Kazuka's page

Kazuka wrote:

The California one is that they not only have to declare themselves, but it has to be written. Which brings up an interesting question about what happens if California rejects this form from someone.

But, in any case, if you pick someone as a write-in and they haven't submitted that form, your vote simply doesn't count. One of the many interesting ways they've come up with to negate votes. Remember the hanging chads?

Sure. They're negating votes like captain yesterday's for himself. So what. Who cares?

Find me a case where it matters and we'll talk. If we see a case, even in a local election where someone would have won, but they hadn't bothered to fill in the form, then it's worth addressing. Or if they win, but somehow they'd rejected the form.

And there are practical reasons too. If by some miracle John Smith wins on a write in vote, which of the dozen John Smiths who show up at the town hall the next day gets the job? The one who declared himself a write in candidate and filled out the proper form, otherwise how would you know?

There are no cases that meet that standard. Those votes would have to be kept and tracked, and they're not. There's no data because the system isn't set up to generate that data.

If it matters? We honestly don't know. Saying it doesn't and saying it does are both the same thing: Guesses based on a complete lack of information. If that lack of information is a sign that something doesn't matter, then I concede you have a point.

That's the lovely thing about election systems. You can set it up so the results you don't want to happen not only do not happen, but simply don't matter.

Kazuka wrote:

Berinor wrote:

Kazuka wrote:

Berinor wrote:

Feral wrote:

If my choices are status quo and slightly worse status quo, I'll just be abstaining from voting altogether.

Please consider casting a ballot even if you leave the presidential election options empty. While I am short-term pragmatic with my vote (especially in this election) and feel strongly I need to prevent one of the candidates from winning, I respect people who demand that politicians earn their vote. But casting a blank ballot is an actually measurable way of indicating disapproval of all candidates rather than the apathy that people assume is the motivation (or lack thereof) behind not voting.

It can also get your ballot discarded, depending on local vote tallying rules.

The point is that they keep records of who votes and, while it's unlikely to get that much attention, a discrepancy between number of voters and number of votes in a given race says more than missing voters.

That way there's at least data to differentiate from apathy. Also, it means it's no longer reasonable to dismiss your complaints as just laziness.

The discrepancy depends on how they count the missing voters. If it's simply people who never submitted a ballot, a discrepancy would exist. But if it's people who never submitted a proper ballot, then your blank ballot automatically gets you cast as one of the missing voters.

It also, in their eyes, potentially marks you as too lazy to fill in a ballot, thus going right back to apathy and right back to dismissing your complaints as laziness. After all, you didn't actually put in the effort to vote legitimately.

Fair. If there's a better way to provide that feedback when there's no "no confidence" option I welcome it. Until then, I will continue to advocate for getting out and casting a ballot, even if your conscience or gag reflex prevents you from voting for any candidate on the ballot.

And they do record which voters came to...

I hope one is found. Blank ballots are really not treated as anything other than a citizen just choosing not to vote.

The recording of voters is simply to prevent people from voting twice.

Kazuka wrote:

Berinor wrote:

Feral wrote:

If my choices are status quo and slightly worse status quo, I'll just be abstaining from voting altogether.

Please consider casting a ballot even if you leave the presidential election options empty. While I am short-term pragmatic with my vote (especially in this election) and feel strongly I need to prevent one of the candidates from winning, I respect people who demand that politicians earn their vote. But casting a blank ballot is an actually measurable way of indicating disapproval of all candidates rather than the apathy that people assume is the motivation (or lack thereof) behind not voting.

It can also get your ballot discarded, depending on local vote tallying rules.

Is that really true, anywhere in the US?

I know plenty of people vote the top line and ignore the smaller, local races. Their votes are still counted. I'm pretty sure they don't discard the whole ballot for leaving a spot blank, even if it's the top spot.

How they actually tally it for that race, I don't know.

It's true everywhere. A completely blank ballot is simply discarded because it contains no usable voter data. And most are even more strict. They do vary if you skip an issue, though.

Indiana will record an undervote if you skip an issue, but at the same time limits what you make mark a ballot with and where you may mark it; marking it in an not-allowed spot by accident can have the ballot discarded. California simply doesn't count ballots for skipped questions, but also has limitations on who you may vote for.

Couldn't everyone vote "blank" and demand new elections with new candidates? It's like the two big political parties decided to choose their worst candidates just for the hell of it. oO

No. The general public doesn't actually elect the President.

The purpose of the vote is to tell the Electoral College how we want them to vote.

Basically, all those people who believe the individual citizen's vote doesn't matter? They're right. It's the Electoral votes that matter. That's how a President can lose the popular election but still win the Presidency; they just have to win enough Electoral votes.

You think Satan isn't a lesser evil?

He's more of an average evil.

Now, if you wanted a greater evil, there's always Cthulhu or Putin.

I say we should all write-in Satan. Lesser evils just are not doing the job anymore.

A ballroom filled with otyughs in ballgowns.

Charles Evans 25 wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

The EU is NOT a government, no matter what paranoid Britons and others think

It is an alliance of sovereign states that agreed to work together for their mutual benefits

It never became a stronger political union than this thanks in a major part to the UK fighting it relentlessly. Which makes it even more ironic that the Leave side won because the UK citizens were afraid of that imaginary EU government.

The problem with saying 'The EU is NOT a government' is that it seems to have gone out of its way to deliberately name a lot of its institutions (such as the European Parliament, the various European Presidents, and the European Court of Justice*) as if it were a government.

It also has a 'budget'.

For an institution which isn't a government, the EU seems to like dressing up as one a lot - well, either that or the translators really messed up when translating the various names and titles of its departments and functionaries into English... :)

* The European Court of Human Rights (which should NOT be confused with the European Court of Justice) is, of course, actually (at the time of this post) an institution outside of the EU. Not that there aren't some in the UK who apparently confuse the ECHR as being an EU institution, which misconception has possibly been unfortunately aided by European treaty obligations requiring member states in some circumstances to abide by ECHR rulings. :(

Well, you do need to throw some bones to the political union aficionados so that it doesn't show too much how the free market has obliterated their dream :-)

But :

There is no President of the EU (as in higher up than the leaders of the member countries)

There is no Prime Minister or any minister/secretary of state of the EU (as in having the definite and authoritative decision on all things about governing the life of the citizens of the EU)

In fact getting European "laws" applied in member countries can take...

1. A government does not need a President, Prime Minister, or any kind of centralized leader.

2. Getting laws to apply everywhere in some nations can sometimes take decades or even a century.

3. A common foreign policy is nice, but not required. Sure, it means that particular governed group can be a nightmare to deal with, but a common foreign policy has never been required.

4. Not all governments are funded through direct taxation. And some of the ones funded that way now went a very long time without it.

5. There's a very long list of nations that have either had periods where an election was deemed widely unimportant, or which never has had an election deemed widely important.

None of those are necessary signs of a government. They are signs of certain governing styles, but not signs of a government.

So in other news, I-1515, the attempt to put an anti-transgender rights bill on the 2016 ballot failed to make the ballot.

I'd link a story, but I can't seem to manage it on my tablet.

Here! Posting this for you :)

It's nice that it happened but wow those movies are awful even though the guy playing bones really nails it and other tertiary characters are ok. The plots are just awful. They literally cured death in the last one. And in the previous one they figured out how to teleport long distances. Never showed up again. I mean, that literally replaces star ships without any consequences. >_<

It's not the first time in Star Trek they've cured death. Star Trek 3 had Spock's death being cured as a result of a Federation missile being the entire plot.

The missile also never shows up again. But, the treaty that bans the Federation from developing or using cloaking technology comes after this, so it's entirely possible the Federation was forced to give up on the missile and cloaking technology both just to keep the rest of the galaxy from attacking them. But, yes, the Federation has had the technology to cure death ever since the 2200s.

They've also used the transporter that way a few times. Just ask Scotty. And Riker is a case of the transporter being successfully used to clone someone.

Theoretically, this is also why it is they have no trans people; it would be as easy as sticking someone in the transporter, making the necessary alterations to their pattern while they're dematerialized, and then rematerializing them. Want to transition from man to woman? It's probably two minutes of standing around bored in what looks like a field of static and then it's done, and without any of the side-effects that modern pharmaceuticals have.

And the long range transporter technology actually does exist in Star Trek outside those movies. Sisko himself mentions using the transporter to travel between planets a lot during his days at Starfleet Academy. It's heavily implied that they have the technology to do it, but the energy costs are potentially too prohibitive to make it a regular form of travel. It's established canon that they issue energy rations to military and civilians alike, so there's definitely some kind of power limitations they're dealing with.

There's also the fact that transporters are very easily detected, easily tracked, and easily blocked; in order to transport between two places, you need to know of everything between those two places that could interfere with your transporter beam. And that's assuming the place you're beaming to doesn't have some kind of tech to block it (nearly everyone does). So, beaming from Earth to Romulus, while theoretically possible, would fail because the Romulans would just block your transporter beam. This is likely also why it is that the Borg don't just use their transporter tech and drop a bunch of drones on Earth.

There's actually a lot of minor details that hint at the Federation's utopia being mostly propaganda that the characters buy into. Quark noted that for all of its propaganda of loving peace, humanity is every bit the warrior race that Klingons are; he's one of the few characters who didn't drink the Kool Aid, and the Dominion War proves how right he is.

The new Star Trek movies don't actually pull anything new as far as what the Federation is actually capable of. They just don't try to hide some of the more ridiculous items like previous Star Treks have.

Edit: If you're wondering how Khan could use a transporter to get onto the Klingon homeworld without it being blocked, the answer is simple: The Klingons were being incredibly stupid during that period of time. The smooth-headed TOS Klingons were because they tried to augment their race using the DNA of people like Khan... who were still technically human. Add to that, they overmined their moon to the point it exploded, causing such of a crisis they were forced to ally with the Federation just to survive. That's part of why the TOS Klingons seemed so human; to a large degree, they were. It took Klingons some time to clean up all of the messes they made during this era as well as purge the humanity from their gene pool, leading to the Klingons of TNG.

"Kazuka, I know it's your turn to GM, but could you run Carrion Crown for us? I know you're a Call of Cthulhu fan..."

One of the players still wakes up screaming from nightmares about the imagery I used, another one can't hear fiddle music without feeling a growing creeping dread, and we're pretty certain a third has a permanent case of PTSD. The fourth was diagnosed with schizophrenia about a month after the campaign ended.

That is also the last time the group has ever played Carrion Crown.

I want to run it again, but people keep citing that pesky Geneva Convention.

Fast forward to this weekend?

"Hey, I notice there's this one module we never play. How about we have Kazuka GM Carrion Cr-"

The GM leaped over the table and tackled him to shut him up.

A few things.

- The joy of telling a story.

- The joy of watching my player's growing horror when they realize the evil prophesy about how to unleash doom describes everything they have done in the campaign so far.

- Watching the players, when discussing their latest self-inflicted TPK, come to the sudden realization it was caused by something innocuous I did.

- Watching one of my players go into a fetal position and have a PTSD flashback every time someone mentions Carrion Crown. I tweaked some of the descriptions a little.

- Hearing the horrified exclamations from my players when they realize two of their goals directly contradict each other... such as the sorceress the king ordered them to kill and the daughter he ordered them to rescue and bring back alive turning out to be the same person.

- The finder's fee I get from a local psychologist.

Does anyone else find it sad and kind of ironic that all this is occurring during the centennial of WWI, a time when Great Britain sent the flower of a generation to die in (primarily) France and Belgium and to defeat Germany?

And that the age group that voted to exit would be the children of that generation?

The whole thing seems surreal to me.

The children of the World War generations doing something that screws up your nation? Americans call that "Tuesday."

Hey all. Have an HRT question for the other trans ladies here, if anyone's up for a nuts and bolts question.

I've been undergoing HRT for just under two and a half years now, estradiol (sublingual) and spiro. Today, in consultation with my doctor, I'm starting on progesterone (micronized).

I've been reading about how some people cycle on and off it, like taking it for 12 days, then off it for 16 days. Other people just take it every day, no cycle, which is currently the plan for me.

I was wondering, if there are any of you here with progesterone as part of your hormone regimen, whether you cycle it or not.

Also curious as to what kind of an impact it's had on you. I've heard both good and bad things about it.

I've just recently gotten things in my life stabilized after a very rocky and exhausting two years by making a small tweak to my estradiol intake (or at least that seems to be the case), and I'd like to try and avoid going through stormy weather again if I can avoid it. Or at least be ready to batten down the hatches if I need to.

And if it's not something you'd want to discuss on the forum, feel free to PM me.

Thanks all. I'm not around here as much as I used to be, but I'm glad to see this thread and this community still going strong.

Keep a solid watch on your opinion of yourself. If you start having a down period, or find darker thoughts happen a lot more often, let your doctor know immediately. And with that combination, don't be surprised if you have more frequent headaches.

ericthecleric wrote:

Interesting article.

Merkel wants Juncker to go. Of course, she nominated him in the first place!

Funny thought : without UK, the majority at the european parliament would pass from the PPE (right) to the PSE (left), leaning more toward political integration and less toward pure business and finance.

The next European Commission president will have to be designated according to this new majority... Unintended and interesting consequence.

So they've created the exact political result they were afraid of?

In the third supplement to the original Dungeons & Dragons rules (1974-1976), Eldritch Wizardry, writer Brian Blume invented two artifacts he called the Hand and Eye of Vecna. These were supposedly the only remnants of an evil lich, Vecna, who had been destroyed long ago. The name "Vecna" is an anagram of "Vance," the surname of fantasy author Jack Vance, whose "fire-and-forget" magic system is used in Dungeons & Dragons.

Magic in DnD is described as Vancian, yet actually works via a very different method than magic in the Vance novels; in the Vance novels, people were effectively charging themselves with magical energy that was set to go off. So the limit on spells wasn't a limit on how many you could remember, but on how much energy your body could store without killing you.

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Scythia wrote:

You of all people should know that a term which does not have an agreed upon definition is not useful to science. Although vague terms are wonderful for philosophy.

Quite the opposite. Science can get away with vague terms because it's describing something in reality that behaves a certain known way. Its descriptive, not prescriptive, and it can be that because its describing something in reality that exists independently of what you call it, so what you call it really doesn't matter that much.

Philosophical constructs need* strict definitions because they only exist in your mind.

Wolves and coyotes are very different animals for nearly anything you want to do with them despite little biological barrier to reproduction. Eastern coyotes are different than western coyotes in both size and behavior. All three groups exist and are easy to talk about in generalities but making a mathematical definition of the differences between them would be almost impossible.

A vague, blurry guideline concept like species or race is fine as long as you remember it's a vague, blurry, guideline concept.

* as much as anyone could ever need a philosophical construct *rimshot*

Personally, I'd prefer that my doctor work with clearly defined terms, like "heart" and "vascular system", rather than vague blurry guidelines like "innards". Ditto nuclear scientists with "atom" and "fission" compared to "glow paint stuff". Similarly engineers working in "meters" and with "kilograms" as opposed to "this big" or "kinda heavy".

Medicine is also 90% "well, it works this way with others, so it should work this way with my patient." As much as they rely on exact terms, most of medicine really is playing the odds that you patient is not some medical oddity. It's a field where a lot of fudging, guesswork, and gambling is pretty much mandatory.

People also die because they were too far outside the average for that particular doctor to cope with. It happens regularly.

Unfortunately, the further you are outside the norm, the more a chance of death you have.

This is why it is those imprecise terms you complain about are so important; they help create groupings that help create norms. And if "Chunasnan" is an imprecise term simply because it refers to a social practice, knowing that all "Chunasnans" have a high risk of diabetes is still medically useful even if the only way you identify a "Chunasnan" is by the silly hand tattoos they have.

Because it doesn't fit the historical use of the term "race"; if you go this route, you don't end up with three (or five) convenience "races" that can fit on a census form, but with dozens, and no obvious way to distinguish them from each other without a genetic scan.

Basically, we already have a term for what you suggest -- note the use of the word "haplotype" in the map already presented.

And why is that a bad thing? Why is it a bad thing to set up a definition of race that moves beyond old reliance upon skin color?

Same answer. If you want to call a specific haplotype a "race," you're abusing the term -- and, again, "African" is no longer a race, nor is "Caucasian."

Am I abusing the term? A race is typically noted as being defined by physical characteristics. I'm just saying a different set of physical characteristics can be used.

I've constantly referred to both of those groups as having multiple races. I fail to see the problem.

Because the various African haplotypes don't hang together as a group. Hippos and whales together are a group; whales and crabs are not, despite the fact that they may share traits (like living in the ocean) that distinguish them from hippos.

The use of racial groups allows for acknowledgement of particular physical characteristics that are not indicative of race, despite being historically used as such, for cases here there might be something that affects a physical trait they all share. It's a useful shorthand for references to certain problems.

But that's exactly my point. There is no singular African race, because the genetics don't cluster along the African/non-African dimension. There is also no singular Asian race, because the genetics don't cluster along that division. There is no singular white/Caucasian race, because.... well, you should be ahead of me at this point.

Genetic clustering is relatively easy. But when you look at the clusters, they look nothing at all like the social construct people describe with the term "race."

I've repeatedly used "races" when referring to Caucasians, Africans, East Asians, etc. As in, each group having multiple races. So, I fail to see how acknowledging that these overly-large groups are not actually singular races is a true problem. If anything, separating the concept of race from skin color may do a lot of good.

And isn't the social construct of "race" repeatedly proving to be a problem?

Kazuka wrote:

But, basically, you're still arguing that you know better than most scientists do and that the science is wrong because of your judgement.

No, actually, I'm arguing that this is what mainstream scientists say and that you're misunderstanding those scientists (badly).

I do not believe I am the one misunderstanding scientists.

"Beginning in the 1930s, with the rise of modern population genetics and evolutionary biology, race was reimagined in the context of evolutionary biology and population genetics. Instead of racial groups being fixed between continents, the race concept was a way to understand the frequency of individual genes in different human populations."

"In this way, race was a methodological tool that biologists could utilize to study human genetic diversity that did not reflect an underlying hierarchy between human populations. This was simply about gene frequencies between groups. And it is this understanding of race that is still largely the way modern science understands the term."

"Race is used widely in human biological research and clinical practice to elucidate the relationship between our ancestry and our genes. In the laboratory, race can be used to investigate disease-causing genes within and between populations, and, more generally to classify groups in studies of human populations. Race is also used clinically to inform decisions about a patient’s risk for certain diseases and to help predict how one might metabolize drugs."

"Most discussions today about race among scientists concern examination of differences between groups with the goal of understanding human evolutionary history, and the relationship between our genes and our health with the goal of determining the best course of medical treatments."

Source

The best thing I ever used to mess with my players was a Bag of Tricks. It proved how, sometimes, a simple magic item and knowledge of the players can create an ongoing game of mental warfare where you have to do nothing at all.

One player confessed to me that her character wanted to be a demented Snow White in how she could interact with animals. As a joking reference to that, I put a tan Bag of Tricks in one treasure hoard.

As soon as the character was told what it was, the player started giggling madly and gave up her entire share just to have that treasure. The rest of the group thought it was worthless and wanted to sell it. But then came that giggling. The other players spent the rest of the session trying to figure out exactly what made that item so immensely powerful that she'd react like that.

The player who wanted the bag played a rogue. The other three a fighter, a cleric, and a wizard. So, naturally, something that would make the rogue react like that was of some concern. At night, the rogue slept cuddling the bag, which freaked the party out even more.

The first fight they got in after the rogue got the bag of tricks, she was positioned in a tree so she could attack enemies from hiding. Well, she kinda did... She used the Bag of Tricks and rolled a rhino for her first throw. The rest of the party, after seeing the rogue slaughter someone by throwing a rhino at them, was suddenly wanting to examine that bag.

That night, the fighter tried to pry it from her arms while she was sleeping without waking her, but couldn't. He thought he hadn't woken her. He was wrong. He woke up later to a lion on his chest and her dagger at his neck, with her whispering that if anyone ever tries that again they won't see the sun rise.

Things went downhill from there. The rogue kept finding excuses to use animals as weapons. And, once, as catapult ammunition. And over time, her laughter as she did it was getting more and more demented... Soon, the rest of the players were in fear of what would happen if they took that bag away from her.

Finally, one day, they decided that both the bag and the rogue had to go. So, they resolved to kill her in her sleep. Unknown to them, she was hidden nearby listening. She spent the rest of the day stealing the party's entire supply of alchemist's fire (the party kept a lot on hand because they kept finding uses for it).

That night, while everyone slept, she slipped out of her bed roll and placed a back loaded with the alchemist's fire inside the roll, then climbed a tree and waited. It was not long after the rest of the party got up and, with the cleric refusing to be involved, the fighter and wizard moved to kill her.

Kaboom.

The wizard was chunky salsa, the fighter was dying, the cleric was heavily hurt, and their camp was destroyed. I rolled dice, checked, and determined it would be three minutes before guards from the nearby town could reach them to check what was going on.

The cleric heals the fighter back to health, steps away to heal himself... and is promptly killed by a rhino falling from a tree. This caused the fighter to curse and begin hunting the treetops for the rogue. The rogue had hopped down from the tree already and used the opportunity to sneak around behind the fighter and stab him in the back with a poisoned dagger.

During the ensuing fight, the fighter managed to kill the rogue, but ended up poisoned to the point he could not survive without aid. And all of the people who could give him aid were dead. The guards arrived just in time to hear his last words.

"The tan bag... it's evil..."

And then the fighter died.

And that's the story of how I got a TPK using nothing but a Bag of Tricks and player paranoia.

Kazuka wrote:

Why don't we use European for whites?

Because not all of the white races are native to Europe.

"White" is used because, at the time it was coined, the upper class tended to avoid sunlight, believing it unhealthy. As such, a "healthy" white person could easily have skin close in shade to snow.

"Black" was coined for a similar reason; recent arrivals from Africa who spent all of their time in the sunlight tended to be pretty dark skinned. You can see this crop up in a few places in modern Africa. I think I read something about the longer-term African American lineages in North America suffering pigmentation loss due to generational adaptation. In a few hundred generations, it's entirely possible that the "white" and "black" races will have the same skin color in North America.

This skin pigmentation loss is also expected to happen to any humans who live in space for long enough, due to the lack of natural sunlight. As such, any movie today who depicts someone with a modern African American skin tone that has lived in space for generations is actually scientifically inaccurate; in this case, "white washing" or use of skin color-changing make-up is actually necessary for scientific accuracy. This is why, for the most part, any hard science far future scifi movie will probably have an almost-entirely white cast. Because evolution doesn't care about modern racial sensibilities.

There may be such effects, but from what I understand they're completely swamped in the modern US by interbreeding. Much from rape in the slave era.

There's some truth in that theory, but I think it works on a much longer time scale than you're suggesting. The few hundred years of Africans in America would have minimal effect, especially since much of that time was spent doing hard labor in the sun. Or consider Africans who lived in the jungle areas, not in open savanna. Nor does it really explain the differences between races outside of white and black. Even pre-modern era populations don't line up...

I thought I had a paper for this, but it turned out to be a news article that was full of crap. My apologies.

However, melanin adaptation involves more factors than just sunlight.

Rogue: "You can't get no..."

The rogue promptly slams the orc in the crotch with his +1 orc bane flaming burst heavy pick, takes the penalty for a called shot, confirms crit, adds sneak attack damage because he's flanking with the fighter.

Rogue: "... satisfaction!"

Article 50 is the mechanism by which you actually start the process of leaving the EU

Europe is NOT a country and it was the habit of treating it as such adopted by so many EU lawmakers that actually started this sad sorry mess in the first place.

You're a collective group of individual governments that report to a much larger government which has been slowly gaining more and more power over time and slowly eroding the smaller governments into one cohesive nation. And it started out as a group of governments working together.

This should sound familiar.

This post is about short people!

-Halflings were originally called Hobbits until Tolkien's estate took issue. It was one of several copyright violations DnD pulled over the years.

-Gnomes have a recent history of being mistreated in gaming. From Eberron making them into paranoid spymasters to 4E not even containing them as a playable race at first, they've taken a bit of beating in pen and paper games.

-World of Warcraft has also disrespected them, having them nuke their own home before the game even starts, to general treatment by players and devs alike that eventually got jokingly referenced in a webcomic and on WoW's wiki.

-Gnomes are still not a playable race in Neverwinter, despite the fact that both Drow and Dragoborn have fielded representatives twice.

-Halflings are not in Neverwinter either.

-Gnomes are not a playable race in Sword Coast Legends, having been beaten out (again) by the Drow. And for the expansion, Tieflings made the cut.

-The first major halfling NPC you can recruit outside of the prologue dies in the first chapter of Sword Coast Legends.

-In the class section of the 5E DnD Player's Guide, neither gnomes nor halflings represented; the majority of the representations are humans or elves, with half-elves, dwarves, dragonborn, and half-orcs having minority representation. This is out of twelve classes, a large number of which have two races depicted representing them.

-Golarion has halflings officially a slave race in some areas. And gnomes are an annoying fae race slowly going mad?

Enjoy these lovely facts, and make certain to hug a short person! Even if they are mistreated so much in gaming.

So wait, canada can't leave. States can't leave, we settled that int he civil war.

*ow ow ow ow kidding ow ow ow*

*preemptively invades Canada*

Either we get some people who know how to run a medical system... or they burn down the White House again. I love a win/win scenario!

So the Leave campaign won by forging an unholy alliance between the hard-right of the Conservative Party and the older, disenfranchised, northern working class citizen who hasn't voted since the Thatcher years, on the basis that the Tories would massively invest in public services and local resources.

In terms of unlikely alliances, this probably isn't quite up there with the Nazi-Soviet Pact but may certainly be in the Sauron-Saruman ballpark.

There is a slight problem here, namely what happens to those disaffected working class voters when the Tories continue to sell off the NHS, continue (if not double down on) austerity and keep shrinking government and public services. Maybe a resurgent Labour under Corbyn, having survived the new leadership challenge and vanquished the last remaining Blairites, sweeps them up and delivers this country to a socialist utopia in 2020. Or UKIP starts hoovering them up at a rate of knots as part of its potential new raison d'etre, "encouraging" immigrants already here to start going home.

This almost sounds like they're trying to recreate the dystopian UK from V for Vendetta.

That's what makes me worry about this. How bad are they going to make things for the people?

TerminalArtiste wrote:

Bob_Loblaw wrote:

You could just see what interests he has and just ask to hang out. That's something friends do anyway so it shouldn't be an issue. You can then follow up with things the way you find most safe.

Well I've made a degree of progress on that, it seems he goes to the local medical university (I'm 99% sure I saw an ID card in his wallet, but it was upside down to me?). So there's that*.

But I had the perfect (and I do mean PERFECT) opportunity earlier tonight, there was no one else in the restaurant but my coworker, who was busy and not paying attention to me as I cashed him out. And then someone walked in, I spaced out a little, and by the time I mentally prepared myself to do it again he was gone with just a "Good night."

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH CURSE MY SLOW REACTION SPEED

*EDIT: this is significant because I am also interested in healthcare as a career. So shared professional interests exist, at least. Assuming I saw right.

well send a wingman to your location!

BucKAWK!*

*You called?

One key thing I notice a lack of:

- Is willing to allow players to try crazy things, or even to derail the entire campaign, if it makes for a better story and the rest of the group is okay with it. But also knows when to reign it in.

Did you know that "Brontosaurus" has popped in and out of classification for existence? While originally it was another, more famous name for the Apatosaurus, new research suggests the Brontosaurus actually existed as a distinct group of animals. They're closely related to the Apatosaurus.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-brontosaurus-is-back1/

"Crinos can't make this worse." - From a WoD game where they played werewolves. Before my time. I don't know the story; every time I ask, they give each other embarrassed looks and then assure me that, yes, Crinos made it way worse.

"Skyrim guard time." - East Texas University game. My character owned a pistol and snuck it on campus. One point, during the campaign, she had it with her while they were sneaking around the campus at night, trying to dodge security. At one point, they need to cover their tracks for what they've done... so my character tries to fire a warning shot so they can play it off as just an armed burglar and NOT the students. Thanks to a botched roll and the following rolls... She instead shot him in the knee. Another character, when summarizing later, said I "made him into a Skyrim guard." Ever since then, this has been a codephrase for a badly botched roll that hurt an NPC.

"Ye" when not a pronoun is not a historical real word; the original symbol used that got rendered as a "Y" was actually pronounced the same as the modern letters "th" would be. Thus, "Ye Olde Book Shoppe" would actually be properly rendered "The Olde Book Shoppe" in modern text.

The reason why a "Y" was used was because the first printing presses in Germany lacked the proper symbol and improvised.

I had a Kingmaker game where one of the players mentioned having heard there are power weapons in Numeria. So rather than go after what was the first guy they were asked to take out, they took a little detour. By the time they got back on plot, they were level 15 and armed with enough advanced weaponry to end entire kingdoms.

That was the last time we let that player play an android.

Kazuka wrote:

John Conner Have a character who, through storyline actions, can only exist because of a temporal loop they instigated to cause their own existence.

Fry - Like "John Connor," but...uh...you'll know you've earned this Achievement when you earn it. And if you do, you'll deserve it.

Leela Find out that idiot who seems to know nothing at work is actually a time traveler.

Marty McFly While time traveling, nearly cause yourself to be erased from existence by getting romantically entangled with your mom.

John Conner Have a character who, through storyline actions, can only exist because of a temporal loop they instigated to cause their own existence.

Timey-Wimey Ball Cause a temporal paradox.

Skynet Cause a temporal paradox that is only possible because you caused an earlier temporal paradox.

Ultimecia Destroy time.

Final Fantasy 8 Destroy time and then repair it.

Hello! Welcome to the boards! *offers complimentary cookies*

COOKIES!!!

*noms*

Wouldn't snickerdoodles throw off the cookie surikens balance?

Maybe it's a secret ninja recipe?

Maybe he's...chicken?

I assure you, she's not that fowl.

I think we scared the OP away. Anyway, welcome to the nuthouse. Watch out for scary clowns....

I was busy with life. But, I'm still here. Not going to be rid of me that easily!

Where is the line when it comes to indirect or unintentional harassment of other players?

This depends a lot. Who are the players? What are the dynamics? What was the harassment?

I used to always be on the side of the people who felt harassed. And then, I gamed with someone who was very autistic. He had certain rituals he had to do to feel comfortable. This wasn't a minor psychological need; he could have a full-blown panic attack if he didn't do them, and then he was typically recovering from that for the rest of the night. We learned that no matter what the social norms were, we had to make certain allowances if we wanted to game with him. Because he couldn't change.

Every new player brought into the group was warned about him. Told up-front he's autistic, how it presents, about the rituals, what they are, etc. And by the time we were willing to take on new players, we had gamed with him long enough we could easily tell the difference between when it was something he couldn't help but do and something he chose to do. If he chose to harass someone, he was called out on it.

Unfortunately, after a few attempts with new players, the group felt forced to make a decision that the only women they would allow in were women already part of the group. Why? Because unless you accepted that he was really that autistic, he could come across as creepy. And we had way too many new women gamers who wanted him kicked because he was creepy and they felt harassed by his rituals because of it. After the sixth one was kicked from the group, the vote was taken... and it as a unanimous decision. We had to protect someone mentally disabled, and at the time we felt the only way to do it was to further another social injustice.

That group eventually broke up. He was moved by the state to a different facility that was better set-up to handle his care, the GM got married, several players took on jobs that left them too busy for gaming... In the end, all we could do was wish each other the best, hope he found another group as understanding as us, and part ways.

Ever since then, I've been a lot more critical of claims of harassment. Is it the player accused of it? The player accusing who is the problem? Or just a simple miscommunication? I try to find out what details I can, and observe as closely as I can, before I make a decision.

Who's responsibility is it to enforce the non-harrassmemt aspect of the campaign?

Everyone's. The GM can't necessarily know everything that goes on. They have a lot to do. So every single member of the group has a responsibility to enforce non-harassment, both on others and on themselves.

For some context, assume a campaign has a non-harrassmemt clause or rule in affect.

The GM describes a fantasy race as having a reputation as being rich and controlling things behind the scenes.

One of the players says something to the effect of "Oh, you mean like x real-life race."

If you were a player in this campaign, what would your expectations be as far as the response to the above, and who should make that response?

If you want to avoid racial stereotypes, you have to avoid gaming of any sort. Period. Because you can't make a monster of any type without accidentally portraying some kind of racist or nationalist stereotype. Sometimes, you can't even avoid them when writing heroic races.

The most blunt examples in Pathfinder? The orcs are Africans, half-orcs are African Americans, and ogres are hillbillies. And Pathfinder isn't the only game to equate African heritage with being an orc. And I don't believe it was intentional in any case.

So, after awhile, you're just going to have to accept that you're probably going to run across some racist or nationalist stereotype when creating a monster or race. Because not even Pathfinder could avoid them.

No, no - feeding is fine. It's the *other thing* that we must never, never do.

Dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?

From what I've seen, women approach the game differently than men. Men often jump right in with confidence that they can learn all the rules, while women have more trepidation and/or want to dip their toes into PF, rather than learning all the pages and pages of rules. Sometimes the GM's instinct---and I have been guilty of this---is to chastise a player for not speaking up. "You didn't talk, so you can't make the diplomacy check." In general a better solution would be to figure out a way to include the player and have her be more involved. Though, really, this advice could apply to any player less apt to speak at the table.

That's why I'm very thankful for my first gaming group. They were so thankful to get a woman involved at all! Took the time to explain everything.

The other way that women may need to be treated differently is conflict resolution, specifically related to sexist behavior. If a woman says that a guy is giving her a hard time, the first thing other gamers need to do is believe her. The second thing is to realize that she probably can't handle it on her own. When I had an issue with a guy being sexist to me, most guys didn't notice things that happened right in front of them. And even when they did, they didn't think it was worth doing anything about. Guys who said, "Wow, his sexist behavior is a problem" still went to play at his house every week and wouldn't say anything to him about it. And sometimes all it takes is one problem person before a woman doesn't feel welcome in the community.

I had this problem with my last group, until I finally sat down and talked with the GM. He revealed he had been taught that the old idea women must be protected was sexist, so he wasn't helping me in this context because he thought I could protect myself. I finally had to explain to him that what was sexist is protecting me more than he would any man. Protect me the same amount and it's fine. The problem player was ejected the next week and he had a talk with the group about it.

I don't think that will work with most groups. I'm just glad it worked with that last. But I know the feeling.

I'm unclear as to why anyone would think that men's opinions on women in gaming groups are relevant or needed. You don't get to decide whether we belong here.

If the opinions of men on gaming groups do not matter, then why should women be involved at all in discussions of how to make gaming tables welcoming to women? It is men holding bad opinions of women at the gaming table that creates that atmosphere. If the opinions of men at the gaming table are not relevant, then what point is there in having the discussions of how to make women more welcome at the gaming table?

I ask because I am confused about what you were trying to accomplish.

Kazuka wrote:

It's okay. I know you're mad. But! If I leave my grin behind, remind me that we're all mad here and it's okay.

You ain't just a whistlin' dixie*... >.>

Of course not!

I have learned to see and hear everybody loud and clear, but the truth comes out in riddles that are safe enough to share; that's how it is in songs, you see, and stripes always look good on me whether or not I'm really there (smile hangs in the air).

I was expecting you to just favourite the post.

Also, welcome new person! We're not mad. We promise. Really. We're too busy hunting goblins.

It's okay. I know you're mad. But! If I leave my grin behind, remind me that we're all mad here and it's okay.

Order of the Cowards: Flee from a fight with goblins.

Does it count if you're fleeing 500 of them?

It's too late on the milk. I seem to have become inexplicably evil.

And apparently, there is a gorilla. In need of bananas?

And, sorry. All out of water. I have rum!

Gypsy Danger Kill two kaiju in the same encounter.

Thanks for the welcomes!

A group of bards who all take dance as their performance and dress in Disco outfits.

I don't think I'm posting this in the right section. Sorry about that.

Um. I'm new!