Musopticon?

Then don't post, your avatar isn't that interesting. I'd have to pick Diablo 3, since Sanctuary > Elder Scrolls, nuff said.

Holy War wasn't started by Austen though, and it was a pretty good story compared to some of the dreck the comic had been going through for the last two years. Ugh, anyhow, I don't feel it's fair to reflect mutant hatred in the X-comics to real world racism. Think about the history of racism in the United States, it's a history of violence, sure, but that violence was very one sided: The west was won(hahhah) by court orders, humane fronts and an idealogy of sustained coexistence on the basis that there really weren't any alternatives available. The extremist elements were relatively short-lived, say Black Panthers for instance, and left a legacy of pride, over and covert, instead of becoming bed time horror stories like Apocalypse. Now, take racism(or bigotry, or speciesm or wte) in the Marvel universe. Remember Magneto taking the world hostage a dozen times? Remember Avalon? Remember Genosha pre-harvest? Remember Gene Nation? There's a justified reason for fear and loathing for the regular Joe and Mindy in the futuristic but all-too familiar US of Reality 616. I mean, their children are in the same school as a kid who can boil minds and her friends, one of whom bends metal like it's soft wax. Their government has a dozen departments and offices, public and dark, devoted to the safety of their citizens against roving unnatural terrors. These offices regularly emply power-armored officers, skyscraper size sentinel robots and a flying fortress housing an aircraft armada. They remember back in the 90's when New York was continuously taken over and nearly destroyed by freakishly super-powered villains(too many to count, heh), half of which vowed world domination and enslavement of the human race. Their freaking grandmother remembers the mutant riots in the late sixties when the government went involuntarily public since some of the "special citizens" decided that all the hush-hush was an orchestrated effort to tear down their spirit and steal their freedom and started burning campuses. In a nutshell, Malcom X turned muslim, Onslaught warped Central Park into a psychic hellhole.

Hahhah, yeah, they do give you that "skin of your teeth" feel that a good adventure almost always requires. There's also something to be said about their great revamp of classic monsters like Goblins, but I'll save that for the Paizo boards, since it would spoil the fun of people who've yet to play any of their adventures. Suffice it to say that they have interesting, often gruesome and brilliant ideas that they are not afraid to use. Oh right, here's Michiell. Say "hi" to Michiell everyone, he's generic and lovable.

Triple posting ftw. Should probably make a dedicated PF thread, but what the hell: We finished Rise of the Runelords #1: Burnt Offerings. It was about bloody time, since the relatively compact scenario had spread itself out to cover six sessions already. In a way that's understandable, since we usually spent no more then 4 hours in a single session. Our longest run had us playing about 6 hours, but that's counting random bull**** about hillbilly treants and enlarged duergars with spiked chains that we had to get through before the actual game began. Please, we only meet every other week at most, of course we socialize. Generally a session saw us playing for about three and a half hours straight. Since the story was largely a coherent and rail-roaded thing, most of that time was spent in dungeons and when recuperating, with discussions and dialogues being very short occasions, springled among dead bodies of goblins and heroes. Another element which affected the sessions besides time was the introduction of our fifth player, who wanted vehemently to play a dwarven fighter. This posed two problems: First of all was that he came in two sessions later than everyone else, which meant reshuffling both party strategies and character relations, taking a complete stranger, characterwise, along to our dungeon romps "just because". It really did annoy me, we had barely managed to hold a flimsy shroud of roleplaying over the medieval combat simulation our party interaction had been from the very start and now there was another player introduced. Second thing that became a problem was his choice of character. I had been planning a fighter/rogue/shadowdancer build for a while, thinking that once our fifth member would join, we'd have an arcane or divine caster to take care of support buffing and long range offensive. Someone with a bent for the eldritch and arcane would have opened up a few story points as well, since no one in the group had outer planar languages or nonnatural or arcane knowledge skills. Instead, suddenly we had a third freaking martial class in the group(a barbarian, a scout and now a fighter), so of course it meant me cutting back taking combat feats and multiclassing and instead concentrating on being a skill monkey and sneaking. Neither in which I was very good at to begin with. Both of these problems strained our group quite a bit. Now, on to the actual meat of Burnt Offerings, I have to admit first that, besides Pathfinder Society scenarios which are all one-shots, this was my first long running rpg campaign that I've played, so bear with me if I sound newbish and green. That said, I loved the offerings there, the adventure was tons of fun. Truthfully, there were times when I felt like strangling some of the players(not nearly as much as the Society players though) and one or two occasions where I felt like doing the same to the writers, but then the scenario itself wasn't at fault. Mostly me, heh. Our gaming group was special in the regard that everyone had played some(others a lot more) D&D previously, but not enough that we were absolutely sure how to progress in the game. The party, unfortunately, lacked a leader and that resulted in a sense of aimlessness, we really lacked direction and it fell to me(the rogue of the group) and my friend(the shoanti barbarian) to take point when ennui started to set in. Often this caused unfavorable situations for the party, since I was the least experienced player of the group and had only a general idea of how environments worked and by what rules the game world lived by. Probably the silliest bit was when a bugbear ranger charged through a door and had the drop on us when I was stupid enough to not announce that I was talking out-of-character when Niero was sneaking behind the door of the goblinoid's room. Fortunately the idiot didn't have enough space to maneuver into an aiming position with his composite bow and elfbane arrows, otherwise the party ranger and druid would have surely dropped. Anyway, I digress, we had a lot of these mess-ups along the way. That all changed with the final session however, once the party had managed to kill my rogue by leaving him unconscious and bleeding out behind a trap door in our last session. Yes, they took the "allies, not friends"-thing to heart, for once. Anyhow, the change came with both the party members starting to get to grips with how the game worked and with Michiell Garrim("Glow" to his compatriots), my cleric of Sarenrae, being introduced as a replacement for my dead character, Niero. Now, Michiell, hmm... originally, when we were in the planning stages for the campaign back in the autumn of 2008, I had been thinking of starting as a divine caster class, since the domain powers looked really flavourful and I liked the balance Paizo had brought to clerics vs. other classes that had been a major source of whine ever since 3.5 came out. Later I got told one of the members of our party would be a druid and let the idea go. I have to admit that there was a lot of regret later on when we had seen how lousy(not to say that he played the class wrong) a healer and buffer the druid had been. So, making another divine caster was a natural thing. And it really paid off, since the cleric energy channel class feature Pathfinder introduced to replace the fairly pointless undead turning turned out to be a really powerful support ability. It almost removed the need to memorise low level healing spells(+1d6/every third caster lvl hp restoration for living creatures in a 30 ft burst centered on the cleric) and those freed slots could instead be used to memorize buffs, raising the overall combat effectiveness of the group by a good margin. Fire domain spells were also reasonably effective, since our high int ranger, Jearis, who decided to fill the party's lack of the arcane by multiclassing to a transmuter didn't yet have the spell prowess to offer proper magic support. All in all, the party had direction and drive and since this final session was mostly about traveling through the wilderness and avoiding large encounters, the party druid had his chance to shine, tracking our escaped BBEG all over western Varisia. Fun times were had and the final encounter was really rather epic, with half the party running away due to failed fear check and the Big Bad trying to cleave us in two. With the scenario finished, we humbly looted what we had left behind, including Niero's body for burial, went back to Sandpoint for a welcome back -party and I took my just dues by taking the BBEG's bastard sword and renaming it, in a stroke of casual genius, "Bastard". Woe is me. The rest, as they often say, is history. Or will be at least, once we tackle #2: The Skinsaw Murders next. I'll be excited to deliver sacred vengeance over death cultists, finally in urban environ. tl;dr version "zomg, wus awesome, plz send moar! plz"

How...American.

I'm all for more franchises that are marketed to women, variety and equality right there, as long as they are good.

NIN - Somewhat damaged

Beckinsale wasn't the good thing about the Underworld movies. Srsly guise. Beckinsale has about the same acting profile and titillative factor as Megan Fox does. Now Twilight, man. I'm glad I watched the first movie. It's a twofold thing, really. First of all, it's infitesimaly better than the book namesake, since it has Pattison and the book doesn't. There's also the nifty thing of not having to read Meyer's excruciating fanfiction-like purple prose for more than a few dialogues. They've even cut down heavily on the worst part of the book, and it's main focus unfortunately, the romantic interplay of Bella and Eddikins. Instead Pattison ridicules his character thorough the film's span, casting to light how idiotic Edward was written to begin with. The character has no soul and Pattison knows it and acts; dull stares, generally disinterested and stalkerish behaviour, etc. You can google the actor's own view on Meyer's books, it's hilarious how worthwhile the movie is to watch when you realise and take to heart that he overplays all the annoying and nonsensical(this is a character who should be in love, afterall) things that Edward does. Second thing why I'm glad I went to watch the movie is the scenery. It's a really really beautiful picture, really. No, really. I particularly love the baseball match scene and the contrast of lights when Bella changes national states. Top scores to the crew. That's all I need to say about Twilight, I'm glad I got into the whole drama that is twitardism(or 'fanscene' or whatever), heh. Oh yeah, Ashley Greene is kinda hot. That's a pro as well.

That bloody settles it, I'll be watching the bargain bins like a hawk once the time comes.

That puzzle in Umberlee's(fave Faerunian god, Golarion's Gozreh is a pale imitation) was actually kind of clever, even though the credit for difficulty went to the confusion caused by the multitude of possible notes instead of the actual mechanic of the puzzle - whether you were tone deaf or not. The dungeon was my favorite of the bunch as well, due to the variety there when compared to the other dungeons which most of the them were tunnels filled with pirates, snakekin or ogres(pick your poison). Hemm, I also had to make a water genasi priestess of Umberlee later on, just because.

The New Historicism Game, featuring Greenblatt and Foucault! Oh joy.

Looks fantastic, I'll have to keep an eye on the English release date. Same here, I'll definitely get this.

Syberia should be there somewhere, perhaps two times even, you know.

Too bad they didn't have the time to use Ben Houge's Libera Me composition in Homeworld 2. Otherwise that game's soundtrack is stellar. Yes, Adagio for strings sends chills down my spine and tickles my music bones. My freaking music BONES.

Immortal - All Shall Fall Oh, yes. Yes they will. For a year there, I thought the album would affectionately be called "All Shall Fail", but this is massive stuff.

We winished Borderlands tonight, just now. Lovely free-roaming experience, which had nice last two hours, but one very disappointing end sequence and a lousy plot coherence. It was just...there, vague and unsatisfying, despite the really decent build up of excitement the game had been garnering for the last ten hours. I have to admit that finally getting to the Vault was very satisfying, but the end boss...well, no.

Yes, because the rarity of water is exactly the reason people vow for DS.

About the time when 3.5 D&D came out. Precision damage was a godsend.

The map in the above picture looks eerily like Stockholm.

Raja Ram appeared to me in a vision and said that it should be and so it shall: Shpongle - Divine Moments of Truth New album can't come soon enough. Are You Shpongled was one of the best things I've bought for half a pound. On the other hand, that was Camden, things tend to turn out awesome.

Change the sword to a spear and you've got the historical gallic berserker. Change it to an axe and you have a germanic one. Just saying. Right then, guess I'll get this game. Funnily enough, it's going to be the first Bioware game since KotOR that I've bought, but some of the comments here have sold me. Now, I'll just wait for the bargain bin to thunk.

Spent the day reading Shaky's Winter's Tale and cringing about Finnish attitudes towards paedophiles. There're no limits to what cans of worms every instance of that subject can to open. I have't read such a plethora of violent punishment fantasies since my short trip to Stormfront. Jesus Christ on a ****ing bicycle.

I envy you. We've been trying to get a zombie walk into this city here, but interest has been slim so far. I even have the perfect costume, emulating a Snork monster from SoC.

Just found SCP? Well I can say that your christmas starts early this year! It's awesome, if your PC can handle it. I loved it as well. Brilliant work and so polished(by mod standards)!