And the "load and go" gameplay of MMO games kicks the snot out of trying to work around everyones private life in the hopes that an entire group can show up, especially at my age where many of my peers have new wives/husbands and young children to consider in the mix. Grinding can be a bore, no doubt, but how much different is it on the excitement scale then making 12 phone calls 3 days before a session, getting everyone together just to realize that you only got nearly everyone together. So you call up the absent player(s) again only to find out that work or family has thrown up a last minute obligation and they'll either be late or not showing at all. All of this leaves not only a timegap that you need to fill with random garbage (not much different than getting a raid together, eh?) but also the problems it causes for the GM. Maybe your group is more stable but in my group we have a lot going on in our private lives and it's not as easy as saying "everyone be here at 7pm ready to play."
We used to have a lot of trouble getting everybody together too, so a couple of years ago we decided that we play every second sunday of the month. Every second sunday. And unless your mother died or you are violently ill, you show up.
Ofcourse it doesn't always work. There are two players who still keep making other plans for those days, so 30-50% of our games there's someone missing, and we play on without him. Last time two players were missing, even. It was the big finish of something we'd been working towards for quite some time, and we ended up fighting 10 fire elementals with just the 4 of us instead of the 6 we were supposed to have. But we won, and our victory is that much bigger because of it. Ofcourse it's sad that two players had to miss it, but that's their choice, and we're not going to let that stop us.
I actually don't buy these books but all it takes is a lukewarm GM and a player who wants to use The Complete Potato Farmer v. 3.5.1223.2a to start to throw a group for a tailspin. I'm not the GM here. If the GM allows whatever book to be used it makes it all the harder for those of us without. I actually haven't upgraded since I got PHG, DMG and MM for 3.0 and I feel somewhat isolated by how the balance of the game is thrown off by the supplemental materials that WotC is selling for 20+ USD a pop. I see my kick ass spells as a 3.0 cleric being turned trivial in the face of prestige classes who have better spells four levels earlier than myself.
This is simply a matter of agreeing in advance what kind of game you're gonna play. Inside the game, the GM is the final arbiter, but outside, the players have just as much say in what kind of game they want to play. If the players want SF, the GM is not going to do fantasy, if they players don't want a splatbook freakshow, the GM shouldn't allow that.
And if he does include stuff, all players should have access to the same information about all the options. You don't need to own every book. Just borrow the book from the guy who wants to include it in the game.
Ofcourse it's also possible that your group simply sucks, in which case you'd better get a better group.
It's true that D&D has a ridiculous amount of junk books for people with more money than sense. If you play D&D, I think it's better to either stick to the basics, or get together and make a really thorough selection of the kind of additional junk you'll allow in the game. Other games aren't immune to this either; Earthdawn has a few books that provide new rules that are just a bit too powerful compared to the basic books. Personally I prefer a system that provides all the rules in the basic books, and uses the additional books for background info or for examples of all the weird stuff you can do with the basic rules. GURPS is a bit like that: in the Fourth Edition, they try to keep rules in a handful of core books: Basic Set, and presumably the upcoming Martial
Not having to own, carry or read 75 Wizard's books alone makes up for what I lose in the roleplaying aspect.
Not to me. It's all about the roleplaying aspect to me, and since we play at the house of the guy who owns the books, nobody has to carry anything other than their own dice bag. (Although I'm actually one of the few people in the group who doesn't own the basic rule book of Earthdawn (the game we're currently playing), but even carrying a single book isn't so bad if you ask me.)
No, it's called socialism. In libertarianism you compensate individuals, not "society", and each of those individuals has to demonstrate harm resulting from an act of aggression willingly carried out by the offender.
Alright, let's call it libertarian socialism, then. That is, after all, the original use of the word "libertarian".
You're trying to gloss over the primary difference between socialism and libertarianism as though it were some insignificant detail! Libertarianism is about the rights of individuals. Socialism is about the "rights" of groups over their individual members.
And there you're completely wrong. Not all socialism is state-socialism. A lot of socialists were and are very libertarian, even if they do prefer doing stuff together whenever that's easier.
No, it's called Socialism. Redistribution of wealth. Government run charities.
Actually, it's called libertarianism. Let people pay for what they use, waste or destroy. Although in the more reasonable cases, the two aren't necessarily all that far apart.
I wonder if the additional income does anything to reimburse society for the damage done.
It should. That doesn't mean it's actually the case, unfortunately.
Ideally the system should work so that this tax income can only be used to repair/counter/whatever the thing that was damaged by the taxed behaviour. In this case, use fuel taxes only for building/repairing roads and for compensating CO2 emissions. Most likely most governments will just consider it a nice additional income, though.
It is actually possible making a living. My employer gives away an Open source entireprise CMS, and sells suppport for it. In the case of the OP, if he's selling it with hardware in a nice and friendly package, he could probably safely Open Source his own code, as people will not be paying for the code, but for the hardware and for the convenience of not having to install it themselves.
I think you could make a handsome living selling sleek boxes with MythTV installed, for example. Most consumers don't care that they could also do it themselves, they simply want to buy a box that works.
Next thing you know I'll be talking about how Steve Jackson's ideas are original and he doesn't steal them from his fans.
That's called "listening to your customers".
Seriously, check what happened when they first showed the covers for the Fourth Edition Basic Set. It may not be an Open Gaming License, but it's more a common effort than most other systems.
So a person with an AC of -5 is actually harder to hit than a nearly-naked person with an AC of 10. And, with those higher -- er, I mean lower -- AC values, you end up subtracting a negative from your THAC0.
Speaking of hitting naked people reminds me of GURPS' "bulletproof nudity" optinal rule. For some settings (like queens in Star Wars prequels), it's appropriate that the less clothes you wear, the harder you are to hit. This also explains chainmail bikinis.
And then GURPS has the "stormstrooper marksmanship academy" rule: bad guys always miss on their first shot. (Obviously these are very optional rules for highly cinematic play. Like Star Wars.)
i agree that d20 was in improvement because it lightened the load of rules that stood in the way of getting people to play compared to 1st and 2nd edition AD&D or many other rules systems. it also paved the way for more social and RP centric players (i.e. girls). however, for a good many people, especially introverted types, trolling the rules was a way for not exactly social creatures to play and be an effective part of the game.
Social RP in d20? The system is quite explicitly designed around tactical situations and min-maxing. If you want something other than that, use GURPS or White Wolf or something.
Some people seem to think d20 is a generic system, usable for any setting, any kind of play. It's not. It's still, like the original D&D, designed for a balanced party doing combat and other tactical situations. It has more options now, but that doesn't mean it's anywhere near as flexible as some other systems.
Play d20 if what you want to play is basically D&D in a different shell. Play Star Wars d20 if you want to play D&D in a Star Wars setting. If you want to play real Star Wars, play WEG Star Wars. If you want to play something else, use the appropriate system. If there is none, use GURPS and adapt until it fits.
I miss roleplaying. Stupid college and its utter lack of roleplayers.
I did plenty of roleplaying in university, but nowadays everybody is playing World of Warcraft, and the RPG market is shrinking.
But it may bounce back again in the future. I think it shrunk after the initial success of Magic the Gathering, but that success eventually brought the gaming hobby some mainstream attention, influx of new players, and I think some of those did eventually end up in the RPG hobby. Perhaps WoW will have a similar effect.
By the way, everyone was outraged about "Big Oil's OBSCENE profits" last year. Get this: Exxon makes about $0.06 profit per each gallon of gasoline sold. That's after discovery, drilling, transport, refining, and delivery to retail. The State of NC takes 10X that much (about $.57 per gallon) for doing nothing.
It could be that they tax fuel in order to discourage pollution. Nothing wrong with that. Technically. Until they they start fining people for being more environmentally friendly, ofcourse. Then it suddenly stops making sense.
We don't HAVE a spaceship that can go 10% of light speed right now...
We also don't have a spaceship that can go there in 450,000 years. Not one that can carry people, anyway. When you want to go beyond Earth's orbit, I'm afraid you're going to have to build a custom vehicle to get you there. And we can build one that can go 10% of light speed. We're just not willing to spend that kind of money.
We'd have to work around that nasty speed of light thing first. I seem to recall that it'd take about 450,000 years to reach the one we found that has water, which is 20 light years from here.
Light actually travels slightly faster than you think it does. 20 light years means that at lightspeed, you'd need 20 years to get there. Ofcourse we can't reach lightspeed, but at half lightspeed, we'd need 40 years, and at 10% of lightspeed, it's 200 years. A long time, but a lot less than 450,000 years.
Not all extrasolar planets are hundreds of lightyears away. The closest known so far is only 10 lightyears away. At.5 c that's 20 years. Give the colonists a free World of Warcraft subscription and off you go.
One would think that the total aggregate angular momentum of the galaxy would strongly suggest the same bias toward stellar planes more or less lining up.
One would think wrong. Stars move in all sorts of weird directions in our galaxy, and they definitely spin in just about any direction you can imagine.
Basically if you look at a star it's probability of having the stellar plane line up with us is a bell curve where the center is 0 degrees out of galactic plane, and the higher you go the fewer do. (That's what I think is the case.)
Unfortunately, we only have one data point (our solar system) and others that by the means of detection mean they are lined up with us...
We don't have only one data point, we know the orbits of tons of binary stars. And even our own solar system is not lined up with the galactic plane. There's no reason whatsoever to assume that all other solar systems are aligned the same way as ours.
Even the detection method isn't nearly as restrictive as you think. It only requires that the planet passes between us and its star (which is still a significant restriction, mind you), but that pass doesn't have to happen in the same direction as our ecliptic plane, or the galactic plane, for that matter.
Now there's an interesting question - if philanthropy is done for selfish purposes, is it still philanthropy? Is the goodness of a good deed undone because the doer also gains by it?
I don't know. I do know it's better to do a good deed for bad reasons than to not do the good deed at all. But I think it's better to do it for the right reasons.
He is hands down the greatest philanthopist of our age, having given billions of dollars and much hard work to help the poor around the globe.
That depends a lot on what you call a philanthropist. There are lots of people who dedicate their entire lives to helping others, receiving little in return, and definitely not the kind of fame and PR that Gates is getting. Gates dedicated his life to amassing ridiculous wealth and power, and now he's using part of that to help people. But it looks a lot more like expensive PR than true selflessness.
You are just another pathetic hater.
Looks like we've got ourselves a true fanboy here.
See? Now that is a brilliant example of a weird moment in a PC game. It's brilliant, but unfortunately I've only heard about it. Still haven't played Baldur's Gate 2 myself. Just BG1.
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We used to have a lot of trouble getting everybody together too, so a couple of years ago we decided that we play every second sunday of the month. Every second sunday. And unless your mother died or you are violently ill, you show up.
Ofcourse it doesn't always work. There are two players who still keep making other plans for those days, so 30-50% of our games there's someone missing, and we play on without him. Last time two players were missing, even. It was the big finish of something we'd been working towards for quite some time, and we ended up fighting 10 fire elementals with just the 4 of us instead of the 6 we were supposed to have. But we won, and our victory is that much bigger because of it. Ofcourse it's sad that two players had to miss it, but that's their choice, and we're not going to let that stop us.
This is simply a matter of agreeing in advance what kind of game you're gonna play. Inside the game, the GM is the final arbiter, but outside, the players have just as much say in what kind of game they want to play. If the players want SF, the GM is not going to do fantasy, if they players don't want a splatbook freakshow, the GM shouldn't allow that.
And if he does include stuff, all players should have access to the same information about all the options. You don't need to own every book. Just borrow the book from the guy who wants to include it in the game. Ofcourse it's also possible that your group simply sucks, in which case you'd better get a better group.
It's true that D&D has a ridiculous amount of junk books for people with more money than sense. If you play D&D, I think it's better to either stick to the basics, or get together and make a really thorough selection of the kind of additional junk you'll allow in the game. Other games aren't immune to this either; Earthdawn has a few books that provide new rules that are just a bit too powerful compared to the basic books. Personally I prefer a system that provides all the rules in the basic books, and uses the additional books for background info or for examples of all the weird stuff you can do with the basic rules. GURPS is a bit like that: in the Fourth Edition, they try to keep rules in a handful of core books: Basic Set, and presumably the upcoming Martial
Not to me. It's all about the roleplaying aspect to me, and since we play at the house of the guy who owns the books, nobody has to carry anything other than their own dice bag. (Although I'm actually one of the few people in the group who doesn't own the basic rule book of Earthdawn (the game we're currently playing), but even carrying a single book isn't so bad if you ask me.)
Alright, let's call it libertarian socialism, then. That is, after all, the original use of the word "libertarian".
And there you're completely wrong. Not all socialism is state-socialism. A lot of socialists were and are very libertarian, even if they do prefer doing stuff together whenever that's easier.
Actually, it's called libertarianism. Let people pay for what they use, waste or destroy. Although in the more reasonable cases, the two aren't necessarily all that far apart.
It should. That doesn't mean it's actually the case, unfortunately.
Ideally the system should work so that this tax income can only be used to repair/counter/whatever the thing that was damaged by the taxed behaviour. In this case, use fuel taxes only for building/repairing roads and for compensating CO2 emissions. Most likely most governments will just consider it a nice additional income, though.
Working for spammers, phishers and porn sites, obviously. That's apparently where the real money is.
It is actually possible making a living. My employer gives away an Open source entireprise CMS, and sells suppport for it.
In the case of the OP, if he's selling it with hardware in a nice and friendly package, he could probably safely Open Source his own code, as people will not be paying for the code, but for the hardware and for the convenience of not having to install it themselves.
I think you could make a handsome living selling sleek boxes with MythTV installed, for example. Most consumers don't care that they could also do it themselves, they simply want to buy a box that works.
Nonsense. They could still release Super Puzzle fighter 2007 Turbo HD NextGen: Kicking The Ass Of Even More Puzzles II Revisited.
It's called "making people reimburse society for the damage they do".
That's called "listening to your customers".
Seriously, check what happened when they first showed the covers for the Fourth Edition Basic Set. It may not be an Open Gaming License, but it's more a common effort than most other systems.
Why do you think Munchkin RPG uses d20?
Speaking of hitting naked people reminds me of GURPS' "bulletproof nudity" optinal rule. For some settings (like queens in Star Wars prequels), it's appropriate that the less clothes you wear, the harder you are to hit. This also explains chainmail bikinis.
And then GURPS has the "stormstrooper marksmanship academy" rule: bad guys always miss on their first shot. (Obviously these are very optional rules for highly cinematic play. Like Star Wars.)
Social RP in d20? The system is quite explicitly designed around tactical situations and min-maxing. If you want something other than that, use GURPS or White Wolf or something.
Some people seem to think d20 is a generic system, usable for any setting, any kind of play. It's not. It's still, like the original D&D, designed for a balanced party doing combat and other tactical situations. It has more options now, but that doesn't mean it's anywhere near as flexible as some other systems.
Play d20 if what you want to play is basically D&D in a different shell. Play Star Wars d20 if you want to play D&D in a Star Wars setting. If you want to play real Star Wars, play WEG Star Wars. If you want to play something else, use the appropriate system. If there is none, use GURPS and adapt until it fits.
The original West End Games Star Wars RPG was lots of fun. It really felt like Star Wars, like space opera, and not like D&D in the wrong jacket.
I did plenty of roleplaying in university, but nowadays everybody is playing World of Warcraft, and the RPG market is shrinking.
But it may bounce back again in the future. I think it shrunk after the initial success of Magic the Gathering, but that success eventually brought the gaming hobby some mainstream attention, influx of new players, and I think some of those did eventually end up in the RPG hobby. Perhaps WoW will have a similar effect.
It could be that they tax fuel in order to discourage pollution. Nothing wrong with that. Technically. Until they they start fining people for being more environmentally friendly, ofcourse. Then it suddenly stops making sense.
We also don't have a spaceship that can go there in 450,000 years. Not one that can carry people, anyway. When you want to go beyond Earth's orbit, I'm afraid you're going to have to build a custom vehicle to get you there. And we can build one that can go 10% of light speed. We're just not willing to spend that kind of money.
Light actually travels slightly faster than you think it does. 20 light years means that at lightspeed, you'd need 20 years to get there. Ofcourse we can't reach lightspeed, but at half lightspeed, we'd need 40 years, and at 10% of lightspeed, it's 200 years. A long time, but a lot less than 450,000 years.
Not all extrasolar planets are hundreds of lightyears away. The closest known so far is only 10 lightyears away. At .5 c that's 20 years. Give the colonists a free World of Warcraft subscription and off you go.
One would think wrong. Stars move in all sorts of weird directions in our galaxy, and they definitely spin in just about any direction you can imagine.
We don't have only one data point, we know the orbits of tons of binary stars. And even our own solar system is not lined up with the galactic plane. There's no reason whatsoever to assume that all other solar systems are aligned the same way as ours.
Even the detection method isn't nearly as restrictive as you think. It only requires that the planet passes between us and its star (which is still a significant restriction, mind you), but that pass doesn't have to happen in the same direction as our ecliptic plane, or the galactic plane, for that matter.
Funny or not, somebody here doesn't like people mocking the editor's dyslexia, and is modding everybody offtopic.
Really? You're making perfect sense to me, unlike the summary.
I don't know. I do know it's better to do a good deed for bad reasons than to not do the good deed at all. But I think it's better to do it for the right reasons.
See? Now that is a brilliant example of a weird moment in a PC game. It's brilliant, but unfortunately I've only heard about it. Still haven't played Baldur's Gate 2 myself. Just BG1.