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Okay, first - I did that once. Second, it was just lists. I hadn't gone to the minutia of actually making up numbers and prices per volume to calculate elasticity and such. I'm not that far gone.
I can easily rationalize disparate tech in a setting - make the tech prohibitively expensive, a clear sine of a caste divide. The corrupt elites are too far advanced for the lower orders to hope to overthrow, and they keep them that way by cruelly stamping out any sign of technological innovation in the groundlings. Could be an excellent dystopia.
here's also real-world examples of extreme tech-aversion - we have the Amish, and history is fraught with Luddites doing all they can to resist the spread of these machines that would render their traditional employment obsolete. Orthos and I had actually been playing with a setting working with just that - a rudimentary factory harming the viability of local town mages who made their living through crafting household goods.
The setting needs to actually go to the effort of crafting the setup of the hovercraft by the ox and plow, but I can see multiple ways to make it sensical and viable.
And that's the issue. I think it might be a generational thing. I grew up in the 70s, when none of the authors or screenwriters could be bothered with such trivia, so anachronistic, "John and Jeff grew up next door to each other in socially- and economically-identical situations, but John chooses to ride a horse and wield a regular broadsword, while Jeff has personal flying battle armor and a laser cannon" situations were commonplace.
It left a bad taste for sci-fi/fantasy crossovers for an entire generation...
I can definitely see the generational thing. I am a child of the 90s, and my introduction to scifi was through dystopian assigned reading like The Giver and Fahrenheit 451 and through video games where technology was often trying to mimic or replace magic. I don't think I'm familiar with the poorly-done crossovers you mention.
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Geez. Poor NobodysWife. April 20 was already an inauspicious birthday, what with it being Hitler's birthday and all. Then along came the Columbine a**hats to make it even worse. Impus Major decided to be born 3 weeks early and horn in on her birthday (a few days later). And then came the whole 4-20 crowd, who swarm the Bay Area, trash every open space imaginable, and leave tens of thousands of dollars in damage in every city every year. Because... yay, pot?
So a few years ago our whole "birthday outing" day was ruined because traffic across the bridge was over 3 hours (normally 20 minutes). This year we decided to stay local and have an extremely small gathering (the 4 of us and 4 guests). But of course, one of them is a news reporter, and he just got told he has to be on call all of 4-20 in case of "newsworthy incidents".
Which we all know are going to happen, 'cause it's 4/20 in the Bay Area.
We just need to move NobodysWife's birthday by a day one way or the other...
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Oh, and LM, if you're working today shoot me a text/email/post here -- I'd like to bum a ride off of you. Our favorite car detailing place got moved to Carlson and MacDonald, which isn't the safest place in the world to bike, but is right on the way from your work home...
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Geez. Poor NobodysWife. April 20 was already an inauspicious birthday, what with it being Hitler's birthday and all. Then along came the Columbine a**hats to make it even worse. Impus Major decided to be born 3 weeks early and horn in on her birthday (a few days later). And then came the whole 4-20 crowd, who swarm the Bay Area, trash every open space imaginable, and leave tens of thousands of dollars in damage in every city every year. Because... yay, pot?
So a few years ago our whole "birthday outing" day was ruined because traffic across the bridge was over 3 hours (normally 20 minutes). This year we decided to stay local and have an extremely small gathering (the 4 of us and 4 guests). But of course, one of them is a news reporter, and he just got told he has to be on call all of 4-20 in case of "newsworthy incidents".
Which we all know are going to happen, 'cause it's 4/20 in the Bay Area.
We just need to move NobodysWife's birthday by a day one way or the other...
so...
Is that a no on a "special" birthday cake for her?
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I sort of feel a little bad whenever I eat a steak because the energy/land conversion ratio for steaks is pretty crap.Most meat has that trouble, but steak is so good.
Really we need to hurry up and invent those replicators that they have on star trek. Like 3d printing but with carbon atoms.
There is this new-ish meatless option in the U.S., Impossible Burgers. From reviews I've read, it's supposed to accurately replicate the umami, flavor-profile, and mouth-feel of a traditional beef hamburger, and to be close enough to a beef burger in taste. It's been available in mostly midrange to fancy restaurants, but they just started serving them in White Castle (a popular affordable hamburger chain) franchises in the Northeast U.S. Hopefully, they'll take off in popularity and become available outside the States soon-ish.
Edit: Dang it, now I'm hungry again.
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Oh, and LM, if you're working today shoot me a text/email/post here -- I'd like to bum a ride off of you. Our favorite car detailing place got moved to Carlson and MacDonald, which isn't the safest place in the world to bike, but is right on the way from your work home...
Texted you.
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The frozen tundra.
I think we used to have a name, but it's buried under snow.
okay.
I live in the SECOND greatest city in the world.
Freehold, do you have the AMC channel through your cable/TV service? Because, if you haven't already, you should really watch all ten episodes of The Terror, based on the Dan Simmons "historical horror" novel about a pair of British ships searching for the Northwest Passage.
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I should be writing instead of constantly playing Lord Of The Rings Online...
<.<
>.>
I have three more levels and tons of equipment to get to be able to roam Northern Mirkwood...
I was there today, ported by a helpful hunter...
It's beautiful.
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Or at least I could play one of the dozens game I have bought, started, and which linger on my HD...
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I should be writing instead of constantly playing Lord Of The Rings Online...
Do you have Paizo's Starfinder and Dreamscarred Press' Ultimate Psionics? Because Dreamscarred's Kickstarter for their SFRPG Psionics Guide just fully funded, and they might need another freelancer or two. :)
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I recommend The Terror, also. I've only seen episodes 1, 5, and 6 (or 4 and 5 -- not sure), but I'm enjoying it!
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Freehold, do you have the AMC channel through your cable/TV service? Because, if you haven't already, you should really watch all ten episodes of The Terror, based on the Dan Simmons "historical horror" novel about a pair of British ships searching for the Northwest Passage.The frozen tundra.
I think we used to have a name, but it's buried under snow.
okay.
I live in the SECOND greatest city in the world.
I'll check it out.
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I can definitely see the generational thing. I am a child of the 90s, and my introduction to scifi was through dystopian assigned reading like The Giver and Fahrenheit 451 and through video games where technology was often trying to mimic or replace magic. I don't think I'm...Okay, first - I did that once. Second, it was just lists. I hadn't gone to the minutia of actually making up numbers and prices per volume to calculate elasticity and such. I'm not that far gone.
I can easily rationalize disparate tech in a setting - make the tech prohibitively expensive, a clear sine of a caste divide. The corrupt elites are too far advanced for the lower orders to hope to overthrow, and they keep them that way by cruelly stamping out any sign of technological innovation in the groundlings. Could be an excellent dystopia.
here's also real-world examples of extreme tech-aversion - we have the Amish, and history is fraught with Luddites doing all they can to resist the spread of these machines that would render their traditional employment obsolete. Orthos and I had actually been playing with a setting working with just that - a rudimentary factory harming the viability of local town mages who made their living through crafting household goods.
The setting needs to actually go to the effort of crafting the setup of the hovercraft by the ox and plow, but I can see multiple ways to make it sensical and viable.
And that's the issue. I think it might be a generational thing. I grew up in the 70s, when none of the authors or screenwriters could be bothered with such trivia, so anachronistic, "John and Jeff grew up next door to each other in socially- and economically-identical situations, but John chooses to ride a horse and wield a regular broadsword, while Jeff has personal flying battle armor and a laser cannon" situations were commonplace.
It left a bad taste for sci-fi/fantasy crossovers for an entire generation...
I always thought Michael Moorcock did sci-fi/fantasy well in the Hawkmoon books, etc.
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Freshly recovered from food poisoning (last week Thursday) followed by dental surgery (Monday) and then taking care of sick kid (up through yesterday), what do I choose to do today? Rest? Recover?
Hell, no! I went into full spring cleaning mode and fully cleaned and rearranged the living and dining room. And the balcony.
I am going to be in even more of a world of pain then usual tomorrow....
My wisdom score rivals my constitution score. This is why I'm an NPC.....sigh..... ;)
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Close to chattanooga btw
Dude, I live in East Brainerd. Sup Neighbor.
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I went to play badminton with colleagues after donating blood. They usually tell you not to do anything strenuous for the rest of the day.
So talk about questionable decisions.
I would try the impossible burger. For vegan burgers we have vegan burg but the patty doesn't really taste like meat. I don't mind though.
But if you ever go to a vegetarian buffet event, if there's any, go for the vegetarian mock mutton curry. And the deserts. Deserts are not affected by being vegetarian.
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Grumbly NobodysHome:
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And personally, I like vegetarian food, as long as they don't try to make it like meat.
The moment they try to imitate meat, I refuse to eat it. Because, why?
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One of my favorites is the vegetarian kidney, which they make out of konnyaku.
You have to appeal to carnivores like Gran at vegetarian buffets, and I do believe that soybeans are more sustainable then raising cows.
Soya beans are actually grown for the land to rest, or they call it fallow.
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I feel that vegetarian food imitating meat is just culinary innovation. There's quite a lot of mock meats in Chinese vegetarian cooking and sure it might not taste like the original, but it's good, anyway.
I view it as an unnecessary constraint. Greens in San Francisco is an all-vegan restaurant run by Bhuddist monks, and it is amazing, and has a months-long waiting list.
And there isn't a scrap of mock meat on it. Their entire focus is bringing out the flavor and the nature of the vegetables themselves.
Which, in my humble opinion, is what cooking should be.
Not, "Well, I can't serve xxx, so I'm going to take yyy and try to make it taste like xxx."
I serve a mean lamb curry.
But I also serve a mean 100% vegan lentil curry. And I don't try to make the lentils taste like lamb. I adjust the flavor of the sauce to enhance their flavor instead.
EDIT: And that's kind of my point: You can make amazing dishes that appeal to carnivores like Gran without attempting to imitate meat. When you attempt to imitate meat, you fall short, and carnivores leave with the misimpression that vegetarian food is necessarily worse than meat. Which just isn't true. But trying to imitate meat perpetuates the stereotype.
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I remember when they put the first roundabout in Wisconsin, I had a couple of friends that smoked a ton of weed and drove around in circles on it singing songs about circles until his passenger threw up.
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I remember when they put the first roundabout in Wisconsin, I had a couple of friends that smoked a ton of weed and drove around in circles on it until his passenger threw up.
OK. I guess in Wisconsin they do understand their purpose, then.
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I feel that vegetarian food imitating meat is just culinary innovation. There's quite a lot of mock meats in Chinese vegetarian cooking and sure it might not taste like the original, but it's good, anyway.
I view it as an unnecessary constraint. Greens in San Francisco is an all-vegan restaurant run by Bhuddist monks, and it is amazing, and has a months-long waiting list.
And there isn't a scrap of mock meat on it. Their entire focus is bringing out the flavor and the nature of the vegetables themselves.
Which, in my humble opinion, is what cooking should be.
Not, "Well, I can't serve xxx, so I'm going to take yyy and try to make it taste like xxx."
I serve a mean lamb curry.
But I also serve a mean 100% vegan lentil curry. And I don't try to make the lentils taste like lamb. I adjust the flavor of the sauce to enhance their flavor instead.
EDIT: And that's kind of my point: You can make amazing dishes that appeal to carnivores like Gran without attempting to imitate meat. When you attempt to imitate meat, you fall short, and carnivores leave with the misimpression that vegetarian food is necessarily worse than meat. Which just isn't true. But trying to imitate meat perpetuates the stereotype.
I'll have to pop over to try it sometime. Eating is believing. Though one comment I'll have about lentils and the beans family is it tends to make me gassy.
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I'll have to pop over to try it sometime. Eating is believing. Though one comment I'll have about lentils and the beans family is it tends to make me gassy.I feel that vegetarian food imitating meat is just culinary innovation. There's quite a lot of mock meats in Chinese vegetarian cooking and sure it might not taste like the original, but it's good, anyway.
I view it as an unnecessary constraint. Greens in San Francisco is an all-vegan restaurant run by Bhuddist monks, and it is amazing, and has a months-long waiting list.
And there isn't a scrap of mock meat on it. Their entire focus is bringing out the flavor and the nature of the vegetables themselves.
Which, in my humble opinion, is what cooking should be.
Not, "Well, I can't serve xxx, so I'm going to take yyy and try to make it taste like xxx."
I serve a mean lamb curry.
But I also serve a mean 100% vegan lentil curry. And I don't try to make the lentils taste like lamb. I adjust the flavor of the sauce to enhance their flavor instead.
EDIT: And that's kind of my point: You can make amazing dishes that appeal to carnivores like Gran without attempting to imitate meat. When you attempt to imitate meat, you fall short, and carnivores leave with the misimpression that vegetarian food is necessarily worse than meat. Which just isn't true. But trying to imitate meat perpetuates the stereotype.
That's OK. That's what lighters are for.
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Grumbly NobodysHome:
I already despise roundabouts in the U.S. because not even the engineers understand their purpose; I point you to every traffic circle in the Bay Area, all of which have either traffic lights or stop signs surrounding them. Which clearly demonstrates that traffic engineers in the U.S. have no concept whatsoever as to the purpose of traffic circles.
This must be a west-coast problem. None of your complaints match the reality of roundabouts here. They've been nothing but a blessing for congested roads all over Chattanooga. The road I use to get home from work used to have a consistent, daily, every-single-time backlog of at least five minutes - and not rarely as long as ten or fifteen - from a four-way stop halfway down. Since turning that intersection into a roundabout (and removing all the signs and lights, I have no earthly idea why anyone would put those near a roundabout) there is rarely if ever any backlog on that road or the one that intersects it longer than one or two cars.
This has held true in every east-coast city I've visited (which I admit is limited to Tennessee, parts of Virginia and West Virginia, and the northern half of Georgia, so take that for what its worth) so I'm inclined to say this is a local problem for your area, not for the US as a whole.
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I tried feeding Hi vegetables when he was here. He's a meatarian.
The Popiah worked, so did the oriental salad from ding tai fung , rojak was so-so, and he didn't really take much of the xiao bai cai in oyster sauce.
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Grumbly NobodysHome:
I already despise roundabouts in the U.S. because not even the engineers understand their purpose; I point you to every traffic circle in the Bay Area, all of which have either traffic lights or stop signs surrounding them. Which clearly demonstrates that traffic engineers in the U.S. have no concept whatsoever as to the purpose of traffic circles. This must be a west-coast problem. None of your complaints match the reality of roundabouts here. They've been nothing but a blessing for congested roads all over Chattanooga. The road I use to get home from work used to have a consistent, daily, every-single-time backlog of at least five minutes - and not rarely as long as ten or fifteen - from a four-way stop halfway down. Since turning that intersection into a roundabout (and removing all the signs and lights, I have no earthly idea why anyone would put those near a roundabout) there is rarely if ever any backlog on that road or the one that intersects it longer than one or two cars.
This has held true in every east-coast city I've visited (which I admit is limited to Tennessee, parts of Virginia and West Virginia, and the northern half of Georgia, so take that for what its worth) so I'm inclined to say this is a local problem for your area, not for the US as a whole.
Yeah, there was a great MythBusters where traffic circles increased traffic flow over 4-way stops by a good 20%, even among drivers who were unfamiliar with them, and by significantly more for drivers who were accustomed to them.
But the minute you put stop signs around them? You're just an idiot.
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Hurr hmm. What should I be running after Strange Aeons...(middle book 5 now).
A lot of the boards has done rise of the runelords, on one hand I wonder what Strange Aeons would be like as a full party, on the other there's the GM-AP mismatch...there's the new AP for exploring the ruins of Azlant, or maybe I should just take a break.
I don't think it's good for me to keep GMing and not playing because I lose track of the players perspective of things and become more...cold blooded, if you wish to put it that way.
Again I'm not really in the mood to play either since most stuff just pisses me off.
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Oh, I can't run skull and shackles either. I mean I'm not into the pirates and yaaarrrgghh thing. I cannot imagine how you can be a pirate without being evil.
You're freaking robbing people! On a ship!
None of this makes sense!
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Ruins Of Azlant is pretty sandboxy.
Personally, i recommend Ironfang Invasion.
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I'll consider ironfang invasion.
Basically looking for a straight forward dungeon crawl. Good V Evil sort, with not too many plot holes that a cat needs to patch.
Previously I found good v evil, black and white boring, but after I ran strange aeons I've had my fill with moral ambiguities. Mod as written some of the things you're expected to do that turns me off.
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Stop signs around a roundabout? I think I've encountered large multi-lane roundabouts with stop (yield?) signs. But small ones with stop signs, wth?
Love the small ones, no stopping!
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I'll consider ironfang invasion.
Basically looking for a straight forward dungeon crawl. Good V Evil sort, with not too many plot holes that a cat needs to patch.
Previously I found good v evil, black and white boring, but after I ran strange aeons I've had my fill with moral ambiguities. Mod as written some of the things you're expected to do turns me off.
Shattered Star and Mummy's Mask both fit this profile.
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I've been watching The Last Kingdom, and it's surprisingly good. A minor English nobleman is raised by Danish invaders, and then sets out to retake his birthright upon his adopted family's death. It's very reminiscent of Conan adventures, except with politics and religious tension rather than monsters and magic.
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Shattered Star and Mummy's Mask both fit this profile.I'll consider ironfang invasion.
Basically looking for a straight forward dungeon crawl. Good V Evil sort, with not too many plot holes that a cat needs to patch.
Previously I found good v evil, black and white boring, but after I ran strange aeons I've had my fill with moral ambiguities. Mod as written some of the things you're expected to do turns me off.
Pretty much this. Those two and Iron Gods are the "dungeon crawl" APs, and you've already stated IG is off the table.
The only other one I can think to recommend is Legacy of Fire, and it can be hit or miss depending on various things, I've heard. I've never been able to run it past the first book myself, Real Life kept causing the game to get cancelled. Also it's one of the 3.5 APs so there might be some things needing conversion or that might not be properly represented compared to PF's normal rules.
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I did enjoy the gray morality of ROW, where you have to ally with an evil to prevent a greater one but I think Strange Aeons turned out too dark.
Like in Book 5 to find the husk of Xhamen Dor, you need to bring someone about to die of seed borne consumption so he will run into the lake as bait to catch your great old fishie. That's horrible.
And of course that's going to be changed in my Strange Aeons run. I'll think of something.
And you get to go in defiance of heaven and fight all kinds of lawful good creatures who try to stop you out of their misguided notion that you, using the Necromonicon would just make things worse. They're justified... Power corrupts. And all they've had to this point are bad examples of what humanity does with knowledge.
But you still do what you have to do.
Oh yes, the module needs some tweaking.
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I'm about to walk to the store (maybe).
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Definitely.
It's only a mile and a half, wearing shorts because it's 34 degrees.
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And now I walk home, enriched with apples.
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Pretty quick mile and a half.
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The kids have jokingly called walking with me as "death marches"
But really, it's all about perpetual motion.
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Although Crookshanks last weekend said she "missed the family death marches"
Kids are so dramatic when exercise is involved.
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And now I'm home.
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Pretty quick mile and a half.
I think I was five minutes in when I said that.
I was already up by Whitney Way.
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I'm wore out just thinking about it.