horangi

Well, tell me that the Republican party isn't full of White Walkers, or to be fair in Josh Hawley's case, White Runners.

Well, we are posting on a fantasy forum aren't we?

In terms of major Democrat policies, sure, but in the extremely unlikely scenario that this occurred and somehow Jeffries wasn't immediately vacated, there are a number of bipartisan bills that could go through with even a handful of R votes. I suspect that funding for Ukraine and other bills could get through with support from those representatives for whom the targeted issues are key to their survival in purple districts or are actually true believers in the cause. Even if not, the D's could put up the 'prevent harm from terrorists to kittens and puppies' bills all day long to force the Rs to vote against them.

I'd also think the nature of modern war doesn't lend itself to the small line formation battle mechanisms that the TW series uses. You can get away with that type of modern battle with a RTS at a small scale like Company of Heroes where you have at best squad sized units who can occupy a single location. However that would make the strategic aspects of running a faction untenable. You could have extremely abstract characters representing company sized units and no attempt for realism like Starcraft or C&C in a fantasy battlefield. Or a Hearts of Iron-like hundreds of miles-wide strategic front and become a paradox game's concept of real time measured in hours or days.

OK, I am hesitant to even step into this discussion. That said, today, October 13, Ukraine claims to have inflicted 1030 casualties on the forces of Russia plus over 120 vehicles and 44 artillery pieces destroyed. Granted, Ukraine has an incentive to exaggerate successes, and we have to assume Ukraine losses were a significant percent of the losses to Russia. Why are the vast majority of posts dealing with the horrors in the Levant vs what is happening in Ukraine? Literally the horrors lashed out by either side which have spawned multiple threads here have been just the norm for whats happening to their North-East.

You Marxists and your dialectics! Actually I am hopeful this is the case. Nature and evolution tend to work in a similar way. We just have to hope that the resting energy state of human nature is something enlightened vs something more sinister.

Setup for a Season 2 we didn't get to explore with him unfortunately. I am divided on whether his last scene was a disappointment of what could have been or maybe a decent way to go out as an actor, gazing out over the undiscovered country at the end. The next grand journey ahead. Perhaps both.

Keep in mind that education in the US is controlled at the state and local level for the most part. So you have some counties with reputable public education and some with reprehensible public education. Some of the reason is due to politics. Growing up in a predominately R area, the county would hold referendums to build new schools to hold a growing student population or even just maintain them and each and every time the referendum would be voted down overwhelmingly, with a 'not my kid, not my problem' attitude. The opposite happens in the more educated (generally heavily D counties) where every referendum passes. The other aspect is funding usually comes from property taxes- the later seasons of The Wire addressed this with the comparisons between a poor Baltimore County and a rich Montgomery County.

Holy hell, I hope that lady is being marked down in some ledgers for future office.

Doesn't the completionist in you demand just one more episode?

Pushing ahead with my multiplayer BG3 game. Its slow going when you can only play a couple hours every other week due to scheduling all three of us at the same time and the game is definitely rough around the edges with multiplayer/cross platform support so we've probably wasted 2 hours total trying to get it to load up correctly. Outstanding game, but why do they have rope, that staple of D&D problem solving, in the game when its not usable. We found an area where the entrance to another dungeon was high above us, we had a flying potion, but apparently we cant tie the rope to bring up the rest of the party. I get it would be a bit game breaking or challenging to code to have it totally free form, but having designated anchor spots (such as the iron gate that served as a door) when its a reasonable choice would have been nice. Or just remove the rope so we don't spend 10 minutes trying to figure out how to use it.

I am just glad that:

I hope not! He's been fantasy gold for my team. Top QB through three weeks. We award a bonus for 300+ yard games, so keep the garbage time flowing! I do wish the pass to Hock at the end connected vs deflected for an int, since I have him as well.

Started One Piece after hearing folks talking about it here. I had literally never heard of the IP before. I enjoyed the intro pirate king scene thinking, OK I can get into a Pirates of the Caribbean/Black Sails world. Stuck with it with the dude in the barrel getting swept up by the pirates. Started to wonder how a kid's show (I was assuming by dialogue) was allowing the pirate to smash a prisoner with a maul. Then got to the part when the dude started using super power bendy movements and Nope'd right out of that series. ETA: I noticed it was a Manga series (based on the Star Wars thread apparently #3 in some several peoples minds of being the most influential all time!) and something of a victory after Cowboy Bebop failed? I thought the Cowboy Bebop live series was quite decent, but apparently I am in the minority

I kinda figured the Dathomir witches punched in the main galaxy in their Uber app, but were too cheap to splurge on UberX and so it was Thrawn and his beater star destroyer that rolled up, no doubt 20 minutes late. We've all had those days. Overall I had fun with this one as well. I also got a no-deep-thinking-necessary laugh from the Howler Sabine interaction.

Among the places I've visited, Jaisalmer Fort in India is near the top of the list. Gazing through the windows of the palace overlooking the desert below evokes a feeling of being in the middle of a fantasy series. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaisalmer_Fort

Seriously, if Chris Hemsworth came into a theater with his shirt off, no one would bat an eye. Well actually a ton of folks would bat an eye, but not in the same way. Boebert has so many things to scrutinize, why make one of the few pleasures in life one of them! For who amongst us has not had a consensual grasp of a (male or female) nipple in a dark theater. Who shall be the first to cast a stone?

Says the dog who is currently plotting to convert the world's production into a wholly owned subsidiary of Lazyscrog Industries!

Thanks! Its the bolded that got me in Kingmaker. I kept running into encounters that were clearly beyond the capability of the party, but, to my knowledge there wasn't a way to run either. I probably didnt give the game enough of a chance, but it felt like there wasnt much of a way to sense and avoid those situations and I've tried to not meta game through trial and error (party wipe, I mean, running away to fight another day is fine).

DP Feel free to remove.

OK thats quite an endorsement- I was put off a bit from Kingmaker when I kept running into no win situations. Does WotR provide a bit more balance or is reloading 'the way'?

My profile indicates its 18 years old, so that would suggest I was one of those Half-life2 early adapters. Interestingly enough the game profile for HL2 doesn't have any hours played or achievements, so I wonder if they weren't a thing when it first came out, since I know I beat the game. As for games overall, 9720 hours played, but a huge amount of that is idle time. The Paradox games are great for a busy life where you can tab out and play in little bursts around a busy schedule. @Werthead you have pretty good balance to make it through games I am guessing, maybe as part of your reviewer livelihood. I tend to either play it to death or it doesn't make it past hour 2 or 3. 1. Stellaris - 2306 (My comfort blanket) 2. Fallout 4 - 588 (Must connect every village with full defenses!) 3. EU4 - 508 (Mostly trying to win with ridiculous scenarios, the game that has gotten the most $$ out of me on DLC) 4. XCom ET - 480 (Long War) 5. TW: Warhammer III - 468 (That's probably like 4 Mortal Empires runs) 6. Valheim - 460 (Online with friends COVID defense) 7. Long Dark - 431 (Great for those cold gloomy winter days with an Irish Coffee) 8. Elite Dangerous - 422 (Nothing more relaxing after a high stress day then mapping a far flung star system no other player has been to) 9. Battletech - 411 10. CivVI - 397 11. Skyrim - 363 12. TW: Warhammer II - 278 13. Rimworld - 201 14. TW: Shogun II- 197 15. Darkest Dungeon - 172 16. Fallout NV - 165 17. Fallen Enchantress LH - 159 18. Crusader Kings II - 141 19. Stardew Valley - 120 (gaming with family) 20. Subnautica - 113 (Most immersive game I've played)

I know you are not really looking for a rational response, but I will try anyways. Larry's comment is totally valid in that the average individual is going to feel the pinch no matter what and its perfectly reasonable for them to be less then enthused. That said, when evaluating the effectiveness of policy choices, it does make sense to consider the alternative outcomes, and in this case, we have a lot of other countries we can use in comparison (recognizing the huge advantage the US has with the dollar being the primary reserve currency). Look at our brethren across the pond in the UK who got both austerity AND terrible inflation, which has still not abated. Its not like any other country with a modern economy is just floating through the crisis as if nothing happened. Check out the OECD stats for inflation overall: https://data.oecd.org/price/inflation-cpi.htm When lightning strikes your house (e.g. a pandemic), you rate the fire department on their ability to respond quickly and effectively. You don't blame them for the lightning causing a fire in the first place. Barring some philosopher king savant of the ages, inflation was coming one way or the other, the main policy problem was trying to manage how long it would last and addressing the economic and social welfare consequences of addressing it. Sometimes the best case scenario, when the state has chosen mostly the optimal options, is 'embrace the suck.'

These are fair concerns, but I am not sure how you solve it without relying almost exclusively on procedural generation, which has its drawbacks for long term play. Skyrim's map is about 37 sq kms. Deimos, on the lower end of planetary bodies, is 500 sq kms. NMS and ED have done a great job in capturing the scale of the universe and the ability to basically go anywhere, but that anywhere, like the real universe is pretty empty (ED) or at least starts to look the same after a couple hours of play (NMS). They can put in hand created content of course, but its either going to be extremely clustered around the handful of settlements (like in Starfield), or you need breadcrumbs to find anything at all (like ED). While I am really enjoying it despite this issue, what Starfield could have done better is managing the illusion of the vastness of space and the transition from the ground. The space flight part just feels like another game compared to the land-exploration side of things. That said, I went into the game expecting a much larger, Bethesda sandbox of the The Outer Worlds and didnt have very high expectations of the space flight. ETA: If I had my druthers, I would have preferred that they had put out the next Elder Scrolls game rather than Starfield- the scale feels a bit more manageable and its easier to suspend disbelief that one person could have a dramatic impact on the world. But I can understand the dev teams wanting to take a break from the IP.

Has anyone heard anything about Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria? A sandbox survival crafter set in Moria sounds like it would be great fun, but since I hadnt even heard of it until it popped up in Epic's pre-order popup makes me wonder if its more of a cash grab using the LoR IP to push sales?