Search results

  1. Ruin Explorer

    2025 Hugo Winners

    The only one I've actually "read" of this year's crop is Caves of Qud, which my god is that a well-deserved win. Cave of Qud is probably most surprisingly brilliant game I've come across, especially wild as I bought it years ago, though it was kind of pretentious and unfun after like fifteen...
  2. Ruin Explorer

    What are you reading in 2025?

    I heard that it pretty much "got pandemic'd" in that Jemisin by her own admission totally lost enthusiasm (not because she didn't believe in the story, but pandemic blues, totally understandable), but felt she had to finish it, and combined the manuscripts from the two next books in the "We...
  3. Ruin Explorer

    Spoilers Alien: Earth Spoiler Thread

    I do think "Mangetout" - "eat everything" would have been another very on-the-nose name! To be fair to the Maginot line btw, whilst the cultural valence in the English-speaking West is as I describe, the French designers did actually understand the Germans could go around it, they just thought...
  4. Ruin Explorer

    Spoilers Alien: Earth Spoiler Thread

    Man the stick I'd get for Cargill-84 lol! At least you dropped the S to disguise it slightly! I once made up the name "Agadir" for a major dragonborn antagonist (not quite badguy) in my D&D campaign only to find out a week or two later that it was the name of a city in Morocco and the way I...
  5. Ruin Explorer

    Daggerheart General Thread [+]

    Oooooh I like this
  6. Ruin Explorer

    Spoilers Alien: Earth Spoiler Thread

    It's not. It's the first thing you see in the show (IIRC) It's foreshadowing what's going to happen more broadly. It's irrelevant that it's a ship, it's irrelevant that it's collecting specimens. It's a theme, if we're going with the "EXTREMELY ON THE NOSE" approach the show seems to be taking...
  7. Ruin Explorer

    D&D 5E (2024) University project on D&D spells

    This was fascinating because the spells I got, the vast majority of them were just very very much too high level. Like, level 3 spells with level 1 or even cantrip-tier effects. A level 7 spell that would have been bad at level 5. A level 5 spell that was kind of objectively worse than upcasting...
  8. Ruin Explorer

    Daggerheart Initiative in DnD

    One way is to just give everyone a token they hand in after their go, and then next "go" they get it back so you know a "turn" has passed for them. Personally I probably wouldn't run D&D with full-on DH initiative because of stuff like that, but if I ever run it again I'll definitely do...
  9. Ruin Explorer

    D&D 5E (2024) When are we getting announcements for 2026 books?

    There's some weirdly very "1980s Judge Dredd story" about that concept!
  10. Ruin Explorer

    US Tariffs: $80-$200 Surcharge On All Packages Regardless of Price

    Honestly it's shockingly easy to picture the Empire of Man's customs enforcement, a very bored looking guy in a dirty uniform standing next to a parcel scanner the size of a semi-truck, with gothic spires like it was a cathedral, multiple tech-priests attending it, waiting for one of the...
  11. Ruin Explorer

    Spoilers Alien: Earth Spoiler Thread

    I think the idea is that the name is foreshadowing - i.e. all the defences they have against these aliens will fail, not that the ship itself is literally the Maginot line. The "on the nose" name would be to call it The Pandora (or any of a million names for hell). However, given how incredibly...
  12. Ruin Explorer

    Spoilers Alien: Earth Spoiler Thread

    Wait wait I got another: Sorry I'll stop now!
  13. 1755616726374.png

    1755616726374.png

  14. Ruin Explorer

    Spoilers Alien: Earth Spoiler Thread

    The Maginot line was a massive line of forts and defenses that were built to protect France from invasion by Germany after WW1, but Germany just went via Belgium, which the line didn't cover. Thus presumably it is a reference to all your careful defences be completely worthless when you get...
  15. Ruin Explorer

    Spoilers Alien: Earth Spoiler Thread

    That's right! Churl vs churl action! I did check and apparently Ripley being in 3 and 4 was indeed entirely due to The Studio insisting (virtually every proposed script for Alien 3 wanted to be separate to Aliens - though often more Aliens-like than Alien-like), and I feel like Fincher and...
  16. 1755616082223.png

    1755616082223.png

  17. Ruin Explorer

    Spoilers Alien: Earth Spoiler Thread

    I mean, they do explain that at some length. She says her emotions are all muted, and they explain they're trying to simulate them in her software because she doesn't have an endocrine system or a nervous system or actual physical brain full of chemicals or the like, but might need to turn them...
  18. Ruin Explorer

    D&D 5E (2024) When are we getting announcements for 2026 books?

    I'm not familiar with it sadly. I suspect there are edgier/punkier MtG settings than that but I'm also not an expert on MtG. That said, BG3 is considerably more "punk" and "risky" (and risque) than that I daresay. Yeah which is a much bigger problem with Dark Sun than anything else about Dark...
  19. Ruin Explorer

    US Tariffs: $80-$200 Surcharge On All Packages Regardless of Price

    a) isn't special to the proposed scenario. It's absolute constant of all customs operations through time and history. It's been an issue in 1000 BC and will be an issue if there are customs in 40,000 AD. You fight it via enforcement. That's how you did it in 350 AD, or 1950 AD or now. If you...
  20. Ruin Explorer

    Spoilers Alien: Earth Spoiler Thread

    I thought that was a little odd myself, I feel like there's probably some behind-the-scenes reason for it, like they tried it and it looked stupid as hell, or endangered the actors/stunt people, or was technically doable but would have been pushing what I suspect is a pretty pushed budget even...
Top