“If our strict measures were not accepted, then our organization could become careless and it could result in eroding the public’s trust,” he said.

They don’t think telling this guy to starve in his old age over $7 will undermine public trust? It’s undermining my trust in this official’s judgment right now!

I guess I don’t live in Kyoto so they probably don’t give a rat’s ass what I think.

I mean, it depends on the edition. In AD&D the damage of fireball increases faster than your HP: you deal 1d6 damage per level and you gain 1d4 HP per level (and you don’t get an automatic max roll at first level), so on average a fifth level caster has 12.5 max hp and deals 17.5 damage on a failed save.

Nowadays with higher hit dice and higher average Constitution scores and potentially larger Constitution-based hp bonuses, it’s more survivable for sure. It also doesn’t expand to fill its nominal volume if cast indoors, so it’s a lot easier to find space to cast it in dungeons without frying yourself.

Edit: This is ignoring the fact that not all mages are equally likely to survive to fifth level; rolling higher HP makes you way more likely to survive to the next level, so I suspect if we surveyed players of fifth level mages the actual average HP would be somewhat higher, with the low rollers having been filtered out by dart traps, lucky kobolds, etc.

It’s been a long time, but it’s supposed to be coming out this year.

I guess the video games probably aren’t canon, but I think it was The Force Unleashed that “revealed” that Vader intentionally planted the seeds of the Rebellion to create an opportunity to overthrow Palpatine, which makes all the times he or his troopers “fail” to stop the heroes make more sense.

Hey, I like puns! I think this one could have been very funny if the thing we were letting sink in was harmless, and not his acquisition of the world’s largest microblogging platform for the purpose of controlling public discourse.

Inspire allies to perform better or push their limits, bolster them against mental damage and heal mental damage they’ve sustained, raise the morale of a group (especially if that group shares my religion). Bonuses to public speaking, negotiation, religious knowledge, etc.

If I belong to a more fire-and-brimstone type religion, perhaps I can intimidate sinners, make my allies more effective against heretics, etc.

Yes, I think we should abolish the police and dismantle the army. That’s, like, the whole point. They’re responsible for most of the violence!

“If you’re a masochist who enjoys being punished for little to no reward, this game is for you,” reads another negative review.

Hot damn, they made this update just for me? I was holding off checking out POE2 but I guess I should.

I was just thinking about this. That 125% tariff on Chinese goods leaves a lot of room for profit if you can circumvent customs, and then undercut legitimate importers.

Well, the good thing about the inert gas systems is that they work even if the fire starts when you aren’t there. We didn’t have the budget for one, so we just hoped there wouldn’t be a fire after 5pm.

This is like the place I worked where our server room fire suppression system was a handheld extinguisher and a “Guardian Angel of Computers” wall hanging.

I feel like this list has some games that are too new to put on a “most influential” list. Let’s give it at least a few years to see how Baldur’s Gate 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 influence the industry.

On the other end, how is Rogue not on the list? The number of games calling themselves “roguelikes” or “roguelites” has been ballooning every year for the better part of a decade now, and some of its ideas have found their way into other genres, especially the use of procedurally generated level layouts.

Edit: Ohhhhh the poll methodology was to ask people to pick one game, and then they sorted them by popularity. So even though I think Rogue is definitely a top-20-most-influential game, it’s harder to argue for it being top 1. But… that makes it even crazier that KCD2 is on the list. A significant number of people voted for KCD2 as “THE most influential game of all time”? It just came out!

Gal Guardians: Servants of the Dark. It’s a Metroidvania by Inti Creates about two demon maid sisters who are trying to restore their dark master, the demon lord Maxim Onslaught, after his defeat at the hands of a rival demon lord. You level up by collecting your lord’s scattered bones, which unlocks new abilities as well as raising your stats, and you can collect subweapons as loot with random modifiers, and then condense the modifiers you want onto the weapons you like. You can swap between the sisters at any time (or play with a friend in co-op): one has a submachine gun, which is long range but consumes ammo, and the other has a whip which is short range but high damage.

It’s superficially similar to the previous game, Gal Guardians: Demon Purge, which features two sisters in high school who are demon hunters trying to save their school from being transformed into a demon castle. But in addition to being significantly less horny (Demon Purge had a panty-collecting side quest… these games are in the same setting as Gal*Gun, so I guess this is to be expected), Servants has a much more open and interconnected world, compared to Demon Purge where the castle is separated into levels that mostly don’t cross over into each other. At the same time, the design for each individual room is a lot less tight: in Demon Purge, almost every room has a specific challenge to overcome, but in Servants there are many filler rooms, and the difficulty of the enemy layouts is lower overall.

There are also a lot of elements I would consider somewhat half-baked, including the subweapon upgrade system and the way rebuilding the castle is handled. Overall it doesn’t reach nearly the same heights as their excellent Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon and Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2, which I would consider the best modern Castlevania-like. Koji Igarashi was involved in that one, so maybe that’s not surprising.

I would only recommend Servants of the Dark to fans of Demon Purge who don’t mind the shift in level design, or who need something less embarrassing to suggest for co-op with a friend. If you’re looking for a Castlevania-style game and haven’t played any of the games I mentioned, I’d start with Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon if you’re looking for classic Castlevania, or if you prefer the post-Symphony of the Night games, I recommend Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (also by Koji Igarashi, but with his studio ArtPlay instead of Inti Creates).

So did they not commit suicide, or was Jobst just wrong about the exact circumstances leading up to it?

Calling it a “vulnerability” that someone with full access to an authorized device can use it to authorize another device is crazy. That’s not Signal’s issue, that’s an issue with your device security. The app has to trust the logged in user; if it doesn’t, then even displaying the data could be a breach.

Ahhh that’s the part I forgot or didn’t catch, thanks!

So this isn’t the main point of the article, but near the end they mention the fan game Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden. I don’t know if I’m forgetting the plot of Gaiden or what, but they say it mixes the original game with the plot of Space Jam which… is not how I’d describe it? My recollection is that it takes place in the post-apocalypse and centers around the power of Barkley’s devastating Chaos Dunk, a dunk so sick that it can nuke an entire city.

What does she mean there was a “generational shift” that led to people burning CDs? Back in the floppy disk days, everyone was copying floppies—I remember when my grandfather bought a Mac to use at home, and immediately his friends at work loaded him up with copied disks. Which generation is she thinking of that wasn’t pirating a ton of software?

Visit Granddad.

Americans are notoriously terrible at protesting. I was in high school in the '00s and our American history textbook had a sidebar about the 1999 Seattle WTO protests. The bit that stuck with me: a French dignitary interviewed on the scene was unconcerned about the protesters. He pointed to an untouched BMW (or similar luxury car, I forget the exact make). “In Paris,” he said, “That car would be burning.”