Old Man

I rarely use this emoji, but you've earned it:

In my opinion, video game magic was effectively invented by the very first editions of D&D. I have an extremely hard time thinking of examples in pre-1970s fiction of wizards casting straight up battle magic like Fireball. The best Gandalf could do was to turn pinecones into Molotovs, and he's one of the frickin' Maiar. It is beyond ironic that D&D would later find itself having to make itself more video game-like in order to compete with the very game genre it spawned. D&D has always needed improvements in balance. 5e did a decent job of improving that*, for a time, but balance promptly fell apart as more splatbooks and subclasses were published. And that's an inherent flaw of any system that does not have an underpinning mechanic or rules philosophy to enforce balance. This very debate occurs constantly on places like /r/dndnext. "How can we make it so the classes and spells are balanced?" "We just need a way to quantify the power of the various abilities." "NO THAT'S POINT BASED KILL THE INFIDEL" and around and around it goes. * Though hardly perfect. Sorcerers sucked out of the gate and the subclasses for Cleric and Warlock vary wildly in usefulness.

For this specific tool? Depends on the law and the people who run the company. But as I explained to a family member who is also in cyber, it is not possible to stop development of AI any more than it would be possible to stop development of, say, video games. The U.S. government could ban AI tomorrow and AI development would promptly move to India or Mexico.

Can he change back?

I was wondering if a switched Glock was involved, that footage would seem to prove it.

Obligatory

Whatever happened to Burrito Boy anyway? The Tourette's Truther--involuntarily says things that are invariably and uncomfortably true, usually at the most awkward moments

So many strongly held opinions about magic! Although that is pretty normal--in the fantasy fiction discussion groups I frequent, "hard" vs. "soft" magic systems are always a topic of lively discussion. Naturally that would carry over to RPGs. My preferences tend to come down on the "soft" side of the spectrum, i.e. mysterious and poorly understood. I find that more well defined systems, in fiction, are uninteresting--being fully understandable, they become esoteric. In some cases this also leads to some strange inconsistencies with the setting. As others have mentioned, mysterious-and-poorly-understood magic is tough to do in any RPG that attempts to be balanced. Hero manages to at least sort of address the subject with skill rolls, Side Effects, and other disadvantages. Other systems, like Ars Magica, address it by leaving a certain amount of wiggle room in the effect. Or in the more lightweight systems, almost not having a system at all. What really sets Hero apart is that its flexibility allows it to cover multiple magic systems. You can have the wizards of the Fire College go up against the Wild Pool Magicians with the assistance of the Vancian Amnesiacs. After four decades of fantasy gaming I have yet to see any other system that can really do this. Usually the best they can do is have you pick spells from a different list. But the point is that Hero can really do both hard and soft magic, and I'm frankly astonished that no other game system has really tried. Clerical magic is a whole other ballgame, as it directly involves the theology of the setting. It's hard to be an atheist when priests are slinging flame strikes and blade barriers. At that point, religion becomes less a matter of faith and more one of devotion and adherence. It's a weird side effect of D&D video game magic, and to me it smacks of football teams granting magic powers to its craziest fans. I have toyed with the idea of requiring clerical spells (prayers?) to be bought with Invisible Power Effects, just to make it a teeny bit less obvious to onlookers that The Gods Walk Among Them. That only works for certain effects, but it does maintain a lot of the mystery. Arcane magic might benefit from the same.

Oh yeah, it's been a lot worse.

Draft order for the first three rounds of the 2024 draft is set. Strangely, all the NGD teams are huddled together in a clump of mediocrity. Do we have a Colts fan I'm unaware of? 1 Carolina Panthers (traded to Chicago) 2 Washington Commanders 3 New England Patriots 4 Arizona Cardinals 5 Los Angeles Chargers 6 New York Giants 7 Tennessee Titans 8 Atlanta Falcons 9 Chicago Bears 10 New York Jets 11 Minnesota Vikings 12 Denver Broncos * 13 Las Vegas Raiders * 14 New Orleans Saints 15 Indianapolis Colts 16 Seattle Seahawks 17 Jacksonville Jaguars 18 Cincinnati Bengals 19 Los Angeles Rams 20 Pittsburgh Steelers 21 Miami Dolphins 22 Philadelphia Eagles 23 Cleveland Browns (traded to Houston) 24 Dallas Cowboys 25 Green Bay Packers 26 Tampa Bay Buccaneers 27 Houston Texans (traded to Arizona) 28 Buffalo Bills 29 Detroit Lions 30 Baltimore Ravens 31 San Francisco 49ers 32 Kansas City Chiefs

Bold of you to assume our cops get training. Can't speak for other countries but the U.S. services do not kid around when it comes to gun control. Every bullet must be accounted for, and when guns go missing (which they sometimes do) people go to jail. As I had to explain to someone on another board, try to open carry on base and see what happens.

Mister Mediocre Everything he does turns out exactly average. Every single time.

Hey I hear the Broncos need a QB.

I play both, but in Hero I tend to play spellslingers simply because I (usually) get to write up the spells. I love axes, but telekinesis is way more versatile than an axe.

Xeriscaping

Vacuum the house

Fantastic Four has been cast.

Less, in fact. Software engineers would be like wizards isolated in their towers, conducting bizarre rituals and never interacting with the real world. Whereas cloud engineers would be hedge wizards, knowing a hodgepodge of random spells that actually get things done.

Sounds like a job description for a cloud infrastructure admin, not a software engineer.

Just think, this is only the second half. IMAX.

Those voters are firmly ensconced in the conservabubble, so it'll work.

Make another character