That said, I wouldn't go quite as far as @BESW and say that they are entirely unseperable - for example, I've certainly read books to get an idea of the mechanics for a game I might at some point be playing, before I have any character in mind at all. And I've certainly sat down with some friends at lunch and talked about how our characters felt about one another and what their backstories are like without mechanics crossing my mind.
For me, personally, the two are best when they intertwine.
Like, straight-up example in ARRPG: when I'm creating a PC and I get to that fifth aspect slot which isn't a high concept or a mode concept, I have to sit down and ask myself really hard questions about who else the character is. Being given that fifth slot to fill in, one which isn't directly associated with the character's primary modes of agency, pushes me to give depth to the character.
I'm not happy with Jessie yet because I haven't found her Omega aspect yet.
But these activities weren't competing with one another for a shared pool of time or interest. They were each consuming from their own seperate pools, and there's perhaps a third range of activities (which comprise BESW's general prep?) that consume from both pools at once.
So that's where the "Stormwind Fallacy" concept falls apart for me, I guess: at the base assumptions it makes about the nature of effort and time in RPGs.
@Grubermensch As BESW was saying before as an example, you can't optimise your character while driving; you can't practice RP'ing different voices in public
(More generally: some bits of my time are shaped (due to my immediate surroundings, my level of inspiration, my current goals, whatever) so that I'm in a mood to think about mechanics. Some bits of my time are shaped so that I'm in a mood to think about character. Some bits of my time are shaped so that I'm in a mood to think about both.)
My NPCs were a LOT better, I think, in the days when I walked to class early in the morning and practiced voices out loud.
For some reason I just can't do that in the car to the same efficiency.
(I think my NPCs were also better when I read more books and watched less television, and that's about the shape of my other time: I work more hours of the day, and I can watch TV while I work but I can't read while I work.)
And I guess some bits of my time might be shaped so that I'm in a mood to think about exactly one OR the other but not both, but I've always found such bits of time to be vanishingly rare compared to the far more common other three types.
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@Nyoze I have close to zero awareness of any developments in the candy or cookie aisles of a grocery store, so it could have arrived without my knowing. Google turns up instructions on dunking oreos though and studies into optimal milk exposure time.
If you do have them and haven't tried them - and you are the type of person not opposed to adult biscuit consumption, I suggest grabbing a pack and dunking them in milk :)
My friend just got up out of bed specifically to tell me that the Monster Farm DVD has been released. His immediate response to seeing it on his phone before he nodded off was "I HAVE TO TELL PIXIE. [jumps out of bed]" True friendship. [sheds friendship tear]
You should watch and/or read Hogfather. It's in the Discworld series, by Terry Pratchett. The bad guy invades the Tooth Fairy's castle to fuel a magic spell...
@Nyoze Aha! Ahahahaha! That is what WE thought many centuries ago! Turns out that there's a lot you can do with something so intimately connected with friendship.
@Adeptus (this is exactly the thing I had on my mind)
@Pixie Yessss. Oh boy. I wasn't even thinking about what you could do with a Blackened Tear of Friendship. Has to be very suitably and carefully prepared and converted, though. Lots of little processes to go through to make it blacken just right.
Not to be confused with a Tear of Ashen Friendship, which is different, and you have to work even harder for that one, but it's only useful for a few things.
I like all of them except Evo, but MR2 is pretty much universally accepted as the best in the series. I did not like the story focus in 4, it undermined some things I liked about the game, but the taming portion was fine (I was thinking of it when I made that comment about Evo, haha).
@Miniman Ahh... another game I will probably never finish, ever. Not that it has stopped me before. xD
Once I hit level 9, I can as a full round action blast an opponent and knock them prone, then get a free AoO when they fall, and when they stand. Which.... Actually doesn't work as well as I wanted, because I can't do it on a normal AoO...
I mean, I'm always hearing about how PF hates mundanes even more than 3.5 and actively nerfs them whenever possible, but this sort of thing still blows me away when I come across it organically.
@Miniman Yeah... If you want to play a melee class in Pathfinder, you better hope that no one else is playing anything but. There's ways in PVP to actually make a difference, but if you were facing actual monsters... You're screwed.
@Sandwich But it was still super fun. On that note, I really didn't like it when they removed monster death. That seems like a strange thing to say, but it increased the emotional investment, and 3 actually did all I could have wanted with death mechanically. They should have just kept that system.
I will never forget the first monster I lost, man. It was a Granity, and, indeed, I done screwed up. I was 9 and it was my first time playing by myself. But oh gosh, it was so sad. I had the funeral.
> Apex  created a new thread "A new ip for CelebCraft" in the General Discussion forum - May 20, 15 > Cougar24 (mod)  created a new thread "Apex (monty) Banned" in the Banned/Muted/Jailed Players forum - May 23, 15
[sigh] Left a "please read the tour and help" comment on a "doesn't answer the question as asked" answer from a double-digit-rep user, then noticed they've been on Stack sites for four years... then saw none of their accounts have the Informed badge. Sticking by my comment.
> "We must not be too ambitious. We cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content ourselves with a joy ride in a paint box. And, for this, Audacity is the only ticket." (Sir Winston Churchill, quotes on painting)
Necrotic-Americans aren't an apocalypse, and they come in a wide variety of mindfulnesses.
It helps that they're just a part of the story, not the primary focus.
UNITY's actually a nanoswarm fluid which replaces the blood of and animates a patchwork corpse. There's a sapient swamp which can fill corpses with motile plant matter to animate them as puppets. There's a swam of more regular zombies in a mad science city, kept smart and non-hostile through the application of vending machines that dispense cloned brains so they can be productive members of society.
A lot of the problem with those zombies is cultural: lurching and eating brains together is a social structure which breathers aren't comfortable with, and admittedly zombies can easily lurch irresponsibly.
For example while I don't like a lot of vampire fiction that is made commercially, I do think the idea and many interpretations of vampires is still powerful and ripe for further writing
@besw A message from the surgeon general: Lurch Responsibly.
Marvel Zombies, for example, spends its last several issues doing little except exploring the different kinds of zombie one can have.
(The primary Marvel zombie is intelligent, self-aware, with the same basic personality as its living self, but with a hunger for humanoid flesh which overwhelms the zombie's self-control until sated.)
(This makes room for character drama more familiar to vampire and werewolf stories.)
there is something about vapirism which and all of its symbols and tropes that probably resonates more with how I see the world (I like werewolves too but to a lesser extent). There are a lot of Christian sin metaphors wrapped into vampires.
Vampires and zombies are very very close to each other, really.
Both are, in their most trope-centred iterations, a reanimated corpse compelled to consume its living counterparts, with the ability to inflict its condition on those upon whom it feeds.
In the U.S., at least, zombies and vampires have been theorized to be two sides of the same coin, each representing the fear of a different political ideology as viewed by the other, and the horror comes with they can turn you into one of them!
nothing in any zombie media I have consumed has ever made zombies feel personal, directed, malevolent, etc. There is that horror of someone you knew becoming a zombie and trying to eat you but like seeing a friend die/become a victim of a plague (or communism lol) it always feels impersonal
It's one reason I like Skin Horse's take on zombies: they have a predisposition to swarming, but they fight it, or channel it, and zombies in small groups or as individuals are shown to have individual identities.
Philly had to enforce a 9pm curfew for anyone underneath age 18 2 years ago because of repeated "flash mobs" that were not song and dance flash mobs so much as throngs of teenagers running through the streets and attacking people for the lolz of it.
I think largely because the public consciousness is more settled on 'what a zombie is' than they are on 'what a vampire is,' for example.
So you can get The Hunger and Buffy and Blackula and still have them all be recognisably vampires, but if you had that kind of diversity amongst zombie movies it'd be hard to sell them all as zombies.
@besw that is pretty true zombies within the western media were largely popularized by a small set of films and then works that were derivative and/or in reaction to those films
It's less obvious these days--until you think about it as a progression--but it's pretty clear if we compare the original Phantom to the original Dracula. From there we can trace the two characters' movement through media over time.
Both are ugly, intelligent men from Eastern Europe who move West (to Paris or London) to own property, become rich, and steal the local women.
(Notably, both are also chiefly opposed by an effeminate man who is betrothed/married to the antagonist's primary female target, but who is mostly ineffectual at the opposition.)
Then we can look at their progression over time, and see that as they moved from novel to film their qualities of "ugly but hypnotic" are translated into visual shorthand of increasingly handsome actors.
For a period of time in the mid 20th century both became little more than cultural jokes, tropes used as parody to disguise other, more important ideas--Blackula and the Phantom of the Paradise come to mind.
And then --with Anne Rice for vampires, and with Lloyd Webber for the Phantom-- they were re-imagined in the popular consciousness as sympathetic antiheroes rather than tragic villains.
Look at some of the most recent film adaptations of both concepts: the Phantom is a dreamy Gerard Butler whose disfigurement is little more than a bad burn, and he apparently spends most of his time sunbathing on the roof of the opera house; while the vampire is now also a brooding sex symbol whose dangerous charisma has been turned into a literally shiny distraction. Both are now presented as tragically flawed but ultimately redeemable.
An interesting parallel. As people became more accepting of the "foreigner" (at least of the Eastern European variety) the old monsters based on them became re-imagined as more sympathetic?
@sillyputty I think it might be more tied to changing mores, in the post sexual revolution west the Bram Stroker's insatiable vampire lusting vampire is not viewed the same way
The vampires of Polidori and le Fanu were allegories for the parasitism of the upper class.
The vampire of Stoker was an allegory for immigration and the clash between tradition and progress.
The vampire of Rice became an allegory for internal struggles, a symbol of a society that sees monsters not in other classes or other nationalities, but within themselves.
The shift of vampire from antagonist to anti-hero was accompanying a societal shift toward self-reflection and self-loathing.
The monster becomes the main character.
(With that in mind, I find Twilight's dual protagonists fascinating: one self-identifies as a monster and can only overcome self-loathing through total devotion to someone else; the other self-identifies as a victim and can only feel validated when given total devotion by someone else. Objectively the self-identity of both is inaccurate, and their solutions are destructive to themselves and all around them. The social politics at play there is mind-blowing.)
@JoshuaAslanSmith ....yes, but then Anne Rice's first vampire novels were grief therapy. The general observation that monsters reflect societal pathologies is in no way a statement about the intent of any specific authors.
It's a major element of the series' appeal, and it's also why I feel validated in examining who Bella actually is more closely: although she appears to be an empty shell, she has very specific qualities and attributes which ought to make her an alien mind to inhabit for some.
I suspect that revulsion to Twilight, by those who have actually consumed it, is largely due to an incompatibility with the proffered reader avatar.
(I've personally experienced physical revulsion while reading some better-written books which ask the reader to step into the mind of particularly incompatible avatars.)
@JoshuaAslanSmith "What's Eating Gilbert Grape." I stayed up all night reading it for a class, because I knew that if I ever put it down I'd never pick it up again.
The film is bad enough, and it left out the worst bits.
(Kudos for the actors, though.)
Twilight, though--Twilight's just not written well enough for me to step out of third-person observation of the avatar.
I'd love to have seen a tightly-edited version of Twilight written from an understanding that both Bella and Edward are seriously screwed up, and their ability to support each other is terrifying because it means they can inflict themselves on others rather than wallowing in their own neuroses.
I know very little about Twilight, certainly not enough to comment on it coherently, but I do find Robert Pattinson's reactions to Edward to be very entertaining. He seems to loathe the character more than anyone else.
It makes me feel badly for them because of the typecasting you have to imagine they would struggle to overcome. Then I remember how insanely lucrative the franchise is and stop feeling badly. =P
I haven't seen any work by Kristen Stewart that has wowed me, or even had me take notice of her as an actress. Maybe she's good, but I find her to be completely...average to below average.
Keanu constantly tries to portray the blank slate character ever since his success with Matrix. I think his goal is to make the audience project themselves onto him. His success in this regard is hit or miss. He certainly isn't the best actor, but he's not terrible.
Anyone have any suggestions on finding historical prices for church bells? So far the only think I've been able to find a price on is the Liberty Bell, but 1) the time period is a little late and more importantly 2) the price includes the cost of shipping across the Atlantic, which I imagine was a signigicant part of the cost.
@DavidReeve Could be anything. A couple of my players are required to to donate their shares of the loot for class reasons, so they decided to start a fund to buy the town a bell
I have no idea if that's a good question for history.se, but D&D (and derivates) are not really famous for having consistent prices for goods across the board
@DrewS Take the weight of the bell and multiply it by.8 for the copper then multiply that number by the price of copper per pound and then do the same for Tin only use .2.
They have to make the mold which uses concrete so I would guess that would take AT LEAST a week. After melting the metals down and mixing them and pouring the bell into the mold the bell has to cool for another few days depending on the size. Then the bell has to actually be installed.
So about 3 week minimum. And that is for a small bell.
I should compile a document with all the things I find D&D 4e faulty of, then everytime somebody tells me he doesn't like the edition because of some bowel instinct, tell him that my opinions are better than his/hers (even if they aren't)
My biggest problem with 4e is that I know it can be used for a good, classical, roleplay-full D&D experience. But being a bad roleplay-full DM, I can't demonstrate it.
@Aaron =P Mainly through the roleplaying! If I'm screwing over my friend in Monopoly it can be frustrating, but if Baron von Trusk, Slumlord and aspiring Railway Baron screws you over with an outrageous accent and a popping monocle, it's good times had by all.
@doppelgreener I'm especially fond of the bit where the relephant line of text was mysteriously the only burred text in the scan that was handed over in discovery.
