Hurlshort

LotR without hobbits would be pretty sad. The have the best architecture. Marble and stone get pretty boring.

Showgunners was fantastic for me. Way more entertaining than I expected. It pairs well with a watch of The Running Man (new or old.) I think the story was even better than Mutant: Year Zero. How did we not get a Mutant Year One? It seemed like it did well enough. UFC Counterforce hasn't grabbed hold of me yet...but it is sitting there waiting for me.

Underkeep is indeed a fun game and I've played through a couple dungeons. Yesterday I had an interesting struggle playing Dune. I wanted to unlock the 2nd sword-master level, and I needed to kill a particular bandit the get a hilt to give to the blind sword-master guy. This bandit had a flamethrower and a shield, which is no fun for my sniper/sword character. One interesting thing Funcom has done is introduced some sort of rival bandits to a lot of the bases. So you show up to a base, and oftentimes there is already fighting going on between the two factions. This makes it a bit easier to thin the ranks while they are duking it out. But I still got killed by the flamethrower. So I hoofed it back from an outpost to the base and tried again. And died again. I did this 4 times before I decided to build a base nearby. That meant I didn't have to hoof it back from far away. It also gave me a place to hide out from sandstorms. Of course, as soon as I built it, I managed to succeed in killing the bandit leader. Aw well, now I have a bunch of new sword-master skills unlocked and it is time to work on tier 4 gear. I am level 54 at this point. I hadn't actually died until that point. Flamethrowers suck.

I picked up Underkeep on GoG. Looks like a very good Lands of Lore/M&M style game.

Hope everything is well with you and we will still probably be here if you ever need to chat.

Patrick Stewart seemed to be a positively happy guy. He just seemed to relish everything in life. He'll be missed.

It's still in Early Access, so you've got time.

They are more similar than you'd expect based on the initial look and design. On its surface, JA looks much more up close and personal, with each colorful merc moving across a small sector looking for cover and utilizing a wide variety of weapons. Menace looks more like a traditional wargame, with squads and armor on a very square map. But it is also utilizing colorful mercs moving across a small sector utilizing a wide variety of weapons. Instead of a single soldier with hit points, you have a squad with soldiers. As you lose soldiers, you become less effective. You still need to find cover, use elevation, and understand weapon range. So combat wise, I'd say they end up playing very similar despite the very different look and perspective. In terms of mission and structure, Menace is a lot more random and replayable. That is where it shares its Battle Brothers roots. They are both great and menacing.

Race Report: My wife and I got to Sacramento on Thursday and the race was set for Sunday. That seems like a lot of days to hang out and wait, but there was a lot of prep stuff to do and it went fast. Basically check in on Thursday, swim practice Friday, check in bikes and gear on Saturday, and then show up to the transition area on Sunday morning at 5:00 AM. Swim - We take a bus to the swim start. It is a one way swim down the river, 2.4 miles long. It was nice the share a seat with my wife. She was very nervous and on the verge of tears, so I tried to keep it light. The swim starts at 7 AM, and you set yourself up in these pens based on your swim speed, so I dropped her off at her pen and then elbowed my way closer to the front. I had some good conversations with people. The guy next to me was from London, so he made quite the trip for this. The swim felt great. I was comfortable and moving well. I was passing a lot of people. There is a lot of contact in the swim, but I had no trouble. One guy managed to somehow cut me on the hand. I don't know if he got me with a nail or what. The swim starts in the somewhat shallow American river and then feeds into the colder and deeper Sacramento. It was 63 degrees, but I train in the ocean and it didn't bother me. The Sacramento was super fast! I finished in 51 minutes, which is almost 30 minutes faster that I did in my last full Ironman. We run up a ramp to the Sacramento A's/River Rats stadium to get our bikes. I did a full change from my wetsuit into a bike kit. Most people use tri suits, but I wanted to be comfortable. Bike - The bike started well. It is two 56 mile loops. The first 28 out felt good, but coming back my stomach started to bother me. I stomach was uneasy all week before the race, so I was worried about this. I had all this nutrition packed, but it was hard to eat anything with the way I felt. I started grabbing the electrolyte drink they were serving on the course and it helped a bit. The second loop was hard going out. The wind had picked up, so I had to do some work to maintain my pace. My goal was a 6 hour bike ride. That is basically a 19 mph average. I dropped to 17ish going out because of the wind, so when I turned around I started to push. I averaged 21-22 mph on the last 25 miles and finished in 5:59:10. It felt good to hit that goal. I also saw my wife twice and she looks great. I could tell she was having a good ride. Run- It was now around 2:30 PM and it was pretty hot out. I changed into running gear and started moving. My stomach was still a mess and I wasn't taking in many calories, but I did keep drinking electrolytes, water, coke, and orange slices. I really wanted to average 10 minutes a mile on this run, but pretty early on I realized that was not going to happen. I was walk/running a lot of 11:30 minute miles early on. Marathons are way too long. Mile 8-16 just sucked, but I did start to rebound on the last 10 miles. I ended up with a a 12:25 pace on the marathon, which is like 5:25 overall. It's not the result I was hoping for, but it was still better than my first race, and I've come to terms with the fact that this stuff is just hard. I saw my wife twice on the run and that was uplifting. She had made a race friend and they were making good progress. She had gotten a stress fracture on her foot about 5 weeks ago, so she had to stay off it, but she went out and still kept up a solid 15 minute mile pace. TLDR: We finished Ironman California! I ended up with a time of 12 hours and 41 minutes. That is over 2 and half hours faster than my previous attempt, so I'm happy. My wife finished her first with a time of 15 hours and 14 minutes. It's a huge relief to be done. We had a great year of training for it. Now I'm going to relax and play video games...atleast for a week or two.

Race day is October 18th. The distance is 140.6 miles. Full Ironman.

I am on the last book and I'm concerned about having to wait for more. There is way too much to keep track of in these things and if I have to wait a year, I will be completely lost.

I did my last long training ride today, despite it being over 90 degrees about halfway through. I did good on nutrition. I was doing a 16-mile loop around a reservoir, and we had our car set up for aid. First loop I ate a bagel as I rolled out. 2nd loop I ate a small sweet potato, repeated that on the 3rd loop, and then ate a sandwich with salami and Havarti after the 4th loop. I found my wife and her friend back at the car after 4 loops complaining about the heat and a bee sting. They had only done 3 loops, so I told them to get moving. Then I put my running shoes on and ran for 40 minutes. It was way too hot and I was dying, but I got it done. I downed an entire coke afterwards. But I was happy my stomach was in good shape, so hopefully that will bode well for the race in 2 weeks. Let's hope Sacramento isn't surface temperature of the sun on race day.

I find Steam is pretty reasonable in terms of aggregate reviews. If a game is mixed or negative, it probably isn't worth my time. It makes it easier to weed through the absolute metric ton of games we have coming out these days. I'm not going to treat them like gospel, but if a game looks interesting to me and has positive reviews, it makes it easier to drop a few bucks on it.

I've got two weeks until Ironman California. I'm feeling pretty fit. I've knocked out a bunch of 10 miles runs and 6 hour bike rides. This weekend is the last long training session. I'm still worried about nutrition. I still don't feel like I'm taking in enough. I'm using sweet potatoes on the bike. Basically I just have some baked sweet potatoes in my back pocket and I eat one every 90 minutes. These are good and don't upset my stomach, but I think I need more. I'm going to try a couple sandwiches this weekend. One halfway through the bike and one before the run. Hopefully that will help.

I never started Act 3. I'm right outside Baldur's Gate and I just can't seem to push forward. But that is typical of Larian games. I don't know what it is. I like the combat, but maybe it just wears me out after a couple acts.

This was definitely sarcasm. Nice to see @alanschu posting.

I've got a speeder and I've crossed some desert in Dune without getting eaten. It is strange playing single player, since you don't have the urban sprawl of the online servers. It's a bit more creepy knowing I'm the only one out there in the desert with the worm. I also started Cyberpunk and bought the expansion. The game seems to run much better than it did at launch. I'm playing a female V. 4 different choices of nipples is quite the customization options. I had my wife help with my character so it wouldn't be weird.

JA3 is a fantastic game.

You can add Dawnwalker to that list. Best story driven RPG I've played outside of Obsidian games. Colony Ship is the only one on your list I really dug.

I started playing Dune single player, which is nice. It basically works like Conan Exiles now and you can set all the rules yourself. I have no idea why they didn't do that at the start, but better late than never.

Unfortunately PoE was on life support when PoE 2 didn't sell well enough, and Avowed was the last chance for that IP to hit it big. Outer Worlds 2 basically did the same thing. It is frustrating because these are all very good games in interesting universes. But Obsidian isn't a small independent studio that can survive with a small loyal fanbase. They need mainstream success to be profitable, and they are only going to get that with an established IP. It's a bummer, but I still expect their Fallout game to be fantastic.

Finished Dawnwalker. I was happy with my ending. I did run out of time on some stuff that I wanted to do, but I was also ready to finish the game after sinking 45 hours into it. I really enjoyed the story and Lacra is my new girlfriend. She would never admit it, of course, but she is clearly sweet on me. Post credits scene was cool. Honestly I'm just glad to know the game did well and I look forward to future games. I've had a great month of gaming with this and Zero Company. I don't finish a lot of games, so finishing two in a month is a surprise. They were both fantastic.

The quests in Dawnwalker also all do a fantastic job of connecting with the main goal. They don't feel like detours, they feel like puzzle pieces that unlock the bigger picture of the main antagonist. It's really well done.

It sounds like you don't really need to remove the time because you an get through most of the content in the 30 days. I'm feeling a bit of pressure. I'm level 22, around Day 13, and I've only killed one of the court. But I'm doing a ton of different side quests and they are all extremely interesting. The day/night mechanic is really keeping me jumping around too, since so many quests are tied to it. I know games using certain times for quests aren't new, but Dawnwalker does a great job of it. It feels very different playing at night versus day. Also Coen is possibly my favorite protagonist in a game in a long time. I'm excited to see what the developer does with him next.

Oh. Is there crafting?