Werthead

I think the main appeal is how fast they are to produce. The Bad Batch has knocked out 3x16 episode seasons in 3 subsequent years, which is clearly vastly superior to the production rates of the live-action shows or what a state-of-the-art, Arcane-ish animated show would take. The quality is good enough and it's a great show, if one a lot of people are sleeping on (and the third series is a serious uptick on the first two, with incredible music and a very Andor-ish vibe).

Unfortunately we're in a situation where these three authors are among those nominated annually regardless of quality (see also McGuire, Seanan), although I at least thought they were moving away from Scalzi for that. Wells is usually reliable, but I haven't read this one. Leckie was a bit of a one-hit wonder who keeps being nominated when she hasn't quite replicated the quality of her first book.

That's not really how they work. In most skill-based systems, you have skills which work on an improvement system. At the end of play sessions you get experience points and these can be applied to improving individual skills on a more granular basis. So you may "level up" more often than in D&D but each time you are applying a more moderate improvement. In Deadlands/Savage Worlds, for example, you might have, say, 2d4 as your roll for a skill. You can spend an experience point to improve that to 3d4, or you might hoard several experience points to "level up" the die type to 2d6. Over numerous play sessions your skill in that area, which might be a weapon or a magic skill or whatever, will improve smoothly. Deadlands/Savage Worlds, almost every 2d20 system (so Dune, Fallout etc), Cyberpunk Red etc are all non-level based games (well, some 2d20 games have a sort-of level-aping thing going on, but not really) which have a strong combat focus like D&D, they're not narrative/story-based systems with much vaguer rules for combat (like Powered by the Apocalypse and its ilk). This is also why the Year Zero ruleset is so hugely beloved at the moment, because its modular design allows combat-heavy games (like Mutant and, I think, The Walking Dead) and more atmosphere, puzzle and role-playing based games (like Tales From the Loop), with some things inbetween (like Alien, possibly the best new TTRPG of the last five years). We nearly got a non-level based version of D&D. When 3E was being field-tested at TSR, they put a bunch of its ideas into Alternity, which is basically an SF take on 2E which fixed 2E's split-target problem (where you roll high for some things but low for others) by making you roll low for everything (as opposed to WotC 3E, which obviously made you roll high), which preserved the utility of the 20-point stat system (something which is now fundamentally useless in 3E, 4E and 5E). They also field tested versions of feats and skills there, but interestingly the progression system is different and much more granular, without levels, at least not in the D&D sense. Alternity worked really well, despite the oddness of 1 being a critical and 20 being a fumble. Alas when WotC took over TSR they threw out those ideas as "too radical" (hahaha) and made 3E more conservative, although still with some nods of the hat to modernity.

The Nevinnomyssky Azot petrochemical complex in Stavropol Krai, just north of Georgia, has caught fire. Another TOS-1 thermobaric launcher destroyed in the field. A third major Russian armoured push, this time at Terny, between Kreminna and Lyman. This looks like an attempt to reverse Ukrainian gains a few weeks ago on the SW and NW approaches to the twin cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk. This fared as well as those pushes. Ukraine has fielded a series of new drones, including some with a range of 1,000km, with statements that 1,200km drones are currently testing and should be operational in a matter of months. Shorter-range drones are also now operating carrying AT PG-7VL HEAT warheads that are bigger than the drone itself. Ukraine is also making greater use of thermobaric suicide drones. Javelin is back in vogue all along the front, with Ukraine switching to using ambush tactics. Some suggestion this is to preserve artillery ammunition for a possible "spoiling" push in the next couple of months that diverts Russian material from a possible summer offensive. Estonia has reported that it has sourced 800,000 rounds of additional artillery ammunition on top of the 1 million sourced by the Czech Republic a couple of months ago. This supply consists of 155mm, 152mm and 122mm shells and 122mm rockets, and would allow Ukraine to restock a greater variety of offensive equipment. There's also unconfirmed reports of a British initiative which may locate 300,000-500,000 shells in the near future, and a major Greek effort as well. In total, Estonia is estimating that Ukraine should receive over 2.5 million shells this year, which should lift it over the danger zone for offensive use, and towards the figure where a new offensive could be sustained. Germany has also confirmed that around 12,000 shells no longer deemed to be in their operational lifespan have been shipped to Ukraine. Not a load, but every little helps. Russia has been celebrating the one-year anniversary of the "liberation" of Soledar by saying it is far too dangerous to actually inhabit and if you go outside you will almost certainly die thanks to FPV drones. Ukrainian intelligence has said it plans to target the Kerch Strait Bridge again in the near future (possibly a psyop to get Russia to redeploy assets to the bridge area).

A lot of the problems in D&D are basically caused by 1) magic being far too powerful for what players really need it for, and 2) levels. There's a reason why the overwhelming majority of tabletop roleplaying games do not use levels and have vehemently rejected them over the years. They tend to favour a power-gaming mindset and a very "gamey" style of advancement. They're also pretty artificial in how your character can suddenly do a ton more stuff better than five minutes earlier (in 5E it's notable how major just one level advancement can be, and you can see that in BG3; Auntie Ethel is a very, very hard fight at 3rd Level but pretty straightforward at 5th).

The icecaps are tiny, and they are both located on the open bled. The cities have to be on the Shield Wall otherwise they'll be destroyed by the worms. There is a "worm line" beyond which the worms' can't approach either icecap, but I believe this was not discovered until many years or centuries after colonisation, and even then that's no good if all the approaches to the city are cut off by worm routes. As it stands, Arrakeen and Carthag (the only two cities of note on the planet) are still only a few hundred kilometres from the northern icecap.

Welcome to Dragon Magazine letters pages, circa 1978 Concentration was introduced in 3E, but it worked slightly differently, and I believe the 5E application was a 3E homebrew rule that was popular in some quarters.

Timely.

No. The feeling I see overwhelmingly amongst a lot of friends and younger people at work is that games are far too expensive given the current economic situation, people will only pay full price for something really special and will generally wait until games become cheaper before getting them (and, like me, bemoan the fact that Steam sales are now hideously anaemic). I think it did not help at all here in the UK that the going rate for PC games was £29.99 all the way from 1989 to about 2013, so the sudden leap to £49.99-£59.99 feels both massive and unfair (basically doubling in under a decade), despite the argument it was needed and far behind the curve. Console game pricing was at least smoother in its rise, although it's still a lot. Another big problem, colloquially at least, seems to be young people sticking with the same few games for years on end rather than exploring a variety of titles. My friends' kids (10 and 13) have been playing just Minecraft and Fortnite for years on end. Very occasionally they'd try something else if it was free, but they'd bounce back pretty quickly. I just about managed to convince them to play Grounded (via the co-op appeal) but they weren't interested in the likes of Subnautica, despite it being in a similar wheelhouse. And they have next to zero interest in single-player games. They did express interest in BG3 because of the co-op but my friend obviously suggested they hold fire on that ideas for a few more years.

A revision to 3.0 was needed, but 3.5E was very lacklustre. As Cooke said, they were planning on at least another two years of building up both errata (a lot of which was already homebrewed and disseminated by the internet anyway, like combining Hear and Spot into Sense) as well as developing meatier content to make the "real" 3.5 a more substantial beast with more content and more significant options, like the Player's Option line from 2E (the so-called 2.5E revision, though it wasn't called that at the time) but maybe rolled into revise corebooks. As it stands, the 3.0-3.5E conversion PDF is less than 5 pages of A4, and half of that is telling people they don't need to go and buy the new rulebooks (so...they didn't, and WotC realised that may have been an error). DM's Guild has a solid print-on-demand option which works superbly for 3E material on (1-2E stuff is more hit and miss). The only weird thing is that it isn't available on everything and rotates around. That's D&D's inherent "Jedi problem." A Level 1 fighter hits things and a Level 20 one hits things three times in rapid succession, probably with some kind of cool magical weapon and a few nice combat options from a battery of feats. A Level 1 wizard can fire off a few cantrips at will and pelt something with a magic missile, at Level 20 they can change reality, shapeshift at will, teleport to another dimension, turn someone inside-out or, depending on what edition and rules you're using, straight-up time travel. These are not really the and same and I don't think ever really can be the same. It's like the Star Wars TTRPGs' attempts to all "balance" Jedi and normies. That's a doomed venture from the start. I do think the only solution is to do what BG3 did, simply prevent people from getting that powerful and may resetting the power levels to something sane. A Level 10 wizard is powerful but not that powerful, can fire off a few really badass spells (but not imperil causality or damage a god) but will run dry relatively quickly so needs to marshal their resources, whilst a Level 10 fighter is quite tough but can't one-shot a dragon or anything like that.

It looks like a similar but smaller armoured attack was launched at Novomykhailivka with similar results to Tonenke. Ukraine has hit the main Shahed production facility in Tatarstan, over 1200km from Ukrainian territory. Only a barracks was destroyed in the attack, with the main production facilities only temporarily shut down, but reportedly the workers (a lot of African and Indian workers, apparently) are now less keen on working there. Some reports that they might now have to move the facility further away from Ukraine as clearly Ukraine's drone attack range is increasing in leaps and bounds. The Nizhnekamsk refinery has also been hit hard. The drone used at the Shahed factory seems to be a light aircraft converted into a kamikaze bomb.

They destroyed the Forgotten Realms setting, just flat-out blew up the entire continent and left if this scattered morass of broken-up islands and landmasses, then moved the timeline forward 100 years (instantly killing every non-magic-using, non-elf NPC, or made them really old overnight) and interrupted all the in-progress storylines. To be fair, some of those were crap, so no great loss, but others were pretty good. For 5E they very quickly undid all of that and the continent became whole again and the whole thing was brushed under the carpet. There's a reason very little of this is mentioned in Baldur's Gate III. 2E added kits. 3E converted kits into Prestige Classes, but they were generally not well-playtested and could get very broken very quickly. 3E did eliminate THAC0, which was introduced in 1E and codified in the PHB in 2E. 3E I think is probably the best-regarded edition overall because its mantra is to give the players options, options and more options, and this continued into Pathfinder 1st Edition. That became problematic as there ended up being too many options for any sane DM to keep track of and some option combos were very OP (grappling rules are also insane in 3E, despite better versions existing both before and since). 3E is good but it's a lot. Maths creep was also a big problem: powerful monsters could have a thousand hitpoints (!) and players and monsters could end up juggling bonuses in the several dozen range. 5E is effectively a heavily-streamlined - too streamlined, to some - version of 3E with Advantage/Disadvantage as the big new mechanic replacing a lot of the maths bonus. The biggest weakness in 5E is removing the Skill system from 3E; although it was another layer of complexity, it gave players powerful tools especially for non-combat roleplaying. 3E was generally regarded as a roleplaying game, 5E is sometimes regarded as a miniatures wargame with a sheen of roleplaying on top. Maybe a little harsh, but there's some truth in that (miniatures were optional in 1E, rarely seen in 2E with a distinct miniatures ruleset developed instead, optional again in 3E and all but necessary in 4E and 5E). 3E also treated NPCs and PCs on the same axis, so if you want to run your games on the basis that PCs are not anyone special outside of answering the call to adventure, you can do so. 4E and 5E basically treaty your players like superheroes, they have something in them that makes them inherently superior beings in 5E. You can run a gritty, low-magic campaign in 3E but not really in 5E (there's been attempts but they have to change so much about 5E it's arguably not the same game any more). Notably, there was an excellent, official ASoIaF RPG using the 3E rules, but it's not really doable in 5E. But on the plus side, 5E means you don't spend as much time creating NPCs as players creating PCs, which was always annoying. 4E was rushed and released long before it was oven-ready (the original launch window was envisaged as around 2011-12, and they had to put it out the door in 2008), and seems to have been based partially on a D&D ruleset for board games the team were developing. 4E basically made everyone the same class: fighters had magic-like special abilities, wizards had attack-like, "at will" powers, so everything was a thin reskin of everything else, lacking a lot of flavour. They also used MMORPG terminology for everything, it was really off-putting. But some of their ideas, especially for tactical combat, were pretty good. 13th Age is apparently the "final form" of 4E, developed by the same team with more time under their belt, and is comprehensively superior in every way. 5E has sold a lot better than any edition since 1E (2E sales were poor, 4E were apocalyptic and 3E started well but fell off a cliff when 3.5E came out, as people thought they were taking the piss), and maybe slightly better than that, but it's not run off into the distance. I think this is the key problem Hasbro/WotC had with profitability, 5E is being played by more people than any edition before, but the books are not selling like they think they should be (since the 5E rules are available free online, more or less). Monte Cooke, who co-developed 3E, has said that their plan was to release a major revision to 3E in 2005 or 2006, and 4E would follow in 2011 or 2012, roughly paralleling the timeline of 1E and 2E. They agreed that although some TTRPGs had to produce a new edition every 3-5 years, D&D could not do the same thing, they had to commit for the long haul. 3E sales were apparently insane in the first year (most of the 800,000 copies of the 3.0E PHB were sold in the first 12 months) but then fell off in Year 2, which he and everyone else who had worked in the industry fully expected, but Hasbro panicked and demanded they bring forward the revised version, despite everyone telling them that was a bad idea. Cooke quit (not just over that, but that didn't help) before 3.5 came out in 2003, just three years after 3E itself. WotC were roasted for that, especially when the books came out and they were just very mild revisions of the original. 3.5E's PHB only ever sold 300,000 copies, maybe slightly less, so the exercise failed. Not only that, but there has been speculation it hurt D&D's overall sales because people felt it was a cash-grab (i.e. if they'd stuck with 3.0E for longer, they'd have sold more than another 300,000 copies in another five years). That also led to them commissioning 4E way ahead of schedule so it came out in 2008, leaving 3E overall with sales of about 1.1 million PHBs. That's only a third of 1E and way, way less than the impression WotC gave at the time of it being a massive mega-success story. These figures only came to light recently. Some 3rd party licensees from the time said if they'd known the real figures, they'd have never jumped on the 3E/d20 bandwagon of converting other systems to it, as it ended up mostly not being worth it (Pinnacle Entertainment only narrowly skimmed being made bankrupt by it). You can get them all on DM's Guild. The 3E setting book is a work of art, aside from the maps (that shrank Faerûn by 20% in 3E with no explanation for no real reason; it got better in 5E).

Russia launched one of its largest offensives since Avdiivka on Saturday, advancing a large number of vehicles west of Tonenke, Donetsk Oblast. They ran straight into a Ukrainian ambush and were forced to retreat with heavy losses. Ukraine did the old "blow up the first tank in the convoy trick" to logjam the formation. This didn't work as efficiently as in urban areas because the Russians were able to fan out into the countryside, although Ukraine had mined some of the area. Current tally seems to be seven tanks and IFVs destroyed, possibly more. A Russian cruise missile malfunctioned mid-flight yesterday and landed nearly in Krasnoarmeysk, Saratov Oblast in Russia. It managed to miss the urban area and hit a field instead.

The "verifying you're human" thing has come back again.

Been bouncing around a few things: Manhunt: Outstanding, a close rival to Shogun for "best thing on TV right now." Tobias Menzies has always been a very reliable performer, but he's delivering a career-best performance here. The weak link is the guy playing Abraham Lincoln who's a bit too cliched, but given he gets killed off in the first episode (not a spoiler, I hope), not a major problem. He is better in the flashbacks later on. Also not sure on Patton Oswalt in a dramatic-only role. Everyone else is on fire, especially Anthony Boyle as Wilkes Booth. The Reluctant Traveller with Eugene Levy: almost totally depth-free froth, but for switching-the-brain-off entertainment, very serviceable. Levy is a congenial host. So far I think the first series was better, simply because Levy was much more entertaining with his Johnny Rose-esque non sequiturs, and seeing him in Finland or Tokyo or the middle of Utah (which ended up being unexpectedly emotional) as a guy out of place was more entertaining than seeing him sipping whiskey in Scotland or wine in Tuscany, which feels much more comfortable for him. The Bear: Wasn't impressed at first as it was just a bit shouty, but after three or four episodes it settled down and became increasingly excellent. Adding Jon Bernthal to the cast (albeit as a flashback-only character) was a good move. Silo: Very good, despite Rebecca Ferguson's wandering accent. The production design is sensational.

I like Eberron, but it has the same issue as Golarion and a bunch of other settings: it was clearly designed by a dude as a "roleplaying setting." It has some contrived worldbuilding elements that feel artificial, though often cool (warforged are badass, and Sharn is a great creation). Forgotten Realms was created by an eight-year-old kid as a setting for his home bonkers stories in the 1960s and then fleshed out over twenty years before D&D got anywhere near it. At its best in those early years it was a chaotic mess which felt like anything was possible in. But, you are right about 5E. Forgotten Realms got fucked over at the end of 3E in 2008 and they've never fully turned it around since then (Honor Among Thieves and BG3 both feel like successes in spite of the mess they made of the world, not because of it). In fact, I think the 5E Eberron book is not only the best but also possibly the only competent setting sourcebook they've put out for all of 5E's existence, and Keith Baker has done great work in fleshing it out via his DM's Guild content. His recent announcement he's retiring from doing that suggests some kind of problem behind the scenes with WotC (the attitude of the current D&D design team to canon and continuity in official settings might have something to do with that).

We have the episode titles: Space Babies, written by Russell T. Davies, directed by Julie Anne Robinson The Devil's Chord, written by Russell T. Davies, directed by Ben Chessell Boom, written by Steven Moffat, directed by Julie Anne Robinson 73 Yards, written by Russell T. Davies, directed by Dylan Holmes Williams Dot and Bubble, written by Russell T. Davies, directed Dylan Holmes Williams Rogue, written by Kate Herron & Briony Redman directed by Ben Chessell The Legend of Ruby Sunday, written by Russell T. Davies, directed by Jamie Donoughue Empire of Death, written by Russell T. Davies, directed by Jamie Donoughgue

I revised my Forgotten Realms "nations" series, adding a second wiki-style map to every article to show where each nation actually is on the continent. Helps with the big-picture idea of the setting.

I think there's a rule that a Worldcon can add its own category for one year or something, and "Best Video Game" was pretty popular last time they did it a couple of years back so they're running it again. Baldur's Gate III pretty much a shoe-in for the win, I think.

Huh, the "DPR" 1st Army Corps, 98th Separate Infantry Regiment of the 2nd Infantry Brigade, has mutinied. They refused to continue assaults on Semenivka, citing that their unit had suffered catastrophic losses and only 15 people remained in the unit. They have now been relieved of their weapons, arrested and accused of desertion. Zelensky has suggested intelligence that Russia's next target may be Kazakhstan rather than the Baltics. Interesting, as anti-Kazakhstan rhetoric was extremely heated about a year ago but it got turned down, apparently after public Chinese statements of support for Kazakhstan's independence.

Berdychi seems to be the current focus of Russian advance efforts following Avdiivka. Both Ukrainian and Russian sources seem baffled by Russian MoD tactics: they initially launched overwhelming attacks across open ground with large formations of vehicles and men, which were pummelled by Ukrainian artillery and drones. So the Russians switched to using small formations of men attempting lots of little attacks to overstretch the defenders. However, artillery and drones were successful in eliminating this tactic as well. The Russians seem to have resumed large-scale attacks with large numbers of troops and vehicles, presumably on the grounds that the Ukrainians have forgotten how to deal with this in the few days since they last tried that. They have not.

Yup, just getting this as well. The board is now taking ages to load a single page, my firewall trips up an "INFECTED WITH: BLACKLIST" alarm and then I get a "Cloud Flare is verifying you are human," message.

Ah, the hit on the Kherson barracks was carried out by stand-off French-supplied AASM-250 Hammer bombs, with a range of about 45 miles. Very difficult to intercept. Perun on the challenges faced by defending the Baltic States:

Ukraine has hit a swathe of targets across Kherson Oblast (the occupied bit, obviously) and Crimea, hitting EW stations and even individual houses being used as barracks by Russian soldiers. Interestingly, very little AA or anti-drone efforts to stop them. You sometimes see these efforts only being partially successful or even wholly unsuccessful, with missiles shot down by Russian air defence or portable anti-drone systems leading to shoot-downs. This latest swathe of attacks seemed to be meet very little resistance, the same with the last few hits on Russian refineries and power plants. In fact, one drone flew behind enemy lines and bombed an EW station that seemed to be trying to shut it down and having no impact. One possibility is that Ukraine's new "AI control system" is now operating, which helps complete missions. When EW shuts down direct control, the AI takes control and completes the mission. The other is that Ukraine's boasts about having new control systems that Russian EW is ineffective against are correct, despite some scepticism in some quarters. The other is that Russia's own stock of EW and AA systems along parts of the front has run so dry that Ukraine can operate with increasing freedom.

Keaton was 38 when he made it so that tracks. Bale was 31 when he made Batman Begins.