aluminiumtrioxid

Other options upon further thinking on the issue: whenever you're in wereshark form, you can make bite attacks as a bonus action for... say... 1d8+Strength bonus damage, but the taste of blood drives you into a frenzy that leaves you tired and spent after it passes, so you gain 1 level of exhaustion (replaces the Hit Die enhancement); your Speak with Animals and Beast Sense rituals can now be used on all predatory aquatic animals (optional pick instead of a/, b/ or c/). So, basically: Tireless Werebeast Your mastery over your shapeshifting abilities increases; you gain the following benefits: - Whenever your shapeshifting would end, you can choose to remain in wereshark form. You still lose all related combat bonuses, but retain the advantage on Strength checks (not saves!) and your capability to breathe underwater. Pick one: - Improved Regeneration: while in wereshark form, whenever you roll a Hit Die to regain hit points, the minimum number of hit points you regain from the roll equals twice your Constitution modifier, OR - Ferocious Bite: while in wereshark form, you can make bite attacks as a bonus action for 1d8+Strength bonus damage, but the taste of blood drives you into a frenzy that leaves you totally spent when it passes. Gain a level of exhaustion at the end of the encounter.* *This is the vanilla option based on the Frenzied Berserker primal path in the core. If you wanna be really hardcore, I'll let you use the following instead: - Ferocious Bite: while in wereshark form, you can make bite attacks as a bonus action for 1d8+Strength bonus damage, but the taste of blood drives you into a frenzy that makes telling friend from foe all but impossible. You always have to attack the nearest eligible target until you change back to human form or the encounter ends. Pick one: - Gain advantage on swimming checks; swimming no longer halves your speed, OR - Gain advantage on any rolls to track, or detect the presence of, any bleeding targets or targets whose blood you ever tasted. A successful Perception check also reveals basic information about targets whose blood you can smell or taste, like race and general health, OR - Your Spirit Seeker class feature can now be used on all predatory aquatic animals, OR - If you chose Improved Regeneration, the minimum HP regain also applies to Hit Dice rolled while in human form.

So I mulled over the question of the wereshark-enhancing feat, and came up with a lot of disconnected little pieces you can choose from. These are the core: - Whenever your shapeshifting would end, you can choose to remain in wereshark form. You still lose all related combat bonuses, but retain the advantage on Strength checks (not saves!) and your capability to breathe underwater. - While in wereshark form, whenever you roll a Hit Die to regain hit points, the minimum number of hit points you regain from the roll equals twice your Constitution modifier. And you can choose one of the following: a/ Gain advantage on swimming checks; swimming no longer halves your speed. b/ Gain advantage on any rolls to track, or detect the presence of, any bleeding targets or targets whose blood you ever tasted. A successful Perception check also reveals basic information about targets whose blood you can smell or taste, like race and general health. c/ The minimum HP regain also applies on Hit Dice rolled while in human form. Note that you gain a class feature called Aspect of the Beast at level 6; since none of the corebook options are especially shark-y, you can choose a/ or b/ as your pick for that. So if you like both, don't worry, there's a way for you to get them both.

Nope. But lately there's been a tendency to see Space Marines as knights in shining armor (a far cry from Watson's surgically mutilated, insane zealots), and a shift in narrative towards grim-faced heroes unironically saving the Imperium through the power of fascism. It's all very uncomfortable, if you ask me.

I live to serve.

Well, technically, according to wiki, tragedy is "based on human suffering that invokes in its audience an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in the viewing"; therefore, since ME3's ending is incapable of invoking either, I'd disqualify it as such. It's a ****ty ending, not a tragic one.

Well, it's not that simple: http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/service-management/businesses-prefer-cut-in-house-costs-than-challenge-providers-of-outsourced-services-3590995/ Or sometimes completely misguided: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/239202 Yeah, these. This utterly shortsighted "sacrifice everything for short-term profit" business strategy demonstrates perfectly what's wrong with... stuff.

It absolutely has. Personally, I blame Abnett's influence. ...But this is pretty OT.

...W40K is also supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, despite Games Workshop's attempts lately at pretending it's totally not.

I have to say this is a good example of the principles of Capitalism going too far No, as JadedWolf has accurately pointed it out, this is capitalism doing what capitalism does. Which is, incidentally, why libertarian "let the free market run its course, it will work out in the end, honest" views fill me with utter dread.

I'd argue it's better exactly because it's just so much more focused. Bigger isn't always better, especially not in a story-centric RPG, where too much freedom kills pacing entirely.

...Now now, I'll write a proper Blüd Tide just for you. Don't expect it to be anything else than what the name suggests, though.

That's what the Sea of Echoes is for. Well, that and because undying halfway-existent melnibonean sorcerer-kings waging memetic warfare against each other is always fun.

I think the poll needs a "meh whatever" option. I enjoyed Pillars. I would also enjoy something lighter in tone (for a change, if nothing else; market seems to be pretty saturated with grimdark at the moment). I can see myself enjoying something even darker as well (give me a decent Dark Heresy CRPG with the option of executing small children for HERESY and/or the crime of breathing while mutant, and I'll have your name be praised forever). Quality is independent of tone.

Do you know of any (recent) game where the story was not average off the stock material? Shadowrun: Dragonfall had a perfectly serviceable story. Yeah, but that's more of a murder mystery than a real RPG. Although it has strong RPG elements it doesn't have real side quests and party management to the extent of a real RPG. You're thinking of Dead Man's Switch. Dragonfall is a completely different campaign (which surpasses its predecessor in every possible way and is probably the best CRPG since Alpha Protocol).

Wouldn't be difficult to describe it as such. I still think it's a strawman, though. Sarkeesian isn't saying video games specifically are mind controlling you into misogyny, she's saying (western) culture is (which video games are undeniably a part of).

Do you know of any (recent) game where the story was not average off the stock material? Shadowrun: Dragonfall had a perfectly serviceable story. At the very least, it managed to avoid Ass Pulling a radical thematic shift in the last... roughly 10 percent of the story, which is more than what could be said for Pillars.

That is not a strawman. It is a crude and ineloquent way of saying the exact same thing. If media can cause people to have misogynistic attitudes then it's causing them to be misogynist and if it works on a subconscious level then mind-control isn't the worst comparison. Is anchoring mind-control?

It's an important distinction because people are fond of the strawman "oooh they're saying video games are mind-controlling people into becoming misogynists! WHAT MORONS AMIRITE". Furthermore... While that is true, as you have pointed out, it's a process with multiple steps, where, with sufficient awareness of your own biases, you can catch yourself and mitigate the effect on your behavior. Which is a pretty significant difference from "it's SATANISTIC MIND CONTROL".

Haven't we already uniformally dismissed that definition since it's joke? "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others" and all that. Translation: "I'm allergic to viewing things in a wider context. Please don't make me do that." Have you even read the article you're talking about in entirety, or just grabbed a screencap that reinforces your biases and launched into a frothing tirade as per the usual modus operandi of this topic? Yes. Then I suppose you're just... not very good at parsing text. Let's go over the contents of the article, paragraph by paragraph. - the first 8 paragraphs are about Rust - 3 paragraphs about the weird double standard of white players crying "forced politics!" when they're restricted to avatars with skin colors other than their own, but when people of color raise the same issue in relation to the overabundance of white protagonists, they're basically told to shut up - 1 paragraph about the writer liking TW3 - 4 paragraphs of the writer (falsely) bemoaning the lack of reviews even raising the issue of minority representation - 1 paragraph about how gender representation is becoming an issue that's actively talked about, and racial diversity shouldn't be any different - 8 paragraphs about why, in a wider cultural context, saying "it's completely like a game based on Indian mythology not containing whites" is simply wrong - 2 paragraphs about how the "historical accuracy" argument doesn't hold water in a game of wraiths and magic. Which is where people tend to miss the point and yell "bu-bu-but INTERNAL CONSISTENCY" like they're incapable of even considering that internal consistency means consistency within the framework of the rules the author set up, and there's nothing preventing said author from setting up a set of rules where the presence of non-white people is acceptable. (Note: this is not an argument specifically against The Witcher, and nothing in the text implies such.) 2 more paragraphs touch on the subject a bit later. - 1+4 paragraphs about how "but the game is dealing with racism! there are elves and dwarves and people are totally discriminating against them!" is a rather weak argument when people of color aren't even allowed to exist within the setting. Or, as the author put it: "I’m not against racism being depicted; the game actually shows racism and bigotry as bad. But even Elves have the opportunity to exist. People of color don’t. Again: This is literal dehumanising of people of color. (...) If anything, making us short, bearded white Scottish men, or very white, pointy-eared thin people reinforces how dismissed we are — by not even being considered human." - 1 paragraph where the author explains that he just wants to be represented in games, nothing more. (Certainly not an unreasonable request in my book.) - 2 paragraphs about the frankly inexplicable hostility of reactions to that very simple request - 1 paragraph where he theorizes it's probably ignorance, not racism that fuels these feelings - 2 paragraphs about how this problem will probably lessen as more and more people of color gain employment in the games industry - 1 paragraph about how overlooked the lack of representation is as an issue (debatable) - 4 more paragraphs about how the real problem we should strive to solve is that these issues can't even be raised without being met with vitriolic hostility There's basically nothing in the article flat-out requesting that The Witcher 3 be changed in any way, shape or form. Furthermore, the number of paragraphs actively discussing issues TW3 had, as opposed to engaging with common counter-arguments in discussions about minority representation is, what, 5? There are more paragraphs devoted to Rust than that. In contrast, there are 19 paragraphs that are essentially all about the gaming community (lack of people considering representation as an issue, and the vitriolic response when people find it objectionable). Hence, in my book at least, this article isn't about The Witcher, much less about "having games made by white people in white countries based on white culture to be changed to suit the possible needs of minorities in other countries".

I'm not sure. Why would they work simultaneously on the expansion and the base game? Especially considering they said that profits from Pillars' sales will go towards the expansion, therefore they couldn't even have set the funding (and consequently, scope) until PoE was published.

Have you even read the article you're talking about in entirety, or just grabbed a screencap that reinforces your biases and launched into a frothing tirade as per the usual modus operandi of this topic? Not if you go by the definition of racism as "prejudice plus power". So it's about thought control. Yes. Exactly. Congratulations, you have grasped the issue perfectly. That's what it was about all along. Moron.

I think both reviews were rather easy on the story, which I consider to be the weakest point of the game. (Still miles above anything Bioware put out since Jade Empire, but that's irrelevant.)

Technically, no one is forcing Western developers to include minorities in their games either. If you want to split hairs, then you got a point. There's *no push* then from media or the intelligentia for japanese/asian game companies to include non-asians. It would be hair-splitting if the... "push from media and intelligentsia", as you phrase it, had a realistic chance of achieving any effect whatsoever on how big-budget games are produced. But it doesn't. Their loss for their own stupidity then. With that mindset, i would've never played any of the Final Fantasy games. Why on earth Polygon thinks that this is good idea stems either from something very sinister or just very ignorant. This thing right here, exactly this, is what the article was about ?? That minority consumers maybe, just maybe, should be able to voice their complaints of underrepresentation without being insulted and shouted down.

...That's not what happened at all. Technically, no one is forcing Western developers to include minorities in their games either. Absolutely. It's totally a fair thing to say "we don't think minority representation is a priority in our game". It's a valid artistic choice. But a (minority) consumer's choice to not buy the game based on this artistic choice is just as valid, which is the entire point of the article. Their loss for their own stupidity then. With that mindset, i would've never played any of the Final Fantasy games. Why on earth Polygon thinks that this is good idea stems either from something very sinister or just very ignorant. This thing right here, exactly this, is what the article was about

So, basically, not mores.