u/Garrettshade

Don't blow my reactor just yet, it's just to have a healthy pro and cons discussion.

I think, the best to play the game is to have full servers, and locking the game even behind a small(ish) payment is still gonna prevent too many people from trying it out. Over time, the devoted player base will even out their gear on max, and without the constant influx of new blood it will die out. Also, imagine the game goes through a year of updates and maintenance. I think the sales over the year will not come close to the current amount of sales since release. I want to support the devs and give them more opportunity to work on the game, but I already bought it and gifted to all my Steam friends who could appreaciate it. What are they gonna use to finance this game in a year?

So, let's say, theoretically, they pivot to some horrible Conan Exiles type of in-game shop or batttle pass. Would it push you away from the game? Would you not care?

I still have fond memories of my time in Cycle Frontier, and I wish that game didn't get shut down. I would like Sand to continue bein developed for years to come...

Am I wrong? I was watching Hulu's "The Princess", and I noticed that it followed the Die Hard fomula. And then I realized, that if you look at it from the point of view of slaughtered baddies, it's basically like Alien. Someone taking out people one by one, murdering them in grewsome fashion. So, then originally, the Die Hard was basically the same as Alien if Alien would be a positive main character. Right?

It is something that I've been asking already either here or on fantasywriting subreddit a couple of years ago, but I have worked more on the story I want to write, and I'm constantly alternating between two conflicting approaches.

I have different "eras" planned for my stories set in the same world. The first story (chronologically) is about an early exploration period. There are 3 separate isolated human kingdoms (divided theologically and extremely hostile towards each other). One of them is on a faraway big island to the far North (think Iceland/Greenland). They hear stories, that in another part of the world, there is a hidden valley among the mountains, where Orcs live. You can't really travel freely that far, because nobody has done it yet, and also because the Elves patrol the coastline preventing anyone from entering their lands. So, the king of these Norse-like people sends an embassy - with the goal to find out more about the Orcs and preferably make a pact or an alliance with them. So, the book is about that embassy. And for it, I want the Orcs to be as exotic and "foreign" as possible. I want it to be like Ibn Fadlan's journey, or Blackthorne in "Shogun", or Marco Polo. So, for that purpose, I probably need the Orcs to be the classic Warcraft Orcs, greenskinned barbarians with their own traditions and a sense of superiority over anyone else. I want my MC to have to earn their respect, fulfill his mission, and leave behind his travelog.

Now, onto the "main story". (Because it was created first, a very long time ago). It would happen a couple of (or several) hundred years after this. This story has a more interconnected world with established trade routes, international politics, and all on the brink of a global war. My main character (a human but from the south now) joins a caravan going into the Orcs' capital. However, on the way, he drops off the caravan and ends up impersonating another person. Now, what's important for the story, is that the person he's impersonating is set to join the central office for the Orcs security service. Yes, the Orcs society at this time has evolved into a mix of 1930s Germany/Soviet dictatorship. And then part of the book is devoted to a kind of spy drama (the kind you have seen in Andor). So, for this purposes, it seems like my MC has to blend in with the Orcs. So, originally, I had the idea that Orcs here are just humans, but very cruel, usually, and their reputation is greatly exaggerated.

So, now I'm at an impasse. I like both stories, and I don't really want to change them. But I have to marry these two different concepts of Orcs, one "classic", another one post-modern. I was thinking of going part way. Like, at the time of the First Contact, the Orcs were really the green-skinned beasts, but then they mixed with captured humans? That would kind of make them rapey. Or, maybe they have specific features, like longer teeth and ears, and varying degree of greenness, but some are more prominent, some are less prominent? Just want to brainstorm together with you

In the 1942 "Casablanca" movie, they refer to the French Morocco as to the "unoccupied France" as if it were a separate entity from both Vichy and the Free France. However, the behaviour of the Captain Renault is as if he's already subordinate to the Germans, has puzzled me. Even after the scene at the Cafe, when they sing Marseillaise, he immediately takes the Germans' side, the police crack down on the anti-German underground.

What's the story with that? Is it based on the real position of the French colonies in the beginning of the war? (The events happen in December 1941).

So, we know that there are two approaches to making magic work in fantasy: the "classical" soft system, when the casted spell basically adjusts to the plot requirements and is not locked into strict ritual etc. Basically, "I willed to fly and I flew" or "Fisben shouted "Fireball" and a ball of fire flew out of his staff". And the one that's popularized by Sanderson especially and usually called "hard" system, when we have a set of strict rules and the enjoyment comes from the unorthodox qays of applying the rules (like, "pushing tin" allows you to hover over the ground if tin is on the ground).

So, recently had a thought that why some people dislike the soft systems is because they view them as "unrealistic" meaning, why does simply saying "Fireball" or "Unimalemalematooms" creates fireballs in some cases and doesn't if you do it in a regular conversation. If it would work every time, then just speaking about fireballs wouldn't be common as you would incinerate your conversation partner.

So, the principles on which LLMs work made me think about it more. Basically, what if the magic "force" is a form of the LLM in your world? It takes in your "prompt" (spell), interprets it according to your conversation history and surrounding context (like, when you say "Burn that fir tree" it understands which exactly tree you are talking about based on your surroundings). Then you could have some cases of using magic when the "magic force" misinterpreted your spell or hallucinated some context which you could use for comedic or plot purposes. And I am not saying make your magic an Artificial intelligence, it shouldn't even be "intelligent", or claim that it is, it could be just "spell processor", which can spice up your magic system.

TL; DR: LLM operation principles could be applied to a soft magic system and make it more interesting for your readers.

Is there any reason to fight ironclads? Should I be getting any loot? Because I tried to find something when I destroyed them and didn't see anything. Is it much better then to avoid them completely?

edit: Book, obviously, lol

As far as I remember, he just mentioned that the book is written in Tagalog, or something like that, at the very end of it, and that he's not Johnny but Juan. But what was the significance of this?

I have been rewatching our favourite fascistic dystopia today, and I got thinking, we don't really know how the asteroid was "sent". We are only told about it on the news, but it could have been just a legitimate asteroid going on it's business across the cosmos and accidentally crashing into Earth, right? There's no evidence whatsoever presented, and while in the book we had earlier encounters with the bugs, so the war was definitely ongoing, at least, here, it seems like the Federation just deflected the origina of a natural disaster to a potential enemy. That's why the first invasion of Klendathu is such a disaster, it's simply the very first fight against the bugs at all.

Начитався про прелесті ОВДП (в тому числі, тут). Поліз в моно, подумав, може купити. І я не розумію, де тут прибуток?

Ок, номінал 1000. Беремо долари - 3.0%. Але облігація коштує 1026.95. А отримаю я за рік 1030, я правильно розумію? Тобто, реально я отримаю 3 бакси. За рік. За тисячу в облігаціях.

Беремо гривні. Тут трошки краще. Зі 100000 за рік я отримаю 15300. Але я заплачу за це 7463. Тобто реально я отримаю не 15% а 7.5%.

Так в чому привабливість? Лише в тому що немає ПДФО?

https://preview.redd.it/mupb6bwon9ch1.jpg?width=1182&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=88e2bba8f30b97c1eeb9f13b2a4924b18a3ade02

https://preview.redd.it/d84zbawon9ch1.jpg?width=1182&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=73ada76ed12b3c6b81393de092f89b5caaad3646

Let's imagine, that Obi-Wan still wasn't convinced that Anakin should be trained, and didn't insist on it after the Qui-Gon's death. What would happen to Anakin? He's a free child, perhaps Padme still takes him into her retinue? What about his force and Palpatine? Would he still follow his career with great interest?

https://preview.redd.it/1kau5hbjsvbh1.png?width=2879&format=png&auto=webp&s=4141bf5a5f0d3a4ed223ac9af33d890c1f8a2d51

I'm very pleased. I call it the first run, because the first two times I was trying to get the hang of the game using a stock trampler. The first time I extracted myself with the trampler... Because I thought the liens are for those who lost their machines.

But this is the first time, when I did have time to proper think of a design (small but planned out), and hit two POIs, and exchanged green flares with a fellow solo-er, and then had a proper extract. Even picked up better guns, cannons, armour

>— To jest ustawodawstwo państwa ukraińskiego. Mają suwerenność, mają swobodę podejmowania decyzji. Pytania, czy te decyzje są dobre. W mojej ocenie, w ocenie prezydenta, ale myślę, że olbrzymiej większości Polaków, sławienie Bandery, sławienie zbrodniarzy, którzy dopuścili się nieludzkiego ludobójstwa na Wołyniu i w Małopolsce wschodniej, to nie jest ten kierunek, który jest kierunkiem do świata Zachodu

I was wondering after reading about the "viking" burial he witnessed, as why was he even allowed to be present at some foreign burial ritual so far away from home? So, apparently, he travelled with a caravan to Volga Bulgaria, with gifts and several companions, pretty far from his own lord. Why would any of the parties he itneracted with, either caravan leaders, Oghus raiders he encountered on the way, these Ruusiyah warriors etc. even accomodate or tolerate some foreign embassy bearing valuable items? It's not like his ruler back at home was able to retaliate against Oghus, for example, in any way.

I was thinking in follow up to another post here, that if I ever get to the traitor's dilemma, I'm voting Share.

The reasoning:

1. If we arrived in the end succesfully as a large group, we have been probably friendly with each other enough to not shit in each other's pockets deliberately.

2. Organizers keeping the prize money is the worst possible scenario, I hope everyone agrees that.

3. So, the risk of everyone selecting the "most rational choice" to steal is too high. If everyone ends up stealing, organizers win. So, I would deliberately vote Share. If both other traitors decide to steal, or if one of them - well, they must be not aweful people, if I didn't throw them under the bu8s for the entire game. I would be happy for them. If suddenly they hear my reasoning and all decide to share, we all win.

I've just suddenly realised one thing: George Martin has a major character named Cersei and zero in-universe explanation of the name origins. He didn't feel there's a need to invent a Valyrian author named Homericus who once wrote down an oral poem of a mythological witch queen named Cersei. He just called her Cersei, because it felt right, and went along with it. And I don't think anyone called him out on that, not really.

So, if you are like me, and tend to overthink and embed into worldbuilding every single modern idiom or reference that comes out of your mind, don't. Sometimes, it's OK to just use a cool name, or a word, or "an Achilles heel" sort of expression and leave it be unexplained.

Or is it too boring and bland in comparison?

Obviously, the crime wave, the privatization of justice, the general dystopian splinterization of civilization... Or is it because of the generic 80s scifi?

I mean specifically Mad Max 1