Alorael at Large

The only real restriction here is no offensive magic. That's a real limitation, but crystal wands are so good that it's not a very big one, especially given that you're using weapons that are remarkably strong in the end-game from the very beginning. —Alorael, who suspects this would be fairly low difficulty even on the highest difficulty setting. Which doesn't make it a bad playthrough, just not a hard one.

I'm as guilty of jumping into the meme pool as anyone. That thread's over a decade old, and it's been longer than that since I played Homeland. I still think its reputation is worse than its actually gameplay. The gameplay isn't good, but it's not mind-warpingly bad. Just regular mediocre bad. Official reviews might pan it but they probably wouldn't be epically humorous in doing so. —Alorael, who will offer the additional excuse that he's never knowingly owned a virus-infected computer, so he doesn't have much basis for comparison. He has used a couple of infected computers, though, with varying flavors of dysfunction and malice.

All that hate was maybe more a bandwagon than anything else. Someone, I can't remember who, actually did acquire and play the full game and said it wasn't that bad. That's probably accurate. From what I remember of the demo it wasn't horrible. It was just not especially good, and its awfulness became a meme here. —Alorael, who would put it around the similarly infamous Galactic Core in quality. It was playable, not particularly balanced, and for the type of game it was you have plenty of better options to play instead.

I've started The Lies of Locke Lamora again. It's still clever, witty, and very fun, but I'm doing my rereading so I can remember what happened when I go through the next couple of Gentleman Bastard books. —Alorael, who should still be wading through weighty tomes of medical knowledge, or at least their less-weighty digital equivalents. He's doing so only sporadically and reluctantly.

The countries that do well by the mentally ill are usually the ones that have very strong family ties, and it's more those ties than a societal attitude towards mental illness that helps. As an outsider I think you'd be at a disadvantage just about anywhere else. I'd also have concerns about other countries. The US has recurrent threats to its tattered safety net, yes, but Europe has its own flirtations with right-wing xenophobic nationalism, and those sentiments seem to be at high ebb right now. —Alorael, who also has some dubiousness about the global options for safety nets. If you're truly unable to work for your entire lifetime there are places where you will not be homeless and you will not starve, but systems rarely provide for much more than that.

Pah. I bet you kids don't even remember what it was like back before there was a layer of grime on the movie theater floor. —Alorael, who also can't believe anyone tells kids to get off the lawn. Why, when he was your age, no one would even imagine that one day there would be lawns, much less kids on them!

Which is, I think, usually moderately annoying and potentially slightly costly to the alleged victim but highly annoying and potentially dangerous for a low-margin business that might take out its costs on the hapless deliverer. —Alorael, who once had a free apology pizza delivered to him as recompense for a mistake in an order. Which was nice, except he wasn't the one who had ordered. That pizza place probably had some kinks in their business to iron out.

Also a fair amount of mushroom leather. —Alorael, who expects that there's bat leather in the mix too. Giant rats on occasion. Smaller rats on more occasions.

I can say that A Young Doctor's Notebook truly speaks to the terrors of the newly minted doctor to the point that I find it a little bit uncomfortable to watch. I can manage an episode at a time, and only after good days. —Alorael, who has not yet been physically and mentally humiliated by his future self. Give it time.

I agree that this would work better in chat (or in person) than by post. However, as someone with an irregular, fairly unpredictable, and demanding schedule, I'm not sure I can actually come up with reasonable times to play reliably by chat. —Alorael, who will give this a few more days to percolate and then see about kicking it off. His unpredictable schedule is about to change (unpredictably, of course) so he'll see.

I ran across this nugget of a game by Vincent Baker (of Apocalypse World, Dogs in the Vineyard, and Mobile Frame Zero fame) and thought that it would be an interesting fit for forum play. Rock of Tahamaat, Space Tyrant This seems like it would be pretty interesting to run as a play-by-post with the wrinkle that it actually would work as a play-by-private-message where Rock of Tahamaat doesn't even know who the other players are or what they're up to except by what the informants tell him. Maybe even the other players don't know who any players are unless and until they seek each other out and find each other. Of course, this still has most of the usual non-freeform PBP problems: slow play and requiring a very active GM. But at least it's like a set of connected player-and-GM games and can't get quite as held up by one player. It also could be very easily reskinned as a game about Emperor Hawthorne and those who suffer under his reign, for that Avernum flair. Thoughts? —Alorael, who is aware that this exists more or less as a Forge-derived experiment in resolution mechanics. (If that doesn't mean anything to you, don't worry about it; it's heavy tabletop RPG wonkery.) It still looks like a fun and interesting game.

I don't mean to nitpick, but are you sure the ratio is one box to one bottle? That seems like it would produce ketchup with some macaroni floating in it. —Alorael, who just made Mexican chocolate tofu pudding. He violated the instructions and used old, not very good chocolate chips, and his ratios were off. It still came out quite tasty, and it takes all of about ten minutes to make it.

Some planes now have outlets and/or USB chargers. But no, there's really no way to make a long flight fun. The seats are cramped and uncomfortable. Sleeping is hard. You just bear up as best you can and remember it's not the journey, it's the destination. —Alorael, who dislikes flying even on one-hour jaunts. Planes are unpleasant and airports take too long while being also unpleasant. Come to think of it, given how more time is spent in airports than in the air when taking those very short flights maybe in his mind it's really the airports that make travel so annoying.

As another vegetarian, I will proclaim that while stir-fry recipes are really variations on a simple theme, they can be very different and very delicious and it's worth mentioning if you hit on a particularly good combination. Especially if it's low effort preparation. I'll agree that vegetables, meat/tofu, oil, sauce. and heat is a reliable combination. You're the dietician in training, Hogan, not me, but I'm a little skeptical. High fructose corn syrup I'm ambivalent on; it certainly isn't helping by being everywhere, but I've seen no convincing evidence that it's worse than having an excess of glucose in all our food. Either way, it's at the very least glycemic spikes and calories we can do without. Phytic acid reduces mineral availability in vitro and in some in vivo studies, but again, the actual evidence of harm or benefit (the jury's out) is mixed and scant. And you're vastly oversimplifying how artificial sweeteners interact with insulin and blood sugar, as I understand it; taste buds have no direct line to the pancreas and there's no direct stimulation of insulin release, but affects on gut flora have been linked to bad things. It's not a simple relationship, though! My suspicion is even more raised when you take potshots at aspartame, which after its highly publicized and politicized downfall has turned out to be, as best a large number of high-power studies can see, harmless (except to those with phenylketonuria). It doesn't cause cancer. It isn't toxic at any plausibly attainable dose. It is, in fact, more thoroughly demonstrated as safe than sweeteners in wide use in the USA. I'm all for eating a diet that's less processed, more plant-rich, and lower in calories generally and sugar especially, but I think there's just not high-quality evidence for any particular nutrients or anti-nutrients as the good or bad actors. I'm happy to be pointed at key papers showing otherwise! And to stay on topic... Shakshuka by way of Scandinavia 12-15 fresh tomatoes, chopped. (Roma are good, but you can use anything fresh. Canned is much less delicious.) Garlic, minced (To taste. I use practically an entire bulb.) Oregano (It'll make this taste a bit tomato sauce-like. Omit if that bothers you. I love oregano.) Olive oil Salt pepper 4-8+ Eggs Spinach, chopped roughly Chop the tomatoes roughly, put in a large pot and bring to a simmer. Add a healthy dollop of olive oil, probably around 1-2 tbsp but this is an eyeballing dish for me. You can simmer for really as long as you like, stirring occasionally. The taste changes, so figure out how you prefer it. I usually give it 20-30 minutes, adding the minced garlic around midway through. When you've decided the simmering has gone long enough crack the eggs into the mixture, spacing them out so they don't stick together. My spouse prefers the eggs dropped in separately and minimal stirring so that they end up intact poached in the tomatoes; I like stirring the eggs so they break up a bit and are smaller and more distributed in the mix. She also goes for as many eggs as can fit; I usually want fewer. Depending on heat it will take around 5-10 minutes to cook the eggs, of course also depending on whether you want the eggs still runny or hard-boiled. The best way to test is to just poke and see how runny the yolks are. Once the eggs are done, turn off the heat and stir the spinach into the tomato soup. It works best if you add it a little bit at a time, submerging it thoroughly. The heat in the soup will cook the spinach slightly without giving you gross overcooked spinach mush. Again, you can add it earlier if you like more cooked spinach. The point of this food: it's hearty, quite quick (especially if you skimp on simmering time), and can be made in batches as large as your pot. —Alorael, who hasn't actually cooked in an embarrassingly long time. His current work schedule has turned his eating habits into everything he has always striven to avoid: expensive, unhealthy, and often not even very tasty.

Delicious Lentils 1 cup red lentils 1.5 cups water (More water if you want the result more like soup and less like stew; I wouldn't use less) 1 onion (Medium? Small? I never know what onion sizes mean.) A good chunk of ginger. (Again, sizes are hard to judge; I'll go with maybe an inch or two. I’ve used ginger powder, ginger paste, and fresh ginger. Paste worked okay, powder not so well, fresh really was better.) Infinite garlic cloves, peeled. (I like garlic. You'd probably want at least five cloves, but I've used at least ten.) 1-2 fresh chiles. (This depends on taste. I like it with a couple of jalapeños, but one is enough for many people, and of course you can leave it out if you dislike spice.) 1.5 tsp mustard seeds 4 tbsp neutral oil 1 tsp ground cumin 0.5 tsp ground turmeric 0.25 tsp sweet paprika 1 3/4 cups chopped tomatoes (I've used fresh or canned. They're about the same, but canned tend to have more liquid, which means a soupier result, which I like.) 2 tsp sugar 1.5 tbps lime juice Salt 1/3 cup unsalted buter (You can leave it out, but you'll taste the difference.) Wash the lentils, then soak in the 1.5 cups of water for at least 30 minutes. While you're doing that, start the next part. Onion, ginger, garlic, and chile go in a food processor to chop coarsely. You can do it by hand, but it's a pain. Put a pot over medium heat and put in the mustard seeds. They'll pop like popcorn. Be patient, it can take a few minutes, and you probably want to cover the pot so the seeds don't bounce everywhere. Pour the chopped mix from the food processor and add the oil. Cook over lowish heat for ten minutes or so, stirring every couple of minutes, then add the spices and stir them in over a couple of minutes. If you have fresh tomatoes, chop them now. When the 30 minutes soak is up add the lentils with all the soaking water, the sugar, and some salt. You'll have to do this one to taste; I'm not much of a salt fan. Simmer over low heat for something like 45 minutes until the lentils are cooked and the consistency is how you want it. You can cook off more water or add extra to thicken or thin the soup/stew. Stir the butter and some lime juice to the pot, let the butter melt, and you're done! Yogurt: Greek Yogurt Cucumber Olive Oil Garlic, if you want something more like raita I use one big cucumber, throw it in the food processor, and chop finely but not into paste. Measure how much that is, add an equal amount of yogurt, add a dollop of olive oil, sometimes the minced garlic. Serve yogurt over the lentils, or just eat it on its own. —Alorael, who currently eats this as his weekly staple food. It has the virtue of keeping well and being extremely scalable, really up to your largest pot size.

Torment isn't out yet, so there's no way to know. Shadowrun fits the bill. The second of the new games, Dragonfall, a bit better than the first. Having a permanent party helps. If you hate real time with pause and will only accept turn-based then the old Infinity Engine games (Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment) are out, as is Pillars of Eternity. If you're judging just by Icewind Dale, though, the same engine does not mean the same games. Baldur's Gate and BG2 are both story-driven. They have dungeons, but they aren't about dungeons. Planescape's combat is terrible and nobody plays it for that anyway, but its characters and stories are truly a masterpiece. Pillars of Eternity is in the same vein as Baldur's Gate. It's combat heavy (but so's Avernum!) but all about story; I'd argue that it's more driven by story than Avernum, really. —Alorael, who really thinks there's a huge distinction between real time with pause in the manner of Baldur's Gate and action-RPGs like Diablo and The Witcher. They're quite mechanically distinct. Also not truly tied to story; The Witcher has fairly strong story and extremely strong story and atmosphere, which is the area where Avernum shines more than in plot. Diablo doesn't, it just has mass monster slaughter. The mechanics do not make the style, at least not completely.

I've now gotten through the first two of Lev Grossman's Magicians books. They're very, very good. They touch on some surprisingly profound insights with surprising deftness for what could easily be a simple Narnia and Harry Potter pastiche. —Alorael, who is also very slowly wading through the occasional medical text. Always in electronic formats, though. There's no argument for the ebook quite like the twenty pound tome that no one could possibly carry anywhere.

Miserably slow, as I said. It's not the difficulty of any individual roll, it's the huge number of actions and rolls required for any given combat. A round will take days. An entire combat weeks. And by then everyone will have lost all interest in the overall game. —Alorael, who believes PBP is a very special, fragile way to play. Don't dump Geneforge on it.

Not archived either, I'm afraid. And I've forgotten the URL because after the site went dark and it wasn't archived there was no reason to keep it in memory. I don't even remember when, except it was a very long time ago, since it was already long gone as of 2007. —Alorael, who somewhat suspects that it was issued a C&D for violation of intellectual property. Not for Spiderweb's but for the Arcana Evolved stuff.

The highly crunchy combat of Spiderweb games, like most CRPGs, is especially unsuited for PBP games. It'll grind to a miserable crawl whenever the swords, batons, and fireballs come out. Unless your tastes definitely run to extremely crunchy simulation-oriented gaming I'd recommend something snappy and more story-oriented. Like Fate, which has a fervent following (although I'll confess I'm not among it) or even an Apocalypse World hack. —Alorael, who believes the most complete conversion of Avernum was, in fact, to D&D 3.5, or more specifically to Arcana Evolved. Sadly the site went down years ago.

I don't have an iPad, but I'm happy for the many fans who do, who discovered Spiderweb that way, who want to play on their iPads, and who might get to again. —Alorael, who is also sad to hear that Jeff had health problems but happy to hear that they're improved now.

The most depressing interpretation is that the player lost interest and never played again after heading through that portal. —Alorael, who imagines that statistically most heroic quests die stillborn, most evil goes unvanquished, and most quest-givers wait, forever forlorn, for aid that will not be rendered.

Please, let us forget the meat. —Alorael, who has already forgotten the meat, in fact, in the sort of 1984 dictatorial way that ensures that you have also forgotten the meat. Sorry, missed some italics. You have also forgotten it.

Except that this somewhat freewheeling thread on race and culture has multiple components. "Redskins" isn't cultural appropriation. It's just a racial slur. —Alorael, who also really doesn't appreciate the Godwinning. This thread was working out fine, thanks.

Addicts generally say that people who have themselves struggled with addiction can understand them and communicate with them better and deliver better care. Obviously that's not good reason to get hooked on something, but it does mean some psychiatrists and counselors have an edge in that field. —Alorael, who would just leave it at that, but then he has another tidbit to add. He knows a couple of doctors who were anesthesiologists, succumbed to the professional hazard of sampling their own wares, got clean, and switched specialties to psychiatry. One is definitely going into addiction, and his experience is a big part of why.