kanisatha

Nice analogy. I stopped paying attention to new rock music around 1995, and just keep playing my 260+ CDs from the '50s-early '90s. But with RPGs, I can keep replaying old games only so much, and do feel a need for something new, even if that means playing something not as awesome as those games of old. So yeah, I still have the BG, PoE, and Pathfinder games, plus Solasta. But I'll also keep playing games like DA and Witcher, and try out new games like Dark Envoy, Vendir, Zoria, Starfield, and Avowed.

Okay, fair enough. I guess I was looking at it as a question of people acting knowingly and of their complete free will, a conscious act and not an automatic/unthinking reflex.

Well said!! Also, kudos for understanding that states and nations are different things. It takes the life out of me trying to explain this to my students every semester in my intro to poli sci and intro to international relations classes.

Willingness to die for a country entirely depends on how that country has treated you. For me, as an immigrant to the US, I would gladly die for the US because it took me in when it had no obligation to do so, and gave me a really good life. By contrast I would never give anything to my country of birth which, when I was age 16, tried to murder me and my entire family.

Yeah, even though I am anti-monarchy and very strongly republican (note small 'r'), I have a lot of respect for Elizabeth II. She was only a teenager when she was crowned, upon the very sudden death of her father with whom she was traveling at that time. I'm good with all the accolades and well-wishes she is receiving.

Re. one of the bigger issues raiesed in the article, the Air Force has already stated officially that henceforth their model for aircraft acquisition programs will be three separate contracts for a project: development, production, and maintenance. So the contractor that wins the development contract does not automatically also get the contracts for production and maintenance. But yeah, my strong expectation also is that this EMD contract is with Lockheed Martin.

Very happy for you @Azdeus and other Warhammer fans. But this game is not for me for multiple reasons, so I will be passing on it. Too bad, because Owlcat is one of only a very few studios making the kind of cRPGs I love. Even Obsidian, my other much-loved studio, sadly seems to be moving away from cRPGs to more action RPGs.

I think they sent this announcement email to all of us who've funded their Pathfinder games. But for me, this game is a hard pass.

Also different pantheon of gods.

I would guess that Greyhawk will be one of the two more settings to be brought back next year. D&D is now such a huge cash-cow for WotC and Hasbro and, since setting books and guides and gaming modules are all mainly being released in digital form and not physical form, they can go nuts pushing out a lot of new stuff. The demand is certainly there.

Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kherson: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/29/world/europe/ukraine-russia-war-kherson.html

This is what happens with me as well. Hits my motivation to keep playing very hard.

Yes they are the land-based version of the Harpoon. Many US allies have Harpoon, but Denmark is one of the very few countries that has the land-based version. Apparently those Harpoons and more US M777 howitzers were very recently delivered. The M777s are only now getting into the fight in the east, and are being assessed as highly effective. On the M142 HiMARS, apparently the White House has decided to send them, but don't want to make a big public spectacle of it because the Russians are screaming about that crossing their red lines.

So here's another new game I just now came across. Any of you played it yet? Thoughts? Thanks in advance. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1157390/King_Arthur_Knights_Tale/

I was just going to post this myself. Yeah, on the Pathfinder reddit, Paizo officially posted that this game is NOT a Starfinder game. So, either it is another Pathfinder game using an AP with a space-y connection (people keep pointing to the Iron Gods AP), or, it could very well be a new Owlcat IP. Owlcat is not an extension of Paizo, and I can see them wanting to do something different that is their own creation.

Well, Ravenloft was already back. And recently we had the announcement of the return of Spelljammer and Dragonlance this year. Here's all the recent D&D-related news, including title and release date for the D&D movie: https://www.geekwire.com/2022/wizards-of-the-coast-reveals-upcoming-projects-for-dungeons-dragons/ https://www.polygon.com/23034058/dungeons-dragons-dnd-direct-movie-release-date-cast https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2022/02/dd-on-track-to-deliver-one-digital-release-a-year-starting-in-2023.html

Sorry for deflating your excitement. But for what it's worth, Spelljammer is one of the old D&D settings that is coming back, and according to the CEO of WotC they are planning on making video games in all of the active D&D settings. So at some point in the future you should get a Spelljammer game.

Okay, good to know. But doesn't it have advanced tech, including directed energy weapons? According to what I've just now begun to read about the setting, it is in the same star system as Pathfinder's Golarion, but thousands of years in the future where Golarion has mysteriously disappeared from the system.

Actually I don't know anything about Starfinder. It's just that I have always been entirely about fantasy settings for my RPGs and have never cared to venture into sci-fi setting games. So there is the possibility that, without supporting the KS campaign, I will wait to see streams of the game after it is released and then possibly decide to give it a try.

A very interesting read: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-us-ukraine-discuss-danger-escalation-new-arms-extend-kyivs-reach-2022-05-26/

Well, that will make it that much easier for me to sit out this Owlcat KS campaign.

This game was an Epic exclusive for a year and has just now released on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/597180/Old_World/ Anyone here played it? Any feedback? Looks very interesting to me, but also looks like playing it might get frustrating after a while.

Here's a very interesting piece, yet another interview with a major realist scholar, except that Allison is someone I typically agree with a lot and I use his books in my classes often: https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-dealing-with-horrible-leaders-is-part-of-the-history-of-international-relations-a-31a0aabb-35eb-4107-a65f-39ae5f79c9e7

No I was referring to a recent NYT op-ed in which the editors demanded that Western leaders force Ukraine to give up land for a peace deal with Russia.

No shocker for me at all that Kissinger is pushing for appeasing Russia (though unlike Macron and co. and the NYT, at least he has the decency to still say it is up to the Ukrainians to decide, and this is just his recommendation). Kissinger is a conundrum for me. On the one hand, his academic books and articles are superb: sound logic, impeccable research and documentation, beautiful writing, comprehensive coverage of the subject. His Diplomacy is the best book out there on that subject. Ditto his book World Order. But on the other hand, he (along with Mearsheimer and Walt among others) are those realists who believe the way to keep great powers from doing bad things in the world is to appease them (though conveniently this is not applied to the U.S., and only to "other" great powers such as the former Soviet Union, the PRC, post-Soviet Russia, post-Cold War Germany, and even today's Iran). I generally agree with realist thinking, but on appeasement I'm a hard 'no'.