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The current Mars samples were slated for return in the 2030s, but that is up in the air for budgetary reasons. There have been successful analyses of several asteroids which had material returned to Earth recently--Hayabusa2, and more recently OSIRIS-REX. In short they have to be very careful...

Yeah, I find the interplay between determinism and chance super fascinating here. Another idea is the evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis. Oxygen (and water) is great energetically; there is competition from fluorine and chlorine but those are both incompatible with carbon biology for other...

I mean that Earth and Mars had similar chemistries that caused life to be funneled down similar trajectories from different origins. Not that life transferred from one to the other. But even that idea is quite interesting...borate is an important stabilizer of ribose, and more common on Mars...

The common cause idea is super interesting to me. We don't know very much about origin of life chemistry and based on what environment it is in different choices could be more likely. Guanine, for example is very abundant (relatively) in meteorite extracts but hard to synthesize in the lab. To...

The original post said "same DNA". I read that to mean same base pairs, the same way "the same proteins as earth" means both "L-amino acids" and "the same 20 amino acids as earth".

An interesting note: the existence of the nucleobases may not get you far because it is quite difficult to react nucleobases with ribose (RNA; probably you get that first). One of the big discoveries in this field found ways to bypass the free nucleobases and instead uses an intermediate that...

You aren't missing anything -- it is the list of literary inspiration Gygax included in the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. Goodman Games does a good job with this content. That's their introduction to the list, and they've got numerous articles on individual authors. The material there remains a...

Yep, that was my point. The assumptions it uses are not well grounded.

The best advice I have is just to read. Read other adventures, classic stories (especially appendix N for Shadowdark), medieval history, contemporary fantasy. Borrow and/or steal as you see fit. Movies in the genre you're going for are also a good bet.

How far does 'in any way' extend? If I, say, put a gun to the opponent's head and demanded they forfeit, have I broken any rules? Or have I won, because my opponent failed to position a sniper to neutralize such a threat? (Thinking of Ivan & Abdul from The Grasshopper, if that means anything)...

My point was that a measurement can be done in RPGs. It just typically isn't. The last part gets at a key divide I see in approaches to RPGs. In my games, the GM can't crush the player like a bug regardless, because they are bound by formal and informal rules. Formal: if an opponent tries to...

Anyone else look at the paper? This about sums up the level of argument:

I don't think it makes sense to tie the existence of skill to the measurement of skill. In principle this measurement can be done by running different groups through the same mod with the same GM. Or does the level of subjectivity in GMing make it impossible? I'm not sure how I feel about that...

Next we can say nothing is free to play because everything has opportunity costs...language can't always be perfect, but "pay" and "free" relating to money is a common usage, and it doesn't make sense to insist that someone is wrong for adopting that usage.

Imo there is a conceptual difference. If I run games at a con and they give me a comped badge, I wouldn't consider it to be paid GMing. Ime folks, myself included, who are opposed to paid GMing are fine with that practice. Granted, it is a subtle distinction.

I think your analysis is based on a transactional view of how religion works. I'm not going to mention specifics but want to note that is not always the dynamic at play. Often a follower of a religion will believe despite no temporal benefit, or even temporal harm as a result. The idea that the...

It's the two step that bothers me. (1) This text presents things simply but there are nuanced ideas in it followed by (2) there is a problem with the text's simplistic understanding. But the text doesn't just have a simplistic understanding, as stated in (1). Rather than making that assumption...

This seems more like the author working through some personal stuff than a criticism of Star wars. Given the strongest examples complicating the "Jedi good, sith bad" dichotomy were put there by Lucas, it seems to me a misreading of the text.

When the utilitarian calculus overrides the deontological one. That point will vary for everyone, but a good place to start is the debate about say, Kant's approach to lying. I imagine the arguments will fall along similar lines, because lying is, in a certain sense, an attempt at mind control...

In that case I wonder to what extent it is a useful distinction. I think it is real--but most games are more linear than Skyrim, so it is subcategorizing a niche.