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I'm Hiding in Your Closet is banned for having managed to not be banned for so long. The Banning Thread will endure !
Schism is banned for making too much sense while being a Derro.
I'm gonna be mastering a session of B/X D&D to my wife and our eleven years old kid... Real Soon Now (how much preparation do one really needs for the first ever adventure of one's son, anyway ?) ! [Note to one's self: don't overdo it ! Relax ! Jeebus...]
Hello, all ! Don't mind me ; just chilling out of reach of the Gnarl Fruitterbold menace. [*chirps of springtime birds, gentle love on the gentle breeze*]
I'm Hiding In Your Closet is banned for keeping all the best closets to himself.
IHIYC is banned for having stolen my purple pantaloons during a foray in my locked vanity closet.
In the beginning of time, KahnyaGnorc was not one, but TWO separate entities. Kahnya was a daffodil lover, and an all around fuzzy ball of goodness. Gnorc loved to strangle puppies before eating his hearty breakfast of Myconid People with dressing sauce. One day they met in a cosmic battle for the fate in the Universe, but instead of one defeating the other, they merged in an untidy union. Since then, KahnyaGnorc has been mostly occupied with knitting mittens for kittens, but under the surface, the Evil that was Gnorc is still there, occasionnaly bubbling on the surface from the depths of the Interweb fora to mentally scar RPG enthusiasts.
And I fully agree that single payer would be much better and I think that if you could pass it here and actually get it into place within a few years people would love it, but you have to get a huge tax increase and a full government takeover of the healthcare system passed against rabid opposition based purely on promises of how wonderful it's going to be. That's a tall order. That's why we got the watered down version we did get Emphasis mine. That one is easy to answer, particularly to a foreigner. You Americans have been brainwashed* to fear anything associated with socialism - or socially intended-anything really. It goes like that : social-anything = socialism = Socialism = Communism = EVIL ! REALLY EVIL ! EEEEVIL ! Of course Communism died a long time ago, but the Cold War brainwashing is still in effect. Less so in the younger generation, which is probably why the Millenials didn't give a fig that Bernie Sanders was a self-proclaimed socialist. We all have those automatic "nationalist" cognitivo/emotional responses enmeshed in our brain. It's easy to pick in another culture, darn difficult to discern in one's own culture (unless you're a cultural deviant, like our esteemed comrade Anklebiter ;-). *actually, you've brainwashed yourself, like in all human societies.
KahnyaGnorc likes to take his tea with a drop of milk and honey, and a smidgen of donkey virgin blood.
KahnyaGnorc is one of the many personas of Chron Ayn Ak, the Dreadful Lord of the Transverse Time Flow. Those days, he mostly fashions giga-origamis with the architectural remnants of dead civilizations.
So this thread has been resurrected from the dead by the grace of quantum mechanics and the Great Old Ones ?
I think the main thing that economic populists have against them is that both parties - that is, the real elected players in both parties - are funded by the ultra-wealthy, who are not willing to let emerge economic populist leaders. I'm a little unclear as to why grassroots Democrats don't try to forge a new party on a populist economic mandate ? Maybe some Democrats could enlighten me (it's not sarcasm, I'm really curious to know the answer(s) to that one).
I agree that we are largely governed by our emotions. Strangely (?) enough, if we recognize it as truth, we are IMO freer to exercise our sound rationality.
To refuse to be challenged about one's ideas, in a safe and learned environment, makes one weak and pusillanimous in his life at large. How sad. This presupposes that both sides will conduct themselves in an intellectually / academically honest manner. Currently in the United States this presupposition is complete farce. I disagree. It presupposes only that the audience is sophisticated enough to discriminate what is said, and to be able to evaluate the soundness of the speakers. I'm talking here about universities, and not about TV talk shows. But I agree that if one wants to spread one's ideas, one of the best things to do is to find venues where those ideas can be discussed earnestly. I'm sure there are currently in the USA places (on the web, surely) where one can find intellectually honest Republicans or intellectually honest Democrats, or similarly honest independents, to debate controversial ideas. If you posit a priori that there's no intellectual honesty to be found anywhere in the opposite party, you're creating the very same divisiveness which is currently tearing your country apart. To an outside observer, the similarities between two irreconcilable enemies are often striking.
Regarding universities: those institutions harken to the Middle Ages, when theologians and other learned persons engaged in regular debates called "disputatios", which pitted two speakers against one another, with all the rigour of logic and the sophistication of rethorics, with the goal of enlightening a broad audience about the subject matter at hand. Students who refuse today to have strong debates held in their alma matter are, to my opinion, disrespecting and antagonizing the heart and soul of the institution which they are part of. To refuse to be challenged about one's ideas, in a safe and learned environment, makes one weak and pusillanimous in his life at large. How sad.
Debating a bad idea doesn't make it go away, it gives it only serves to elevate it, give it publicity, and spreads it to a wider audience. Especially in today's "choose your own reality" culture, this is not a good thing. So you don't debate "bad ideas". And I gather that bad ideas are a subset of ideas you disagree with. So there are some ideas that you strongly disagree with and that you refuse to debate. I'd wager that you refuse to debate ideas that seem to you to be absurd, ludicrous and/or repugnant at face value. What message does that convey to those who hold to those same ideas that you find so repulsive ? Something like : "Those ideas that you hold dear are absurd, ludicrous and repugnant at face value." Now, what is your goal ? Are you hoping to convince, by rational discourse, those people taken by those ideas you find abhorrent ?
Are you hoping to convince, by rational discourse, those people on the fence about those ideas you find abhorrent ?
The conclusion is that, if you only want to convince people already sympathetic to or convinced of your ideas while feeling intellectually and morally superior, then by all means refuse to ever engage your staunchest adversaries in debate.
Just to be clear, you're not right wing but you do believe Hillary Clinton had a secret (or maybe not secret) plan to turn America into a feudal serfdom? That's your reality?Are you sure your evidence isn't just a hoax perpetrated by China? It's more that the exit point of American economic and political life since Ronald Reagan is plutocracy - governance by the rich. And after plutocracy, when the American middle class is dead, who knows ? Serfdom it may be ; though I would call it corporatist serfdom, more than feudal serfdom. As for Hillary Clinton she's (to my eyes, at least) a typically corrupt politician, bought and paid by for the tenth of the 1% who are the plutocracy. It's not that she has a plan to turn the USA into a serfdom, it's that that is what lies logically ahead of her policies. For what it's worth, I hope that the american people will cling to their democracy long enough to give the boot to the likes of Clinton, Trump and Obama, and to establish a more decent and caring society for themselves.
If my players have a sudden urge to discuss "fudging or not fudging", and tell me that if I fudge in any way without their knowledge they will end our friendship because I will have irrevocably broken their trust, and that they will feel as if I've been punching them (repeatedly) in the face, and I am an horrible cheater, and a dishonest backstabbing scum, and any number of other hyperboles, I will be seriously concerned that something has gone horribly wrong in our relationship, and I would very much want to understand what the problem is, and try to fix it. But since my players are reasonably sane persons, I very much doubt I will ever have such a drama-laden exchange with them. So in the meantime, I will happily fudge and lie about it, and I won't apply myself to solve other persons' non-existent problems.
Q : Why is there no good succubus equivalent ?
Whichever makes the better experience. This. Personnaly, I don't care if fudging is cheating or not. If ignoring the result of a dice roll improves the player's experience, I will do it. My players appreciate keeping a PC they've invested time and feelings in, so e.g if the die dictates that the character die an untimely or ignominous or an otherwise unappealing death, I will disregard the result of the die. On the other hand, if a player seems to want his character to die, I will repeteadly put his character in dangerous situations, and roll dies in the open, till his unevitable demise. I consider my role as a GM to be akin to the role of an illusionist. I must persuade my players that Fate or Hazard alone dictate their PC's existence, while in fact I nudge the odds in their favour, to help them tell the character's story they like the most. Rolling in the open gives the illusion that the game we're playing rests in the hands of Fate, but in reality that's just a very effective trick. To give the players a sense of danger, and of defying the odds, I pretend to be an uncaring GM in regard to their characters' continuing survival, while in fact I care very much. So, I regularly lie through my teeth by reaffirming to my players that whatever way the die lies, I'll follow its dictate. In 34 years of cheating with my players, I haven't been caught once, to their delight.
If I may say something, as someone who is not american. (The following being purely my opinion, of course). You Americans are living in a plutocracy. Your politicians are bought and paid for - and that's not a figure of speech - by a minority of your total population (the 10th of the 1 percent who own the most capital), acting through the mega-corporations they control. Many of your woes - impoverishment, lousy healthcare, crushing debt, etc. - are due to the fact that the interests of the minority controling your political system are not the interests of the huge majority of your population. The task of the leaders of the Democratic and of the Republican parties are to deliver the consent of their electorates to a national leader - the POTUS - who will then act, for the most part, according to the wishes of your ruling class, the tenth of the 1 % . There's no doubt in my mind that some blue and red politicians deplore that you're living in a plutocracy, but that's the way the system is working, and they have to deal with it during the course of their political life.
Say what you will about PETA, but I couldn't help notice that their letter to Games Workshop was respectful, and made their case with rational - if debatable - arguments. To wit: they didn't try to paint Game Workshop as amoral, and dissolute backwards thinking perverts. I can't help but to find that refreshing in those times. EDIT: removed part tangential to the main argument.
Looker-Up-To-The-Sky, from the Bearded Bear tribe.
Regarding the subject of the thread, I think it’s time I unequivocally spell my belief on the subject. The foundation of my belief system:
From this paradigm (a Western cabalistic paradigm, in case you’re wondering), the spirit world is real. In fact, contrary to the oft-proposed viewpoint of modern materialistic thinking, the basis of our reality is not material but spiritual. About the afterlife:
So, in fine, my belief is that the afterlife exists, but that this here life, with us appearing as discrete human subjects, is unique in all eternity.
Iron Cactus
Antenna Girl
Perhaps it is better to be grateful for the general hostility and unfairness of the universe? I feel the universe is full of love, and I wish I could communicate that feeling to you :-).
Maybe you would be interested in reading this. There's no mention of magic in the article. This particular website presents articles from all venues of science - hard, soft, and in between :-) - by actual practitioners of science. Thinking that every notion you've not been previously exposed to and that challenges your current understanding of things is "woo woo crystal theory" is the epitome of lazy thinking. I hope for you don't practice science because you would be exceedingly bad at it. Speaking of meditation, Jon Kabat-Zinn has been studying its virtues and proprieties since, at least, the nineties. Look it up in the net, or continue to wallow in your smug ignorance reinforced by half-baked notions about what science is. Hint: it's not simply the currently admitted paradigm and world view supplied by your social and cultural environment.
Do you think this conversation has benefited from your focus on painting amorphously large groups, that can be shaped however you like, with broad strokes? Yes :-). And I get it, IronTruth: you can't be so arbitrarily defined. Unless it's by that big chip on your shoulder :-p.
Cute Trans-Kender. Dammit, this isn't the Nickname thread ? The next poster has a big one under its coat.
Let me guess : you don't identify as an Atheist +. Nor are you sympathetic of their views. I think a significant part of the american left (and the left in general) has an inclination - not always acted upon - for disparaging people when confronted by their arguments regarding hot-button issues. They do this in a leftist fashion, by painting these people they disagree with as morally repugnant and socially retarded. The conservatives (some of them, at least) have their specific way of disparaging people, but it's more that they tend to find those they disagree with as morally repugnant because of their breaking away from tradition [the (mythical) way things have always have been]. Also, on the left, there's (broadly speaking) a tendency to assert one's prejudice in more intellectual terms than on the right: " Those that disagree with me have faulty thinking or a lesser intellectual capacity ; they're dumb." The more stringent lefties will sometimes describe their opponents as "insane", or some similar term. The people on the right rarely describe the opponents (many on the left) that they want to disparage as "dumb". The lexical field of their condemnation has more to do with religious values. To sum it up, in simplistic terms: the conservatives disparage people by painting these people as breaking away from supposedly traditional values. The leftists disparage people by striking a pose of (unawarranted) intellectual superiority.
There's a word for that (well, 2 words) : intellectual terrorism. Intellectual terrorism is not material terrorism. Intellectual terrorism is a concept that predates the 21st century by a large margin. Maybe you think it's an hyperbolic notion ; and perhaps it is. But it's a quite useful concept.
I love my (cooking hot) wife.
On the first day of this new year of Our Lord, I promised myself I wouldn't held myself accountable to my New Year's resolutions. I feel very fulfilled ! Next poster thinks original Pathfinder rogues are up to the par with god wizards.
355. Mary-Sue characters :-P.
Obscure Nicknamer
As I said, when dogmatic American leftists don't get what they want, it is ALWAYS because people are misogynist, racist and otherwise *ist, not because the stuff they wanted might not have been attractive enough to matter for those who could join. I couldn't agree more. There's a word for that (well, 2 words) : intellectual terrorism. Not that misogynism isn't a real thing. But when it's always about misogynism, gender or whatever - in the afterlife ever :-p -, well, then it isn't about these things at all. In my opinion, it comes from a (typically North American)* puritanical worldview : the tendency not to discuss subjects, but to reduce people and their argumentation to their supposed/surely irredeemable flaws. I.e : "You're a BAD person, and you corrupt whatever you say with your BADNESS." * It's also a very leftist essentialist point of view a.k.a. ideological purity.** ** I was raised in a very leftist environment. I've got nothing against Lefties (Is that a word ?) that I haven't got against Conservatives :-).
I just finished reading The Gods of Pegana by Lord Dunsany, which was published in 1905, and I'm currently reading Time and the Gods by the same author.
In my day, the level one thief opening a chest might get stuck by a poison needle, fail his save, and DIE. Back in my day, my one-level thief character opened a chest, got hit by a poison needle, made his saving throw, took 1d8 hit points [the master rolled a 8] divided by half (because I had succeeded in making the save)... and died. The game was not afraid to kill your ass. Indeed.
There are excellent suggestions in that thread, and much to my liking. What I would really like is for all of Kobold Press Midgard products to be converted to 5e D&D. ... Ho, wait : did the deities of Midgard hear my pleas ? Praised be Loki ;-) !
Back in my day there were no "grognards", only fellow teenage gamers.
Many, if not most, doctors say that there's no causal relationship between vaccination and autism. So the people believing there's a relation do not so because that lone doctor established a relation with this one study. It's rather that they were previously wary about vaccinations, and that they use that study as corroborating their previous doubts about vaccination. They choose data that validates their point of view. Like we all tend to do, scientists or not.
I disagree that there's a useful and necessary hierarchy of how we learn stuff. Eg., when growing up as toddlers we learn by experimenting with our bodies, and by social immersion. Much later, in school, we learn by being exposed to the scientific method. More generally, we then learn to learn in cognitive ways. When we finally hear about the science's processes, we, hopefully, have already learned a good deal about being a human being and an affable member of society. Science is not the way of learning to trump all other ways of learning. I appreciate all my various ways of learning.
It makes me want to go conversion crazy. A horrendous condition ;-).
I love the Midgard campaign setting ! This book looks like it's awesome ! Any chance for a D&D 5th version of this ? Because that would make me go all "Squeeeee ! Take my money, please !". In truth, if the entirety of the Midgard campaign setting was transcribed into D&D 5th edition, i think I would go (temporarily) bonkers with joy, and surely broke. [*Putting a kobold's skull helmet askew on his rotund gnomish head and waving a miner's pick in a (self-harming) menacing way*]
I like Pathfinder as a player... with Hero Lab running on my laptop as I play around the table with friends (and a good local beer brew). I've decided to stop GMing Pathfinder altogether, as it's too demanding (for me) - in terms of rules mastery
I will now be GMing D&D 5th ed play sessions, as that game seems to adress the above problematic (for me) points. I decided to switch to 5th ed after spending approximately 6 months trying to adress Pathfinder's problems (in my opinion) with houserules.
For what's it's worth, I fully subscribe to Kirth Gensen's analysis of the martial/caster NARRATIVE disparity problem in Pathfinder. Now, regarding Paizo. I think they're an awesome cutting edge company, particularly regarding customer relationship management, with a policy of minimal b#$@$*@+ting* of their customers and of transparency and accountability about their products. I'm sometimes baffled by the ire Paizo draws from a vocal minority of their customers. I mean, come on guys !: the vast majority of (non rpg) companies out there deceive and blatantly lie to you, and then take your hard-earned dollars in exchange for s#*+ty and uninspired products, and here you have a company (Paizo) lead by real people, whom you can meet in person during conventions and who honestly answer your questions in their forums - and it seems to generate so much venom in some people ! I can only surmise than those people are so bewildered by simple and deliberate honesty than they confuse it with deviousness. Sad. Long live Pathfinder, Paizo and 5th ed, and good gaming to everyone. * it's spelled b-u-ll-sh-itting. Stupid amerikanish neo-puritan profanity filter ;-) !
You're making a perfect case against yourself. Neither of those have anything resembling spell slots of 3e sorcerers. They are both closer to using a pool of energy a la 3.5 psionics. Kyrt-Rider, that was an informative, concise, and illuminating reply - expressed in an uninflammatory manner. I thereby shun you for having broken the most sacred and unspoken rules of internet forums !
You're making a perfect case against yourself. Neither of those have anything resembling spell slots of 3e sorcerers. They are both closer to using a pool of energy a la 3.5 psionics.Can you elaborate here? I'm really trying to rack my brain over the division between the two in terms of story, and how a Psion is any different from a Sorcerer in that regard. I'm shunning you for entirely missing the point of the poster you're replying to.
Sometimes the very inanity of superfluous posting will make you roll on the floor in the throes of absurd humour !
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