Re-upping this for the afternoon:
Writer for variancehammer.com and goonhammer.com. Co-host of Lost to the Nails and the Plastic Pressgang Podcast. Fan of the Horus Heresy, Adeptus Titanicus and myriad historicals. Avid terrain enthusiast. He/him/his
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Re-upping this for the afternoon:
LEs. Scalpers and the unreliability of the website have robbed them of any appeal.
I'm going to hold out for the LE of that last Siege book, and then I'm done. I'm tired, and at this point, glad it's over and not looking for the experience again.
Been super busy week so far, but heres a little buddy on her street i managed to get painted up!
Watching this video 10 times has significantly improved my mood.
Been thinking about idle games a lot and had this phenomenal progression in the shower
I love this so much and I am absolutely tearing up about it. The gentleness and plainness of this, the way he just lets her be her (and she seems so damn lovely, who wouldn’t?), the generosity. It isn’t going to solve the world’s problems, but this kind of humanity is a hell of a start.
Sometimes I wonder if people look at products like BattleTech and Warhammer and Magic and D&D and question the received wisdom that complexity is somehow bad.
Sam Altman says a lot of things.
I already have a "team of Ph.D. level experts" in my pocket. It's called being in a discord server with a bunch of furries
Finished my "Auspex Table" map for my club's upcoming Crusade campaign. Features the main hive city, plus a ruined spire for Kill Team hijinks, and a wrecked Cruiser for a local FLGS to have a mini campaign around.
A vaccine effective enough that less than a decade ago, "We could maybe eradicate measles" was not an insane thought.
Protip: Before agreeing to your fiancee taking your name, make sure they're not Fair Folk.
@iraganaart.bsky.social as a commission for me :)
This remains the perfect representation of the vibe I wanted for my Sisters
Dude just argued with me about Substack (my position is "the fact that they fight to platform Nazis and transphobes means you should not set up a newsletter or read a newsletter there"). His "argument" is that "you'll be missing so much good comics content" if you listen to me. 😳 Fuck Substack.
Other hard lessons to learn: + Not all stories belong to you. + Don't just hire consultants. Hire talent from the cultures you're making games out of. + Put more BIPOC folks in leadership positions. + Support products from beyond America.
I used to think we should check to make sure people knew that the "Greed is good" speech from Wall Street was supposed to be a bad thing. I think we might need to upgrade it to "Do you realize the 'Are there no workhouses?' speech from Christmas Carol is a bad thing?"
Our gay vignettes are a big hit, they make lovely gifts for others as well as yourselves, they've even been used as wedding cake toppers and well, they're just lovely. Hand sculpted & hand cast in the UK. Queer woman owned company! badsquiddogames.com/shop#!/Gay-S...
We’ve discovered a literal miracle with almost unlimited potential and it’s being scrapped for *no reason whatsoever*. This isn’t even nihilism, it’s outright worship of death and human suffering.
For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper
Where is the Hollywood movie about this, I want it
It is! Just some life hurdles of late.
It's been a minute, but we've got a new Plastic Pressgang Podcast episode up! rss.com/podcasts/pla... This one's about "Historical-ish" games - games that, while not about actual history, still have the right vibe.
Absolutely ghoulish.
;)
Welp now my post shows up on a general query about a REAL HISTORICAL FACT lmao. Google is cooked
Pondering the intersection of TTRPG/Wargame fans rebelling against AI content and TTRPG/Wargames fans perennially being really bad at the notion that creative work should be decently compensated.
Internet revisionism is a powerful thing. “X aged poorly, so we secretly always knew it was trash” is easier and more gratifying than “It’s hard to go back to a thing I liked in the fullness of time.”
We stan a star fort.
Today's unhinged gaming idea: "Necromunda HOA" Escher models painted in middle age and Orlock gangers with wraparound shades. Fielded using Enforcer rules.
novapublic.blob.core.windows.net/event-primer... An old event pack, but it's a start. Basically - small format up to ~ 1500 pt games. Emphasis on lower-level heroes, no vehicles or large Dreads/Robots. Lots of 0-1. The vibe is "Marines beating each other to death in the mud."
I’m sure the old Centurion-style systems will get updated. They’re my favorite way to play
Toxic Masculinity is OUT! Ghost of Christmas Present Masculinity is IN! - Loud laughs - Roasted meats and spiced drinks - Hospitality to strangers - Living in the moment - Singing in public - Body positivity - Emotional generosity - Sick robes
“Age of Midgard” - rank and flank AoS armies using the Midgard rules
Pendragon Blue Planet Traveller Exalted
I’m so sorry
My Dearest Martha, They've taken away our suspensor webs. The Delegatus went to see if he could sort it out, but that was the last I saw of him. I fear nothing will be the same. Tuck the Macro Arid Explorators into bed tonight and give them a kiss for me. Yours, Immaculately Converted Sergeant
Nor was the entire doctrine "We can always build more" plus the errant belief that precision bombing was a thing.
I have very niche GoFundMe interests, but engine repairs on an old PBY Catalina might be one of them. www.gofundme.com/f/pby-engine...
I like the idea of a Drukhari in a lecture hall trying to explain the fundamentals of aerodynamics, while a tech priest just scribbles in their notebook "What if just bigger engines?"
...and like clockwork, leaks come out, and any enthusiasm for a new release is swamped by a flood of Everything Is Ruined Forever (tm). My fellow hobbyists, why are you like this? Why are you thieves of your own joy?
Impressive flip turn Macy.
Saw some discussion of people using LLMs to assist with pairings in team tournaments. Not only is this stupid and wasteful, but it's *the wrong type of model*. You could actually implement a pairings model. Would take maybe a weekend worth of coding. Be methodologically correct in your cheating.
If "AI" was as valuable as they say it is, they wouldn't be selling it to you. They'd be using it themselves in secret to make the next Minecraft, the next Avatar, the next Hello Kitty and then they'd sell that to you. They're trying to sell you a sick goose, while pretending it lays golden eggs.
It is a great tragedy that MDF is so dubiously toxic. Burning the scraps from major terrain projects would be so cathartic, but between "cancer" and "I live in the Western US and have an innate fear of fire", it just gets binned.
Has a very cool sort of "Mysterious Emissary" vibe to it.
Could you help us out? It's been one of the quietest months in a decade, and partly I believe it's because people don't know we exist! Hi! I'm Annie! I run Bad Squiddo Games! We hand sculpt & hand cast 28mm scale models of women, critters, scenics & occasionally a man! www.badsquiddogames.com
About to attempt something similar - how did you dam the edges of each piece to do the resin pour?
Weathered some Monster Fight Club shipping containers and did some transfer work as part of a project whose working title is "Mankind's Hubris".
Yeah, I’m glad it’s faded into memory
Oh and this sticker is also available in a 2 pack with a similarly themed sticker by @crippledgiraff.bsky.social himself. For those that *REALLY* love goblins and hate fascism. crippledgiraffdecals.etsy.com/listing/4330...
American, pretty sure we own two
my current favorite TikTok account is this guy who tries to replicate women fitness influencers
www.goonhammer.com/running-a-gm... My first real 40K-focused article on Goonhammer, about starting your own narrative campaigns.
Can we talk about how "We can't moderate/curate/evaluate our content/posting/training data at scale" should be a condemnation, not an excuse?
happy pride to Paul the Real Estate Novelist Who Never Had Time For A Wife and Davey Who's Still In The Navy -R
Nope. Fully a modern, "taking place at the current year" campaign setting :\
RPGnet is fully online. We apologize for frustration caused either by the downtime or the uptime. www.rpg.net forum.rpg.net (We were not eaten by ghosts.)
Linux users be like of you’re using Glorp with a Scoof KDE? you fucking philistine real Linux users are in Kraboble with Zert as the front end
The Tank Hearse, a converted FV432 APC. Video here youtu.be/LDatK26DKyM
You should consult with your sports folks on the value of reviewing video to actually find out what happened. Like, you know, a news agency.
www.goonhammer.com/goonhammer-r... Review up for Guards of Traitor's Toll. Genuinely a great game. Note that the FAQ in several places should shorten playtime considerable, which is one of my few caveats.
Tinkering with punching up some Monster Fight Club pre-colored shipping containers. This is just some metallic chipping and a coat of Ammo of Mig Starship Wash. Trying to decide if I want to push it further, or accept that sorta dirty is good enough for something I'm going to have to do like 50 of.
The new 'Armageddon' campaign book continues GW's long and glorious history of forgetting the Sisters of Battle exist. A planet full of chaos cults revolting in hive cities, and the order of battle has 61 regiments of Miasman Redcowls, 3 companies of Rogue Trader voidsmen...and not a single Sister.
I will for the life of me never understand why Warlord Games decided to make epic scale AWI figures before either Austrian or Russian Napoleonics.
Congratulations Dr.
Star Wars has always been obsessed with mentor-mentee relationships ("do or do not," "trust the force," etc). But Andor is specifically about different ways of running a lab, and how they all go wrong.
Lowkey reverse all science spending cuts by taxing one man whose fortune was built on science.
1. A Mexican revolution trans man... a trans woman who transitioned as a kid in the 1800s... a trans woman fencer and spy turned double agent... a trans civil war soldier who stole his captor's weapon... These are the trans people you never learn in school. Subscribe to support our journalism.
Once again begging terrain 3d modelers to include solid versions of their models in addition to ones with skinny little walls, so they can actually be resized in a way that doesn't involve turning them into absolute nightmares to print.
And what does Bloomberg News say?
The top priority for Trump 2.0 is to punish the libs and science is lib-coded despite “STEM” being centrist to conservative coded because the pro-STEM rhetoric is really just anti-humanities rhetoric, they don’t actually support science and half of them think the Earth is 6,000 years-old.
Possibly the best thing I've read about ChatGPT yet. h/t @melaniemitchell.bsky.social amandaguinzburg.substack.com/p/diabolus-e...
Morale wise, I think this is at least as bad as COVID. And is layered on top of COVID for a lot of us.
People talk about brain drain, but there's no other country, or group of countries, really able to be there and pickup the mantle. I had two separate colleagues today talk about the end of science in the U.S. People at the height of their careers, productive, talented people, talk about quitting.
Posting this on my hobby account because my professional one already knows this. I cannot convey to you how *demoralized* American scientists are right now. We're watching the gutting of our fields, the death of the most productive scientific enterprise in history, and it's just relentless.
Horrific.
11. Gaming System of Choice "Old Reliable" - a Intel i7 desktop with an nVidia 1080Ti.
10. Best Gameplay This is one of those "define your terms" categories. But for me, CP2077 has a really great blend of intuitive mechanics, a bunch of different ways to play, and a really natural feel. Leaves me wishing for a truly open world CP mercenary game.
9. Saddest Gameplay Sequence The Death of Mordin Solus.
8. Best Soundtrack No One Lives Forever is a strong contender here. But I'm actually going to go for Heliborne. The way this game manages to make you *feel* like you're listening to Vietnam-era rock without actually *being* Vietnam-era rock is remarkable.
6. Most annoying character. Literally any NPC in WoW Classic who is an escort mission.
7. Favorite Game Couple? Morrigan and my City Elf Grey Warden. Terrible people saving an undeserving world.
5. Game character you feel you are most like (or wish you were). Umm...maybe Mordin Solus? Maybe. I don't really identify with video game characters.
4. My guilty pleasure game World of Warships, coop mode. Just turn my brain off and torpedo battleships.
3. A game that is underrated Future Cop: LAPD
1. Very first video game. First one I can remember at least - Duck Hunt.
Why not.
Harry Potter isn't more important than Trans Lives. Pass it on.
Someone else said something very similar to this the other day, but. It really burns me that our (millennials') generation was legally terrorized for like, downloading Radiohead discographies But we're supposed to be ok with billionaires stealing human intellectual output in its entirety bc AI
Could not have scripted it better. Proud of the terrain, thrilled with my players for rolling with some unexpected surprises, and just currently basking in the best narrative gaming feelings.
She plowed through 11 Sea Guard. An Elven Prince gave his life trying to bring her down and let his forces advance. And then the dice spoke. A Bretonnian Duke, down to two wounds, tasked by the Lady herself, passed four Blessing saves...and then dealt a killing blow.
What they didn't know is that the shrine was already corrupted. What waited for them there was the "Crimson Maiden", the former Damsel of the shrine. They'd have to get through her first.
Game Four saw several of their mages dying rather spectacularly if they rolled an eight to cast their spells. The final game of the series was attempting to actually take the shrine, both armies putting everything they had into it.
