Strawberry-Cream

"I survived 2020" is just what a brain-eating zombie would say to make us let our guard down.

I'm not fooled, sir. Not fooled.

What could go wrong?

How, how, how can Johnny Silverhand be dark-haired?

Reeves is an actor. Is it asking too much to act the role by dying his hair?

I know, I know, a minor thing... but precisely because it is a minor thing I am disappointed they could not make the minimum effort required for continuity and immersion. And making an effort still is wired to showing respect in my brain...

Damn, 2020 is a weird year if things like this start ticking me off

Definitely a great hook for a desert CP game, was my first thought. Some corporation raking in the dough due to their nanotech greening up the desert, upsetting the balance of power through food and water... leading to rival corps, nations, criminal enterprises and militant activists wanting a slice of the pie, alter the regional balance, or access for the masses...

Then again, did you guys read how solar panels power poppy farming in Afghanistan these days, suddenly making it commercially viable to operate pumps in the desert?

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53450688 - "What the heroin industry can teach us about solar power"

The plots are writing themselves these days!

https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/follow-the-food/the-spray-that-turns-deserts-into-farmland.html

Regrettably it's not smart yet, but we're getting there.

On 29/08/2020 at 19:42, Dog Soldier said:

Well I'm back checking here regularly again so I guess the future may be bleak

You're just here hoping we act as your world-spanning spy network in case your lawn mower shows up somewhere around the globe! 

Well, apart from armour there's always the body damage tolerance to consider, which also applies per hit. We almost immediately house-ruled that armour cannot push damage below 1 and body cannot push damage below 2 (yes - you read that right). I do not remember whether we altered KO/EX check rules, so any hit could potentially at least knock you out, but we may have done so to alter the thresholds for those "fully absorbed" hits.

Our games were mostly more restricted in militancy to begin with - if we mostly played a civilian set-up, our characters had to worry about what guns they could get away with hiding / had access to acquire, and if we did play militarised outfits, well, the baddies usually weren't armed with a .22.

In any case, with "vanilla" rules small arms are very niche, I agree. You need to be able to cause at least KO checks or it's just the wrong gun for the job.

On 14/08/2020 at 04:11, Cybernetic Jesus said:

Love it! It so aptly captures that despite the negative attitudes existing towards Metal for its superficial projection of being "dangerous" or "nihilistic", it is actually a lifestyle of joy and tolerance, where you embrace life precisely because you know its insignificance. Metallers seldom get hung up on, or try to deny, our fear of our own mortality and thus provide one good piece of advice on how to live life more fully.

Also I have been saying for years that the only solution to racism is misanthropy - just hate everyone equally - so I approve of this message.

On 28/08/2020 at 16:04, Dog Soldier said:

Strawberry-Cream,  that's the best thing that I've read in quite some time!  I look forward to any future rants you might feel obliged to share (as I continue the search for that lawn mower)

If I ever get to GM a cyberpunk again, the hunt for a stolen souped-up lawn-mower will be the initial party hook. ❤️

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😶

So I figured you guys would know how we call a Mulligan on 2020. Any ideas?

I suppose there are some parallels to cyberpunk fiction, though I guess instead of one "corporate" reality juxtaposed to the few outsiders rebelling against it, we now have bubble spheres for almost everything, and usually being split down the middle to keep in perpetual conflict and echo-chambers. And even people who should be sensitive to such things are falling for it, or think themselves so much smarter that they fall for the weirdest theories and psychological traps without ever stopping to apply Occam's razor.

In my naive mind, Democracy would function a bit like this: We have problem X. Some people think A is the solution, others B, and some C. Now there is a discussion on the respective merits, criteria are agreed upon and attributes weighted, compromises are made, and we come up with a solution that would ideally be decent, but in reality often is a flawed compromise that is at least effective enough to keep the thing from blowing up now.

But this seems unworkable nowadays (and this started probably at the beginning of the millennium), because we seem to be incapable of even agreeing upon what reality is. Some people trust news sources that "feel" right more than actual facts and have no media literacy, source research education or any semblance of rationality, preferring to seek emotional reinforcement instead because it just feels better. Feelings are more important than facts, and every opinion has merit (especially your own) and needs to be considered. Even if this is fundementally ridiculous - you cannot agree to disagree on existential threats to the planet's habitability, can you? And just because somebody somewhere holds some opinion, it is somehow worthy of full consideration. The filter used to be media, and while on one side this meant that even valid minority opinions may have been suppressed, it now means that every nutjob can enter the most outrageous "theory" into the public debate, without any threshold or weeding; in fact with media often being complicit due to their eroding income and being reliant on attention for revenue, and less and less support for often times relatively decent, objective-criterion based state-funded (but not run!) media.

Yet on the other hand, everybody who holds a different opinion is also immediately a bad person / stupid and ignorant / WORSE THAN HITLER / a dumb redneck / a liberal faggot, and needs to be cancelled / kill themselves / stop whining, while the aim of discussion now seems to be to DESTROY, CRUSH and OBLITERATE your interlocutor, rather than seeing it as an exercise that might enrich you both.

And then, there is no forgiveness, no compromise. Suddenly, it is more important to display our own moral superiority and outrage by condemning everybody for every mistake they may have ever made, regardless of context (and timeframe), and denying the possibility of learning, growing, redemption & improvement. Is this something we only manage to envision because we are roleplayers and understand the concept of levelling up and increasing ability scores, I wonder? But it seems everybody is now willing to throw the first stone and consider themselves without sin.

It is all so very exhausting. Some of it seems natural: Loud, extreme people tend to be drawn to the extremes, and with less and less community identity provided by broad, hopefully benevolent inclusive social institutions, the center simply cannot hold because whatever inconsistent, fallacious theory you find appealing, you will get it validated someplace. And those normies (the word itself now being bandied about as an insult) are usually too busy living their lives, worrying about job, kids, pension (and their lawns / stolen lawn mowers 😎) and not prone to extremism anyway.

So let's have more maniacal moderates. Crusading centrists. Intolerant tolerants. Rampaging realpolitikers. Preachy pragmatists. Added alliterations, you get the point! Rise up and give a solid middle-finger to both sides of the political divide, to piss off with their pet peeves and half-baked mental re-tweeting.

Please tell me that I am not mistaken and that this is the place for at least some of you people - those people who get attacked by the left for even owning a gun or finding guns marvellous pieces of technology, and by the right for thinking that they can hunt & sport fine without a G36 with underbarrel grenade launcher. Those people who think it silly that others worry about what consenting adults do in their bedroom, but that maybe chromosomes have some basis in reality and that maybe girls should get to choose whether they let XY-people into their bathrooms. Those of us who think most of the culture war bullshit is just distraction. Those of us who are not offended by the truth, but do not weaponise it to offend. Those of us who dare admit they enjoy their electric cars for their superb, responsive feel of acceleration AND their reduced environmental impact. Those of us who can drink a glass of wine with somebody of different political persuasion - without a shouting match. Those of us who see the point and try to reduce our meat consumption but just like the taste of a good barbecue too much to quit entirely. Those of us who are complex and conflicted people, sinners all, trying to improve and better ourselves and navigate our lives without taking the cop-out of replacing ourselves with some token ideology. Those of us that think that religion, or lack thereof, is usually a private matter. Those of us who accept that reality is not based on our desires, wishful thinking and political theories but hard, observable facts that we just have to deal with.

Please tell me some of you still lurk out here - because I think I need a hug, big time 😄.

Thanks for humouring my rant, friends!

Comrade van Atta, dobry dzień! That is a weird coincidence, I have not seen you around for ages, either... 😉

Man, Dog Soldier! How is the clan? And I remember that lawn mower. Damn, I really thought they would find something that size.

And a Rockwolf! Seems I got myself a decent set of familiar faces to feel less scared by. 😃

Things have a future now? I call fake news.

Unfamiliar things scare me.

All these birthdays make want to wish you ignorance of your own mortality, the true source of the blissful joy of youth .

Wszystkiego najlepszego z okazji urodzin, comrade.

Whatever happened to that lawn-mower?

My heart-fealt congratulations and well-wishes to you, Sir!

2014 shall have operation tax evasion... I mean, romantic wedding. Totally romantic wedding.

The reason we do not congratulate you is because your birthday has not come to pass in our parts of the world by the time you lose patience, future mook!

Happy b-day and all that .

I wish you a very dobry birthday indeed, gramps .

Perfect fodder for your Solos and others.

Wait... isn't it the other way around?

Hey,

Jagged Alliance and all its various sequels are currently pretty cheap on GOG (www.gog.com). I actually picked up a copy of the core game again (for the ease of having one stored digitally and to run fire-and-forget rather than having to fiddle with DosBox myself), and immediately got sucked back into the addiction... I think the fiancée is starting to get jealous of the time I spend in company of Ivan, Grunty and Speck on Metavira island...

Links to the individual games:

http://www.gog.com/gamecard/jagged_alliance

http://www.gog.com/gamecard/jagged_alliance_deadly_games

http://www.gog.com/gamecard/jagged_alliance_2

http://www.gog.com/gamecard/jagged_allianc...nished_business

http://www.gog.com/gamecard/jagged_alliance_2_wildfire

Cheers,

"An upcoming RPG from the creators of The Witcher and The Witcher 2"

Oh, great, so we can expect...

- shitty translation

- female characters so compelling they'll have to be reduced to collectible cards or their sheer awesome characterisation would blow our minds

- game menus and controls more reminiscent of an excel spreadsheet than of sleeek, intuitive cyberpunk elegance

- immersive, story-based missions like "bring me 10 cyberpsycho headsets", "now bring me 10 elder cyberpsycho headsets" and finally "the time has come to bring me the headset of an ancient cyberpsycho"

to just name a few.

Yeah, don't see the hype... let's hope this thing doesn't do damage to the genre.

OT- Strawberry cream is back!

Lies and slander.

You must be one hundred-thirty or something now!

Congratulations and all the best wishes .