Irishjohn

This is fantastic.

Cool, well your DM will know a lot more than me how to deal with it. I THINK, if I remember correctly, that the dilettante trait I mentioned before was a half-elf thing, taking another class' at-will power and using as an encounter power, but I think it had to be the same broad area (Divine, Martial, etc.). So maybe you could grab Healing Word. But, to be honest, it's whatever your group has fun doing. I only really had one strong group experience, and the DM was great. He was all about shifting things to make it fun, and the group shared the same attitude to role-playing. Like I mentioned, I get incredibly uncomfortable when people are "acting" even though that's the whole fun for other people. It's really a flexible thing, I miss it.

Cheers for the tip. I think that was a big mistake of mine. It's making a big difference already, I've tidied up the figure a fair bit. It's never going to look GREAT but it's starting to look okay. I should really go and grab a D&D book... man, a cleric would help you guys. You can roll a pretty aggressive cleric in 4.0 that can still heal but gets to kill dudes. I eventually took the dilletante trait and took a nice ranged attack from either an avenger or an invoker as an encounter power. Do you have an Invoker? I know it's a bit far down the road, but there's a Paragon Path (Adept of Whispers) that has a utility power that is a pretty strong heal, Restorative Word. Anyway, didn't mean to hijack the thread with RPG and tabletop talk, I guess it's still on topic?

Until recently, I'd only ever played D&D 4.0 when it came to role playing, I like it a ton. It suits the way that I play. I don't really want to be in character or anything, but I'm willing to make my character do things I think he'd do. Also, lots of dice rolling. Maybe one of you will pick a path later on that leads to more healing abilities? I can't remember how that works. I was always a cleric, but I THINK the other divine classes had options? Additionally, I did get a miniature this past weekend and... I made a complete balls of painting it. Like, it looks like a two year old was allowed a go at it. Hey, whatever. I paid for it. If I ever get better at this painting stuff, it'll be a point of pride to put this guy out there. Dudes in the local gaming store were extremely nice, they're going to run a demo for me soon. It seems that a decent chunk of the local community for Warmachine are around my age too, so that's a bit less discouraging.

I agree completely. I have a ton of fun with that game because they do a great job matching me up with people. I'm happy playing Bronze matches for weeks, it's still fun being up against people.

I just got back in after a LONG time. Now, prepare your ears, because I am truly awful. Back when I was playing regularly, I learned how to use hotkeys and how to produce a few troops at a time (Terran) without having an aneurysm. I went on ridiculous winning streaks (like, 30 in a row) before finally making it to silver where things went back to normal. I'd found my level. Now, for some reason, I wanted to give Zerg a shot. Yeah, I can't play Zerg. Now I know why I stopped playing all that while ago. Just absolutely clueless. I just got placed in Bronze after playing a few Terran games. Obviously I'm not great at Terran either, but at least with Terran I feel comfortable creating a Ball and wandering over to a dude. That's the limit of what I can do, really. With Zerg, I could get to a point where I was spreading creep, keeping up with the larvae, but ultimately just producing a lot of zerglings and then being crushed. So yeah, nice to be back here in the lower levels.

In the game I just completed, the Islamic nations/empires were bringing armies that size on a regular basis. I did successfully claim Sicily as part of a Crusade, but otherwise I found them very tough to deal with, completely overmatching me and my allies.

I have an i5 (almost two years old) with an ATI HD Radeon 5650. Running it on a 23" monitor connected to my laptop HDMI. It runs fine on 1920x1080, only really lagging when it's on super-fast and there's a lot happening (which I only found out about because I was more or less done but wanted to get to "the end") and on Jan 1st of every year when it saves. Doesn't seem taxing at all. My system isn't bad but I'm sure it's one of the more modest around here.

They're doing great stuff, but that is far and away my favourite of the episodes they've done. Then again, Wizard bias.

Anyone playing board games recently? I got Lords of Waterdeep and successfully got my wife to play it. She enjoyed it, and not just because she won. I've been mucking around with Castle Ravenloft's solo options too, and I was going through Grind tonight... Not sure how I'll convince anyone to play it with me. There's a fun idea in there but there are a lot of rules. I'm tempted to just grab a Warmachine starter set and head down to my local gaming store to scratch the Mech itch, but I don't know if I can handle getting into a table-top habit. Also, turning up to try and play randomly with strangers is too reminiscent of trying to get to know people in school. I hated trying to get to know people in school.

Neal Gabler wrote a history of the role of the Jewish community in the development of the Hollywood system called An Empire of Their Own. Not sure if it's what you're looking for but it's good.

Yeah, but LOL is a fun experience that you can actually play here and there and be generally relaxed about. Heroes of Newerth looked so much better, but the people were awful. I only played Dota 2 briefly, but I really don't need to spend what little time I have to play online games getting my ass handed to me. I find LOL a lot more accessible. Maybe that's a horrific sentiment to express in the eyes of anyone with a modicum of experience or skill in Lords management, but I'm just not going to find the time to get stuck in and get better.

I'm just always happy to see the word "langer" written down. Fantastic.

You'll really enjoy The Inverted Pyramid then, really fantastic and interesting. Directly challenges the notion of "direct" football though looks to rehabilitate poor Graham Taylor a bit. Moneyball is excellent. Just as a book in and of itself, it's really well done. You don't need to be a massive baseball fan to enjoy it. Once you've read it though you'll probably get a bit irked by how much the term "moneyball" has been thrown around in relation to Liverpool. Not sure of some of those guys (journos) have read the book at all.

Ah, that's right! That's been on my to read list for so long I've forgotten about it. There's a film too, but I've heard it's not a patch on Plimpton's book. Cheers for the recommendations all, some great ones here.

Sounds good! Yeah, I don't know about multiplayer either. I don't even know how it works for a game like this... I guess you just plan ahead to have a few hours free? In any case, looking forward to hearing about it.

That sounds like a fun idea, and I'd be down for giving it a go. I've been playing as the Lord of Munster, and by being extremely conservative (and utilising info from the first three parts of that fantastic LP/guide) I've actually gotten hold of Connaught and Ulster now. Just waiting for an excuse to take on Leinster and unify the island, but this could be the end of it all. They're pretty tough.

Oh dear. I could very much be one of those people. Though I try not to be by sticking with a group as much as I can. Medic works that way because the whole point of the class is to support people. I don't know enough about the game yet to be an infiltrator. I might have been lucky last night... there was a mix of classes (not just all soldiers) and people seemed to be grouped together at least.

Well, I didn't have a problem getting a game last night, but earlier in the day it was stuck looking for people for ages. I didn't check to see what kind of experience people had. Maybe the Steam sale has kicked it back into life a little? I've barely touched it, fun so far but we'll see. The art style is very cool. Not being snarky (at all) but what multiplayer shooters would you recommend? I haven't played many online. TF2 seems like the easiest to just drop in and play. For five bucks, if I play Brink on multiplayer for a while and move on after two or three weeks, I'd be fairly happy.

Yeah, I'd like to keep playing. I don't really like talking to dudes when I play online, so I was concerned I would just be inadvertently ruining other people's games. It doesn't work that way at all, people seem to mostly be playing to their class (which takes care of teamwork in most cases) and I'm not sure if it's the game or a few guys on the team who know what they're doing, but we moved on from objective to objective without too much hassle. Short of running off like a jackass and willfully being stupid, I'm not sure how you could really derail your team. Great fun, will have to get back into it again soon.

Got Brink in the Steam sale, and just had my first multiplayer game. I had a lot of fun with it. I don't play a lot of online games, and I don't use VOIP or anything. I just picked a medic, stuck with it, and went around healing and reviving as much as I could. We failed the second mission (I played the first with bots) but it was fun.

Cheers man, having a look now. Cool, thanks for the tip. I'll definitely have a look.

Yeah... it's not THAT bad, but the dogs humping was lame. It's funny, maybe I'm getting old, but I found the Borderlands 2 trailer with the wimaweh stuff pretty gruesome and disturbing. But yeah, this looks great, I think I might go and reinstall Blood Money. The nuns, indeed. Ugh.

I find the game... impenetrable. I have a few Paradox games now, and mostly I do something goofy like take control of Texas in Victoria II or Ireland in Hearts of Iron III. Neither of these options are a good way for a beginner to play the game, but I am a history nerd and that's how I've been having fun so far, before actually, you know, playing the games. Truth be told, I'm rubbish at strategy games, but still enjoy them. I should go and figure out how to play this game.

Man, this game. (Early-ish) spoilers ahead. It was fantastic. Not the most well written account there, but I'm trying to convey how I was experiencing the whole thing. Really, a lot of fun, and even more so because it challenged my ideas of how video games work (kill dude/xp/level up/keep going). I do like it when that basic progression model is challenged, but I'm hardwired to want to win in very simple and straightforward fashion, I guess. It's funny, I hadn't touched the game for a couple of weeks, and coming back to this I wondered if I would bother continuing, but that little snapshot of how this game works has got me back into the game in a big way.