Enoch

I never did understand the problem with the dialogue wheel. Do I want to pick from three-five lines of dialogue that may/may not represent what my character would actually say if I was doing a P&P RPG or do I want to pick from three-five "mood" stances that may/may not represent what my character would actually say if I was doing a P&P RPG? A bit "Six of one, half a dozen of the other" innit? I mostly agree, but I do like how a full-text listing can give you more than 3 or 4 options when appropriate.

Okay, I bought this yesterday. Spent an hour or so mucking about with character creation, and settled on a Witch (with air magic instead of the default point in a saving throw category) and a Rogue (with the backstabby stuff subbed out bow skills). Hopefully I'll be able to find a meatshield hireling or two for them before my spider gets too overmatched. Anyhow, I played the tutorial dungeon and the orc encounter outside the town before calling it a night. It was getting late, and I wanted to make my level-up decisions without being pressed for time. UI headaches: Is there a way to just remove the chat window? Rather annoying how it keeps popping up even when I'm playing single-player. Also, is the camera-pan speed adjustable at all? It's manageable if I use WASD, but mousing to the edge of the screen causes my view to practically leap to the edge of the map. Can you pause the game outside of combat? I chased a rat halfway across the dungeon before I was able to successfully click on it for a conversation. (In hindsight, I suppse I should've zoomed in a bit.) Edit: Need I mention how difficult it was to resist giving both my characters giant platinum-blonde afros?

Nah, Neeshka, Khelgar, Sand, and Qara would have survived. I liked those four. In Dragon Age: Origins I would have murdered everyone except Wynne and Shale. Wynne was cool, and Shale... I'm not sure how I would even go about murdering Shale. Dude is made of rock. In DA2 everyone but Varric would get murdered. Is it weird that I'm most offended you would've killed the dog? (Also, Qara gets to live?!)

Got around to playing Broken Age the other day. Short, and a bit too easy, but very enjoyable. Is there an ETA on Chapter 2?

Likely me, too. I had completely disregarded the previously released games for reasons that I cannot entirely recall (wasn't the first one some kind of Diablo-clone?), but it's tough to ignore kind of accolades this is picking up from folks who I know share some of my tastes in games.

Interesting coincidence that this was bumped back to the top of the forum right around when I started getting back into the playthrough that I was quasi-blogging on the old thread. (I was in the mood to play something a little more management-gamey for a few weeks.) Anyhow, the group is now locked inside the Tomb of 1000 Terrors. (And, of course, the XP lump you get for completing Act 2 just as the door seals behind you was enough to push 3 of my characters into needing training in the tertiary skills they're presently leveling up.) My attention wandered after I had achieved the goal of promoting all my characters and getting GM training in all their primary skills. When I came back to the game, I set out completing some minor quests and poking our heads into a few dungeons we had found that we received no quest to investigate. As far as I can tell, these mostly relate to promotion quests for other classes, as a couple of them had the vestiges of some interactivity that I could do nothing with. I also went through the Fortress of Crows, which was apparently a DLC addition. That one was a lot of fun. Additionally, I had never found the Shard of Light. I will confess that I resorted to the internet to remind me that there were parts of Falagar's mansion that I hadn't cleared out when I passed through there when first entering Karthal. So I checked that one off, too, before ending Act 2. One thing I haven't bothered to do yet is pray at all the shrines on the correct day. Is the payoff for that worthwhile? Not having paid much attention to the days of the week (it took me rather a long time to find where that information is actually communicated to the player), I'd pretty much be camping out at each shrine until the day when praying does something, which feels lame and gamey.

This guy has only rolled over once-- from his stomach to his back this past Friday-- and it was with a little assistance (a small pillow, roughly the size and shape of my forearm, was under his armpits to help him keep his face off the floor). The books we're reading are all talking about keeping a regular schedule and putting the kid in his crib before he gets "over tired," which apparently means before he shows any signs at all of actually being sleepy. I don't know who these families are who can maintain a "regular schedule" sufficient to the needs of an infant, but it sure ain't us. On weekdays we end up bringing him home from daycare at an inconsistent time, playing for a little while, and then noticing that he's rubbing his eyes or blinking slower than usual at some point between 6:30 and 9 PM. And he needs to be fed somewhere in there, too. Weekends are all different. (He also is probably dealing with a little bit of the sore throat and sniffle that the wife and I have both gone through in the last week.) The end result is that he usually ends up "over tired" and wants to be walked around (in one of the few postures he deems acceptble) until he's pretty soundly asleep and then gently lowered into the crib with a 50/50 shot that he wakes up (and complains) on contact. That was getting pretty old. The weekend, we went with option B-- just put the freakin' kid to bed. Listening to screaming in the next room for 20-30 minutes beats carrying a 14.5 pound baby around for an equivalent amount of time with no guarantee of success. And, provided that you know he's warm, dry, and well fed, it ain't gonna hurt him.

I know that a lot of parents stress out about letting their kid cry himself to sleep, but I've found it somewhat perversely enjoyable. He fell asleep in my arms while burping him after his 8PM bottle (during which he ate nearly all of a rather aspirational 200 mL pour), and I successfully laid him in his crib, hoping that would be good for the next 5 hours or so. But he woke up about 90 minutes later (which is the typical duration of 1 sleep cycle), and went into full-throated screaming mode. After a few minutes of that, I checked him, and decided that his diaper was feeling spongy enough that it should be changed. So that's what we did (and it was indeed rather wet), after which I bounced him in my arms for a moment or two to calm him down-- it didn't take long, as he was clearly quite sleepy. But the transfer back to the crib went less-than-perfectly-- i.e., more screaming when he realized that daddy wasn't holding him anymore. The wife and I talked it over a bit. We knew he was well-fed and dry, and we've seen him soothe himself out of somewhat-less-histrionic complaining before. Based on the the reading we've done, we decided that he's old enough (4 months, plus a week) that we should give him a chance to get out of this himself. So we sat there in the living room and listened to him scream. (It's a small house, so you can pretty much hear him everywhere when he really gets into it.) It took a him a half-hour. All the while I'm thinking "Yeah, I'm not that sucker who's going to carry you around for 20 minutes just to make sure you're asleep anymore!" It felt a little like I was standing up to a bully, and the bully is now down for the count. I love the guy, but he's got to figure out the way the world works, and he may have just learned his first lesson in self-reliance.

The example from Fallout was relatively player friendly and worked fine (for me), but this brings to mind other examples-- Wizardry VII and Quest for Glory 2-- where time-triggered events were a source of either pure frustration or waiting around for something to happen. Neither of which makes for especially fun gaming.

You can get treated that way in N'awlins, too, but it'll cost you at least $200.

condolences. were you at least the first to discover the new reflecting pool in your kitchen? no doubt mrs. enoch is the most kindest and understanding woman in the world, but in our experience there is a tactical advantage to discovering your own blunders before your significant other does so. HA! Good Fun! Mixed results there. I was the party to discover the problem, but I was actually on the phone with her when I did. So she shared the surprise and anger of discovery, but was spared the chore of cleaning it all up.

So the wife took the early shift today, leaving me to pack the youngin' up and take him to daycare. (They don't open until 7:30, so we stagger our workdays a bit-- the early shift parent gets to pick him up in the afternoon.) We've got a little cooler bag that we use for transporting the bottles that they feed him during the day, into which we toss an ordinary small ice pack. (The daycare facility is just over a mile away by foot/stroller.) Apparently, when I got that ice pack this morning, I failed to completely close the freezer door. It's one of those drawer-style doors on a relatively new bottom-freezer fridge, so it doesn't just swing closed on its own. This evening, we consequently found all of our stuff thawed and a large puddle on the floor. Not fun.

That's a fair assessment, IMO. The core premise is fundamentally self-indulgent-- "look at all the somewhat-geeky things that I thought were awesome when I was 15!"-- but there was enough cleverness there to help the reader look beyond that. (Which is no mean trick for someone who reflexively reacts with shame when the topic of my youthful obsessions are brought up.) I, too, was made happy by this book.

Peyote does strange things to jurists. yeah, am wondering if Scalia wrote the decision for oregon v. smith while in a peyote filled sweat tent/lodge. that being said, we will be reading hobby very close 'cause after our first few readings, it looks... childish. you got ginsburg claiming that the decision will open the gates o' hell and set lose the dogs o' war on the rights o' women and minorities. alito responds by saying that she is wrong. is very little we can find that gives scope to the decision. http://www.thereason4hope.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/nuh-uh-vs-yes-huh.jpg is actual good for business, but... *shrug* HA! Good Fun! Ah, now we've hit at the core of the matter-- the Court is trying to expand employment opportunities for those misguided souls who stumbled out of law school under the illusion that they could find paying work practicing First Amendment law! A noble endeavor indeed! Soon there will be a booming specialty in advising corporate clients on precisely which religious affiliation allows them to evade the regulations and mandates that most restrain their business operations! (Alternately, it could be argued that, for certain folks on the Court, consistent legal reasoning takes a backseat to the "will this make dirty hippies happy or sad?" test.)

Peyote does strange things to jurists.

That's the kind of thing you expect from a studio that specializes in RPGs...

I'd argue that the type of athleticism required by soccer is rather different than the type required by other major sports in America. Would-be soccer stars aren't playing professional basketball, baseball, hockey, or football because those sports require excellence in upper-body strength, height, and hand-eye coordination. Guys with an elite soccer-type athletic profile (balance, foot speed, cariovascular endurance, lean musculature) aren't becoming pros in other sports-- they're becoming middle-managers who run marathons on the weekend. (Although some probably end up as American Football RBs or DBs who lack the size and strength to go pro.) LeBron James would probably be a pretty good goaltender if he grew up in a soccer-obsessed country (great reach and reflexes, but a bit too much mass to change direction quickly enough for top-level performance), but I can't see him excelling in any other role on the pitch.

I'm sitting in the basement watching my son sleep on the baby monitor. The camera is on top of the bookshelf next to his crib, so the perspective is pretty close to straight down. His preferred posture appears to be that of a person being crucified-- arms straight out or angled slightly up, heels together, head lolling to one side. (He is, of course, on his back for SIDS-prevention reasons.) But when he stirs, the arms move about in such a way as to suggest flagless semaphore. It's surprisingly entertaining, provided that he doesn't wake up enough to start screaming. The doctors still don't want us letting him sleep for as long as he wants to, so I'll be waking him up again in a few hours for a snack at 1:30AM. He goes about 4 hours between feedings at night; 3 hours during the day. It'll be the wife's turn at 5:30. I think he has grown enough and had consistently good enough blood sugar readings that he's safely past the hypoglycemia issues he had as a newborn, but the docs err on the side of being very conservative about this kind of thing. So, we get up in the middle of the night. Anyhow, I should really be getting to sleep.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYJ_4vSruog Apologies to Gromnir's digestive tract, but we're just a couple weeks shy of the 50th anniversary of this guy's tragic death.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oatH0IWaUhI

Sawyer's mini-plot-hints have indicated that they don't want to tie the PC to any particular faction or background. He/She is merely somebody who happens to be in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time and witnesses (or maybe... Watches?) an occurrence of some cosmic significance that sets off the rest of the plot. (This is pretty much the same initial plot-hook concept as was proposed for The Black Hound)

Are you aware that Netflix, Amazon, Hulu is not available to more than 6 billions of people living on this planet? You are really missing the point. More than half of those people live in poverty. Is their access to the latest Game of Thrones episode really the most important issue? We are talking about entertainment. Stop trying to make it into some grand social justice issue. I am not going to oppose you but culture or entertainment is part of life, if you would earn just enough money to buy food/housing. would you rest of the day stare into wall if you can almost for free watch some movie on internet? Man cannot live by bread alone actual quote is as follows: "it is written: ‘man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." am not sure the passage is working for you the way you think it does. HA! Good Fun! I don't know-- it clearly justifies pirating Bibles.

It was mostly a question of value. They like Joseph, but, defensively, the Giants spend their money on pass-rushers and coverage guys. Joseph is/was mostly a run-stuffer (9 sacks in 3 years as a starter; he often came off the field in clear passing situations), and he is very good at that, but the team feels that they can get that kind of performace on the cheap. Also, they used a 2nd round draft pick last year on Jonathan Hankins, a DT who they see stepping into Joseph's "1-tech" role.

This is largely the point of view I've come around to. Sure, there are things teams can do to maximize their chance of success, but ultimately, the dumb luck factor is so huge that it's not especially fair to evaluate a management team on the tiny sample size that is the results of any particular draft (or even a multi-year sequence of drafts). As the business-management folks would say, you evaluate based on process, not results. And fans don't have enough access to really have useful insights about a team's processes in most cases. Given the dumb-luck factor in "hitting" on picks, the strategy I like is to maximize the number of picks your team has to work with. And, although I have no real interest in defending my team's past efforts (the inadequacy of which are a major reason behind the team's lousy results over the past 2 seasons), I will take some issue with your assessment of NYG's 2010 picks in the interest of making a broader point. Specifically, that the willing departure of a player in free agency should not be considered a reason to criticize the decision to draft him in the first place. A draft pick buys a team the exclusive right to employ a player at bargain-basement salaries for 4 or (for 1st-rounders) 5 years. That's it, unless the team is willing to use the extreme measures of the Franchise or Transition tags to keep him. Whether to employ the player beyond that point (at a much higher salary, if the player is any good) is an entirely separate consideration from the team's point of view. The Giants' 2nd round pick in 2010 was Linval Joseph, a defensive tackle who spent his rookie year on the bench and the following 3 years in the starting lineup, playing rather well. Indeed, he played well enough that, a couple months ago, the Minnesota Vikings offered him a 5-year contract with $12.5M in guaranteed money and $31.5M in potential overall compensation. The fact that the Giants were unwilling or unable to offer Joseph this much money (or, alternately, that Joseph simply didn't want to continue working for the employer that had been forced upon him by the NFL's draft system) doesn't make the team's 2010 decision to pick him any less wise. (Also, I note that NYG's 2010 3rd round pick is a good example of the dumb-luck factor: Chad Jones had a catastrophic car accident shortly after signing his rookie contract. He was lucky to learn to walk again, let alone play football.)

Well, you can't very well expect Jimmy Graham to show up for a voluntary quasi-practice when has a pending grievance over the propriety of the franchise tag the team has used on him. He's actually still a free agent-- for now the Saints have a right of first refusal and the right to draft pick compensation from any team signing him, but this grievance puts those rights in question, too. Most likely, it's all posturing for leverage before the two sides commit to a long-term deal, but you can't just assume that everything is going to work out. And, as I'm sure Keyrock is presently lamenting, non-contact or no, injuries do happen at these things. So attending just a few weeks in advance of signing your big cash-in 1st veteran contract is probably not a smart move.