I once had a session that became infamous amongst my group at the time. There was a magic forest that only the elves knew the way through, but no elves had come through for a while. One of the players was an elf, and I had given him a note explaining that there was a path featuring a sequence of specific species of trees, oak then spruce then elder, that sort of thing. He was supposed to go in the direction moss grew on said trees until seeing the new species, then look for the moss again, and so on and so forth. I expressly noted on the note that if he didn’t see the exact sequence of trees I gave in the note, “something had gone seriously wrong”.

Of course, the idea was that something had gone wrong and the path through the magical maze forest was screwed up, hence no elves arriving recently. My reason for setting it up this way was so that the elf would lead the party into the woods, he’d try to find the path, realize the path was broken, tell the party, and then they’d get down to the business of figuring out what was wrong and fixing it. You know… start the adventure.

Instead, what ensued was an entire multi hour long session of nothing happening. The elf would lead them. I’d tell him the trees they were seeing, out of order. He’d just keep following the moss, the “path” as he always did. I started emphasizing the wrongness of the trees he was seeing. He kept leading the party. I nudged him harder and harder. He just fucking kept going. The party was confused of course, as the whole path thing was supposed to be an elven secret that they didn’t share. And the elf player just kept ramming the entire party’s heads against the stupid wall for real world hours and I couldn’t stop it until I eventually dropped the 4th wall and flat out said this isn’t working, I’ve told you it isn’t working, please do something else! And then we had to end the session and start again next time.

It was incredibly frustrating in the moment, but it actually worked out well for the game as a whole. Became a running gag, a source of a lot of laughs, and it somehow ended up hammering in the point that something was wrong with the world and forest far more effectively than it might have if it had ended quicker. So good times in the end after all…

But MAN was it frustrating in the moment.

Feels like they took the best ideas from Mario Maker, polished it up to a glowing shine, mixed in some great movement, threw in a metric fuckton of whimsy and joy, and overall made a great game.

Someone needs to watch more Sesame Street. :p

I love the analysis done by zompist, here: https://www.zompist.com/chance.htm

In summary, having a few purely coincidental similar words is extremely likely. In fact, if there were no such similarities that would be weirder, from a mathematical perspective… especially (but not necessarily) if you stretch what might be considered a “similar meaning”, which people often do.

I continue working in Japan and have it covered by national insurance.

Haven’t heard of paralives. The one I’m familiar with is “Life by You” from Paradox. I’m hoping for cities skylines integration, which is why I have my eye on that one, even if it is a different developer it’s the same publisher so there’s hope…

(Sorry if you briefly saw a billion duplicate comments from me— Memmy suddenly crashed and when it reopened it seems to have just kept reposting again and again. I think I deleted all the copies now)

A map can almost assuredly be constructed that gives those two districts, even with democrat representatives, and yet maintains overwhelming republican power in the state regardless. Two districts against however many others.

Again, I’m not advocating for this. Gerrymandering is a disgusting practice. But it’s still something I’m pretty sure they could have done.

Yes. Different books call the phenomenon by different names, but it amounts to the same thing.

Long exposure shots can be awesome.

That’s totally fair. As I said, there’s no real way to get into destiny now and understand what’s going on. No way for old players to return, or new players to come in and get caught up. By no means am I saying that’s a good thing.

Regardless of the backlash about this message from the devs, the game is still fun, has tons of content, and if you’ve been following the story for years, a good and engaging story. (Alas, there’s no real good way to catch up on the story at this point if you haven’t been following it…)

This is a better link to explain that concept: https://every.to/p/breaching-the-trust-thermocline-is-the-biggest-hidden-risk-in-business