[Off-Topic] Community Chat Thread

[kirkusjones]

Is Aminatou the kid from Trick or Treat?

@toctheyounger if slashers are your jam, definitely check out My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones. I finished the sequel, Don't Fear the Reaper last month.

[toctheyounger]

Is Aminatou the kid from Trick or Treat?

@toctheyounger if slashers are your jam, definitely check out My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones. I finished the sequel, Don't Fear the Reaper last month.

Noted and thanks for the recommendation. I'm sort of into slashers, I grew up reading Stephen King through the age of 11 or so, but never really ventured too far from that in any big way. Mostly I'm into supernatural horror, somehow having a human real world antagonist mostly just doesn't do it for me.

Oko is totally Pennywise btw.

[kirkusjones]

Is Aminatou the kid from Trick or Treat?

@toctheyounger if slashers are your jam, definitely check out My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones. I finished the sequel, Don't Fear the Reaper last month.

Noted and thanks for the recommendation. I'm sort of into slashers, I grew up reading Stephen King through the age of 11 or so, but never really ventured too far from that in any big way. Mostly I'm into supernatural horror, somehow having a human real world antagonist mostly just doesn't do it for me.

Oko is totally Pennywise btw.

Give it a whirl. I don't want to spoil anything for you, but I think we have similar taste in books.

How is Oko not the Leprechaun?

[toctheyounger]

Is Aminatou the kid from Trick or Treat?

@toctheyounger if slashers are your jam, definitely check out My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones. I finished the sequel, Don't Fear the Reaper last month.

Noted and thanks for the recommendation. I'm sort of into slashers, I grew up reading Stephen King through the age of 11 or so, but never really ventured too far from that in any big way. Mostly I'm into supernatural horror, somehow having a human real world antagonist mostly just doesn't do it for me.

Oko is totally Pennywise btw.

Give it a whirl. I don't want to spoil anything for you, but I think we have similar taste in books.

How is Oko not the Leprechaun?

It's been a while since I read horror (partly because fantasy but also predominantly because parenthood - the last time I tried my kid lost my bookmark and I gave up) but I'll give it a shot.

I say Oko is Pennywise on account of the shapeshifting. Also cause he's a %$#% clown.

[RxPhantom]

I use draft chaff as bookmarks. I've recently rediscovered my love of reading and am currently on a tear. My library card is seeing a lot of action.

[kirkusjones]

I use draft chaff as bookmarks. I've recently rediscovered my love of reading and am currently on a tear. My library card is seeing a lot of action.

What are you reading?

[DirkGently]

Random thought about design, when comparing Leori, Sparktouched Hunter and Commodore Guff - I've been very down on tribal payoffs across the board, but digging deeper, I don't think I mind tribal payoffs per se, it just depends on how they're implemented. Leori (setting aside the potential to have multiples of the same type, which I think is mostly irrelevant) essentially caps out in payoff by having a single planeswalker. Beyond that, you get a little selection, but that's about it. Compare to Guff, whose abilities scale without limit for the number of walkers you have.

I find the guffs of the world to be really boring, because it incentivizes running a really high percentage of the deck having the same tag and thus homogenizes decklists a lot. I like to think about what I can do to put my personal stamp on a given decklist, and "run a %$#% of the same card/creature type" isn't exactly unique. By contrast, something like Leori gives a lot more room for customization, since only a relatively small percentage of the deck needs to be planeswalkers in order to reliably get value off the saboteur trigger.

Of course, things do get muddy - if they made a Leori but for elves - maybe Nissa, Resurgent Animist is the closest comparison - even if Nissa doesn't care beyond a couple elves, in fact gets better with a small selection, so many other elves scale with the total number that you're probably going to want to stock up on elves regardless. Planeswalkers is a poorly-supported enough tribe that the commander dictates a lot more about the shape of the deck, though, so Leori gets to preside over a planeswalker tribal deck that doesn't need to run 35+ planeswalkers.

[ISBPathfinder]

@DirkGently personally, if you are planning on having multiple planeswalkers alive at the same time I think you are already doing fairly well. I honestly wouldn't even bother with assuming you have 2+ of the same type of walker in play as its probably being greedy. I would instead just assume that 98% of the time Leori's ability doubles up a good activation rather than going deep on specific tribes of walkers.

I am always gunning to remove any and all walkers though. Its rare that I want someone to untap with a walker still. Defending walkers from a whole table can be tough so I generally don't plan on most of my walkers to live more than a turn unless you are playing against more casual players but beating up on more casual players with a walkers deck feels kind of mean.

[Ulka]

I booted up skyrim and forgot which house my children are in

So long as you eventually come back with the Milk you are doing great!

[Hermes_]

I booted up skyrim and forgot which house my children are in

So long as you eventually come back with the Milk you are doing great!

I successfully completed the quest: Find yo kids

[Dunadain]

I booted up skyrim and forgot which house my children are in

So long as you eventually come back with the Milk you are doing great!

I successfully completed the quest: Find yo kids

But did you bring the milk?

[Dunadain]

Speaking of video games, finally beat Hades. The game is great. I took a break a couple months ago and only came back to it recently because I felt that I wasn't really progressing, in respect, I should have just turned on God mode, but I did it in the end.

I bought a steam deck and it's been great for clearing out my backlog, lol.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3. @Dunadain can you see this?

[Dunadain]

Yup, it's back now, huh

[ISBPathfinder]

Anyone else play Path of Exile? They are doing a new league Friday and I just get a little weird the last few days to week before it starts counting %$#% down. I got bit HARD by Diablo 2 in my childhood and Path of Exile has been the only other game in the genre that has really scratched that itch for me.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Anyone else play Path of Exile? They are doing a new league Friday and I just get a little weird the last few days to week before it starts counting %$#% down. I got bit HARD by Diablo 2 in my childhood and Path of Exile has been the only other game in the genre that has really scratched that itch for me.

I used to play it a couple years back, but the skill tree was too brutal for me. I need a more linear path to min/max than that game can provide.

[folding_music]

I was really into Path of Exile until I realised it was just another game where everyone follows a guide, everyone's on the same grind and everyone wants the same stuff. opted out of it so quick. but the canvas of mysterious and tempting skills and passives was initially really exciting

[toctheyounger]

I haven't gamed in a while, because children, but I do miss it. I'm fairly picky on games, kind of into the Final Fantasy series and some co op shooters. The one game I keep coming back to though is Divinity: Original Sin 2. It's a turn based RPG with customisable characters and multiple story paths. At first it seems fairly rudimentary, but by god is it good. Just really enjoyable, variable play experiences right through, it's co-op too if you want that, and it's not one you need to level grind with either. Mostly I just really like that you do kind of need to think around corners a bit to proceed, and that's relatively rare with video games. I've probably played through it half a dozen times with different characters including some of my own making, and I'm never bored running through it again.

Plus it's nice to support an independent studio; after the success of this one I believe Larian were involved in the development of Baldur's Gate 3, which seems pretty awesome.

[ISBPathfinder]

Anyone else play Path of Exile? They are doing a new league Friday and I just get a little weird the last few days to week before it starts counting %$#% down. I got bit HARD by Diablo 2 in my childhood and Path of Exile has been the only other game in the genre that has really scratched that itch for me.

I used to play it a couple years back, but the skill tree was too brutal for me. I need a more linear path to min/max than that game can provide.

I was really into Path of Exile until I realised it was just another game where everyone follows a guide, everyone's on the same grind and everyone wants the same stuff. opted out of it so quick. but the canvas of mysterious and tempting skills and passives was initially really exciting

Yea the game kind of has a name for itself at this point for being the overly complicated game with a %$#% of learning time. I think I have over 3k hours logged and I haven't ever used a guide and still to this point refuse to use most external resources for the game but I am also someone who has never officially finished the "end game" content of the game. I make good enough characters to fight the non uber bosses but I know there are people out there that can measure their DPS in endgame bosses per second which I cringe at lol. Its fun to tinker with but its also extremely frustrating as most of the resources other than path of building are vastly incomplete in terms of the scope of asking valid questions on how mechanics work.

@toctheyounger I get you on the kids thing. I only have one but its still hard. I normally try to game for 1-2 hours a night still at the end of the night but I think there might also be some continuous sleep deprivation to me for pushing that and my kiddo sleeps through the night.

[toctheyounger]

@toctheyounger I get you on the kids thing. I only have one but its still hard. I normally try to game for 1-2 hours a night still at the end of the night but I think there might also be some continuous sleep deprivation to me for pushing that and my kiddo sleeps through the night.

Yeah I mean we're doing a whole lot of work on the house and have another on the way too, so it's not kids in isolation I guess. And we have decided to co sleep and a couple of other decisions that make it better for the kids moving forward but harder on us. It is worth it, but yeah spare time is like at an all time low. It's pretty much what I expected moving into fatherhood, so no complaints. It's the hardest job I've ever had but easily the best.

[ISBPathfinder]

Yea we thought about having a second ourselves but then my wife hit 40 years old and she was doing the math and didn't like how it stacked up. Also we got lucky the first time and got one that would sleep like 12 hours a day and didn't feel like playing the lotto a second time.

Co Sleep sounds..... rough. I think to date my 3 year old has slept in our bed maybe 2-3 times ever and most of those were due to my wife being out on work and me not wanting to figure %$#% out in the middle of the night when she walked into my room lol.

@TheAmericanSpirit you might like the Diablo games specifically Diablo 3 and Diablo 4 but the downside is they aren't cheap and the down complexity of them tends to be a pro upfront but a con later as you get familiar with the game.

[duducrash]

My friend recently got D2 for the switch and I got the itch. D2 is one of the games I have played the most in my life, a hammerdin build was the first time I had success in such a game

[ISBPathfinder]

My friend recently got D2 for the switch and I got the itch. D2 is one of the games I have played the most in my life, a hammerdin build was the first time I had success in such a game

There must have been like..... 10 years of my life that every freaking summer I booted up Diablo 2 and played for a few months. I both do and don't miss that game. The trade options in D2 were so freaking bad that I would mostly just accept that there was no trading outside of with friends because hosting games for trade purposes was so rough lol.

[Hermes_]

My mom passed away last night

[RxPhantom]

I'm so sorry @Hermes_. I hope you have the support you need right now.