Actaeon

I hope it's a check! Really, though, if Sy was gonna poison me, she could have done it before now. And I could have taken out her and Neb in one fell swoop... but that's another story.

Bah. No one on this forum has been mailed anthrax since TM left.

If you'll pay postage, I'd be happy to ship you my copy.

Okay, this is promising. Sy appears to be coming along with the system, although most of what she tells me is way over my head. I've set up a document for basic character descriptions and backstories here. Feel free to add your own. My plan was to run the first single-shot myself. It will probably be an alternate version of the Battle of Boulder that was intended to conclude "Riders on the Storm", but will be significantly simplified and designed to include the up-to-date version of the Inn. I'm thinking early April, if the system is ready. After that, Nikki or Bard or Rose or whoever will be welcome to go ahead with campaigns of their own at any time- all you'll need to do is post here with a general idea of a campaign, number of players needed, and a time (or a whenisgood link).

Legend tells of a magical inn that is of all worlds and of none. It is filled with nationless adventurers who, with nowhere left to go, stumbled upon it and stayed. When the multiverse is in need of heros, these lost souls sally forth and intervene. Or some such. Basically, this is a superior sandbox campaign setting to my previous proposal. It is, admittedly, a bit of a TARDIS rip-off (complete with having a will of its own and probably the ability to translate), but I think it holds promise. It lets you take the same character to drowned worlds with city sized ships, ancient ruins filled with dark magical powers, dystopian futurescapes, or even right here and now. Over time, you may long for a homeland, or find that other multidimensional powers threaten the denizens of the Inn, but in the mean time... It lends itself to short, easily scheduled campaigns without the fuss of generating new PCs. Everyone gets to play when they're free and not when they aren't, and you can try your hand at DMing without committing to more than a couple sessions. I've been working with Sy on a chat integrated system that will keep track of characters as you play- hopefully reducing the learning curve to practically nothing. But before I ask a bunch of competent coders to devote their time to making it a reality, or get too excited at planning my own intro mini-campaigns to flesh out the "setting", I'd like to have an idea of how much interest there is. Oh, and feedback and ideas are always good. The basic bullet points: • Practically any setting • Short (1-3 session) campaigns • No experience necessary • A good chance to try DMing The poll isn't anonymous, so if you vote you don't have to post unless there's more to say.

I have never been carded for anything. It cuts down on the drama of coming of age: my first R movie, my first lottery ticket, my first drink...

Here. I've made a place to talk about alcoholic beverages so we'll stop side tracking other threads. Try not to violate the family friendly clause.

Given that the mods are the most frequent offenders, that seems unlikely to help. I would say that unusual milestones are acceptible so long as you don't also partake of the usual ones. I, for instance, ignored 1000 and went for 1024. I am assuming I am anything but a high water mark for restraint.

... I disapprove of the bias shown in your unfair formatting.

The point was, I think, that even if Rocinante was damaged, there would be little point in making a claim because the car is old enough to vote.

I'm pretty sure he was going for "thug" not "Brit". So unless you've been holding out on us... Ain't no thang.

The one with the exploding cigar.

Usually, I'd ask a set of questions to provoke your thought, and maybe make the title a play on words ("Attack of the Drones"? "Game of Drones"?), but I think the media has done enough of both. As such: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/06/white-house-drone-media-_n_2632538.html http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/15/faa-seeks-proposals-to-create-6-drone-test-sites/ http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/2013213105942846108.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/technology/rise-of-drones-in-us-spurs-efforts-to-limit-uses.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19842410 Discuss.

You know what this means.... we're gonna party like it's 1908. Edit: read the article and saw that a lot of people got hurt... unlike Tunguska. I have no intention of minimizing human suffering.

Dinti/Eddie could have been pulling an extremely long con.

Hopefully "Towers of Midnight" and "A Memory of Light" measure up. I just finished 1Q84, which was decent, but could probably have accomplished the same effect in half the length. I believe that completes my attempt to read all of the potential choices for our ill-fated bookclub. Speaking of which, does anyone want to try that again? With an actual live AIM/CalRef discussion at the end of it?

Nah, SupaNik doesn't wear glasses, and he has that awesome hair curl. He couldn't possibly be Nikki.

After a semester of Human Evolutionary Biology, I'd tend to side with Jerakeen. Most of our ancestors were extremely prognathic compared to modern humans. We've confused natural selection a bit by becoming more carnivorous, then suddenly switching to tropical grains that would have given Paranthropus pause (a move which wreaked havoc on our teeth in just the way Sy describes- but AFTER we were anatomically modern). We ended up with a multipurpose jumble of teeth instead of a specialized system, and the optimum ratio would have varied wildly by population. Meanwhile, our dentition has tried kept up with our shrinking mandibles, but it seems to be lagging. A more interesting question, to me, is WHY the hominoid with the smallest jaw came out on top. Was it a fluke? A sign that we'd improved our tool use so far we no longer needed large teeth? Was it easier to communicate without them? And how come the most obvious difference between a human and a Neanderthal skull, save perhaps the forehead, is our protruding chin. Edit: Before someone calls me out on this, it's worth admitting that both Paranthropus and Neanderthal probably had fairly specialized diets and are not considered to be part of our direct lineage. No other hominoid can rival Paranthropus's cheek teeth, and Neanderthal's molars were taurodont to the extreme.

... Oh, no one's ever gonna let Nikki hear the end of this.

Nalyd? Sarcastic?

Leaving Diki, Tyran, Aran, and Sy as the most prominent overlaps. Still, four mods can make a difference. ... Do we count Diki? Do you need an account to be Refugi?

You can understand the joke and still find it inaccurate and offensive. And personally, I'm not particularly fond of the male role in that particular stereotypical scenario, either. If every single women you come across is disregarding your opinion, it might be that the problem's on your end, not half the world's population. If we hadn't managed to turn the topic to hobbit teeth, this topic probably would have been locked by now, so I'm going to follow Lillith's lead and shift back to that. I'd like to know where this particularly factoid came from. Tolkien himself? An interview? Notes? Was it actually included in something published?

I have decided to hold the next (final?) installment of Riders on the Storm at 17:00 (5pm) Mountain Standard Time, Saturday, February 16, on Calamity Refuge's role-play channel. All are free to join- come with a rough idea of why you want to do, but don't worry too much about mechanics.

Actually, I wonder if there isn't some truth to that. CalRef chat is live and doesn't have to be family friendly, making it an even more fulfilling outlet for random intellectual discussion than General. For me, at least, it contributes to my decreased postcount in recent weeks (for the last month or so, there's always someone in there-which wasn't true when I joined). Not that I'm complaining.

Six, Aran. When possible, I think it's best to take the book's version over the movie's.