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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • Further context, assuming the ruleset governing the OG Baldurs Gate games was true to the tabletop (I know they sort of kludged AD&D and aspects of 3e together). As the above said, a dual classed human “retires” their original class, and then begins to advance in their new class, essentially starting over from level 1, with only the hit dice and HP of their original class rolled over (you cannot access any of the class abilities you learned while advancing your original class). However, once your new class level is superior to your original class level, you can now access both skill sets.

    It’s a very strange system, and I am curious what the fluff reasons surrounding it are, if anyone has any insight into that edition.




  • 100%. I know that the jury is out, academically speaking, on the actual effectiveness of the bombs, but it makes intuitive sense to me that they at least contributed to the Japanese decision to surrender unconditionally.

    In fact, up until the bombs were dropped, Japan was working with the Soviet Union to act as mediators in peace talks, so Japan could get a better deal. Of course, while the USSR entertained the diplomatic overtures from Japan, they were actually planning on declaring war, as they had promised at Yalta. But, I think it still contributes to my point that a civilian population that has been targeted by a besieging force must believe their only options are unconditional surrender or utter destruction (which, incidentally, is exactly the verbiage the US presented Japan in the Potsdam Declaration 10 days before the first bomb was dropped). If there is a plausible third option available (or believed to be available), then that’s what will be pursued.


  • No, it was not my intention to suggest that. I’m sure the Germans threw everything they could afford into the Battle of Britain.

    Though, I am most definitely not an expert in the field and should be treated as I am, a dude on the internet lol.

    However, even Germany in early WW2 (arguably at the height of their power) was unable to throw enough explosives into London to make that switch flip in the civilian population from “we shall fight them on the beaches” to “okay, in light of recent events, we are reevaluating our ‘Never Surrender’ policy…”.

    In fact, I might even suggest that the scale of bombing necessary to make it a viable tactic was impossible at that time, as the nuclear bomb hadn’t yet been invented. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than me can fact check this assertion, but I think the only time intentionally targeting civilians has successfully cowed a belligerent was when the US nuked Japan. And even then, it took two.


  • Also, to add to the other poster’s point, in a medieval siege, the defenders have every reason to believe the attackers will happily let every man, woman, and child behind the walls die gruesome deaths to starvatiom or disease. That’s why, when it came down to the wire, cities would submit.

    In modern times, cultivating a believable military posture of, “Surrender, or we will personally execute every last motherfucking one of you” is politically dicey. Look at the news stories coming out of Gaza about supplies running low thanks to Israeli interference. Right, wrong , or indifferent, the international community (as well as your domestic community, if those that disagree with these sorts of tactics are allowed to make their voices heard) tends to look down their noses at targeting noncombatants populations. So, due to these complications (which were largely absent or less impactful from warfare in the time of Genghis Khan) wholesale slaughter of civilian life isn’t really openly used. In fact, guidelines like “proportionality” are invented which dictate the level of response you can give certain provocations and what not.

    So, if you’re a modern day commander being tasked with taking an urban center, the closest way to approximate a medieval siege would be to absolutely carpet bomb everything. Make it known that you will happily let every single person in Moscow die, if not send them to the afterlife yourself. While you’re bombing the suburbs, you’ll also need to encirce the whole city to prevent supplies from being delivered, since you can’t guarantee every bomb will hit it’s target and need starvation to provide additional assurance to the population that, if they maintain their current course, they are doomed.

    Unfortunately, the world isn’t going to allow that, and you know it, so you commit to the level of bombing deemed acceptable by the world at large. At best, you wind up in a situation like London during the Blitz. Your bombing runs are effective, in that they disrupt the daily life of citizenry, and cause some infrastructure damage and loss of life. However, you’re never going to be allowed to scale up to the point where your victims feel they have no way out but to submit. There’s enough plausible deniability that, even when a bomb hits close to home (literally or figuratively), the victim is more pissed at the bomber than their government.


  • Right? Like I see folks in this thread and elsewhere echoing some of the typical things you hear when Hollywood botches an adaptation. Things like “it would be better if it was faithful to the source material” and other sentiments like that.

    However, in this case, the one aspect of the games that is easily translateable to film (the writing) seems to have aged the absolute worst. Self-referential Internet humor was a bold, unique aesthetic in 2009, but it’s been largely played out the 15 years since the og game released, or at least Borderlands’ take on that style of humor has gotten stale. Maybe the writing was better outside of 2 and Tiny Tina’s (the entries I played the most), but I sort of doubt it.

    I would not want to be tasked with adapting Borderlands. Stick close to the source material, get flamed for writing something juvenile. Diverge from the source material, get accused of not capturing the spirit of the franchise. It’s an impossible situation.



  • Man, Trespasser is an example of a game with some pretty wild ideas about immersion and puzzle solving in a first person shooter game that the tech just wasn’t quite able to pull off. If anyone is curious there is a positively antique Let’s Play on YouTube that discusses the game’s development, its relation to the wider Jurassic Park franchise, cut content, and, of course, the game in context. I think it may have come from the old Something Awful forums, and it remains, to my mind, the gold standard for what I’d like Let’s Plays to be. Worth checking out if you’ve the time.



  • Miniature models come in two flavors for me, DnD or 40K (which is really just my way of saying fantasy or sci Fi aesthetics). So, when I saw this, my first thought was that it was an imitation Tyranid model which has taken inspiration from one of the critters in the Star Wars movies. Imagine my surprise when I check and see that it’s got nothing to do with Tyranid at all and is just the Star Wars monster.

    Great sculpt, hope to see the final product painted up! Thank you for sharing.



  • Right there with you buddy. I get the antipathy with which remakes are treated nowadays, but this isn’t yet another rehash of Spiderman or Batman. It’s been 70 years since the og film. A sizable chunk of the population will never watch it simply because of its age, either due to their bias against “old” movies or due to plain ignorance. I might even say most people fall into that camp.

    Plus, it’s not like there’s all that much that is sacrosanct about the original picture. In cultural memory, the og film is basically just the title, the suit design, and maybe the image of the creature holding a lady in his arms. As long as the remake hits those beats, it basically has free reign to go anywhere else in terms of story. Furthermore, new tech is going to allow for different approaches to filming, especially the underwater sequences, that should serve to make the movie actually frightening to a modern audience. The OG is an impressive technical achievement (I’m not sure how common underwater photography was at the time, but I can’t imagine it was a widespread practice), but I would not classify it as scary.

    Idk, I just think this is an example of a “flawed” film getting a second chance with the benefit of modern filmmaking techniques, or the exact sort of project people always cite as an appropriate use of the remake format (as opposed to someone remaking a movie which holds up).

    I’m not holding my breath that this announcement will go anywhere, it seems like they e been trying to get a remake off the ground since the 80s, but while everything is speculative, I’d rather focus on the opportunities a remake offers than fixate on the myriad ways they could fuck it up.