pkirkner

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by pkirkner

  2. Posted

    Any suggestions? I'm pretty sure I prefer ancient history, we don't know enough to get bogged down in too much detail. 

     

    It's probably not what you're looking for since it tends to focus on more recent history and is very much US-centric, but I've enjoyed the past present podcast recently. It's a group of three academics providing some historical context for stuff that was recently in the headlines.

     

    I've also enjoyed the Gravy podcast recently, which is probably even further afield from what you're looking for, but is still history adjacent. It explores the culture of the Southern United States through the lens of food. The episode focused on Shirley Sherrod (the USDA official slandered by Andrew Breitbart in 2010) was particularly good.

  5. Posted

    Anyway, I'm still wondering about good offlaners for beginners.

    Also if there are some supports that are generalist enough to almost always be good picks regardless of comp like WD, Dazzle, etc

     

    Assuming you'll be alone in lane, Dark Seer has probably the easiest laning phase. You just ion shell a creep, stay at the edge of XP range, and you should get nice XP gain and decent gold gain without having to venture into harms way. He's a little trickier to play in team fights, but not overly complicated. Basically just put up your wall, try to vacuum the other team across it, and focus the illusions you get on whoever you really want dead.

     

    If you have an offlane support, as is common for beginners, you basically just want someone who can absorb some hits without being forced out of lane. Bristleback, Tidehunter, Abaddon, Tusk, and Centaur Warunner all are pretty decent in that role.

     

    As for supports that are always good to have, Omniknight has been the highest win rate hero for some time now. He's also an excellent counter for Witch Doctor since his ultimate blocks all physical damage, and Witch Doctor's ultimate deals physical damage. Lich and Warlock also fit really well into just about any team composition. I found Lich especially good as a beginner support because his sacrifice ability helped get me in the mindset of manipulating lane equilibrium before I had the timing down to do stuff like reliably stacking and pulling creep waves.

  7. Posted

    By the way, sorry if I'm a bit overly declarative with my thoughts on American vs European fantasy and The Witcher. I tend to think anything on forums should be read as in "in my opinion" but maybe it doesn't come across that way. Curious what you guys think. Maybe I am alone in preferring the more grounded, less D&D, variety of fantasy...

    I actually had almost the exact opposite reaction. My exposure to European fantasy is limited to Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, and J.K. Rowling, so while The Witcher 3's sense of place came across as distinctly European, the tone brought to mind stuff I've read by American authors like Glen Cook or George R.R. Martin. In addition, the protagonist's English voice-over came across as so aggressively drawn from Hollywood action movies (almost to the point of Kung Fury-esque parody) that I found the contrast between the setting and the delivery of the dialogue jarring before I learned you could play it using Polish voice acting with English subtitles.

  10. Posted

    Also times, I guess. I can do most days from 6am GMT to about 12pm GMT, and on Fridays and Saturdays let's say midnight GMT to midday GMT. That might be tricky to work around.

     

    Within those bounds, I'd be available for a session sometime between midnight and about 0700 GMT on weekends. As far as systems go I'm familiar with 5e and Apocalypse World, but open to trying something new.

  16. Posted

    Cloud Imperium held their annual backer gathering today, this time in the UK. They showed off where they're at currently with the multiplayer:

     

     

    Released a cutscene from the single-player (PC Gamer has the cast list):

     

     

    And added an interactive map of the star systems in the game to their website.

     

    I like what they showed of the multiplayer. They basically incorporated their FPS stuff into the Gamescom demo and added more stuff to do on that map. They only showed narrative stuff from the single player, and I've never been a fan of the narrative in Chris Robert's games, so that did nothing for me. All in all, I guess I'm glad to see them still making progress despite all the recent distractions, though I wish they'd take a break from having their devs crunch on these stage demos every few months.

     

    edit: They also

    one of the single-player levels:

     

     

  20. Posted

    The only items that it really matters if you duplicate are:

    • Mekansm (and the Guardian Greaves they can be upgraded into)
    • Crimson Guard
    • Pipe of Insight
    • Veil of Discord
    • Vladmir's Offering
    • Assault Cuirass
    • Desolator

    For any of those, just ALT+ left click on the icon in the store for the item you want to buy. That will let your team know what you're building so they can avoid duplicating it.

  23. Posted

    Tim Follin gave an interview recently about the production process. I was surprised to learn that he had originally planned on including adventure-game style puzzles:

     

    "I had all these physical puzzles involving all kinds of things; switching on lights, moving things around in the court and someone appearing, a workman at one point leaving something behind. All this stuff that was written in that we just didn't have anywhere near the time to be able to film it."

  25. Posted

    I'd like to second the recommendation of The Yawhg. Mechanically, it's a choose-your-own-adventure book with some light stat-management that supports up to 4 person local multiplayer, yet still works as a single-player experience. But the mechanics aren't the draw. It's a well-written, beautifully-illustrated, and superbly scored game that only requires about 20 minutes of your time.