Old Man

Re: The cranky thread Back in the good old days of the bubble, there were some sales orgs that compensated their reps on gross sales... not gross profit. So what did the reps do? Sell lots and lots and lots of stuff, at a loss.

Re: Musings on Random Musings So, I should run out and buy a copy and play it? I imagine my time might be better spent trying to make sure FH6 is actually an improvement. Maybe.

Re: Musings on Random Musings I dimly recollect playing Space Master exactly once, and I remember thinking that it was really complicated as compared to MERP. But that's not a fair comparison since I never played it enough to get a real handle on the rules. One thing that annoyed me about MERP, anyway, wasn't the tables so much as that there weren't enough tables. Sounds crazy, I know, but about the fiftieth time by hobbit archer had severed someone's patellar tendon, I was really wishing that the tables were either more generic, or waaay more detailed, so that I wouldn't be bored by the results. As for Ars Magica... it's famous for its magic system, of course, which is not all that flexible but is really unmatched in terms of capturing the flavor of dark ages black magic--laws of sympathy and contagion, nature and spirits and the elements, etc. But I also liked the combat system, which had a neat back-and-forth advantage-shifting mechanic. None of these, though, even approach Fantasy Hero, flawed though it is.

Re: The cranky thread Exactly. But really, in order for this particular snafu to occur, five separate unrelated errors had to be committed, each by different people. The policy change is only one of those. It's one of those things where all you can do is shake your head and sigh.

Re: A Game Of Questions Don't you mean "what is the topic?"

Re: Musings on Random Musings I always had you figured for a pain freak. Never really played Rolemaster, but I have some MERP mileage, which I guess is RM Lite. Even so I had issues with the lethality of the system. Oddly I've never played GURPS; I suspect that'd be my second favorite fantasy system if I had. But since I haven't, #2 is Ars Magica. (I think 4th ed., because it matters.)

Re: The cranky thread Well, it's been a very educational tuesday. See, when we order stuff from the distributor, the distributor invoices us instantly upon shipping. If we wait until we actually get the stuff a week later before we invoice the customer, then we are left in the hole for a week until the stuff actually arrives, and then most customers wait the full net 30 and then some before they actually cut us a check. So it's a real cash flow problem and I understand why the policy was changed. Unfortunately, "received" for purposes of invoicing is now not the same as "received" for purposes of English. So when the sales rep got an email saying Customer Z's order was "received", he called up the customer and asked them when they wanted it installed (and the answer was, predictably, "stat"). Only the items are not here. They're thousands of miles away, and due to another unrelated error, it appears they are coming on a boat, not a plane. So now the rep has to let the client down, and there is no way to spin it other than that my organization is hopelessly fubar, which could affect repeat business. This is a $40,000 order, or as we refer to it in my department, a "two-Civic order." So we really ought to be a bit more on the ball, you know?

Re: Musings on Random Musings I think we'd be better off whipping out... a whip, if we're going to self-scourge.

Re: Musings on Random Musings Heh, I once felt nostalgic for playing AD&D and decided to make up a character and try to get a game together. I don't think I managed to finish making the character before being harshly reminded of why I'd given the system up to begin with.

Re: The cranky thread Okay. For the past decade, marking shipments "received" when we, like, signed for them at the door was working just fine. So why the policy change? Because marking shipments "received" when they leave the shipper is now ruining my tuesday.

Re: A song of Ice & Fire Oh, the series is wonderfully written, if gritty and even bleak at times. But on the other hand, at this rate the series won't be completed until 2013 at the earliest, and who knows if he will be able to conclude the series in an appropriately epic, non-anticlimactic manner? Especially if he can't bring himself to kill off a character or two.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings My tires are here. I wonder if they'll let me get away with putting the Kumhos on the front. They've got to be stickier than the stock Bridgestones.

Re: A song of Ice & Fire That's why they call it The Wheel of Timing. Also note that, acronymed improperly, A Song of Ice and Fire reads "AS IF".

Re: Musings on Random Musings Funny, I thought that was the sound of a cat in heat. Wait. You don't mean...

Re: Musings on Random Musings I wouldn't call a Viking an idiot to his face, no.

Re: Musings on Random Musings And that's why it's time to begin the insurgency.

Re: A song of Ice & Fire The answer is yes. Four books have been published so far. IIRC the original plan was to write six books, but the fourth one had to be split into two and he is still working on the second of the two. So best case scenario is seven, but I doubt it; I really get the sense that he has started too many subplots and it will take more books than that to wrap them up.

Re: Musings on Random Musings The best one I had was the one who complained when I started giving him zeros on his homework because I couldn't read it--his penmanship was that bad. The funny part is, to complain, he wrote a note to the department chair.

Re: Musings on Random Musings There are some things man just wasn't meant to know.

Re: A Game Of Questions Or at least get a room?

Re: Jokes Maybe, but it's not exponential or unbounded. There is a limit.

Re: Musings on Random Musings

Re: Musings on Random Musings That beats my friday night plans, which involve a screaming infant and a diaper full of poop.

Re: D&D 4th That's... quite possible, actually. I hope I didn't come across as too snarky in my reply to Curufea; I just had a hard time picturing roleplayers not being able to roleplay a fight. To me, nothing could be easier. But while I've played lots and lots of game systems, as I said earlier, I might not have played with lots and lots of roleplayers. So perhaps that is where my sample size is small.

Re: D&D 4th