Best posts made by Ganymede

@Tyche said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

Are you one of those that suggest that I might not be acting in my own enlightened interest. Is it possible that I might be deplorable?

Whether or not one is deplorable is not dependent upon whether one works against one's own interest. Similarly, working against one's own interest does not make one deplorable.

And have you ever given thought to how Canada and the rest of the world have and still benefits from public and private medical research in the United States because of that business model. You know like half of the entire world's spending. And the reason it IS spent here.

There are lots of reasons why a lot of research is done in the United States, and I see no reason to believe that it is solely due to how the medical industry works in this country.

That aside, where are the results of that research? For all of that spending, the United States isn't within a sling's shot of the top 10 nations for health and wellness. We can draw a lot of conclusions based on anecdotes, but I would like to think that a nation that is spending around $110B on medical research would have comparable results to its birth rate and life expectancy.

What is really said is that, while U.S. investment in medical research is actually dropping, so is its status in overall R&D. While it is #1 in the world for total spending, it is #11 for % GDP. The country ranks behind Israel and Switzerland for % GDP spending, which is sad for a nation whose economic dominance was largely based on its ability to out-research other nations.

All of that aside, it is economically feasible to cover every American with Medicare / Medicaid at the current compensation levels. Despite the proliferation of the cruelty of social medicine, there are still many, many Nobel Prize recipients in the field of medicine or physiology that hail from socialist nations, just as there are Americans.

It is not infeasible to devise a system that works better. The private industry has made some "breakthroughs" that have helped to lower costs, but the industry itself has to be regulated by government if it is to survive. From what I've observed, it is the competition itself that makes the system fail.

@yyrqun said in Fallout: Montreal:

Question: Will Frenglish be the official language?

That's a trick question. Quebecois do not speak French; they speak Quebecois.

And, goddammit, that will be the thing that keeps me off the game. I left Canada for a reason.

@Auspice said in Songs on a Theme:

What do you listen to when it's raining or storming? What songs remind you of the rain?

Garbage: I'm Only Happy When It Rains.

Beth Orton: I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine.

The Dark Romantics: Roads.

Suede: The 2 Of Us.

30 Seconds to Mars: Stay.

Scala & Kolacny Brothers: Use Somebody.

Manic Street Preachers: Small Black Flowers That Grow in the Sky.

I like the premise to #3, but I think it needs work. What you have is the start of a scene here, perhaps the one that kicks off the game.

Maybe take the Ariadne and start to head home through the aliens. Take a bit of Voyager and Robotech, and mix that with a lot of Event Horizon and Star Control 2.

@Quinn said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

But as someone who recently filled out 26 fucking hand written invitations how the fuck are you supposed to write on them because pens don't work due to the fucking wax covering or whatever they have on there, sharpies wipe off and oh my god, I'm so glad to hear it's not just me.

This is me seeing the same fucking kind of invitation for the third year in a row:

If my partner pulls this shit again, I'm just going to print some off and send them out on my own.

(Note: there are ~15 kids in each of my kids' preschool classrooms and daycare classrooms. That's ~30 per kid, and they are twins. We have 9 RSVPs, 5 of which confirmed attendance.)

@skew

Then you'd have M. Night Shyamalan's The Village, and we all know how that ended up.

@Ghost said in Good or New Movies Review:

Live action Anastasia?

Go see the musical.

The pacing sort of sucks, but the music is good.

I will never stop praising The Hunchback, though. The musical score is bone-chillingly good. The choral work is beastly and beautiful.

@cobaltasaurus said in What Do You Want In A New Game (3-options)?:

I like the Space idea, but I've a mild worry that people would want it Hard Science, and would get upset when I accidentally give the properties of a Red Dwarf to a White Giant or something.

The only kind of hard science I like is when someone sticks something biological into me.

Doing Enterprise shit is boring.

Doing Voyager shit is better.

Doing SDF-1 shit is awesome.

@Pandora said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

People who use the words 'No one wants to see...' when discussing anyone else's sexuality.

What I mean to say is "no one wants to see other people happy."

I know I don't.

@cobaltasaurus said in What Do You Want In A New Game (3-options)?:

#3 ...I have a little more trouble worldbuilding for. But I would personally play it! >.> Someone else make it!

FINE.

I'm really enjoying Lucifer more than I thought I would.

@faraday said in Earning stuff:

If a significant part of your intended audience is looking for something that your game design just flat-out can't provide then you've got issues.

Said everyone at some point about World of Darkness games.

Important events can be scheduled, but World of Darkness games invariably contain some amount of status-earning incentive that creates competition. In a way, this is a plus: internal competition can drive the RP between PCs. In a way, this is a minus: internal competition can create divisions within the PC groups, which makes it difficult or impossible to schedule "important events" in a manner satisfactory to the parties involved and their interests.

That said, it is certainly possible to overcome this inherent system problem in WoD.

And just when I was considering canceling the Netflix.

@lisse24 said in Earning stuff:

I think we need to do a better job of finding ways to make random/social RP focused and meaningful from the outset.

I am of the opinion that engaging in random/social RP is the point of itself. Because of this, I'm not sure how to incentivize it without deprecating it. I like the +activity/log system at Fate's Harvest, and I liked the +beat system at Requiem for Kingsmouth.

But I don't think that those systems necessarily made the interaction meaningful. That was up to the players.

@Arkandel said in Fandom and entitlement:

But also some people are very weird about stuff others like; I have folks on Facebook who take a weird kind of pride in the fact they don't watch Game of Thrones, or don't care about basketball.

We have a word for people who hate things that others enjoy, but which they don't understand: evangelist Christians.

@faraday said in What isn't CGen for?:

Mostly I'm just interested in continuity: Is there a sensible reason for it, or was it just "I didn't realize what the numbers meant".

This sums up my response.

Whatever system you put in place should be responsive to whatever staff is looking for in a PC. My preference is for PCs that fit the theme and setting. I don't care for min-maxing, as long as the player understands that doing so within the system's limits will make their PC weak in areas which they probably shouldn't. Almost every person I've approved understands that I nitpick only to confirm that they understand what they've built, and to make a decision as to whether the PC is going to fit into the game.

@Sparks said in Fandom and entitlement:

In Captain Marvel, are Carol Danvers and Maria Rambeau in love? Like 70 or 80% of the fanbase say yes (and Brie Larsen sure as heck implies it constantly in interviews). Is that ever openly stated in the film? No. The subtext is, admittedly, extremely loud, but it remains subtext.

I loved the subtext.

In those scenes, Lashana Lynch eats every moment up. You can see that Brie Larson wants to break out of the subtext, but maybe she can't because Carol's brain isn't exactly together. Whatever. Am I looking forward to more Brie? Absolutely.

sigh

Here's to hoping that Maria and Carol get treated like Stuart and Freddie in Vicious. (Very under-rated TV series.)

@arkandel said in Player buy-in:

Either way that may still not be the game you wanted to run, or the things you hoped your players want to be doing. Maybe you hoped they'd turn a suspicious eye on each other, wondering who'll steal their supplies, develop tightly knit groups stealing resources from other groups... and instead you have folks running a bar.

I see this as malicious.

For me, malice is more than just ill-will, and includes a blatant disregard for others. In this case, you're describing a blatant disregard for the vision of staff and a clear description of the setting. Part of the concept of buy-in is accepting that vision and setting, and where elements are not so clear it is reasonable to expect someone to ask for clarification or permission to make an element their own.

@Thenomain said in Good or New Movies Review:

And we haven't had a lot of good enough outside MCU lately.

I presume you include Marvel's Netflix series in this.

That said:

• Wonder Woman
• Shazam
• Teen Titans Go! To the Movies
• The Wolverine
• Logan
• X-Men: First Class
• X-Men: Days of Future Past

Basically, anything that didn't have Zack Snyder's name attached to it.

@zombiegenesis said in Potential Buffy Game:

As for the rest, here's what I'm leaning towards...A fictional southern city that is a so-called "college town" (the college is integrated with the city so it's difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins). This way if the focus becomes college students that's easy enough but it's also easy enough to shift to other stories for those who want something more "adult"(for lack of a better phrase) we can use the same setting, same grid, and things won't be weird or contrived.

Why not Dayton, Ohio?

I mean, I live here. I can tell you all about it. Do a Wikipedia on the place. Let that do the talking.

Here's some highlights:

• Home of Charles Kettering, once-home of NCR, and the nation's highest rate of patents per capita. (Mad scientists? Yes, please.)

• Site of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the largest continental USAF installation, along with every other known, substantial defense contractor in the United States. (Government or military conspiracies? All over.)

• Minutes away from Yellow Springs, Ohio, the home of the revered Antioch College and Dave Chappelle; also, damned hippie island in the middle of Trump country. (Hippie, witchy, spiritual respite? Yep.)

• An hour away from Cincinnati, Ohio and Columbus, Ohio; two hours from Indianapolis, Indiana; and three hours from Cleveland, Ohio, Lexington, Kentucky, and Detroit, Michigan, all of which can be alternate shenanigan sites. (Urban decay! Shenanigans! Bengals fans! Boo!)

• Smallish, mid-western, great little burg, and, hey, I can even help you write up a realistic grid.

Just some earnest thoughts.