Durckad

Having just watched the entirety of TOS for the first time a couple of months ago, Spock's Brain is uh not that bad. It's far from good, but it's dumb, largely harmless, campy fun. It's the equivalent of a "so bad it's good" episode. There are many other far worse episodes in TOS and even some worse episodes in later series. So yeah, Spock's Brain, it won't kill you. A ringing endorsement from me, I guess.

Well, you only have one more movie to watch and it's Aliens, so your hope will be achieved I think!

Honestly, for me, all it has to do is look and play better than Oblivion, which is not exactly a hard barrier to cross. But I'm also someone who thinks Skyrim still looks pretty good. Maximum graphical fidelity is not exactly what I primarily look for.

Assuming that is true, $30 per month is an insane amount of money. I assume it's for some platinum+ tier where Jeremy Crawford literally helps you run your games with rules checks, but still that's more than half of what I spend on my total streaming services. There's no way any of my players would sign up for that. Everything else requires a bit more info before passing judgment, though my knee jerk reaction is, um, "negative." Like explaining what exactly "base tier" means. Same with AI DMing and "stripped down gameplay." Like that could go either way, honestly. Want a quick TTRPG fix but have no one to play with? Well Skynet here will gladly run you through an AI approximation of the Tomb of Horrors! It really couldn't be anymore baffling and nonsensical than the real thing. But yeah this all just plays into my fears when they unveiled their plans for their VTT earlier in 2022, just pointless, greedy monetization. I eagerly await their rendition of loot boxes.

Yeah, it honestly really, really depends. There are two main differences that can lead to this sort of scenario: hit point inflation in 5e and modifier inflation in 3E/PF. Generally monsters in 5E have much higher hit points than their counterparts in 3E/PF, so the typical orc might survive 2-3 good hits before going down, whereas one in 3E/PF will go down probably after only 1. The other difference is that the modifiers to everything increase way quicker in 3E/PF than in 5E. Attack modifiers, Armor Class, save DC's, skill check modifiers, and skill check DC's will rather quickly eclipse their 5E counterparts... after the first 3 or so levels. So that encounter with the orc in 3E/PF is generally going to involve a lot more missing attack rolls, which will draw out the combat whereas 5E will have far more frequent successful hits, with the hit point totals drawing out the combat. The big difference between the two is that the typical orc will very quickly stop being a threat to higher level adventurers, even in massed numbers. 20 orcs vs a 12th level fighter with a 34 AC, 3 attacks at +20/+14/+8 is generally not going to be really challenged by those orcs (barring some usage of creative tactics) whereas the same character in 5E might be a bit more challenged simply due to the fact that AC and attack bonuses don't scale as much. Same if you use a wizard instead, the 3E wizard will have more, higher level spell slots that auto scale with higher DC's (that the orcs will likely not even be able to save against), whereas the 5E version has fewer slots, especially of higher level spells, and may be able to wipe them all out with a single lucky spell, but may not, as the DC is going to be lower and the hp of the orcs higher. And the 5E wizard has to deal with concentration so has significantly less ability to crowd control and buff, even at higher levels. TLDR, but the math is ultimately different and not completely 100% comparable as they're aiming for different things. I'll be honest, I prefer the 5E approach as lower CR enemies can remain a challenge for far longer and don't become little more than minor speed bumps. Many of the encounters I run in 5e are against larger groups of lower level foes, which tend to run much longer, whereas the encounters against single "boss" monsters are over much quicker. So what is, on paper, a "simple fight" in 3E is less simple in 5E and it really depends upon what the DM is aiming for. Me? I like a long combat. I don't really "do" random encounters often, I prefer curated encounters that are more meaningful, and they tend to run longer than the average. But I also did the same when I ran 3E/PF and it mostly worked there as well. Some were really short (anticlimactically usually) and others were long, drawn out slugfests. I once ran an encounter in PF that lasted for almost 2 full 5-6 hour sessions, but it was the players versus multiple mid to high level spellcasters with buffs and summons up. It was a great encounter but probably too much, honestly. Yeah, I never did and still don't agree with that complaint. That said, I do not remember my brief time with 2E all that well, either as a player or DM, so I have no idea how we adjudicated those sorts of things back then. Yeah, I've been out of the loop on PF and Paizo for years so I have really no idea what they've been up to since the early 2010's at least.

Ah, okay. I saw some vague comments about "PF3" and wasn't sure if something had been hinted at or announced or if it was just baseless rumors. I haven't really been following Paizo much since my Pathfinder 1 game ended back in 2012, I think, so my knowledge of their current going ons is rather limited at the moment. That doesn't bother me all that much, although the super high numbers is certainly not something I miss from 3E/PF1. I do much prefer the less steep curve of 5E over the sometimes absurd number inflation of the other two.

This is simply not true in any conceivable fashion of reality, though I guess it may vary depending upon the ability to remember various, minor bonuses and modifiers and do quick math on anything and everything. But 5E being more tactical than 3E is just flat out not true. In fact, many of the complaints of 5E are that it is specifically nowhere near as tactical and that it does not have as many options and choices as both PF1/3E. 5E significantly limits the number of spelled out rules for players to engage in and leaves many of the "options" up to DM fiat and ad hoc rulings (which certainly carry their own problems) but it does reduce the number of times you may have to look up what the exact modifier for "charging across a frozen pond while wielding a vorpal axe on a Tuesday" is. YMMV on which you prefer. Honestly, having DM'd all three systems, I go back and forth on it many times. 5E characters, OTOH, have many more options at lower levels compared to similarly leveled characters in 3E/PF. As levels increase, those options decrease as 3E/PF characters have access to many more skills, feats, magic items, spells, and class abilities. All of these are significantly reduced in 5E with feats being fewer in number but more impactful, spells being significantly limited with the spell casting system and concentration, and magic items being limited by the attunement system. 5e MAY BE a bit slower at the lowest levels, but that does not last long, IMO. 3E/PF characters fairly quickly attain many, many different options which can have a variety of effects both in an out of combat and it devolves into an utter mess at mid to high levels. 5E high level play is certainly not... uh... great or good even. The CR system is wonky at the best of times, but it doesn't collapse upon itself at the slightest gust of wind spell like 3E/PF. It is playable and it functions, though not well. Still, it didn't make me want to kill myself like when I DM'd high level campaigns in 3E and PF was an utter fucking nightmare at equivalent levels. Ultimately it comes down to preference. Some work better when everything is spelled out explicitly and clearly and others will find making on the spot rulings much more preferable. I er towards the former but the latter I don't mind all that much as long as the ruling framework is there. Not really no. Pathfinder smoothed out many of the rougher edges of 3E but also added a ton of new rules content and crunch. Classes are much more developed and robust in PF which can significantly slow down play but also gives more options to players. Result is that it is a tighter, better, but slower and more tactical system. This is not entirely true. The skill system is still there, but it was largely lifted from 4E IIRC. It functions much the same way, you pick your skills at character creation and the ones you pick increase in ability at set points rather than investing ranks at each level. The skill rank system is gone, but skills do still exist. PF again significantly improved the skill system over 3E and I do prefer it over the vague abstractness of 5E. Picking skills at each level and creating a weird mish-mash of what you were good at doing was fun, if not a bit time consuming. Again, this not true. In fact this is also a complaint that AD&D players had about 3E/PF "back in the day" in that having a skill called "Diplomacy" or "Search" (with explicitly spelled out rules governing both of their uses) significantly deemphasized role-play and puzzle solving in favor of rolling a die. Which is... not true for those editions either. Challenge Rating and disadvantage/advantage have nothing to do with each other. The former is for encounter construction and balance and the latter is for action resolution. They do not interact. In fact, CR has not changed all that much, it's still just as inaccurate as it was in 3E/PF. Disadvantage/Advantage, OTOH, is honestly a very elegant system, assuming you don't mind a level of abstraction on certain resolutions. It works rather well and speeds up play quite a bit. The problem? It's very, very abstract and deemphasizes some amount of tactical thinking. Honestly, WotC trying an "again but more!" approach to the OGL as they did with 4E is just... bafflingly stupid. Like, they created their most direct competition as a result of their actions on the OGL/GSL back in 4E and they thought they should try again but with a MORE draconian and restrictive license? It's the same sort of idiotic thinking that drives conservative Republicans each election cycle to proclaim that they lost because they weren't conservative enough. Just, completely idiotic decision making all around. Considering that only a portion of the backlash to 4E was due to the GSL, I don't think it would be much different. The rules of 4E were very controversial and it's possible that Paizo or another company may have decided to overhaul or stick with 3E instead of going forward with the new edition, albeit at a later date. I know Paizo developed Pathfinder primarily as a direct response to the vague and restrictive GSL, but I'm not sure 4E's design philosophy would've gelled well with theirs. It's certainly possible Pathfinder still becomes a thing under such a scenario, although later on and maybe not as successful and maybe 4E limps on for a couple more years before losing steam. If Pathfinder is not a thing, it's quite possible CR never becomes a thing and maybe the eventual 5E never quite takes off. And perhaps, if 4E doesn't fail as spectacularly as it did, 5E might not be the "return to tradition" version it ended up being and is more of an iteration on 4E. The real test, IMO, is going to be how OneD&D does after this. Some of the potential changes in OneD&D might end up being kinda controversial. Marry that with the backlash to the OGL 1.1 and if One&D falls a bit flat, well, who knows? It's possible PF2 (or 3) rises to the top again or some other derivative system does, but considering the market share D&D currently has, I'm not sure that's really possible. Maybe we see a situation where there's a bit more parity between the various players with D&D being less of a dominant power house. As for me, I just finished DMing a game that finished off at 20th level last year and we started up a new game just before the whole OGL drama unfurled and I have another game I'm DMing that just reached 10th level so I think I'm stuck with 5E for a while at least for now. OneD&D is going to be the test, I think. If it ends up being bad, maybe I might convince the players to move to a different system. That said, I have been mostly positive on some of the changes released so far Right now there's not much interest in moving on to a different system amongst my players and I'm honestly not very keen on going back to running a more rules heavy system like PF1 (I would happily play such a game, but fuck DMing that again) unless it's a very, very limited campaign (ie 1-6 or 1-10 at most). I might spend some time checking out PF2, but that has been out for a couple of years now and if Paizo is working on another edition, I might just wait and see. It would be nice to have something in my back pocket if OneD&D shits the bed, but my players are a mix of vets and newbies and the vets are very much "D&D/d20 only" players and the newbies haven't really played anything else but might be more amenable to something different. Maybe I can finally get some use out of those Warhammer books I own, but I fear anything we switch to will need to be some sort of derivative of D&D unfortunately.

They shoulda just gone all in and named the character Leon Skum.

The Onion likely came up with something like this, then tossed it because "Nah, too stupid even for us." But lo and behold, 2022 continues to deliver Onion-defying headlines.

I've gotten way too addicted to Podcasts since the start of the pandemic, to the point where I barely listen to music anymore. Hardcore History, Carlin is a very good storyteller, though I haven't listened to it in a couple of years QAnon Anonymous, comedy show dedicated to following the various QAnon conspiracies, but has also branched out to other conspiracies and cults Blowback, podcast about various points in history that have led to Blowback in the current day. 1st season was about the Iraq War, second about Cuba, and the current is about the Korean War Behind the Bastards, a podcats about the worst bastards through out history It Could Happen Here, I actually don't really actively listen to this one all that much, but it's a podcast run by Robert Evans, who also does Behind the Bastards about, as they say, "things falling apart and how we can put them back together." Lots of local and current politics, usually with a more anarchist bent. I usually put it on while I'm doing house work or cooking or generally not paying much attention. Chapo Trap House, comedy podcast about politics. The hosts can be funny but they can also be really insufferable sometimes.

So... NFT's without the NF. So.... an NFT then? I have soooooo many things to say about this. 1) I love how cheap the art looks, like Trump's head has just been poorly photoshopped onto a Liver King-sized body. And some of the others are EVEN WORSE. 2) I love that Trump is getting into NFT's NOW, after the market has crashed and they've largely been exposed as a scam. Like he's so incompetent he can't even grift properly sometimes. 3) I love that Trump is trying to get in on that Dark Brandon energy. He clearly hates Biden but is simultaneously trying to siphon off some of his chaos energy. I love and hate so much about this.

Has that stopped him before?

Yes, they weren't fascist ENOUGH. That's why the conservatives lost, clearly.

GA just prefers werewolves over vampires generally. Also, I don't know how many of you have noticed that gas and eggs are more expensive now. I guess Democracy has failed and we have to do a fascism now. Also, eggs and gas are more expensive because trans people exist. Or something. I haven't gotten the latest talking points read the latest report from Conservative Eagle Patriot MAGA News about why that is, but Tucker says it's true so it must be.

The blest and brightest, people. These billionaires are the blest and brightest.