Lurker > shadowsword87

So it is a biological product?
Or it isn't?
Or is it both?

Would you say that... saying that it isn't a biological reaction, is a bad phrase and you shouldn't do that?

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

MeteoricBurst posted...

That would be crazy since Venus is extremely hostile even compared to Mars. The latter seems fairly sedate but compared to Earth even Mars is very inhospitable. Venus is a nightmare. We don't know how good we have it here.

The idea is that the upper Venusian atmosphere is hospitable, and the fact that oxygen is lighter than the surrounding gas, you could create a floating habitat.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

I... what?
I was telling you about that.

I'm really confused what you're on about.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

The stages of helly grief.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

Gwent isn't mandatory, but it's really fun, so fun they made a spinoff.

Also, I'm going to be honest, I played on the easiest difficulty and had no problems with it. I just played for the story and had fun that way.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

Pneumonia isn't a disease, it's a symptom of a disease.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

AIDS doesn't kill people either.
It creates the opening for secondary infections to come in and create massive issues.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

This is a friend of mine who made it:


Apparently it's much oranger in person, the camera didn't do it justice.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

Apparently it's quite bad, and neon orange.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

Is this lewd, you have to tell me if this is lewd.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

All of my gay friends wear masks.
I don't knooooooow

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

Loved that movie. Defoe really should have had an Oscar nom, those monologues were amazing.

Something that's funny about that movie? The trailer for it is so hilariously mismatched with what the movie is like, it's painful.

I'm standing firm in not watching trailers anymore, and just listening to what people are talking about.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

I should finally read the first couple books

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

Because they make fun movies.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

Nah, it's fine.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

Some of them yee'd their last haw that faithful night.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

No, but they do drink turpentine.
So, their lives are good.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

It was an absolutely great movie, with some of the best acting I've seen in years, there's a few monologues in there that I'll remember for a while.
It's just one of those weird thinky movies.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

We watched The Lighthouse.
That was, uh, a real decision I made for the both of us.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

Oh, fun fact, the Michelin Mans name is Bibendum.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

I'm learning, but I've gotten good enough that I can whip something up with just whatever is around.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It's kind of like the difference between buying an ill-fitting suit off the rack without even looking at the size and trying on a bunch of suits until you find one that mostly fits pretty well and then buying it. Sure, you could tailor the first suit to fit you just as well as the second one, but you're more likely to get what you want and feel more comfortable if you just buy the second one (and you can tailor that one as well, so, you know, bonus).

I disagree with that analogy. My method is more not knowing how your body is, and instead getting the different parts of the suit, that you then stitch together. Will it look weirder than if you just designed everything from the ground up? Yeah probably. Does it work, and allow more flexibility? Yeah.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The key is, when you work out the backstory, you know who the character IS (when you start), and you know who they were and where they come from, but that's not the same thing as who they BECOME. If you're playing in a group where literally everyone is trying to be "GROUP LEADER", you can always allow your character to evolve, accepting in-character that it might be better for them to follow someone else's lead than always push their own agenda. Or, conversely, if you're in a group where literally everyone is terrified of ever speaking to NPCs, your character can evolve into the party spokesperson simply by virtue of realizing no one else is going to do it. But it's harder to know where you're going if you don't know where you've been (at least for me).

Which would be fine, if everyone followed what they said they were going to damn well play, Ed. Someone can be the leader mechanically, and politically (like the captain of the ship), but, they can just absolutely refuse to make a decision.
So if everyone shows up, with them wanting to be the captain, but they suck shit at it, someone needs to re-tailor their character so they're the grizzled old second who everyone goes to when there's a problem. It's still functional, but, not everyone plays what they agreed on.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

ParanoidObsessive posted...

A character that fits the theme/group is definitely a major factor (and being able to establish pre-existing character ties is nice, because then you don't wind up with "You all meet in an inn/Why the f*** am I still part of this group?" issues), but for me, it's mostly a question of figuring out who my character IS.

I almost never play "myself" when I RP. So I kind of have to get into my character's headspace and figure out how they think, so I know how they react to things. They won't necessarily react to things the way -I- would react to things.

When I try to "wing it", it usually just results in me becoming absolutely passive and reacting to almost nothing. Because I'm not really playing the character at that point, I'm just playing the stats (which is worse, because I find stats and mechanics inherently boring).

For me, the ideal character is one where I get such a strong sense of their personality/identity that the choices "they" make during play can actually surprise me. I've had characters like that, where I've described it more like they're the ones playing and I'm just dictating their decisions. Those also tend to be the ones that are the most fun to play.

I honestly have no problem winging a personality, because I tend to be ok making something up, and sticking with it for a long time. While actual improv I'm bad at, using improv in non-improv stuff I'm golden at.

The difference is that I like to wait a bit before putting things in stone, because I'd rather figure out what sort of personality the group needs than just bolt in Another Leader no matter what. We need a leader, a moral compass, a go-getter, a clown? I'm comfortable doing that with any class/race combination. What the group needs can be handled a lot easier if I have time to figure out where the pieces lay first, rather than suddenly realizing that the warlock with a high charisma doesn't really want to be a talker because they're too busy being broody.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

ParanoidObsessive posted...

But yeah, I've been in the camp of "I need about a week to come up with my character concept, write about 14 pages worth of backstory and setting detail, and then 20 minutes to actually roll stats" for characters for like 25 years now. Which makes it kind of hard to roll characters on the fly or play in ill-planned spur-of-the-moment one-shots.

I still wing a lot of character personality things, but, I would like to have a basis to go off of so I don't show up with a badly themed character.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

ParanoidObsessive posted...

If anything, in many cases, I'd argue that's the literal opposite of what the point of fantasy is (Tolkien himself said on multiple occasions that he loathed allegory in all its forms, and deliberately avoided using it in anything he wrote, and people have still spent the last 80 years trying to read intent into what he wrote to know what he "really" meant).

Tolken himself may not like allegory, and that's why I take LotR at face value.
And, he may have codified a bunch of the tropes for fantasy, but he is not all of fantasy and it's a bit unreasonable to just go with Tolken as the word of god for all works of fiction in that genre.

Fantasy has fallen into the field of literature, and all of the good and bad elements have to be brought with that, kicking and screaming. Reader interpretation and literary criticism of the material is a valid reading of fantasy now.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

I'd be interested in it as well, but, it really depends on logistics more than anything else.

I also have gotten more and more planing-based for character creation, so I'd like a heavy session 0 to make everything mesh.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

wolfy42 posted...

Eventually in these posts things get back to science fiction shows/books, games etc, then I join in again:)

I'm just here for DnD/TTRPG talk now I feel.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

Zeus posted...

How many years? Oo Surely it's not as big as it was in the 80s? idk, I don't keep up with D&D and I tend to zone out when friends start talking about it and other p&p RPGs. And, even when sales are up, I'm never sure how much of that is increased interest vs increased monetization of the playerbase.

So, in the 80s it was well known due to the satanic panic, but the actual sales of it were actually relatively low. It was heavily influential and important, but, a good chunk of parents said "That Dungeons and Dragons is evil, but that Fafsa group doesn't have to do with satanic things, so you should be good to play it".

I don't actually know off the top of my head, so I did a quick googling, and according to this article:
https://unpossiblejourneys.com/how-well-is-5th-edition-dungeons-and-dragons-selling/
DnD 5e players handbook (the one with all of the character classes in it), have surpassed the PBH of all of 3e (lol), 3.5e, and 4e PHB. This was in 2016, which it's only gone up since then.
It's *really* hard to get accurate data of 1e and 2e because it wasn't actually produced by WotC, and TSR wasn't run by primarily business men so their records aren't that great. I don't think the point you're trying to make profit margins, but butts-in-seats of how many people are playing the game, or, have an interest in playing the game (which aren't the same).
So, instead just looking at what people play online, you're looking at Roll20 having 3 million users (about 65% of which play DnD) and FantasyGround having about 700k users. This is just online play and user numbers, so you have alts, but, it's a good marker that a lot of people play DnD.

WotC also claimed that 2019 was the biggest year of any year of DnD.
https://www.dicebreaker.com/series/dungeons-and-dragons/news/dungeons-and-dragons-2019-biggest-year

Huh, only 61% of players are male according to that article. That's actually pretty interesting. In my IRL playgroup, we have 3 men and 2 women, so, that somewhat tracks. Online games are mostly men, but, it's still honestly really interesting to me.

EDIT:
The cultural impact may have been different, but, actual people playing have gone way the hell up.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

WastelandCowboy posted...

Whoopsies.

THERE IS ONLY ROMNEY, WHY WOULD YOU SUGGEST OTHERWISE

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

:|
:o
:|

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

There is a different way of looking at this, than purely "people on internet mad". This has been a company that's existed online in the early 2000s, dealing with angry neckbeards, or SJWs, or anything else, has been normal forever. WotC got rid of their DnD forums in, like, 2015, they had more than enough time to get used to it.

What is different from now, is what the TTRPG market has been moving towards. More recently, games have diverged into either heavy crunchy wargame-style games. Pathfinder being still a prime driving factor of it. Then, you have more flippy floppy hippie dippie games, like Lasers and Feelings. 5e straddles that pretty decently, but it's flippy dippy for the people who want crunchy systems, and people who want flippy dippy games, it's still really crunchy.

The industry is, broadly, moving more towards the flippy dippy games, it's better drama for people to get into, it's improv with a dad. The marketing associated with a nice FATE game actual play, is something that can't get overstated enough, that's how you sell to people now. That's how I learn about new systems, I watch someone play, learn the feel of the game, the feel of the world, and so on, I don't sit down and get used to a game by just reading. This isn't a judgement call or anything, this is just how the industry is moving.

So, what does that have to do with the racial modifiers? Racial modifiers deal directly with one of the extra crunch elements, the stat, not the modifier derived from it. I could see the game removing stats entirely, and just moving directly to modifiers. It pulls away some of the mechanical creativity, but, that's what flippy dippy games are about. Making races have skill modifiers (orcs are always good at yelling, for example), or, being able to use a skill in a different location (like FATE stunts), is something that I could 100% see as the reason to make the game different and more flippy dippy.

EDIT: God, why do I only make giant posts when I'm talking about ttrpgs.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

TheWitchMorgana posted...

he's terrified that he may actually lose his job in a couple of months because being a private citizen again will be very bad for him so he will absolutely hold on until the very last second

Nah, he's prepping for the reason why he lost and why he should get another vote/presidency.

Remember during the election when he talked about how corrupt hillary is, and how the votes don't count? That was more or less to cast doubt on the entire process.

If he loses, he will 100% claim that the vote didn't count, and mail-in votes aren't valid. Then cause a massive stink for the rest of the time.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

Zeus posted...

But how much of it is SJWs trying to influence D&D vs just D&D desperately trying to make itself relevant in a world where p&p rpgs are gradually fading away?

...Bro what?
DnD has been stronger than it has been in literal years, this decade has been fucking massive for DnD.

4e was the "We want the non-gamers to play this game".
5e and Critical Role pulled people in with the roleplaying aspects, because that's why people care and why people actually want to play the game. People enjoy listening to actual plays, much to the older gamers chagrin, because it's fun and engaging content.

This isn't a grab for attention, the backlash is because new people are getting interested and buying the products.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

ParanoidObsessive posted...

We've basically gone from arguing over whether or not orcs are racist to people claiming that all races are objectively racist because some are better than others, to the point where WotC has come out and said that they're going to rework the rules of D&D to remove the entire idea of race bonuses/drawbacks for elves, dwarves, orcs, and gnomes (and honestly, I'm half-waiting for someone to point out that "dwarves" has a prejudiced connotation in the real world, and have them desperately try to rename them as a concept as well).

Almost like the whole point for fantasy was to talk about race relationships and peoples viewpoints on good and evil :o

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

People bitching about something they don't have any investment in is a staple of the internet, c'mon now.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

Blightzkrieg posted...

There is quality stuff coming out of China even today, but unless you're actually Chinese and in China it's hard to know if what you're getting is shit (and even then, a lot of Chinese people I know are wary of using anything Chinese). Quality control still isn't standardized, and I've heard horror stories of western companies investing a lot of money in Chinese manufacturing only to find out too late they got one of the shitty factories.

Yeah, you need to be incredibly specific when dealing with Chinese factories because they will say you didn't specify a minor thing and then cut every corner to it.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

I honestly really like electronics from china nowadays.

Not plastic or fabrics, but designed and produced electronic products are actually pretty damn good.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

OH MY BAD, I MISREAD IT.
I thought he plead guilty.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

Easily.
JASON
JASOOOOON
JASON

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

Zeus posted...

Again, these are just allegations (although honestly I kinda think he did it, but his career choice has kinda prejudiced me towards that conclusion)

It's not allegations if he plied not guilty to it.
If you're waiting for the law to confirm it, well, it's right there in the judicial system.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

There are sugar free gummies, but, as judgemenl mentioned, it's an ass-blaster. It apparently makes death farts.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

TheWorstPoster posted...

Also, one needs to remember that the Klan was a branch of the DEMOCRATIC Party.

Yeah, in the late 1800s, party lines change. I don't think anyone is pro-slavery anymore.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I don't think I've ever known anyone who owned bookcases full of books solely in a decorative sense, in the same way people will have figurines or knick-knacks. I'm not saying they don't exist (rare book collectors probably fall more into that sphere), but there's almost always another motive to own book collections.

You can buy books by the foot, and a lot of CEOs and lawyers will fill up their bookshelf with things that give the impression that they've done a lot more reading than they have. It's a tactic.

https://www.strandbooks.com/books-by-the-foot
https://www.booksbythefoot.com/

It's probably also used for shows/movies, but, this is a product for actual people.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

I can just nap through the movie, it's fine.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

I played it for a good 10-15 hours, before getting bored and moving on to something else. So, depends on if you think that that's worth it.

It was perfectly enjoyable the entire time though.

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"

TheWorstPoster posted...

They'll only win via voter fraud.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris has exactly 0 voter enthusiasm.

Damn, hitting that hard early, eh?

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ImmortalityV, "I would like to kiss Icoyar to be honest in a non gay way though"