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aluminiumtrioxid

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Posts posted by aluminiumtrioxid

  1. So, let me tell you a hypothetical story. Hypothetically let's pretend there is a state somewhere between Alabama & Kentucky. Now, suppose that state was considering a project for river levee reinforcements on the banks of a large American river that runs north to south and was made famous by Samuel Clemens. Lets assume that river runs past a hypothetical major city in the western quarter of that hypothetical state. Still with me? Good. 

     

    Now, this state is concerned about soil erosion following a series of floods of this hypothetical river over several years. So a project was proposed to reinforce the earth levee with a fiber underlayment. In fact, a hypothetical frequent poster on a small computer game forum did a materials cost analysis of this project two years ago. Nice fella. Baseball fan. Hypothetically.  

     

    Anyway the proposal was completed and budgeted by the state government of this hypothetical state and then defunded, That appeared to be that. It turns out that two members of the General Assembly Agriculture and Natural Resource subcommittee of this hypothetical state, one with a degree in business, the other theology, are doing a feasibility study of the proposal. The study has a budget of, well let's say half the material cost of the original proposal. So for two years a theology major and business major are studying a proposal that took an Ecologist, Civil Engineer, and a electronics engineer (who literally fell back-asswards into the job) about three days to put together. And wasting a hell of a lot of the tax payers money while doing it. 

     

    When the Baseball fan and frequent board poster pointed this out the reply was a dismissive quip "Why make a big deal about that? It's not like it's your money?" Hypothetically. 

     

     

     

    I swear to god I have no idea what your hypothetical is trying to say  :grin:

  2. Yep. The best thing is it uses the existing pathfinder rules set so no stupid balancing dramas.

    lololololo

     

     

    Tier 1: Capable of doing absolutely everything, often better than classes that specialize in that thing. Often capable of solving encounters with a single mechanical ability and little thought from the player. Has world changing powers at high levels. These guys, if played with skill, can easily break a campaign and can be very hard to challenge without extreme DM fiat or plenty of house rules, especially if Tier 3s and below are in the party.

    (...)

    Tier 6: Not even capable of shining in their own area of expertise. DMs will need to work hard to make encounters that this sort of character can contribute in with their mechanical abilities. Will often feel worthless unless the character is seriously powergamed beyond belief, and even then won't be terribly impressive. Needs to fight enemies of lower than normal CR. Class is often completely unsynergized or with almost no abilities of merit. Avoid allowing PCs to play these characters.

     

    A+ balance indeed

    • Like 7
  3. Essentially, Larian has always had the unrelenting attitude of "Hey Rpg fans, we're making computer role-playing games how we want. If you don't like that, f*** you!"... And it shows in their work. Most people can't seem to comprehend that they purposely made their story a joke, salted with humor, dry sometimes even breaking the fourth wall. And their response to romances in the first game was unnaturally perfect for reason. Great stuff, I give Larian major kudos for what they've done in the Original Sin series. The quality puns and jabs of other games makes the game even more relevant to play if you're an Rpg lover.

     

     

    To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Divinity: Original Sin. The humour is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of classical computer role-playing games most of the jokes will go over a typical player's head. There's also both protagonists' nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into their characterisation- their dialogue options draw heavily from the rich history of fourth wall breaking jokes in CRPG history such as the concept of CHIM, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these jokes, to realise that they're not just funny- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Divinity: Original Sin truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in the main antagonist of the story, which itself is a cryptic reference to the Neverending Story. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Larian's genius wit unfolds itself on their monitors. What fools.. how I pity them.  :grin: 

     

    And yes, by the way, i DO have a Divinity: Original Sin tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- and even then they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand. Nothin personnel kid  8)

    • Like 7
  4. Gromnir I assume you will not accept the idea that the better angels of our nature might just prevail. That most people might be decent to their fellow humans without Big Brother threatening them. But if you won't accept that then you can expect folks to act in their best economic interests.

     

    lol what

  5.  

    I've been reading this piece of crap:

     

    %7B8A34F3DD-94B2-4E0A-A305-36C6062432D2%

     

    Easily one of the worst sci-fi books I've ever had the misfortune to encounter, with characters and dialogue so wooden that Asimov would shed proud tears seeing how the standard he set lived on even in 1995 (which, I'm told, is when this thing was written), ideas and themes Ian Watson's Warhammer 40k books have better addressed five years before the first publication of this story as gaming literature (which is pretty much the lowest of SFF), and a... final twist that actually kinda works? Surprisingly? It's definitely too little, too late to save the book, but at least an attempt was made.

     

     

    Watson's 40k books addressed themes ? :p

     

     

    Hell, compared to crap like the Gaunt's Ghosts series, they addressed themes proficiently.

  6. Could it be an issue with the translation into English? 

     

     

    To Hungarian. (English cover image was posted for recognisability.)

     

    Apparently it was translated by some guy called Csaba Varga. No idea how good (or bad) he is; it certainly wouldn't be the first book to get absolutely wrecked in translation (looking at you, Malazan Book of the Fallen). But based on the numerous other flaws of the book (paper-thin characters, bad narrative structure), I would wager that even if he is at fault to some extent, he would not be solely responsible for the trainwreck that is this novel.

    • Like 1
  7. I've been reading this piece of crap:

     

    %7B8A34F3DD-94B2-4E0A-A305-36C6062432D2%

     

    Easily one of the worst sci-fi books I've ever had the misfortune to encounter, with characters and dialogue so wooden that Asimov would shed proud tears seeing how the standard he set lived on even in 1995 (which, I'm told, is when this thing was written), ideas and themes Ian Watson's Warhammer 40k books have better addressed five years before the first publication of this story as gaming literature (which is pretty much the lowest of SFF), and a... final twist that actually kinda works? Surprisingly? It's definitely too little, too late to save the book, but at least an attempt was made.

  8. Aluim a weak government is not no government. I am not an anarchist. A government that does not have eminent domain powers, and whose regulatory, taxation, and police powers curtailed to just their constitutionally defined limits can still enforce the law without having the ability to help one group or another. 

     

    But no matter what you do, the government will still have the power to appoint Supreme Court judges, and thus bend or reinterpret those constitutionally defined limits, so... how exactly is this supposed to ensure that they won't have the ability to help one group or another?

  9.  

    The very reason I argue that a government's power MUST be limited is because it is comprised entirely of the same selfish, narcissistic, greedy,  and self interested people that left ascribes to "business" people, or "capitalists" of the "rich" (imagine a sneer when you read those words). The difference is they have police powers. They can actually take things away from you. The richest man in the world could not take a single dollar from me that I didn't freely give him. (...)

     

    I agree with her that having a government that does favors for the "rich" is a fast track to oligarchy. But there IS no other kind of government. They all do it because to a man and woman they are venal, selfish, and exactly the kind of people they say they want to protect us all from. Only THEY have guns. By protecting ourselves from the government we are also protecting ourselves from the "evil rich".

     

    Do you see what I'm getting at here?

     

     

     

    I do, I just vehemently disagree with every word of it.

     

    The very reason the rich can't take a dollar from you if you hadn't given it freely is that we have laws against that sort of thing, and a police to enforce them.

     

    Also, consider this: we have a government which is supposed to safeguard the people's interests. The processes of this can be subverted, but assume we didn't - would anything be better? A weak government may not be subverted by those who would bend it to serve their will, but neither would it have the tools to oppose those people.

    • Like 1
  10.  

     

    As you my melancholic assessment: "When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion — when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing — when you see money flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors — when you see that men get richer by graft and pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you — when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice — you may know that your society is doomed"

     

    Classy.

     

    Do you think any of that is wrong?

     

     

     

    I just think it's funny in light of an article I recently read, which argues that the ultimate goal of the same special interest groups who uphold Rand as an inspirational figure are also very keen on the Virginia school of economic thought, whose endgame - according to the article's author - is to create the exact situation described in the bolded part of the quote.

     

    (Not that I trust any article from a random source - if you happen to know more about Buchanan's work and disagree with his characterization by the author, I'd be happy to hear your thoughts.)

  11. As you my melancholic assessment: "When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion — when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing — when you see money flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors — when you see that men get richer by graft and pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you — when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice — you may know that your society is doomed"

     

    Classy.

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