majestic

Haven't played D3 in a long time but in the past one got set items for the season journey at some point. And then we're talking about ridiculous things like a 1600% damage buff to abilities.

A perfect match then. Imagine selling the levels of a shooter as DLC. Daikatana would have raked in billions. Billions!

Jadzia and Bareil died on Worf and Kira respectively. On the other hand Rom and Leeta, Ezri and Julian and BLT with Not!Locarno did fine (as much as fine goes with B'elanna and Tom). Kira, Odo, Sisko and Yates were special cases that could be seen either way. Not sure where to put everything else that happened, e.g. that Picard/Vash fling, Data's one episode girlfriend Jenna, Wesley and Robin and whatever Geordi had with Christy Henshaw, or aborted/never resolved romance arcs (like Picard and Beverly, Deanna and Worf, Harry Kim and Seven, Janeway and Chakotay). Oh, damn. I forgot Kes out-evolving Neelix. Woops. That tilts the balance a bit. Ah crud.

The "new" guy also debates with Gromnir, then tells him he must be fun at parties. Actual new guys annoyed by Gromnir wonder what the hell is going on with his posting style.

Someone went and spelled mystery wrong. I'm pretty sure it was spelled correctly before, now it's wrong. Clippy, was that you?

There's some real money to be made these days if he's good enough. Or bad enough to be entertaining. I have no idea how all these Let's Play people can make a living off YouTube or streamers can rake in loads of cash with a skill level like that. Kind of makes me jealous to have been born 15 to 20 years too early.

Pathfinder pretty much is 3rd Edition D&D with slightly different names and teamwork feats that may or may not work properly in the game. It's really best to look up decent feat combinations and if they even work as stated (much less work as intended), especially if you want to use the game's pre-built NPCs, since they're all average at the very best, outright terrible in some cases. Getting some value out of Valerie takes serious effort. Oh, and do yourself a favor and bring an alchemist along. Unless things were patched in the newer versions their bombs are ranged touch attacks that aren't affected by spell resistance. Those big scary monsters that show up every now and then that your normal characters can only hit when the stars align? Heh. Throw, boom, win. They even come with switchable damage types in case something's immune to your regular booms. Oh and sneak attacks are so easy to do that you can give anyone who ever attacks in melee a level (or two, or three) of Vivisectionist Alchemist or Rogue to take advantage of it. Those juicy level 20 capstone talents that look awesome? Yeah, most of them... pale compared to extra d6 or d8 on every attack.

I can see tiered pricing. 4.99 for a B-List celebrity, 9.99 for an A-List one and 14.99 for William Gibson. Or lootboxes and with every box you have a 20% chance to win Tim Schafer but he'll ask you for more money on Kickstarter GOG.com halfway through the game. Could also have an Ion Storm revival pack, complete with a licensed model of JC Denton, Warren Spector and a 5% chance of getting to be Romero's bitch.

Mmmm. Celebrity DLC packs.

With a public holiday today this was a weekend full of indulgence. Or, in other words, unhealthy food for the win: Well and some take-out ribs from out local Italian place. Might sound weird, but they make them like pizza by throwing the ribs into the oven and burn them to a cinder. Well, kind of. 300+ degrees for a few minutes make them blackend on the outside and super juicy inside. Then they get a bit of sauce on top (a hot one in this case). Compared to the usual way of doing them with extended low temperature they stay a good deal chewier, and obviously there's no smoky flavor but it's full of pure Maillard bliss. Honestly, biting into these is as close to a tastegasm as you can come.

Went for a walk last week, saw a couple of swans crossing a river. Except one of them's a dog.

My group played a bunch of D&D - but our DMs always created their own settings and storylines. We once tried Keep on the Shadowfell, an introdution module to a 4th Edition campaign of a total of three adventures that came out a bit before the actual 4th edition rulebooks. It was okay. It served more as an introduction to the ruleset, was fairly well made but average all around. Perhaps the follow up modules were more interesting, we never really got to play them due to a lack of time. So, yeah. Can't contribute more. ^^

I just noticed I spent the better part of two hours typing up posts. I seriously need to re-evaluate my priorities here. I think I'm out for now. Especially since this is the third time since TLJ came out that we're having the exact same debate, and I'm pretty sure it will have the exact same outcome as the last two times. Seems pretty close doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. Erm...

It isn't entire objective, of course. The movies so far have all looked good. The prequel trilogy's CGI looks terribly dated by now but that's normal. It's not entirely what I was talking about, but I would also say that it is a bold claim to state the prequel trilogy was competently acted. I'm sure everyone did their best given the material the got, but some party are really, really, REALLY awful. Take any random scene with both Anakin and Padme in it. I've seen better acted porn. Better written porn too, for that matter. There are things we can look at when it comes to screenwriting and characterization. How much a given story element makes sense in its universe, for instance, or how understandable character motivations are, whether the characters drive the plot or vice versa, if the movie runs into pacing problems or feels messy or disorganized. The points at which issues with these become a problem for the watcher are subjective, of course, but in general the prequel trilogy in particular did a spectacular job of failing there. The Last Jedi's structure resembles a comedy more than a sci-fi adventure film (i.e. things happen because everyone who isn't Kylo or Rey is an incompetent schmuck, including ALL the leaders on BOTH sides of the conflict). The new Disney era films also have a huge problem with working inside established rules for Star Wars - and it's not like there are many. For me that is a huge issue with my suspension of disbelief, but where that beings to break is subjective. Objectively these are issues that could easily have been avoided so they don't - subjectively - become an issue. Also, you don't ever. Ever. EVER allow FTL bombing like the one shown in TLJ in a sci-fi setting. A few years ago I would have said that being fair to Lucas isn't, well, necessary. These days though, yeah. Although I've seen and read interviews that clearly said that Lucas' first rough cut of the original Star Wars movie was horribly boring and that a collective effort salvaged it. Especially when it comes to pacing, strange cross cuts and destroying the Death Star without the Empire knowing where the rebel base actually is (which is apparently why all dialogue in the rebel HQ comes from off-camera - these scenes were slapped together after prinicpal shooting had long ended).

I don't think that wanting films - even the fun adventure romps - to be competently made is taking space fantasy too serious. The original trilogy was competently made and well crafted (in spite of Lucas, the original was saved by editing after all), and two of them were actually really good movies as well, in addition to being fun space fantasy (although I'm not entirely sure how the presence of somewhat low magic wizards invalidates Star Wars as a sci-fi setting so much it becomes fantasy, but that's another discussion entirely). Well... yes. You're right, of course (and a Calmar is a squid, in the end). No, that's just wrong. I mean, sure, there is the part of the fanbase that deifies the old trilogy, but that has nothing to do with understanding why Tim Rose felt awful after what happened on The Last Jedi set or how large a part Ackbar's character has become in the franchise - and let's not forget that while Ackbar was created by Lucas for Return he was actually introduced in a 1982 comic so we don't go down the "only the movies count" road nedlessly (and even then, prominent haters of the Expanded Universe like Mike Stoklasa think that an iconic character like Ackbar deserved a better send-off). It's okay to not feel as passionately about the topic as Tim Rose. I also don't. I've posted before that I found "It's a wrap!" hilarious, but it's also easy to see how and why Tim Rose felt it was disrespectful to him to ask him to reprise the role for apparently nothing but a cheap death and a joke. It also fits rather well with the impression that large parts of The Last Jedi were made to troll the more passionate Star Wars fan base, i.e. the people doing a lot of free advertising. I mean look at The Mandalorian. Do you really believe that Favreau and Filoni didn't have enough costumes and extras to film the show, or rather, wouldn't have had the budget for them? That's just the flimsy excuse they used to get the 501st on screen. Which means you suddenly have tens of thousands of fanboys telling everyone they know to watch The Mandalorian because they played a part (plus it probably saved a good deal of production cost, those fan made costumes are often way better than the real deal). I'm also not entirely sure why we're debating how much of an effect minor characters can have on pop-culture or how popular and beloved they can become with minor roles. Movie history is full of them. Inigo Montoya, Gunnery Sargeant Hartman, heck even Wedge Antilles and Boba Fett.

Yeah, but that's probably only because his marital status transferred with him to DS9. There are some other happy couples but none started out a new show as married.

He is, in fact, playing one of the most beloved characters in the franchise, and while Ackbar memes are all good fun reducing the character and the actor(s) behind them to nothing but a meme - on set in front of everyone else - when you're the people in charge of Star Wars is completely tone deaf, and the argument that the guy should thoughen up and just because he played a ridiculous alien he's not allowed to be offended (or have any pride in his work for a job well done) is a bit strange coming from you of all people. I'm not saying that "It's a wrap!" wasn't hilarious. It was. The way it was handled was not (much like Ackbar's death in the film was handled terribly) and I understand Tim Rose being offended. Oh, and Mon Calamari are not squids. The squids are called Quarren (both races are native to Mon Cala). Racist.

WotC changed a lot of things with 4E, and yes, the Blood War was axed in the process. Fun fact, The Abyss was listed as Elemental Plane in 4E even though it's still home to creatures regarded demons instead of elementals, how that was supposed to make sense is anyone's guess. I might have misspoken about 5E having a Manual of the Planes already. Looks like it doesn't. That information appears to be baked into one of the expanded Player Handbooks.

Is that because she doesn't like the character or simply because the episodes featuring him prominently are somewhat annoying on DS9? Although I'd say the outstanding O'Brien episode is Hard Time, not Visionary.

Read a few of the comments on the tweet. I agree that it was most likely not intended as an insult or humiliation but it is a perfect example of being completely tone deaf. Not much of a surprise given how The Last Jedi turned out to be (as part of the Star Wars franchise and as a movie, if such things can be seen separately).

You're right, it didn't really take off or go anywhere. At first she rejected him on the Holodeck, then he got more confidence in Transfigurations, then there was a turbolift conversation about how things with Christy are going really well (and Worf was commenting on how he taught Geordi about women) and then the show just dropped the entire thing. It's been a while but his grin when talking about how things were going with Christy pretty much implies getting laid, or at least that is what I imagined it was about. But yeah. He certainly got the butt-end of action. Dunno, maybe it has something to do with the supposed plans to make him gay. He sure liked Q's hunky Wesley version. Heh.

The 4th and 5th Edition does have a Manual of the Planes and Sigil comes up in them but the Planescape campaign setting as such is gone. Without details it's hard to tell of course but I seem to recall BioWare no longer licensing D&D due to cost issues and story/edition control on behalf of WotC. That's not to say that WotC didn't relent at some point. I always found it curious that 4E played so much like it was designed with a much easier adaptation to computer games in mind but there never were any major game releases. Unlike a whole slew of AD&D 2nd and D&D 3d edition games back in the heyday of (A)D&D adaptations.

As far as I know it's WotC policy to license out only the latest edition. But who knows, maybe we'll get AD&D back. Bring on the THAC0s baby, screw BABs.

Watched What/If on Netflix. I suppose the show is really as bad as its review scores, still I found myself entertained by the sheer absurdity of the plot and the actor's "performances". Bridget Jones hamming it up like Shatner crossed well and truly into the "so bad it's good" territory for me. Plus I really like watching the Doci (aka Warlock) regardless of how ridiculous or small his role is.