Duckman

The track has the PTC system installed but it is not operational. What that most likely means is that the tracks have it but the engine did not. It's possible there are other ways to keep it from functioning (e.g. failure to power the system) but the information we have does not cover the exact reason. The track definitely do have the PTC installed though.

The way the US legal system works he was suing for other things but that was part of his complaint. It does not claim to hold sole rights to anything but is mentioned to define a class in case any other plaintiffs want to join the suit. It was likely also introduced as a means of back-dooring information into the complaint to demonstrate the nature of the defendant (i.e. claims public domain information as protected IP). There's a reason to avoid reading legal documents unless you really have a vested interest. The US legal system is all about a specific process which is intentionally obscured so that the layman cannot represent himself and thereby deprive some poor, deserving lawyer of his retainer and $500 per hour.

I had not heard of these guys and they were linked in a discord I read. Can't speak to the quality of their stuff or anything but I thought others might be interested in their stuff. http://www.tablewar.com/

I'm not sure that telling people that unless they are willing to make large expenditures they should reconsider entering the hobby is the best way to support either the hobby or the LGS. There are a number of ways to actually get into wargaming that don't involve the purchase of a new rulebook and a new army and I don't mean PirateBay either. Used armies and books and where they are available PDFs are all options to lower the cost and keep the hobby alive. And as more and more wargames come out through kickstarter or largely online sales those games are going to become the model for the future and they are not, by their very nature, going to support the LGS. So when confronted with the choice, do you let the hobby die because it does not support the LGS or do you try to bring new blood into the hobby even if it means a new business model and a new venue for gaming? I think you still have to support the people creating the IP, whether it is rules or models or electronic platforms to play on. Otherwise you might as well write off the hobby entirely and the LGS is dead anyway.

You seem to have missed the point of my post, Pax. This is actually not about whether or not I support my LGS. It's about *how* I support my LGS. I look at products and decide if they are worth the price they are marketed at. Paizo's books at $45 for a hardcover book offering new spells or new combat feats is not something I will buy, period. I am a good enough GM that I can come up with my own content and my own relatively well-balanced spells if I want to. As such, I am not going to buy that product, period, and my LGS gets no support. I am not such a philanthropist that I will go out and donate $45 to my LGS to keep it in business. On the other hand, when the same product is presented for pennies, I will give it a very different look. You're trying to draw a distinction between Barnes and Noble and Amazon and the LGS. You've missed the point. No matter how reputable or nice the buggy-whip vendor is, they are all but dead because the buggy-whip is no longer the most efficient tool (or even in demand) in our society. Similarly, print books (and boxed minis and albums from the big music labels) are being replaced by digital content and print-on-demand because those paths to market are so much more efficient and cost effective. When you remove the choke-hold on the distribution path held by traditional publishers of these products the IP becomes cheaper and more readily available to the consumer. If you want to identify some *other* benefit that the retailer provides (e.g. tables to play at and a social forum) then look at a way of maintaining that product (e.g. the gaming cafe) and quit trying to save the doomed aspects. As a retail vendor of certain types of IP, the LGS and the book store are doomed. Over time that market has no option but to dry up and die. Whether it is kickstarter eating 70+% of the market for new games by offering direct-to-consumer sales or online digital content, those products are moving away from the traditional retail storefront. Every person here who purchases kickstarter minis or Jim's castings like his excellent terrain and objective markers is taking money away from the LGS. And I'm going to praise Jim for bringing an excellent product to market and using a new and more efficient means to do so. I don't know if he could have done it with traditional publishing but it doesn't matter because of the new technologies available to him. So the need is not to support the LGS in the specific (although I do where it makes sense), but to identify the things about the LGS that are not being replaced by the digital content revolution. Space for gaming and social interaction is clearly one of these and is why I hold up Ordo as an ideal means of perpetuating the hobby. Conventions like GameStorm and Dragonflight also provide a unique experience that is not being replaced. Online forums and tools are also going a long way toward providing the social environments and digital tables or other tools for gaming though. These environments provide access to many more people and encourage them to invest in the IP and perpetuate the hobby in a way that the retail storefronts cannot. I can't roleplay or wargame locally. I am in central Mexico in a small town and there simply is not a social group participating in that kind of thing here (at least not one known to the folks who frequent the local ex-pat forums, physical or virtual) and there is certainly no LGS for me to support. I can still participate in those activities through the internet though and so I still invest in RPGs and games, supporting the hobby and the holders of the IP. That's not hypocrisy, that's identifying what is important to me and supporting it as much as I can without being a foolish wastrel.

Direct profit or tax write-off, Paizo is benefiting because I bought something that I would not have at full price. While I understand the loss of support for the LGS or the local bookstore, the same problem has been killing the LGS regularly. For popular gaming titles I can wait until I get a Barnes and Noble discount and then go ask my LGS to offer me the same price on the title and they can't match it so if I go support Barnes and Noble I am not supporting the LGS. Taking it a step further, publishing is a hideously wasteful medium in this day and age and it allows specific publishers to dictate content in a way that is detrimental to the market. That's not to say that they don't provide some good services (like editing and proof reading) but at the same time they also refuse good, solid titles because they control the market and they don't want a property in a specific niche at the moment. This applies to fiction and literature just as much as it applies to roleplaying. Kevin Simbieda, for example, is in desperate need of an editor, a proof reader and some playtesters, but all the same I am happy that he put out Rifts as it is a great setting that deserved a chance. Hugh Howey is another good example of someone who had a good product that was not picked up by traditional publishing. Then you go into the cost of producing a fixed number of copies and storage and shelf-space and you can compare that to the costs of print-on-demand or digital copies and you see why the big publishers and the music industry are in a panic. The people in control are looking at a market that is no longer willing to support their salaries because they no longer hold a monopoly on distribution and they have no other useful purpose in the business. While this does not bode well for the LGS (at least regarding published material) it honestly is one of the best things to happen to fiction, literature and music as it has provided more people access to more material. Like the LGS, hobbies like roleplaying and wargaming have got to figure out how to perpetuate themselves in this environment and I think clubs like Ordo are one of the best answers. To be honest, a LGS is a terrible environment for a lot of people. They tend to have local cliques and in some (or even many cases) are downright hostile to outsiders, whether being defensive or just abrasive. I've watched wargaming at the LGS and it doesn't often carry the same spirit that you see at Ordo. When you watch roleplaying, you have the same kind of dichotomy. Worse, with a group exercise like roleplaying, the LGS attracts people who cannot find stable groups in private settings. At least with wargaming you see more Ordo-style gamers who also game at the LGS and set a good example. To be honest, the internet itself is killing a lot of the benefit of the LGS (says the guy who still roleplays with his Seattle group every week from 3000+ miles away). Another sign of the world changing... I don't have a good answer for you really, Pax, other than to say the world is changing and through self-publishing and kickstarter the life of the LGS or bookstore owner is changed radically (which I suspect you already know and agree with). I think we both are willing to pay a premium to support those businesses but I am not going to feel guilty about buying something on sale (or from HumbleBundle) when I would not buy it at retail price. I've already made a decision that Paizo's Ultimate Combat or Ultimate Magic are not worth $45 each (plus tax and space to store them and on and on). But if they are offered to me (by the legitimate owner of the IP) then I have no qualms about picking them up for less than the price of a cup of coffee. I also see no harm in telling a teenager where to find a cheap, legal copy of the source books. I'd rather he get involved and support at least the publisher, if not a LGS, rather than see him leave the hobby because he cannot afford the $500+ buy-in. Your extension to the wargaming hobby here is one I have not quite figured out how to handle for myself. GW has been very careful how it manages its IP and I understand why but at the same time other companies like Privateer Press have demonstrated that they can write much more legible rules. I'm not sure I support the idea of $40-$60 for a new codex, especially not one as badly proofed and playtested as some of the GW stuff. At the same time, they have some incredible artists making really good models and I want to support those guys but I haven't figured out how that should be done in the new world of 3D printing unless it is to develop an infrastructure for 3D printing just like print-on-demand books. That, of course, leaves GW themselves in exactly the same position as the record label execs and the printing house managers... They've always made their living by owning the distribution path for the products of their authors and artists and that is simply no longer the most efficient route to market.

Fantasy genre sounds like? Purchased through Steam or something else?

Granted, but if I would not buy the books any other way then Paizo comes out ahead because I bought *something*. The Core Rulebook is worth having in hardback. Everything else is a reference book... I agree that it is easier to sit and page through a hardback but the references rarely rate a page-turning reread.

LOL! You gots too much junk, Pax! (This would be why I bought the PDFs when they went on sale at HumbleBundle .)

Pathfinder has been sold via DriveThruRPG for a while now as PDFs. Check around and see if you can find a copy of the PDFs unless you specifically need a bag full of tome-sized rulebooks. For myself, I have been very happy to move all my rulebooks to a kindle. I also do a lot of my development and plotting at the computer and have plenty of screen-space to have multiple PDFs and my notes open at the same time. You can also find a number of the books, as mentioned, on auction sites if you want the hardbacks. For Pathfinder you'll want the Core Rulebook and the rest is optional. There are at least 6 more titles available which add options and flavors (advanced classes, advanced options, gear, spells, etc.). The Beginner's Box does not actually give you all the content from the Core Rulebook and the GameMastery Guide as I recall. Paiso (the original publisher) offers the PDF of the Core Rulebook for $10 while the hardback runs $50+shipping. You may also be able to catch an offer from HumbleBundle for the books as they have sold Pathfinder in the past. And since we're on the subject of books and PDFs, I will strongly recommend to any GM who has not seen and read it... Find a copy of Robin's Laws. This will do more to improve your awareness of the party and hence your game mastering than any other resource I have ever run across.

How much crunch do you want? Are you looking for a system that has a built-in setting or are you going to develop and use your own setting? Pathfinder is 3.5 with some of the rough edges polished off (and others added, of course). Their system is tied in closely with their setting. It assumes PCs have a profession other than adventuring that takes them from place to place and provides income and loot is balanced accordingly. It has loads of material available in published adventures. The adventures tie together and provide fairly good continuity and interaction... (Remember that amulet you got from the mad wizard 4 adventures ago? It interacts with one of the traps in this one to allow you to bypass it completely!) I have not played 5th edition since the beta but my take on it was that it tried to add back some of the flexibility and crunch that went away in 4th edition. I always felt like 4th Edition was good but really took a lot of the creativity out of players hands. That said, it tries to maintain some of the simplicity of 4th edition by making all modifiers an advantage so you kind of lose the flavor of things... So, are you flanking him or is he off balance or prone or blind? Meh, it's all advantage so take your +2 and go. Pathfinder encourages the GM to think more... Pathfinder wants to allow you to throw a flask of oil and then light it with a flaming arrow. D&D still has a hard time with allowing players to think outside the box although a good GM can allow and encourage it if he's willing to work at it himself (without a lot of support from the rules).

My problem with Jordan is that I think he was writing the standard (for the time) 5-book arc and his publisher said "Oh gawd, don't wrap it up because you will lose readers!" I felt like the 5th book had a solid story and they tacked on a starter chapter and then monkeyed with the ending. (If you outline it and look at what you have it's really clunky.) It's also the point at which he started throwing out all the rules of his universe... This power unmakes things and rolls back time... Except where I need to say oops, king's-x so I can bring back arch baddies that have been defeated to prolong things. Up to that point I felt the writing was reasonably tight, well editted and consistent and that his universe was sound and he had character development. After book 5 he seemed scattered and he lost me as a reader. I've been told he found a way to reshape his arc and that it can be viewed as a coherent whole at a later point but I never gave the series a chance beyond book 6.

Ubisoft has announced two games for free this month. They are giving away World In Conflict (a 2009 war game from Massive Games) until Dec 11th and Assassin's Creed: Black Flag which will be free beginning Dec 12th. Titles are PC only and you have to have UPlay installed and visit the store through UPlay to get the titles.

You must have been very well behaved, Pax. I know *lots* of parents who use a Shopping Cart as means of restraint when a child is running the aisles picking up every shiny that catches their fancy. Most just figure the drop is enough threat that they don't have to put a roof or lid on the cart.

Make no mistake... The company has every opportunity to adapt and provide multiple products. Don't mistake the choice by many companies *not* to produce something as a case of their inability (legal or logistically) to do so. Microsoft could very easily support older versions of their software but they choose not to. Paramount could very easily license and profit from the immense amounts of fanfic out there but they choose not to. There's risk to opening up and allowing all that stuff as diversity comes with its own problems whether it is support logistics or something like the X-files universe which is so fragmented as to be impossible to tie back into a coherent whole. This is a conscious choice by the owners of the IP. It's not one that I think is smart but since I have no interest in being a CEO I am not going to change things that way. The only way I have of interacting with this system is to vote with my $s. It's easy for me to look at products out there and point out examples where being good to your fans has been beneficial (e.g. Supernatural, who actually give a nod to their fanfic every once in a while) vs. IPs that have been closely controlled to the point of stifling (e.g. Star Wars). I have a clear opinion what is the best approach for fiction IPs. Programming is different in terms of requiring support mechanisms and so I understand why Microsoft retires products rather than try to continue to support them. Regardless, in the end it is a company making a choice and if you don't like the choice that they are making then your only option is to vote with your feet. No different from you choices in purchasing gasoline or groceries or watching football games.

Well, here's the deal... Copyright allows the owner of the property to control how it is accessed and, where relevant, produced. Originally this was about profitability and it has, over time, expanded to include product image and production quality. These all make sense and as someone who produces material that is copyrighted I totally support the use of the law in this context. Unfortunately, this does not give the consumer any leverage when a product goes in a direction that they don't like. For example, those of us who hate Windows 10 do not have any legal right to take a copy of Windows 7 and offer it as an alternative to the new Microsoft product (even if it is what people want). It doesn't matter whether we're doing this for profit or not. We also do not have the right to build a clone of Windows 7 and market it as such although we could market it independently under a completely different brand, name and logo. When it comes to intellectual property like Start Trek, there is no difference. We can all argue about whether or not it is good for the franchise or is morally right or not but the truth is that this has nothing to do with the legal reality. And while we can vote with our feet or our money, in the end if CBS and Paramount decide to go this route then you've got two options... Walk away from the product or give in to whatever the company has planned. Paramount is banking on not only the need but also their ability to pull in a whole new era of followers for the product with the new series. I won't be one of them, but as the holder of the copyright, it is their choice to make. Fanfic has never been protected. It's just been ignored or even encouraged (e.g. Supernatural). Worse, what a company ignores today, they can just as easily take notice of tomorrow and you still have no legal justification to stop them.

I so want Guns of Icarus to be a good, fun game but it really only works if you have a team of four to man the ship instead of relying on AI for it. That said, it's a lot of fun when it works for you.

Anyone playing? I'm on PC which has finally released, yay! Enjoying it. Don't do console games so I gave the original a miss. Playing with a bunch of guys from a Discord server that I hang out on (bunch of coders and techies) so I am not pushing to get ahead of folks or anything. Just finished Io and came back to Earth last night.

I've always had a soft spot for "Don't Come Around Here No More". But I will admit that aside from that and Refugee Full Moon Fever has most of my favorites.

So, I went through this trying to make the conversion to the Mexican Pharma system. Aleve is Naproxen Sodium. Over the counter it is a 220mg tablet/capsule with instructions to take one pill per dose (2 for the initial dose if symptoms are bad). Mexico offers 200, 220 and 550mg packaging. Note, that one of the side effects of Naproxen can be migraines, often experienced at particularly high doses. And for a conversation about drugs, this conversation is not nearly random enough for this thread. Is it better to be top dog on the losing team or hind-teat on the winning team?

Yeah, the problem is that TMZ reported that he was dead as early as 1am the night before. The family confirmation came later but TMZ and their precognitive news brigade beat the actual event by roughly 20 hours.

TMZ created the news instead of scooping it. This, among many things, is why I dislike the online paparazzi.

My problem with tapes is that they make vinyl look durable. Too easy to melt, twist, spindle or otherwise mangle a tape. Of course, with the vagabond lifestyle that my wife and I have adopted I am really moving to digital everything. Before we left Seattle I converted everything to digital so that it was more easily portable. At present I have about 17GB of music on my computer here and can move it to my phone and/or car as I desire. It also means that my library of electronica, often only available as a download, doesn't get separated from the rest of my library.. (And to get us back on the music topic)

<shrug> Calling True Blood and others a ripoff of World of Darkness is the same as calling World of Darkness a ripoff of Interview with a Vampire. It's a genre and it has been for forty years, at least fifteen more than World of Darkness has been around. What it boils down to is find a core dice mechanic that works for you. Then worry about setting. A good GM can take an appropriate dice system and build their own setting if they need to. The dice system, however, is key to the way your setting works. Fate is a reasonable mechanic. It is good for storytelling, rewards cooperation and makes well rounded characters very workable. The drawback is that there is no fate-point mechanic or open-ended rolling so some things may just be flat-out impossible for a character. Like GURPS, there are a million settings out there for it. The original 7th Sea (d10) system was and still is amazing. Not only does it have an open-ended rolling system but it has one of the most balanced attribute sets I have ever seen. The d20 7th Sea threw out all the good mechanics in the interest of appealing to d20 players which hosed the setting completely by ruining a number of aspects of the setting. The (d10-based) reboot has some interesting ideas but in the end it fails to deliver the experience of the original setting because the attributes are no longer as balanced as they used to be and the new mechanic is not as well balanced as the original. (The reboot does a much better job of delivering the setting than the d20 version did, however). As has been mentioned, RIFTS was an incredible setting with an abysmal rule-set (Kevin Simbieda need both an editor and a stronger group of play-testers). The Hero System is a good idea that refused to ever standardize on anything which is fine for a group you play with a lot but means it should be avoided at all costs at cons because all target numbers were essentially subject to GM interpretation so if you didn't know the GM you had no idea what to expect. It's a very flexible system good for everything from pulps to heroes to sci-fi and everything in between but it can be awfully crunchy and it rewards the person who is going to go online and research different ways to build the same effect within the rules most cheaply. Iron Crown Enterprises had incredible settings but their core mechanics were abysmal. They had great ideas for powers and races and settings and everything from high fantasy to starcraft and hardcore sci-fi but they built a system that made Starfleet Battles look light on tables. Every combat skill, weapon and power had a unique table of effects. It was very easy to maim characters so even non-lethal damage meant that the character was retired... Savage Worlds is another generic system with a number of settings published for it, some of which are pretty good. The problem is that the core dice mechanic is broken. It is an open ended system but the target numbers are built incorrectly which means that the balance is out of whack (e.g. if your target is an 8 you actually have better odds of success with a d6 skill than you do with a d8). It is an open-ended mechanic which is one point in its favor. Recently there is a host of new games which have adopted Fantasy Flight's mantra of "let's make unique dice that force people to spend more money with us". Starwars is an example of such. They generally do ok but they often suffer from the "some things are impossible" syndrome of not being open-ended and not having any kind of fate point system. Some of the settings are pretty good but the dice mechanics are not terribly unique and so there's nothing outstanding about them.

It dissolves into the blood stream which is filtered.