Merus

Yeah, basically everyone called the original movie "A New Hope" that is a thing that happened this conversation makes me very suspicious

I'm getting a real Wario Land vibe from that Splatoon trailer, particularly the music and the random cuts to mood pieces.

The trick with interviewing is that you do not have complete information on how you did. You can interview well, but someone they also interviewed might be a better fit, and there was nothing wrong with you particularly. That said, that sounds like a fantastic sign, particularly if the second position hasn't been advertised.

Boy it's going to be wild when they start wondering if the Zoe Post is similarly filled with distortions

It seems like the flooding part of the Meat Circus is easily fixed: the intended path, where you're climbing around the outside of the mesh cylinder, doesn't play well with their controls. So make it easy for players to go literally anywhere else and it'll probably be fine.

The first one was the best to my mind, but Bowser's Inside Story is also really good.

Yeah, the core rulebook is a superset.

Given how much content there is in that game, I think it's only the real crazy people that will actually finish everything instead of just ducking out when they've had their fill.

Die Hard is a Christmas film though. Last year my housemate and I did a Christmas movie marathon with In Bruges, Die Hard and Gremlins. (Gremlins doesn't really hold up.)

For Numenera players: Our first session will be character creation and a gentle introduction to the campaign. It's worth thinking about what kind of character you're interested in beforehand. You won't be able to finish your character without the other players, as your ties to other characters are a part of character creation, but much of it can be done beforehand if you're interested. All Numenera characters fall into three basic archetypes: the glaive, your typical mercenary; the nano, who can detect and manipulate numenera, and is the Ninth World equivalent of a magic user; and the jack, who focuses mostly on staying one step ahead of their own personal oblivion, encompassing rogues, thieves, wanderers, swashbucklers and everything in between. Numenera characters are described as a <adjective> <noun> who <verbs>. The noun is the archetype, and determines your basic moveset. The adjective is a descriptor, from 'smart' to 'tough' to 'graceful' that influences your character's personality (or, at least, it should). The verb is your focus, and determines how your moveset is flavoured and what additional abilities you get to round out the set. The foci are a little specific, so if you don't have a player's guide, and don't want one/can't afford one, we'll cover that in the first session.

Well, I guess TotalBiscuit never had cancer after all.

I could tell I was in for a wild ride when he treated his IQ as an important facet of his being. There is a small part of me that's going "the Standford-Binet IV becomes unreliable over about 140 though, how is he getting 155 unless he did one calibrated towards higher intelligence that he did somewhat poorly at" but a larger part of me is going "IQ doesn't mean much other than your performance on IQ tests" and there's this bit way in the back going "I'd swear it's more than one standard deviation separating TB and I because that man does not put 2 and 2 together, but then IQ is no protector against douchebaggery" Although the second reply was that he quoted fucking Illidan which frankly I should have noticed earlier

The player guide is fine - the full book contains setting information and GM advice, all of which I'll duplicate as necessary. I'm expecting at least a couple of players won't have the player's guide. I'll explain everything they need to know as we go. If you have the player's guide, you can make more informed choices in character creation, and you'll have a headstart when learning the game.

Yeah, I'll be running fortnightly games, which for Americans is every two weeks, probably starting next weekend on the 15th. My maximum doesn't include me (so seven players total including me) - I can handle six players in person fairly easily, but online you lose a lot of the non-verbal cues.

Based on the discussions here I think my Friday game is not going to be Eclipse Phase, at least at first. If Reyturner's still up for a D&D5 game, I'll run Numenera - I think D&D5 is a great entry point for tabletop roleplaying so I want to make sure a game of that is available. I'll be looking to run games at around 8pm CST, going for 3-4 hours. I have flexibility on that start time based on the individual player needs, particularly later, but probably not earlier than 5pm CST. My max is six players.

I've been burnt by internet-based secret santas before, so I'm probably not going to participate. International postage seems to be a bridge too far. (Then again, that was a group comprised of 95% North Americans.)

Well, TF2 has a melee weapon and a class-based weapon or two, depending, and ammo is a real limiter. Splatoon doesn't have classes, and you're constantly shooting with easy access to ammo, so most of the depth is going to be in the territory control with very little depth in the shooting. You are sort of spraying walls and floors with ink but in practice you're running forward towards the fight.

Well, that's a concern troll.

Jesus, I leave you people alone for five minutes Part of the problem of "gamers" as a descriptor is that while it ostensibly means "someone who plays games", when we think of a "gamer" we think of a young, nerdy guy and not, say, my mum, or a queer former EMT who boxes and volunteers with the ACLU, or a feminist studies major who puts videos up on the internet. If you put photos of these people and a stereotypically young, nerdy guy and was asked 'which one is most like a "gamer"' people'd pick the guy every time. The descriptor is bound up in ideas about gender and demeanour that were, if we're going to be honest here, never true, but are less true than ever. And if basically everyone plays games, if the play instinct is as universal as the researchers insist it is, then we don't really need a word for someone who plays games, we don't need a culture defined by how we are different from others. Gamers are dead. Long live games. I also don't get how Anita Sarkeesian's videos are condemning games but this TV Tropes page isn't condemning all media everywhere, unless the person making the argument is either wrong or covering for their insistence that women can't have problems with the way they're portrayed.

So I played Splatoon at PAX (and dominated btw). It's very cute looking but I have no idea how deep it's going to end up being. You score points based on covering territory, with a bonus for killing other players. You can move faster when you swim in your team's ink, so there's a clear combo move there to quickly get out to the centre of the map, with two people cleaning up in the rear. You also have a special meter that charges based on points scored, so there's an incentive to go back, paint up parts of the map that have been missed, and charge your special. You're stunned (and it seems like you take damage) in opponents' ink, so territory control is paramount, but it's also fairly easy to flip so it's hard to know how that'll go in practice. The shooting mechanics are very, very simple - you have an ink gun, a grenade, your special and that's it.

Does that include being shot at university by a delusional gunman Does America measure its body counts in pounds as well or do they have some other stupid-ass measurement system for that (I think I'm judging the offensiveness level appropriately here)

It's MMO bullshit with really good writing and mission design. My tip is to rush to the end of the storyline mission and come back and clean up the other missions later, because otherwise you're going to spend tens of hours on Solomon Island and that's rough. Investigation and sabotage missions (they have different icons) are pretty much always worth doing. I'm playing as Illuminati, and they have a fun aesthetic, but apparently one of the mid-game Dragon-only missions is much better than the Illuminati/Templar equivalents, and the late-game Templar mission to open up the third map is much better than the Dragon/Illuminati one, so that may be a factor in your decision-making.

To put it in simpler terms, it's when you make up your opponent's argument and then show how stupid it is. Of course it's stupid, you made it so it was stupid. The metaphor to keep in mind is making a crude opponent out of straw and then being pleased when you punch the stuffing out of them.