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Readerbreeder wrote:

Aberzombie wrote:

Later by Stephen King. I’ll follow that up with Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.

Both of those are on my to-read list, Aberzombie. (Granted, I have a lot of books on my to-read list, but still...) Are you willing to give a spoiler-free opinion when you're done?

I finally finished Project Hail Mary last night. I enjoyed the book. It had an interesting story, and some likable characters. Towards the end of the book, my opinion about the main character changed a bit, and I saw him in a slightly more negative light, but not enough to make me dislike him. The second main character was totally awesome and had no negative qualities whatsoever.

The story is actually pretty straight forward. No surprise, it was (very) heavy on the science. The engineer in me approved. This book also had a bit more of the "fiction" to go with the "science", which is different from The Martian (I haven't read Weir's second book yet). There are also some high drama/action scenes, which I suspect were included for future Big Screen Adaptation.

The story is told in "present time" and "flashback", but not so much that it disrupted the flow of the story.

All in all, I think if you liked his other books, you'll like this one.

Thanks for the recommend Aberzombie! I'm looking forward to reading it.

Readerbreeder wrote:

I am now currently reading Stephen King's Night Shift, an early short story collection of his. It's apparent that King's storytelling ability has positively evolved over the years (as I suppose it should), but even these early stories are good for some solid goosebumps...

King's short stories always seemed to me to be better-written than his novels, but I admit to being partial to tight writing.

Maybe it's because I'm heavily grounded in SF/Fantasy literature, but I'm also enamored of short form writing. (Many of the classic authors in speculative fiction "proved" themselves in genre magazines/pulps before moving on to novels.) At its best, you get all of the punch of a writer's style and skill -- in a story that you can finish in a wait at the doctor's office.

Does anyone else have nostalgia for Dark Sun halflings? Just me then? OK...

...the Lord of the Rings TV series...will be smutty.

As my increasingly wise daughter would say, "Can we really just not, please? Of course they would make this series in 2020, when everything seems determined to become the worst possible version of itself.

I blame Cosmo for any depression caused by my knowledge that this monstrosity-in-the-making exists, and we have to have this conversation in the first place. Aaarrrggghhhh.

Josh: ”Spherification is fairly popular these days”

Is that similar to curling up into a ball and crying? 'Cause I could see that becoming popular, with the way some things are right now.

As promised elsewhere, I blame Cosmo for the cluster#^!$ that has resulted out of the issues the Batwoman show has had recently from having to recast the namesake character. I also blame Cosmo for making DeathQuaker post a logical argument that it isn't likely to get any better. I was just starting to kindasorta enjoy the show instead of watching it out of a sense of Arrowverse completionism, Cosmo! Why?

I agree, I think it would be unfair to blame even Cosmo for some of the existential issues that 2020 has thrown at us. The cluster#^!$ that has resulted out of the Batwoman issues? Still on the board... : )

Completely Coincidental, you are a scholar and a gentleman for making this offer, and I am grateful to you for it; thank you!

I would love to get a copy of Bestiary 6, if you are still willing...

I blame Cosmo that, apparently, teachers aren't "essential personnel" for running a school. (I'm being bored out of my mind along with my kids, Cosmo!)

I also blame Cosmo that my kids aren't yet bored enough to be interested in starting an RP campaign together (not really their area of interest, though I think they'd enjoy it with an open mind [wouldn't anyone?]).

Thanks, EZG, for the review! I have been waffling about getting the 5e version of this, but I've been trying to whittle down the sheer number of RPG products I buy, after realizing that unless something changes, I'll never have a chance to use some of them. After reading your review, this onto my buy list (and I'm going to make a point of trying to get my group to play through it)!

Readerbreeder wrote:

I blame Cosmo that I was unaware of freakish behavior on the boards...

not on the boards, but OF the boards.

I blame Cosmo that I read that wrong... His bad!

I Blame Cosmo for the freakish behavior of the forum boards today. What's up with that?

I blame Cosmo that I was unaware of freakish behavior on the boards...

(IT, but sometimes crime scene cleanup is required as part of IT.)

Figurative or literal? (Gods know I've had IT react like I created a crime scene with my efforts to "fix it myself", for which I'm happy to blame being tech-obtuse and Cosmo (for the individual problem and for making me tech-obtuse).

I haven't seen anything RP oriented, but Dean Koontz, in his book Watchers, made my head explode when, near the beginning of the story, the protagonist came out of a rural canyon and began heading down streets and passing landmarks that were not a half-mile from where I lived at the time (Orange CA, USA). The McDonald's drive-thru he stopped at framed the page he mentioned them in, and so far as I know, it remains there to this day.

Virginia J.: THIS IS HORRIFYING

Virginia J.: I LOVE IT

Cosmo, stop putting words in Virginia's mouth!

I blame Cosmo that there are still 19 class days before school gets out... I've been ready to have this year over with since Spring Break ended.

One of my four-year-old students today referred to another staff member's crutches as "cockroaches".

As in, "Ms. R., how do you walk on your cockroaches?"

The little ones give the best malapropisms...

I can work with this... the current Shadowsfall material is my favorite stuff from JBE. Any estimate at this point on an arrival date?

Sam: I'd argue is a Roleplaying right of passage to be eaten by something and gruesomely escape.

*Older warrior nods to amazed younger protege while sitting amongst the eviscerated remains of a massive purple worm that he has taken apart from the inside*

"I had to get my sword back."

**The Paizo offices and warehouse are currently closed due to winter storm activity in the Pacific Northwest.**

$&*%@^! it, Cosmo, if you wanted some time off, why didn't you just say so?!

Let's see, in the last 24 hours, I have:

1)Had my car broken into with somebody smashing the window to get in;
2)Turned my ankle on the front step;
3)Had a new medication make me so dizzy I had to come home early from work;
4)Had one of my students basically turn into Zack de la Rocha at the end of "Killing in the Name", for reasons unknown.

Yeah, I'm Kinda sensing Cosmo at work here!

Chris C: im gonna go buy kiwis tonight just so I can eat the skins in front of CS tomorrow

Sara Marie, please tell me that Chris was talking about kiwi fruit and not the bird or (gulp) New Zealanders? 'Cause the last two sound more like something Cosmo would come up with...

taig wrote:

Jason Nelson wrote:

taig wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

Readerbreeder wins the roll off by 3, and APOPHIS1989 joins the repeat tiebreaker club with Uncle Teddy and Hellder (sorry about that, everyone!).

I'll be in touch with Readerbreeder soon.

Viva la losers! Readerbreeder gets a PDF of... roll...

Fort Scurvy!

Yo ho ho, email me and get yer piratey swag!

That would be bhampton, yes?

Whoops, yes. Bhampton it is! Winners get nothing!

Sooooo, I lost because I won? :-P Have at it, Bhampton! Fort Scurvy looks like a lot of fun!

I won? I won! Woo-hoo! It's rare that the Fickle Finger of Fate picks me from the masses. Give me a little time to decide what to do with the largesse, and I will respond to the inquiry PM that Taig sent me!

Edit: PM sent! Thanks again, taig!

CC, I'd be willing to bet that there are some who haven't seen this thread because it's on a part of the boards they don't frequent; Would it be OK with you if I gave you a shout-out in some other board sections?

CC - Downloads received with no hitches. Thanks again for your generosity, and a Merry Mikazemas to you!

Taig, you are a gentleman and a scholar for putting this shindig each year! Count me in!

So last night around 915pm (CST), YouTube's 'Next up' played a song by Night Club... I liked it, so I listened to a few more of their songs... and then it happened...

I've had THIS on repeat for almost six hours now, and it's all Cosmo's fault!

I. Love. Night Club. Have you heard "Schizophrenic" yet, Zelda Marie?

I blame Cosmo that Night Club do not get the publicity and exposure they deserve...

Sara Marie wrote:

Cosmo wrote:

Point of order: The profanity filter is totally a thing and has always been. And causing it to trigger and/or bypassing it has never been allowed.

I blame Cosmo for being hypocritical since he's the one that taught me to avoid absolutes.

Oblig.

I blame Cosmo that the linked statement is, itself, an absolute statement, and the scriptwriters were too dense to catch such a howler before it made its way to the screen...

In other words, I blame Cosmo for incompetent-seeming Jedi.

I've been interested in some of these for quite a while... count me in!

I thought I had been just lucky enough to avoid the vicious, nasty cold going through my family that made my 10-year-old cough-vomit mucus twice (and yes, it's even less pleasant than it sounds)... Nope. Woke up congested with my voice leaving me this morning.

Guess where I'm putting the blame for this one, Cosmo? Aaargh.

Now if FGG would get around to actually publishing the Lost Lands Campaign Setting, awesomeness would be upon us.

I would love to see this as well, but my fear is that with the epic way FGG does everything, it will be a total of 6.000 pages, published in four volumes, and cost 450 bucks... and I will still have to have it, and go without snacks for a year (or some such) to save for it.

Like, your actions in the game should have consequences. They don't need to be on the level of butterfly effect or that stepping on a blade of grass so drastically changes the future so that monkeys rule the earth, but there does need to be some ramification, a logical reaction by the world your PC inhabits, to the PC's various actions and behaviors. If I play a necromancer (Which I do from time to time, chaotic neutral) I usually have to role play in a way where I have to hide my undead minions outside of towns, or not talk during specific dialogues, because MY character's actions of resurrecting 10 dead bodies in the town as undead minions to fight off the bandits trying to murder everyone in the town, even if for a good cause, just doesn't usually gel well with the families of those dead bodies. And sure, my character can react however he wants to, but I can't just expect to get away with some wonky anime haired protagonist BS. And I don't mind crazy like this ON OCCASION, it's when that is their sole style of play that I don't like it. Like the guy that genuinely thinks lawful-good = lawful stupid, and makes the now famous quote to paladin players "you can do what the law says, I'LL do what's right", I'd love to meet anyone who would never get tired of playing with that guy.

Agreed 100%, though in my mind, assigning consequences to player actions is more of a GM's construct than that of the game system. Systems that create "one man armies", however, do seem to enable players with a Gawd Complex more than others.

Like. I have a friend who genuinely hates combat and exp in pathfinder, he thinks it takes away from the game, but he likes inspiration points because "They make the game interesting". A game where you can role play an adventuring wielder of reality warping magic, and an inter-dimensional corpse bamfing into your dimension to grab a random peasant and pull him to the negative energy plane to chase him like a horror movie slasher villain out of it's sheer hatred of the living is not only accepted as a possibility, but a fairly normal occurrence... Is not interesting to this man. That's not a problem Paizo needs to address, that's a problem with the player, as I can tell you he does not make characters that mesh well with the world (his current character is a wizard, who worships zon kuthon, and is a "emo goth poser". Which to him, translates into only preparing pit, grease, invisibility and enlarge person, and sitting in the back whining about how the universe is pain while invisible.) and honestly, it only creates real problems when the developer tries to cater to this mindset.

Most of us have run into "that guy" at our gaming tables, whose play style is radically different from what the rest want or expect. You may have been most comfortable (assuming you were there to be so) working with 1st edition AD&D, which, if published adventures are any indication, required a lot more teamwork and planning within the party than you generally see anymore. Though even then, I have seen an interview by Tracy Hickman (who co-wrote the original Dragonlance books and the original I6 Ravenloft module) talk about pulling a "Leroy Jenkins" on a party he played with, so maybe it's more the player type that the game at large.

May I also suggest that you may find this article on EN World an interesting read. It seems to be saying many of the same things you are, from a game design standpoint.

You forgot to put "Went to Pathfinder because D&D 4e was a train wreck, and when 5e came out, was interested enough to check it out, but stayed with 1e PF in the end due to story/loyalty/inertial reasons. However, now that 2e PF is a thing, we will be moving over to 5e D&D." What would you say is the closet poll answer to that? ;-)

Rysky wrote:

Katina Davis wrote:

Robot Chris: now to shed this cocoon sham of web product management and to arise as the clickbait writing butterfly I am inside

... yay?

You'll never believe her best clickbait title! Click here to see!

Would that not then be your clickbait, CSMET?

I blame Cosmo for the idea that Cosmo should be blamed for everything. :P Fnord!

But he is to blame for everything! He said so himself!

Many, many backups...

Wave Three package received safe and sound! After being shipped halfway around the world, it actually arrived in better condition than the book I ordered from Amazon that came from a warehouse halfway across town!

I add my thanks to the others for your generosity, Steve. As Duiker said, the items will be put to good use.

In the moment? Absolutely Sturm Brightblade in Dragonlance Chronicles. I was 13; it's the only time I can remember purposefully mistreating a book (I threw it across the room).

My 6-year-old computer is slowly entering its death throes, after my being able to nurse it along through no longer recognizing its own battery, getting cranky with wi-fi connections, and now just running really, really sloooowwwwwlllyyy.

I blame Cosmo for planned obsolescence.

I'm blaming Cosmo for the fact that, with the site revamp, now I've got to figure out how to navigate this place all over again! I hate change, Cosmo! Why do you do this to me?

Any possibility of eventually compiling the blog posts into a single document? I will definitely be using this -- my oldest (who enjoys rp'ing and loves Greek mythology) is perfect for it!

I keep getting reminded that my children have been born into a digital age. My oldest (nearing 20) was trying to explain something rather complex (if I remember right, it had to do with time-travel paradoxes) to my youngest (nearing 10).

My youngest gets a thoughtful look on her face for a moment, and then looks up and says "uuhhhh, search results not found", turns around and just walks right out of the room...

I just started THE WAY OF KINGS by BRANDON SANDERSON and I'm already bored and getting WHEEL OF TIME vibes from this and not the early on in the series good vibes.

It only cost me one Audible credit but I'm on chapter 9 of what might be a 76 chapter slog. I hope this gets better because I have a tendency to want to see things through till the end...

Funny you should mention The Wheel of Time, for a couple of reasons: 1) Sanderson wrote the last three WoT books after Jordan passed away before he could complete the series. 2) The Way of Kings is the first in a planned decalogy (10-book series) from Sanderson himself. My advice if you're not in for the long haul is, get out now while you still can! I had to wait 27 years from start to finish (four years after publication, long story) for the end of the Wheel of Time, so I feel your pain. Good luck!

Readerbreeder gets the sole 1 and gets something from Legendary games.

Wow! You mean one of those critical fumbles I keep rolling actually means something good? Woo-hoo! PM sent to Jason Nelson -- Thanks again for setting this whole thing up, Taig!

The school I teach at is about to let out for Christmas Break, so the only thing I have to blame Cosmo for is that the finals days, significantly shorter than the regular schedule, for some reason feel much longer. What's up with that, Cosmo?

I'm game! Taig, you are a gentleman and a scholar for being this kind every year.

Want to 3D Print a Sepsidaemon? Here you go! I take payment in souls and likes.

What does it say that at first glance, I read this as Pepsidaemon?

...a portal to Hell above a panicked Material Plane village...

All right, just how many of you Paizo folks played waaaaay too much DOOM back in the day? I can't wait for this book!