tberton

The biggest problem I've had with the little Civ I've played is that your empire is so stable. You build a city and you're in complete control of it for the rest of the game, unless an enemy takes it over. The people might get unhappy, but that just makes the city less efficient. There's never any threat of rebellion or disagreement or anything. Not only is that mechanically dull, it's also historically ridiculous. One of my favourite things about Crusader Kings is that it emphasizes how tough it is to actually get the things you want done and hold a group of disparate places together. I wish 4X games tried to implement mechanics that rocked the boat a bit more.

I would say that music has intrinsic meaning, at least to the extent that words do, if not in exactly the same way. A light flute means something quite different than a booming tuba. But I'm with Chris here. I still don't think the analogy works. Saying that, for instance, "Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac would mean something different to me without the lyrics is true, but it would also mean something different without the guitar. Both are pretty intrinsic to the song's meaning. What Chris was talking about on the show seems to be more that those textual elements feel completely separate from the rest of the game in such a way that the game would hardly change if they were removed.

I kind of see the analogy here, but I love lyrics in music and they are generally the entry point for my emotional connection with a song, rather than closing things off.

I disagree pretty fundamentally (except for the part about Korra's characterization, I agree it's kind of wobbly), but don't have the time to go into it. One question though: how is Zaheer written as a libertarian rather than an anarchist?

I'll take Toki Tori 2 if nobody else wants it.

Yeah, bullying sucks. I was bullied a fair bit as a kid, and while "toughing it out" did, I think, make me a stronger person, I also think it gave me a lot of asshole-ish habits that still linger. Looking back at when I was around sixteen, when the bullying had mostly stopped but the memories were still very fresh, I definitely treated several people very poorly doing what, in retrospect, was pretty much what was done to me. As for this kid, N1njaSquirrel, offering a sympathetic ear is really all you can do. There's no one-size-fits-all approach to stopping bullying, so just do what you think is best in the situation. He thinks he doesn't have friends, so be one. However, it's important to remember that he kind of just fell into your life, so don't let things get too personal. Also, if the topic comes up, maybe help him think about resources he can lean on that are closer to home. There's only so much a random Internet person can do.

I'm so gratified that my Axiom Verge thread title got mentioned. I essentially only made that thread so that I could use that title. I have learned much from Jake's way with words.

Hmmm, those are pretty good, but the first two are more Mondegreens than Eggcorns, I think, because they're just nonsense rather than being interesting new spins on the same meaning. The last one is just complete gibberish. Still pretty good though. I kind of want a superhero named Alter Eagle.

Pulaski could have been an interesting character, but as I recall, they never gave her any traits other than "grumpy" and "doesn't like Data." Not much to hang a character on there.

I think some episodes are on Cartoon Network's website and it's available on iTunes. I watched it more illicitly though.

The only episodes I can think to add to that list are the two Moriarty episodes, "Elementary, Dear Data" in Season 2 and "Ship in a Bottle" in Season 6. The latter's the better episode, but both are fun. I may just have a soft spot for them though. Oh, "Thine Own Self" in Season 7 is also neat, although Data's my favourite character, so any episode that focuses on him appeals to me. Another Data-centric episode I like is "The Offspring," where he creates a daughter for himself.

I see what you did there.

See, I think Steven Universe is one of the absolute best examples of how to do this right. It's backstory and surrounding world are layered in piece by piece, always in a way that makes sense and always in service of developing the characters and their motivations. It's never necessary to delve too deep into it to understand what's going on, but it's also clearly very well thought through and not just slapped in at the last minute. That's my favourite part about the show. Without that it's just mindless anecdotes. Also, Lore's TNG episodes were awesome.

Tanukitsune

The world-map wanderers are there as Kickstarter rewards. That's probably why they seem off. As for the length of the game and New Game+ complaints, like I said, the Plague Knight dlc will be released soon and will be free. There will be two more free dlc campaigns after that, as long as they maintain their Kickstarter promises.

I like that one. This was mentioned on that clip, but "it's a doggie dog world" is a pretty great one too.

This is awesome! The wonderful thing is, that since a lot of these are English sayings, they make no sense to me anyway! "Arguing pedantics" is particularly great.

This just reminds me that I'm still waiting on tenterhooks for the Plague Knight expansion. Gonna be so good!

Not exactly the same situation, but El Muerte has had yearoftheps3.info registered for like 7 years and it links directly to this site. Does that reflect poorly on Idle Thumbs? It could easily be seen as domain squatting. Obviously, there are differences, in that El Muerte isn't employed by Idle Thumbs and this isn't necessarily considered a "professional" site, but there are some similarities. I'm with JonCole on this one. Dumb prank, maybe, but not really any dumber than the pranks that get pulled all the time.

Yeah, the Waterdeep expansion is pretty good. The Skullport module I especially liked. As for other worker placement games, like I said, my favourites are Alien Frontiers and Spyrium. I also quite enjoy Lancaster, Keyflower and Last Will. I'm also not a fan of Agricola, but I haven't tried Le Havre and I know a lot of people who hate the former but love the latter. Personally, I wish Uwe Rosenberg would go back to designing game's like Bohnanza. The worker placement games I tend to enjoy have a twist on the mechanic. Alien Frontiers' workers are dice, and it has an area control game layered on top of the worker placement. Spyrium has this really weird, neat two-dimensional bidding system and card tableaus. Lancaster and Keyflower both have systems where you can outbid people for spaces. Last Will is the most conventional of the ones I listed, but even it has a really fun, Brewster's Millions theme to it.

That is true, although it doesn't play as significant a role as I'd like it to. That also ties into another issue with the game, which is that the quests come out too randomly. If you're going for Warfare and the really good Warfare quests don't come out, you can be pretty screwed.

To me, what makes Waterdeep kind of dull is how it applies the "point salad" approach to game design. Everything is equivalent to everything else. This is especially clear at the end of the game, when everybody's just taking the spots that get them the most cubes/money/gems/whatever because every just converts to points at the end anyway. It leaves each element of the game feeling kind of hollow. The fighters don't feel like fighters, the money doesn't feel like money and the snozberry's certainly don't taste like snozberry's. My complaint isn't that "it does its theme poorly," which is a pretty common critique of Waterdeep. I actually quite like the implementation of the theme: the idea that all these different adventurers are abstracted into resources for use by the Lords feels neat. But I don't like it when games have interchangeable resources. It just seems like a missed opportunity. It makes the game really smooth, but also makes it kind of slide off me. That said, I do enjoy playing Waterdeep and think it's a good game. I especially like the buildings: any game where you can buy buildings for other people to use gets at the core of what makes Monopoly fun and appeals to me greatly. I'm surprised more worker placement games haven't taken that up, especially since it was a core mechanic of Caylus, the ur-worker placement game. If you're interested in more worker placement games that have a few kookier aspects, but are still fairly simple, I highly recommend both Alien Frontiers and Spyrium. Both have that same aspect of "simple mechanics working in concert" that you seem to enjoy in Waterdeep.

Going on a bit of tangent, but it's interesting to me how the "names 'n' dates" complaint has such clear analogues in other disciplines. In mathematics, people complain about rote arithmetic. Linguists complain about teaching the "rules of grammar." Kind of points to how screwed up our education system is.

Yeah, I understand why the Thumbs don't like lore, but I love it. Of course, bad lore is bad lore, but good lore is wonderful. I'm the kind of person who spent ages just looking over the lists of characters in the back of the Song of Ice and Fire books.

I just started reading Critical Play by Mary Flanagan and it seems pretty good so far. It's about more than just video games, though, and comes at it from a very artist/activist perspective, so I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for.