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  1. Ruin Explorer

    Your most pointless TV/movie/book nitpicks

    Rare reverse example - Slow Horses S5. (Not really spoilers as this happens nearly immediately) - A guy shoots a bunch of people with an assault rifle, gets sniped at the end of his rampage (by someone waiting for him to finish), and I was immediately like, "Well, that's a 5.56mm weapon, and...
  2. Ruin Explorer

    How do you like your steak?

    I voted medium-rare but honestly if I trust the place and the steak quality, rare is what I increasingly prefer. But either of those elements is questionable medium-rare. I've had blue steak and have had mixed experiences with it honestly, so I'm not super-keen on that. By the time you've got...
  3. Ruin Explorer

    Dungeons & Dragons: Warlock Video Game Announced by Invoke Studios

    Right? That's the the sort of thing that it's very easy to claim, and countless games have claimed something along those lines, but relatively few of them have actually lived up to that. More often it's just that you have a couple of kinda-flexible abilities and some really easy puzzles...
  4. Ruin Explorer

    D&D General "True Neutral": Bunk or Hogwash

    There's no actuality to in any edition of D&D that I'm aware of. This is what I was referring to when I pointed out that Gygax/Arneson have a lot to answer for, because they were the ones who decided to expand TN from being between Law and Chaos (where it made sense, and where the consequences...
  5. Ruin Explorer

    D&D General "True Neutral": Bunk or Hogwash

    "Players" very much including DMs here, I presume? Most of the absolute worst takes on alignment that I've ever come across "in the field" have been from DMs. Indeed the very first time alignment became an issue in D&D for my group was one I've mentioned a few times - when a DM told us we "had...
  6. Ruin Explorer

    D&D General "True Neutral": Bunk or Hogwash

    To be fair to Mordenkainen, which I don't really wanna be but w/e, the concept of The Balance in an FR perspective relates specifically to the gods, and is backed/enforced/desired by AO, the super-god, it doesn't relate to like, day-to-day activities/horrors normally. But it would mean, at the...
  7. Ruin Explorer

    D&D General "True Neutral": Bunk or Hogwash

    According to Gary Gygax literally everyone in this picture could be Lawful Good except the bearded guy holding Stabby back, who would have to be NG or CG. I'm not kidding or exaggerating, note, he was very clear that killing defenceless prisoners was A-ok for LG, even women and children (he was...
  8. Ruin Explorer

    D&D General "True Neutral": Bunk or Hogwash

    This is probably the most coherent take I've seen on this - there's no logical reason it should be generally appealing or even seen as correct (it's basically a pure anti-change position) but it's one that has consistency and makes logical sense, even if you say "Well that's codswallop!", which...
  9. Ruin Explorer

    D&D General "True Neutral": Bunk or Hogwash

    What exactly are you referring to? I can't see anything they did as actively fighting back against good or promoting evil for the sake of evil, but perhaps I'm forgetting something. He talks the talk re: The Balance (which is a formal but basically deprecated concept in FR cosmology - it's been...
  10. Ruin Explorer

    D&D General "True Neutral": Bunk or Hogwash

    I don't think Daoism can really be argued to oppose Good, or to promote Evil, in D&D senses, though. Daoism certainly fits with Moorcockian neutrality - i.e. between Chaos and Order, but ultimately it's actually pretty concerned with what it sees as "good". I mean, for example, the "three...
  11. Ruin Explorer

    D&D General "True Neutral": Bunk or Hogwash

    Yeah the second point is the huge issue. The whole thing is very firmly Gygax and Arneson's own stupid fault. They're both worthy of significant criticism for creating the whole situation. True Neutral made sense when the Cosmic Forces were Chaos and Law, neither of which was inherently "good"...
  12. Ruin Explorer

    D&D General D&D Archetypes that spread out to other settings and media

    Priests healing people isn't remotely a D&D thing. Sorry but no. Priests have had "healing powers" in myth and legend and even people's day-to-day lives (as far as they believe) for at a minimum 5000 years. D&D doesn't get to claim that lol. Clerics are very different to priests. Clerics and...
  13. Ruin Explorer

    D&D General D&D Archetypes that spread out to other settings and media

    Warhammer Fantasy is interesting here because it has some D&D influence but a lot more direct Moorcockian influence. Like I think it's probably reasonable to say Moorcock was the biggest early literary influence on Warhammer Fantasy (40K is a complex one), with Tolkien next, and D&D third. D&D...
  14. Ruin Explorer

    D&D General D&D Archetypes that spread out to other settings and media

    Definitely not. Games Workshop did that. Green orcs with tusks are 100% a GW thing. They had them from the mid-1980s or earlier, and D&D continued with pig-orcs and grey orcs as the main approach for a very long time after that. A lot of Warcraft is taken from Warhammer Fantasy because...
  15. Ruin Explorer

    D&D General WotC Continues D&D's Advance To Digital First Brand

    Why you gotta hurt me like this man, that's brutal. That said I can't rule it out when they're trying to sell games for $90 and stuff already (I mean, they always did, but it's becoming a lot more common). God knows how much GTA VI will cost.
  16. Ruin Explorer

    D&D General Hasbro CEO Says AI Integration Has Been "A Clear Success"

    I think the big question with AI doing a lot of that stuff is "Why would I want to read something nobody wrote?" and that very much applies to powerpoints. It's bad enough, criminal even that 100 slide powerpoints exist (anyone who uses more than 10 slides for a non-super-technical presentation...
  17. Ruin Explorer

    D&D General WotC Continues D&D's Advance To Digital First Brand

    I'm pretty sure we've already had products like that, just for years and not for major RPGs. I suspect if I thought about it hard enough I could come up with one. But yeah when we see this for D&D or w/e that's going to be pretty bad. And it will happen. How people and WotC react to it will be...
  18. Ruin Explorer

    D&D General WotC Continues D&D's Advance To Digital First Brand

    You've made no case whatsoever for there being a common irrational sentimental attachment, merely asserted that there is one. amd just pre-insulted and pre-demeaned anyone who thinks that non-digital-heavy approaches have value! Which you now agree they undeniably do! Why come in that hot? When...
  19. Ruin Explorer

    D&D General WotC Continues D&D's Advance To Digital First Brand

    And let's be clear - this has been WotC/Hasbro's goal since 2008. The disastrous "We want to make D&D like WoW" interview in 2008 wasn't a WotC guy expressing the idea that he wanted D&D to be an MMO, or play like an MMO, even though people misrepresented or misunderstood the out-of-context...
  20. Ruin Explorer

    D&D General Hasbro CEO Says AI Integration Has Been "A Clear Success"

    It's notable that the wording here is extremely careful. All the actual examples given are ones that consumers don't really care about - "financial planning, forecasting, order management, supply chain operations, training and everyday productivity". But they're clearly using it in ways other...
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