A game which I have started numerous times, and then bounced off of due to the archaic control interface. One of these days I’m going to have to knuckle under and learn how to interact with it, as the concept is cool as hell, and I’m sure the controls become intuitive with practice.
I need to lay off the Mount and Blade. Definitely saw Calradia as I was scrolling past.
Further context, assuming the ruleset governing the OG Baldurs Gate games was true to the tabletop (I know they sort of kludged AD&D and aspects of 3e together). As the above said, a dual classed human “retires” their original class, and then begins to advance in their new class, essentially starting over from level 1, with only the hit dice and HP of their original class rolled over (you cannot access any of the class abilities you learned while advancing your original class). However, once your new class level is superior to your original class level, you can now access both skill sets.
It’s a very strange system, and I am curious what the fluff reasons surrounding it are, if anyone has any insight into that edition.
100%. I know that the jury is out, academically speaking, on the actual effectiveness of the bombs, but it makes intuitive sense to me that they at least contributed to the Japanese decision to surrender unconditionally.
In fact, up until the bombs were dropped, Japan was working with the Soviet Union to act as mediators in peace talks, so Japan could get a better deal. Of course, while the USSR entertained the diplomatic overtures from Japan, they were actually planning on declaring war, as they had promised at Yalta. But, I think it still contributes to my point that a civilian population that has been targeted by a besieging force must believe their only options are unconditional surrender or utter destruction (which, incidentally, is exactly the verbiage the US presented Japan in the Potsdam Declaration 10 days before the first bomb was dropped). If there is a plausible third option available (or believed to be available), then that’s what will be pursued.
No, it was not my intention to suggest that. I’m sure the Germans threw everything they could afford into the Battle of Britain.
Though, I am most definitely not an expert in the field and should be treated as I am, a dude on the internet lol.
However, even Germany in early WW2 (arguably at the height of their power) was unable to throw enough explosives into London to make that switch flip in the civilian population from “we shall fight them on the beaches” to “okay, in light of recent events, we are reevaluating our ‘Never Surrender’ policy…”.
In fact, I might even suggest that the scale of bombing necessary to make it a viable tactic was impossible at that time, as the nuclear bomb hadn’t yet been invented. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than me can fact check this assertion, but I think the only time intentionally targeting civilians has successfully cowed a belligerent was when the US nuked Japan. And even then, it took two.
Also, to add to the other poster’s point, in a medieval siege, the defenders have every reason to believe the attackers will happily let every man, woman, and child behind the walls die gruesome deaths to starvatiom or disease. That’s why, when it came down to the wire, cities would submit.
In modern times, cultivating a believable military posture of, “Surrender, or we will personally execute every last motherfucking one of you” is politically dicey. Look at the news stories coming out of Gaza about supplies running low thanks to Israeli interference. Right, wrong , or indifferent, the international community (as well as your domestic community, if those that disagree with these sorts of tactics are allowed to make their voices heard) tends to look down their noses at targeting noncombatants populations. So, due to these complications (which were largely absent or less impactful from warfare in the time of Genghis Khan) wholesale slaughter of civilian life isn’t really openly used. In fact, guidelines like “proportionality” are invented which dictate the level of response you can give certain provocations and what not.
So, if you’re a modern day commander being tasked with taking an urban center, the closest way to approximate a medieval siege would be to absolutely carpet bomb everything. Make it known that you will happily let every single person in Moscow die, if not send them to the afterlife yourself. While you’re bombing the suburbs, you’ll also need to encirce the whole city to prevent supplies from being delivered, since you can’t guarantee every bomb will hit it’s target and need starvation to provide additional assurance to the population that, if they maintain their current course, they are doomed.
Unfortunately, the world isn’t going to allow that, and you know it, so you commit to the level of bombing deemed acceptable by the world at large. At best, you wind up in a situation like London during the Blitz. Your bombing runs are effective, in that they disrupt the daily life of citizenry, and cause some infrastructure damage and loss of life. However, you’re never going to be allowed to scale up to the point where your victims feel they have no way out but to submit. There’s enough plausible deniability that, even when a bomb hits close to home (literally or figuratively), the victim is more pissed at the bomber than their government.
I have it on good authority that that isn’t an issue in this instance. They’ve towed the boat outside of the environment.
Can you be more specific with what you consider the “soul” of New Vegas? I would consider it to be its embrace of Fallout 1/2’s tone and canon, as opposed to the fairly clean break between the rest of the franchise and Bethesda’s offerings.
Good for Owlcat. Their Pathfinder CRPGs are excellent, and it’s always good to have more independent publishers out there supporting the genre.
I heard mixed things about The Outer Worlds. My recollection is that people were somewhat disappointed by it, but I can’t remember any real specific critiques (other than it’s scope being more limited than some people were expecting). Anyone have a take on the game they’d like to share?
Yes, I believe the figure they cited was that Google earns 73% of their revenue through ads. I imagine what they would have to do is bust up the ad services in addition to the various departments of Google. Each new entity formed gets to keep revenue from ads shown on their platform maybe? E.g. YouTube gets spun off into its own thing separate from Google proper. They get to keep ad revenue from what is shown on their platform, but they don’t get to touch any revenue from sponsored search listings, or from banner ads on other websites, etc.
That’s an approach that makes surface level sense to me, but I am neither a lawyer nor a business bro nor a tech bro. So, I don’t actually have the faintest idea if my idea bears any resemblance to reality.
I’m speculating, but perhaps the thought would be that separating Google Search from the rest of the company would deprive them of the alternative revenue streams they used to maintain their market position? If I remember the ruling against them correctly, one of the key pieces of evidence cited by the judge was that Google spent like 30 billion dollars a year to have 3rd parties use their engine by default.
I mean, the article states that the victim did suffer some symptoms, so I wouldn’t say they were totally unaffected. If the article is accurate, would it be possible that she was inhaling vapor from the spill? The victim is quoted as saying she had to be at that board for 5 hours, and the Wikipedia article indicates that the primary danger of elemental mercury is inhalation of vapor (it claims 80% absorption rate via respiration, as opposed to the 1% via direct contact). Unfortunately, I am pretty ignorant of chemistry, so I’ve no idea if my speculation is plausible. How much room temp mercury would need to be sitting in front of you before you felt the effects of the vapor. Or even if you would at all, since the CDC website says the vapor is more dense than air.
Additionally, I noticed that one of the symptoms of mercury inhalation is cognitive impairment. Obviously this is more speculation, but perhaps the intent was not to kill, but rather to sabotage the victim’s play? After all, it seems like the perpetrator and the victim were rivals. Could be a Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding situation, just more classically Russian what with the use of poison rather than brute force.
For what it’s worth, having a lower retirement grade shouldn’t actually affect his pension at all, at least in so far as I understand it.
Walz joined up in 1981, which was the year after the “High-36” retirement system was adopted. Under that system, the army looks at your career and plucks out the 36 months where you earned the most money. In the vast majority of cases, these are the final 3 years of your career. These are averaged out, and then multiplied by a percentage (2.5% per year of service, e.g. 20 years of service = 50%) to determine your monthly payment.
All of which is to say that his pension calculations do take into account the time he was an E9, even if his paperwork and other privileges rflect the lower pay grade.
Caveat: it’s been several years since I retired, and it’s a very complex process. I could be off base as it applies to Walz’s case specifically, but what I’ve described is generally true.
Hmm, so, last month I began to have issues with my Chromecast for the first time. I have an old 3rd gen Chromecast attached to my bedroom television (not a smart tv) for the purpose of casting obnoxiously long video essays to fall asleep to. After like a decade of essentially hassle free operation, it suddenly stopped being able to maintain a connection to my phone. I cast a video, and after approximately 10 minutes, the cast disconnects and I get a message on my phone saying “this video cannot be played in the background”. I’ve tried ever troubleshooting technique I can think of.
I know I shouldn’t attribute to malice what can be explained by other causes, but boy, seeing this news today sure makes me think about things like planned obsolescence.
Alright, I’ll bite, what distinguishes a hot dish from a casserole? Tater tot crust?
Austin, the character, also has the advantage of being written as fully committing to the free love swinger movement of the 60s. It would not stretch credulity if his 90s era handlers were paranoid about Austin finding out his partner is a gay man, but Austin himself is completely nonplussed by the news. Hell, he could even allude to having same-sex experiences of his own (“You know, when you are at the bottom of an orgy pile, you don’t always know where your bits and bobs are going, and you certainly don’t care. Yeah, baby!”)
Depends on how it’s handled. While I think your version is the most likely outcome, especially considering the creative team are a bunch of aging Gen Xrs, the reason the original escaped the pitfalls we are talking about here is that Austin’s 60s sensibilities are the butt of the joke, not the advancement of societal norms so often decoratively labeled as “political correctness”. The movie is about the character learning to adapt to the times, and not the character demanding the times return to the 60s status quo.
Really though, I think they already sort of made the movie we are talking about here, and it turned out fantastic. The 21 Jump Street movies were basically what we are describing, just without time travel shenanigans. Channing Tatum’s character, who was hot shit at his high school in the 90s, returns to high school 20 years later and finds that the things that made him popular are no longer cool and he has to learn to adapt to changed circumstances. Obviously that one is specifically satirizing the change in school culture post-90s, but it works on a general level too I think.
Love Ahoy’s essays. They’re so slick.
Any playersof CoC willing to chime in on the key differences which push that game into a more investigative space than your typical DnD style dungeon crawl adventure? I mean, I assume there are things like a sanity mechanic, as well as an emphasis on player fragility, but I’m curious if there are other systems at play which separate the two RPGs even further.