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I'm so sorry to hear that. Now I feel silly for testing your sense of humor yesterday.

With people saying stuff like exposition sessions like these being awkward... That's the trouble with the episodic format of El Goonish Shive. Each issue has to entertain in and of itself for reasons I'm unsure on, which means we as readers catching each new update it'll be ok to read, but if we read them in one go, moments like this where the characters mostly just sit aroynd and get told the plot as has happened offpanel seems... Clunky, at best. But then again, EGS has always had this, and its main strengthhas been and always is that real consideration is put into these talky Q&A moments where the world is built up from characters discussing the world. It's not really a problem, per say, it's just awkward narratively whilst being interesting on an intellectual level. I'd read an essay Dan'd write about his setting thus far, detailing its many layers and facets, if he wrote one. Still love it though. (plus this is the most negative in my life I have ever spoken about EGS' writing, so considering how positive this is mostly, I can prove quantatively that I want Mr Shive to go full steam ahead as is on his current course.)

I have always had an odd love-hate relationship with Karma meters. I like the idea and it does add variation to the games, but sometimes the choices are so STUPID. For example, in classic KotOR where you play a force sensitive character you keep getting choices between Light and Dark Side. In one situation you meet a man being mugged by gangsters. You can elect to save the man (Light Side), ignore the event (Dark Side) or kill the muggers because they irritate you (Dark Side.) Okay, no problem. But afterwards you can either help the man a bit more (Light Side) or extort all his money from him (Dark Side.) Er, what? Let's say you were trying for a Darth Vader style character feel. I can totally see him kill some muggers because they irritated him. But can I see him taking the victim's money afterwards? No. Why not? Because it is TOO SODDING PETTY. It is so much beneath Vader's dignity that it is ridiculous. And that is the problem with Karma meters. They all too often oversimplify, or worse yet, do evil for evil's own sake, purely for the muhahahaaa of it. If I play a villain, I'd like my evil to at least make sense. This can also be a problem with Good, but in my experience Evil tends to be the more egregious of the two. (Or Light and Dark Side, or in the case of Mass Effect, Blue and Red.) Sigh.

There's a reason Justin Trudeau is at the Nuclear Security summit right now, he's getting ideas. Yep Canada is sick of the world thinking of us as polite, apologetic lumberjacks. When WW3 happens, we'll be ready, and we'll make everyone apologize..... Yeah....I couldn't keep myself from giggling as I typed that.