[-] Lianodel@ttrpg.network 34 points 3 days ago

/u/DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca is right on the money. Mana paces the game, so anything that can break that is super good. In an otherwise even matchup, if one player has a Lotus while the other doesn't, that can easily make the game. It's not going to win the game in and of itself, but it's a huge enabler to play the thing that will win you the game, before your opponent can reasonably do anything about it.

On top of that, it's literally good in all decks. It's been banned in every format besides Vintage, where it's restricted to one (and not including casual/fan formats). It had to be banned partly for power reasons, but also because it makes deck-building less diverse. There's no deck that wouldn't want a Lotus if it could have one, much less four.

It's also part of the Reserved List. After WotC overprinted cards, they essentially promised not to reprint certain ones. I think it's a dumb decision, but they've annoyingly stuck to it (and players are worse off for it). Black Lotus is on that list. And it was alreadly limited in printings, because it was a rare card, and a bit of a design mistake.

It's also simply an iconic card. Despite being a design mistake, it's a major part of Magic history, and gets referenced all the time. To some extent, it's famous for being famous. That makes it the biggest prize for collectors.

So, all this together, it has an incredibly high demand, a very limited supply, and no indication of a reprint anytime soon.

So I printed off a proxy at a professional card printer for 30¢. :)

[-] Lianodel@ttrpg.network 2 points 3 days ago

Happy to help! It's worked great for me, and a buddy of mine also liked it, so I'm fairly sure it's not a fluke. :P

Also, my ratios were by weight. That's only relevant because that's what makes me push up against the maximum solubility. If you go volumetric, you have more wiggle room. The second point will be less relevant, but it's still faster and easier than heating it in a pot, IMO.

Oh, and as a bonus: you don't need to wait for the syrup to cool down.

[-] Lianodel@ttrpg.network 7 points 3 days ago

If you're going to make simple syrup, use a stick blender.

Firstly, it's easier and faster than heating the sugar and water in a pot, which is the most popular method.

Secondly, you don't lose any significant amount of water to evaporation. That's not a big deal if you make 1:1 simple syrup, but if you're going 2:1 (which I prefer), you're already very close to the maximum solubility of sugar in water at room temperature. Losing a few grams of water can make it supersaturated, which leads to sugar crystals falling out of solution over time. Not a big deal, but a little annoying.

If you give it a try, bear in mind that you're going to get a cloudy syrup at first. That's totally normal, and it's not undissolved sugar, it's just air bubbles. They'll float out over time.

[-] Lianodel@ttrpg.network 61 points 3 months ago

Sometimes I think about how much art was never created because of capitalism. It either never got funded, or a potential artist never got the chance to make it, because just to scrape by, they had to spend too much time toiling to make some business owners money. It's depressing.

And, just to cut off one potential counterargument: I don't give half of a shit how "good" that art would be. I'm confident there are spectacular works of art that never came to be, but even putting it aside, it's all subjective. Some folks would have loved it, and the artists would have found value in making it. That's more than enough, and a hell of a lot more meaningful than breaking your back working for a living so that other people can own stuff for a living.

[-] Lianodel@ttrpg.network 88 points 5 months ago

Sokka, Scanlan, John Snow, Walter White - except “more based” or “less of a cuck”.

The two that stick out most to me are Sokka and Walter White.

A major part of Sokka's character arc is outgrowing his misogyny. I mean, Christ, the Kyoshi Warriors episode had him humble himself, ask to learn, and crossdress.

As for Walter White, his arc is becoming "more based" and "less of a cuck." It's also about him becoming a total monster.

There's been a lot of discourse about "media literacy," and it's frustrating that the people who most lack it, often in destructive ways, end up just dismissing the criticism out of hand, as though it's not dead-on.

[-] Lianodel@ttrpg.network 79 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Time to take a meme on the internet too seriously! :D

There are two things that bug me about the weirdly frequent discourse on Batman.

Firstly, there's no one version of Batman. You can find bastard fascist Batman, and you can find actual justice Batman. Hell, you can find both by Frank Miller, depending on the point in his career. My favorite version is from The Animated Series, and you'll find tons of examples of Batman using kindness and compassion to affect meaningful change, instead of reveling in violence as though it solves anything. Heck, he's nicer to working-class folks, even sympathetic criminals, than to his fellow rich people.

Secondly, I think it's a talking point with bad optics. Batman rules. Why let the fascists have him? If there are loads of ways to look at and interpret the character, I'd rather focus on the one that makes him the good kind of class traitor, anti-fascist, anti-cop, and fighting for economic and social justice.

[-] Lianodel@ttrpg.network 115 points 8 months ago

My potentially controversial take is that metagaming is neither good nor bad. A metagaming problem is really just some other problem that rears its head through metagaming.

You can metagame and be a good player. It's like doing improv with dramatic irony. If you're prioritizing the gameplay and everyone's enjoyment, it's a useful tool.

If you're using it for the personal advantage of your character, though... that can also be fine. Some old-school games, especially dungeon crawls, are like strategy games testing the players as well as their characters.

It's when there's a disconnect between how people are playing the game that you get problems. If someone wants to play a strategy game while others want to play improv, and they're not thinking about what kind of approach is appropriate and when, that you get issues.

[-] Lianodel@ttrpg.network 118 points 9 months ago

I have to admit I was kind of impressed seeing the way two scams worked together: the Hyperloop, and the Loop. People genuinely thought they were related projects because of the name and, I guess, the tunnels. So the Hyperloop made the Loop sound more exciting than it really was, and the Loop made it seem like there was progress towards the Hyperloop.

Of course, in reality, the Loop is just a shitty cab tunnel designed to financially and physically block local mass transit projects, while the Hyperloop is just bullshit vaporware designed to financially and politically block intercity mass transit projects.

[-] Lianodel@ttrpg.network 146 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Hoo boy. Against my better judgment, I'll wade into this pool.

  1. If voting for either party gets you the same result, fascists wouldn't be so focused on elections and trying so hard to take the vote away.

  2. Withholding your vote doesn't do anything. When has losing an election pushed either party left?

  3. Voting doesn't prevent you from engaging in other forms of direct action.

Both parties suck. People will needlessly suffer and die no matter who wins. But there are also people who will suffer and die under one party but not the other, and the same can't be said the other way around. Our democracy is fundamentally flawed, but voting is a tool at our disposal, and we're in no position to turn anything down.

[-] Lianodel@ttrpg.network 110 points 11 months ago

New national parking platform

...if that means what I think it means, it's probably the worst of the lot.

Take it from an American: mandatory minimum parking will absolutely ruin your towns and cities.

[-] Lianodel@ttrpg.network 75 points 1 year ago

That might be surprising for developers that released a Unity game back in, say, 2015, when Unity CEO John Riccitiello was publicly touting Unity's "no royalties, no fucking around" subscription plans. Now, even developers who paid $1,500 for a "perpetual license" to Unity back then could theoretically be subject to additional per-install fees starting next year (provided their game is still generating sufficient revenue and installs).

This reminds me of a story from earlier this year from Wizards of the Coast, publishers of Dungeons & Dragons (and subsidiary of Hasbro). It hinged on exactly the same semantics.

The short version is that, in 2000, Wizards of the Coast released D&D under the "Open Gaming License (OGL)," which gave third parties explicit approval to make and sell their own material using most of the D&D content, under a perpetual license. Cut forward 23 years, and lots of major publishers got their start making D&D supplements, and continue to use the OGL because (a) it's a cover-your-ass license in case they tread into a legal gray area, and (b) allows them to open up their own content to third parties. Plans for an update OGL leaked, with predictably dogshit terms that I won't get into right now, but essentially killed the license as anything anyone would want to use. The malicious part was that they would be "de-authorizing" the OGL 1.0a, because while it was a perpetual license, that didn't make it irrevocable.

(IIRC, it's also a legal argument based on case law established after the OGL was written. Not a lawyer, though.)

Predictably, there was a huge backlash. WotC backtracked, and even gave up ground by releasing a bunch of stuff under the Creative Commons. However, the OGL is still dead, because third parties can no longer trust that WotC (or Hasbro) won't try this ratfuckery again. (Sound familiar?) Lots of products were subtly rewritten to no longer need the OGL, and several publishers worked on an industry license amusingly called the Open RPG Creative License, or ORC.

The thing is, D&D's going to survive this a lot better than Unity. The business model was to sell D&D and D&D supplements, they only indirectly benefited from third-party material, and people are still going to make D&D stuff because it's D&D. Unity's entire business model relies on licensing, so if people stop using it... that's it.

[-] Lianodel@ttrpg.network 98 points 1 year ago

Due to the nature of Cybertruck, which is made of bright metal with mostly straight edges, any dimensional variation shows up like a sore thumb.​

It sounds to me like the reasonable conclusion to draw from this would be to modify the design of the car. I'd also assume you don't need tolerances to be the same for literally all parts inside and out. I'd also think that, if the car looks that bad if things are 10 or more microns out of place, these cars are going to age terribly after regular use.

But what do I know? If I were smart, I'd be rich, right? And Elon is so rich, he must be a genius!

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Lianodel

joined 1 year ago