Enoch

I like the little guys-- I've actually got a Gnomish character going in a rather intermittent PnP campaign right now. As for PoE, I appreciate the ways that Obsidz is trying to mix up some of the cliches, but Elves and Dwarves remain rather boring to me. I was never a fan of the D&D planetouched. Humans probably make for a nice blank slate in jumping into a faction-heavy game in a new setting as this seems likely to be, but I think I might go for an Aumaua, just to be wacky.

I've never had watermelon rind fried, but it comes out rather well when pickled.

Well, sure, some idiots on TV are, well, idiots on TV. But the NOAA work at weather.gov has no institutional biases towards sensationalism. (And, yes, I know that the NY bureau missed on this particular event.) And some localities have other good sources. In my area, the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang is fantastic-- they explain their rationales, how confident (or not) they are in their conclusions, and what went wrong with the models when they miss. They've got a nice post up now about how the NYC and Philly forecasts for this storm were so poor (and poorly communicated). Edit: As to your "current conditions" complaint, I'm reminded of the old Carlin stoned-weatherman bit (paraphrasing): "It's 58 degrees at the airport. Which is stupid, because I don't know anybody who lives at the airport."

Predictions are probabilistic and therefore sometimes inaccurate-- we should stop predicting!! Anyhow, impact here in the DC area was minimal. (As predicted.) I swept about an inch and a half's worth of snow off the driveway.

Yeah, if you want to follow along with the community reactions at the time, go look at the oldest threads in the "Announcements and News" forum.

This forum needs more lulz today. It's childish, but I dare you to keep a straight face through this.

I play games pretty slowly these days. I'll probably jump in within a day or two of the game's release, but if the response among those with more free time is that the game is especially scarred by bugs, balance issues, and other problems a patch should fix, I could be convinced to put it on the shelf a while to ripen.

Petty revolt against the moderation preferences of the owners of a private forum rarely leads to good places.

No honeysuckle, it's to point out that moot left 4chan. That's why there's a link to moot's post about leaving 4chan. Then why the diminutive jargon in the title and link to some weird re-hosting domain name and not 4chan.org?

Ah. That makes sense. So this thread is mostly an excuse by KP to relay a lame (and, to us Olds, confusing) nickname and exult in some kind of GG triumphalism? (Can't we keep all that idiocy on the designated thread, where sensible folks can ignore it?)

I followed that much. It's "4 = 1/2" that confused me. (Or is "halfchan" some separate hive?)

Meh. Political rhetoric is fundamentally uninteresting. Let me know when they have actual legislative language to go with all that stuff.

what is weird is that Gromnir recalls so well the 1986 broncos playoff run, including the ridiculous win over cleveland, and yet it don't feel like 29 years. HA! Good Fun! I have vague memories of the '86 Super Bowl, but they're mostly of how excited the Giants fans at the party were. I was about 6 weeks shy of my 8th birthday. Somebody explained what a Safety was to me after Elway was sacked in the end zone.

Man, how weird is it that the starting and backup QBs from the 1985 Broncos are now, 30 years later, the General Manager and Head Coach of the team?

People sign in to youtube? Ew. (Vaguely on-topic, I have exactly 3 Steam friends, all of whom I've at least met IRL. If I've gotten any invites from randos, I've long since forgotten them.)

Nicely done. Bring on the Mulmaster Beholder Corps!

I've never ever casted prot-evil-10-rad in an IE game ever. You didn't need to. And I've never stood around casting stoneskin every damned day. What a waste of a spell if you don't need to cast it against enemies like trash mobs. If your party is barely 7th level or so, I agree-- you want to conserve that resource as much as possible. But when you're in the teens (as in much of BG2) it's certainly worth spending a 4th-level spell slot "just in case." Particularly so if you're not playing with metaknowledge of what you're going to be facing next. (And even if you are, BG2 random encounters usually drop enemies right on top of your back line, so pre-stoneskinning is invaluable.) As for Protection from Evil, a 10% bonus to AC and saving throws against most of the game's enemies for all of your party, that rarely expires before you need to rest again (barring long hikes), is a fantastic value at its level.

Being able to pre-buff is theoretically nice in that it rewards good scouting or other info-sources (with the drawback of rewarding good metaknowledge), but it's hardly the only way in which a game can reward scouting or paying attention to in-game hints. I've played very little of the PoE Beta (and even that was a couple versions ago), but scouting and planning were still useful in determining tactical approach or avoidance options, equipment variations, wizard grimiore selection, planning when to expend per-day resources, etc. The analogy that some are making to "charge in and click until everything is dead" ARPG gameplay doesn't really fly. But I've never found standing around casting stoneskin and prot-evil-10-rad a whole lot of fun. I still did it every damned day with every party I ran in BG2, because you'd be dumb not to, but it was tedious. And I doubt that anybody has ever gotten a feeling of having accomplished something clever by casting Bless and Haste to tip the numbers in their favor before a battle. If PoE can get rid of that tedium and still deliver systems that reward forethought, reconnaissance, and planning, that'd be great in my book. (I guess that preparing one's self with stuff like Negative Plane Protection or Chaotic Commands could be a little satisfying when you see those attacks/spells failing later, but those were never the kind of challenges that I, as a player, got much satisfaction out of solving. It was rote countering-- the game played the Vampire card at me, so I played the NPP card in response-- nothing so rewarding as, say, figuring out a way to win a battle through superior tactical positioning or clever use of an under-appreciated spell, item, or ability. This is parenthetical because it really says more about to the "no hard counters" design goal than it does the "no pre-buffing" design goal.)

IDK. Arcanum setting always felt pretty boring to me. To me, it was a cool concept that got less and less impressive the more I saw of the actual implementation. I dig the music, though.

Whoever salted the sidewalk a few blocks from my office this morning (we had a little light snow) used that super-duper salt that is effective not only at preventing freezing, but also at preventing evaporation. And they probably used too much of it. Result being that the paving stones were occasionally slick with slimy salt solution. And that, as I exited the burrito joint with my lunch, my torso took a left while my feet decided that right would be more fun. I landed hard on my left elbow. Probably isn't more than a bruise (and maybe a sore shoulder joint for a while), but my slacks are now covered with crusted salt. The burrito, thankfully, was unharmed.

Dump skeletons? That's crazy-- skeletons are awesome!

I'm not sure that Fox isn't on the outs because Elway is covering for a change that Manning has demanded.

That is definitely what happened to me, thanks.

This was the point where my party flamed out back in the day. Most likely, a large part of the problem was my unwillingness to stock up on and expend consumable resources like you did. Was there some option in there that would've led to your party fighting in that monster ring? (Maybe breaking into too many houses?) I seem to remember something like that.

We've got a slow cooker that I only use to keep stuff warm when I need the oven and stove for other purposes. (That is, very rarely.)