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Ragitsu

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  1. Thanks
    Ragitsu reacted to Certified in Certified -> Immunity (5) : OGL Fiasco.   
    This is very true. 
  2. Thanks
    Ragitsu reacted to BarretWallace in   
    Oh, that is cool!
  3. Like
    Ragitsu got a reaction from Certified in A common rule of thumb across all TTRPGs is that a combat encounter that doesn't prov   
    Your response somewhat helped  . I suppose there are morale rules at play here (I'm using AD&D 2e), but...there may be times when a character is shooting the proverbial "fish in a barrel" and I was simply curious as to how you'd handle XP awards in those scenarios.
  4. Thanks
    Ragitsu reacted to Certified in A common rule of thumb across all TTRPGs is that a combat encounter that doesn't prov   
    This premise goes with the assumption that Combat = Experience. A lot of modern games have moved away from this idea, including my own work. However, if we are going on D&D, or D&D like games, there is an alternative here which is Milestone leveling. Here, characters level based on narrative beats, which removes the need to determine the significance of an encounter. That said, my response might feel like a dodge to the question. 
     
    Let's look at the scenario provided: 

    An unintelligent monster is attacking in an urban environment. An archer is poised in a secure position, mitigating the threat to them due to the creatures inability to reach them.  
     
    It's not that this encounter doesn't pose a challenge to the character, it is that they have offset the risk. If the player realized that moving to a rooftop negated the monster completely, I wouldn't want to penalize the PC for creative thinking and / or planning. 
     
    As the GM, not knowing the creatures stat block, I might have it attack the building the archer is on top of, like a bear trying to knock something out of a tree, but with the possibility of bringing the structure down. Suffer ye the damage of falling and the joys of being covered in rubble before becoming a snack. Granted, the archer might move to another location, but you can repeat this and it makes the encounter a bit ore engaging. This also brings me to the second tactic. 
     
    Unless compelled, if it didn't look like it could get to the archer, I'd have the monster leave. Go look for easier meals, no the archer can stay safe opting not to engage, or give chase. In either scenario I would probably have the monster cause collateral damage, catch someone outside, or other harm. If the player choses not to engage then I might deny them Experience for the encounter, and make it clear that they could have prevented others from being harmed. If they are a paladin, this gets really ugly as they may have broken an oath. 
     
    Does that help?  
  5. Thanks
    Ragitsu reacted to Certified in I don't mind one character among many seeking revenge in a greater/wider story (espec   
    Because, you're not going to get any better. Taken was fun, not amazing, but it's the best I've seen from that revenge genre. (Sorry, Kill Bill)
  6. Like
    Ragitsu got a reaction from Certified in If there is a place better than this, are we not duty-bound to locate such a haven...   
    These days, I think of fantasy over science-fiction (if only because fantasy is more divorced from the sad realizations of our own existence). When all one has is dreams, it hardly hurts to dream big...
     
    You do raise some fair points, however. Space colonization - at this point in our evolution - is incredibly complicated, glacial and almost self-defeating in some ways; we require miraculous advancements (e.g., faster-than-light travel that sidesteps relativistic issues, artificial gravity that isn't spin-gravity, fully protective radiation shielding, truly long-lasting plus safe stasis chambers, energy generation at least as powerful as reliable matter-antimatter reactors, et cetera) to make the endeavor worthwhile. The near-certainty that space exploitation is going to be guided by corporations is disheartening. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll go back to my former bleak thoughts.
  7. Like
    Ragitsu reacted to Certified in If there is a place better than this, are we not duty-bound to locate such a haven...   
    Here I thought you meant bailing on the site. With the added context, my thought is that we have a lot of house keeping to do before we can start looking for a new home. There have been a number of exo-planets discovered that could potentially house human life. However, barring the need for faster means of travel, there are still so many issues we should resolve here first. 
     
    When Elon Musk proposed that poorer people could effectively pay their way, much like indentured servants, in his vision for terraforming Mars, that really sent shivers down my spine. As once you are there, there really is no way out of the arrangement, and your boss controls the food you get to eat and the air you can breathe. Total Recall was not meant to be a guide. That's just on the idea of unchecked capitalism and how it looks more and more like feudalism as we remove what limited controls that are in place. 
     
    Then you get into societal issues, all the given "isms" of our world. Who would get to go to said haven? In Burning Chrome, there was a short story about a space station in a degrading orbit. The crew had all been evacuated, except for one person who had such bone deterioration from living in space he could not survive on earth. The story ends with a group of people using modified hot air balloons to  reach the upper atmosphere and correct the orbit before the station breaks up. Their goal to form a sustainable colony off world. There's something really innocent and fun in this concept, as they succeed and the remaining crewman becomes a mentor to the new inhabitants. However, I can't imagine this ever happening. Even if we take the events at face value, once this abandoned station is fixed, I can only see the original owners returning to collect. Although, I do like the idea of upcycling at that level. 
  8. Thanks
    Ragitsu reacted to Scott Ruggels in The old school got me back into fantasy tabletop gaming.   
    Which one? There are a lot of OSR D&D clones
  9. Like
    Ragitsu got a reaction from Starlord in   
    Apparently, the masters for this music were lost. That is a damn shame.
  10. Thanks
    Ragitsu reacted to Cancer in   
    A point I make in my classes about this: we do not yet know the resolution to the Fermi Paradox.
     
    In that I like to draw attention to another astronomical paradox, one framed multiple times since at least the Greeks, but most recently early in the 19th Century, Olbers' Paradox.  If you assume that the Universe obeys standard Euclidean geometry, and that it is infinite in spatial extent, and it is eternal (it has existed for infinite time, and presumably will continue to do so for infinite time, though that last is not required in the paradox), and uniform in content when averaged over an adequately large volume ... then one has to conclude that all sightlines in the Universe must eventually intersect the surface of a star, which means, the whole sky should be about as bright at the Sun's disk.  Obviously that is not observed.
     
    In the context of comparing this to the Fermi Paradox, I point out that all but one of the assumptions that went into Olbers' Paradox are incorrect (and perhaps a second is correct, but we can't evaluate that one).  The Universe is not eternal: it has a finite age.  It does not obey Euclidean geometry, though the degree to which it fails to do so does not seem to be important in the resolution of this paradox.  It may or may not be infinite in spatial extent, but we can't evaluate that because of the finite speed of light and the finite age of the Universe.  The one that that we do observe to be true is the one about uniformity in content, once one makes allowance for the finite age of the Universe and the evolution of the matter in it over time.  And, capping all that off, at the time of the framing of the paradox, absolutely none of those failures in assumption was known at the time (you could imagine all of those failures as possible resolutions to the paradox, but utterly no evidence was available to support belief in one as the resolution), and would not be known for more than half a century.
     
    So ... what is the resolution to the Fermi Paradox?  It is way too common to pick one assumption as being the obvious incorrect one, and wave away the problem.  As an instructor, I give that sort of thinking a grade of B-minus.  What if all the assumptions made in the Fermi Paradox are incorrect?  Or more than one, and not all?  Each failure and combination of failures has other implications for our views about life in the Universe, and it is worth considering those implications for each individual possible failure and combinations of them, because all of them lead to profound conclusions in their own right.
     
    So ... When I am asked about life elsewhere in the Universe, I avoid the "whole Universe" question.  I have no opinion informed enough to pass along.
     
    But when I started teaching, which was in a course on the Solar System, I did adopt an answer to the question about life on Mars (and this is any life, not intelligent, technological life, which the Fermi Paradox is concerned with).  And my answer is: I think that once we have the requisite ability on site to find it, then we will find that there is life on Mars, somewhere. 
     
    However, I am not willing to bet more than a beer on the issue.
  11. Thanks
    Ragitsu reacted to Old Man in Apparently, if you do the "right thing", you'll get your doggy treat.   
    Great video, thanks!  Although I wonder how "undecided" voters can even exist nowadays.
  12. Thanks
    Ragitsu reacted to Duke Bushido in The world would be a far richer place if every person spent more time unearthing the   
    Thank you, Sir (I presume); that is much appreciated.
     
    Unfortunately, I've come to discover that's not as welcome here as it once was.     In the world, I mean.
     
     
    I agree with you completely.  I miss the days when it seemed more common.  On the plus side, I'm sixty!  I don't have too much longer to worry about it! 
     
     
  13. Thanks
    Ragitsu reacted to Thia Halmades in The multiplayer (online) component of Halo PC provided me with many hours of fun.   
    I’m on PS4/5 now, but I do lament I’ll miss HALO Infinite. 
  14. Thanks
    Ragitsu reacted to Amorkca in A relative of yours, I take it?   
    Likely a necromancer...
     
    and yes - my aunt...
  15. Thanks
    Ragitsu reacted to Cancer in This happens to be my astrological sign. Apparently, it is yours as well?   
    It is, under classical Western astrology.  My username was a triple pun at the time I selected it.  The horoscope; my thesis project was on M67, a famous star cluster in Cancer; and at the time, I was employed as  a scientific programmer at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, developing a population microsimulation code for evaluating cancer screening strategies.
  16. Haha
    Ragitsu reacted to aylwin13 in Is this a friend of yours?   
    😄
     
      Forrester grimaced as he looked down at the photograph laying on his desk. It had been mailed to him in a manila envelope with no return address.
      "Who the hell found this?" he asked, shaking his head. "I thought I had buried that Pepsi endorsement campaign deep enough that no one would ever find out about it."
      Sometimes you have to do things that you end up wishing you hadn't.
  17. Thanks
    Ragitsu reacted to TheNaga in Mr. TheNaga is an awesome dude.   
    Thank you very much.  That was nice of you to say that about me.
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