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  1. Ruin Explorer

    D&D General You Were Rolling Up a New Character, and Just Rolled a 3. What Is Your Reaction?

    Yeah really putting the 3 in CON is absolutely the smart play here if the DM won't allow you to re-roll it for some reason.
  2. Ruin Explorer

    D&D General How Did You Generate Your Most Recent Character's Stats?

    My experience is that nice (i.e. almost all) adult players will always act like a rising tide lifts all ships, but on close observation, it's pretty obvious that significantly poor balance of any kind results in people have more/less fun, barring truly unusual individuals (in either direction)...
  3. Ruin Explorer

    D&D General The Monsters Know What They're Doing ... Are Unsure on 5e24

    Power-tripping DMs/GMs/Storytellers etc. are a real thing, and sometimes that power-tripping manifests as being a "killer DM", especially if the person has already had the idea that a good DM is a killer DM inculcated in them. I'm not sure that antisocial behaviour is reliably curbed by...
  4. Ruin Explorer

    D&D General The Monsters Know What They're Doing ... Are Unsure on 5e24

    That you have to phrase it like that demonstrates that the stretch is definitely not on my part! Nor really yours! But on the blogger. "Single-class" and "not incorrect" and "raised" is very different from: That's a lot! That's a wild and prima facie untrue claim to make. We can argue that in...
  5. Ruin Explorer

    D&D General The Monsters Know What They're Doing ... Are Unsure on 5e24

    Yeah it's a shockingly shallow and rather unevidenced take from this blog. The idea that 5E14 was "internally consistent" but 5E24 isn't, is frankly, well it's kinda dim as a take. There's no really any clever or generous way to describe it. That's at best a silly and rather vapid claim. Also...
  6. Ruin Explorer

    Upcoming AAA/AA CRPGs or story-based RPGs (updated 15/12/2025 following The Game Awards)

    Treating this separately, I think the issue is that Swen (not Sven, but I assume that's autocorrect's devilish hand at work) has promoted Larian specifically on that basis! You seem to be writing here as if people had merely assumed Larian were a "gaming paradise" (whatever that means -...
  7. Ruin Explorer

    Upcoming AAA/AA CRPGs or story-based RPGs (updated 15/12/2025 following The Game Awards)

    As I said, the sex assault guy appears to be based in Warsaw. No idea how that could be confusing and it's certainly not "speculation" in the same sense as "Right-wing views may not be fireable offence there, or at least could require a significant paper trail". That's the least-informed...
  8. Ruin Explorer

    Upcoming AAA/AA CRPGs or story-based RPGs (updated 15/12/2025 following The Game Awards)

    You know, you could just... not speculate wildly about Europe as it if was Mars or Faerun. I can tell you, you can absolutely fire someone in any country Larian has offices in*, for expressing fascist/racist views - they're not a protected characteristic (insanely, bigoted anti-trans views...
  9. Ruin Explorer

    What are you reading in 2025?

    I see. I guess I'm kind of the opposite way, I really don't like lickspittle/fainting/damsel-type female characters in cis-hetero stuff unless they're actual lunatics/stalkers (when it sort of wraps around to being kind of fun again), which are sadly not uncommon in the worse-written shonen-type...
  10. Ruin Explorer

    What are you reading in 2025?

    Wait people hate Nynaeve and Egwaene? I had no idea. I guess both of them can be wet blankets at times but honestly a lot of the characters in WoT could benefit from some wet blanketry!
  11. Ruin Explorer

    Street Fighter 2026 Teaser Trailer

    I feel like Peck sort of almost karmically balances Schulz here (I mean, you shouldn't need to karmically balance your cast but w/e), I was just watching him as a guest judge on RuPaul's Drag Race (S15 I think, I'm catching up), he was pretty fun. Also like, I think he'll definitely be able to...
  12. Ruin Explorer

    Dungeons & Dragons: Warlock Video Game Announced by Invoke Studios

    Now that is a deep cut! I hadn't thought about that game for a long time. Re: "change who you're playing" in an action-y game (as opposed to a CRPG), the problem is that every game that's done that has both flopped sales-wise and been poorly reviewed. Clive Barker's Jericho, Agents of Mayhem...
  13. Ruin Explorer

    Today I learned +

    Orion is positively sane compared to the proposed usage for an actual nuclear ramjet, Project Pluto. On a charming note, Putin recently claimed to have basically resurrected Project Pluto (though the complete lack of radioactivity from the test in October strongly suggests the whole "nuclear...
  14. Ruin Explorer

    Upcoming AAA/AA CRPGs or story-based RPGs (updated 15/12/2025 following The Game Awards)

    Also whilst I mentioned he is good at hiring the right people, it's come to light that the process they use to do this is sometimes nightmarish and exploitative: There's more reporting on other people with similar experiences here...
  15. Ruin Explorer

    What are you reading in 2025?

    I think a lot of those authors are pretty influential on sort of Japanese writers who basically created the shonen genre too, though. It's not like there's any lack of awareness of Austen/Dickens/Tolstoy in Japan (Austen I know is particularly big/influential/well-regarded), and yeah...
  16. Ruin Explorer

    Upcoming AAA/AA CRPGs or story-based RPGs (updated 15/12/2025 following The Game Awards)

    Yeah, it's er... not great. I've maintained for a long time that Swen is essentially kind of an idiot who is good at basically two things - hiring the right people and keeping his company private (and he's potentially wavering slightly on the latter). But there have been signs he has Bad Ideas...
  17. Ruin Explorer

    Street Fighter 2026 Teaser Trailer

    Yeah he's a jerk, and it's a pity they cast him, but at least he's playing a minor character and one whose primary claim to Street Fighter fame is that he sucks.
  18. Ruin Explorer

    What are you reading in 2025?

    I've been saying this for years too but yeah @Retros_x explains with words what I only had as a vague instinct. I think there are actually quite a decent subset of fantasy novels, especially of the "Epic Fantasy" subgenre who would be easily best-adapted as anime if being adapted to a visual...
  19. Ruin Explorer

    Upcoming AAA/AA CRPGs or story-based RPGs (updated 15/12/2025 following The Game Awards)

    Minor update as Swen said that Divinity will be a turn-based RPG like DOS/BG3, but "brought to the next level" (which I can only assume means even more cutscenes!). This is of note mostly because the original Divinity was actually a Diablo-like ARPG, just more story-heavy.
  20. Ruin Explorer

    Upcoming AAA/AA CRPGs or story-based RPGs (updated 15/12/2025 following The Game Awards)

    Updated this for The Game Awards - will try to update quarterly at least going forwards.
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