The Old Hack

Isn't this a good time of the year to do that in the US? I seem to remember something about a lot of new car sales going on around the end of the year, or maybe the beginning of the new year. Either way the used car dealerships ought to be wanting to make room for an influx of more stock so they should be lowering their prices, too.

What can I say. Susan seems to get high on carrots.

No, his business is drawing socks. So he is a professional sock drawer.

Eh, maybe Dan just had a socky day.

Someone once asked me what the difference was between the Danish Parliament and the Swedish Parliament. I responded that the former was full of Danish meatballs and the latter full of Swedish meatballs.

See, you could make that your goal to find out!

http://www.egscomics.com/?id=2438

*scratches head* We now have a confusion of goals. In-game we had a group of NPCs whose objective was to keep their temple from being robbed. Out-of-Game we had the objective of everyone having fun. In-game, the NPCs clearly achieved their objective. The players wanted loot and experience. They got half of that. Out of game we all just wanted to have fun. Given how the players facepalmed and howled with laughter once they realised what had happened, I'd say we succeeded. All of that is why I like good roleplaying games. They are not zero sum. And even losing in game does not equate to having lost in general.

The players retreated in disarray. I call that an NPC win.

Sadly, several of the players in that group had made use of the Weed option which tended to slow their thinking and as a result not properly consider consequences. 'Charge' was their primary mode of operation with 'Run away! Run away!' being the usual fallback if that should fail. In their defence, this was something they often suspected me of because I had done so before. I just wish they had considered the fact that as long as the Darkness was also Silenced, there was a definite limit to how much the caster could do to set things up.

One of my wife's and my favourite TV moments ever occurred when a hapless TV announcer stated that coming up next was Law and Order: SUV. First we imagined the howl of laughter the poor woman must have faced from the technical staff in the studio. Then we started to discuss what the show might be about. We agreed that it was about police officers and legal staff driving fancy SUVs and only deigning to investigate SUV-related crimes. The climactic trial would always end with a dramatic speech in which the lawyer demonstrated that the SUV of the accused was inferior to the models employed by the police and the plaintiff.

I wonder when amateurs will realise that the bleeding obvious point they are lecturing professionals about might already be known to them.

I was about to advise that she do exactly something like that but Don Edwards beat me to it. This is a good strategy. I highly recommend it.

Anyone deliberately charging into that cloud to get at Raven. DUH. Yes, that would be just ONE of many, many reasons it isn't tactically advantageous to blind oneself by charging into an enemy smoke cloud. I once ran a game of D&D where several casters on different sides were casting spells. It was extremely chaotic. In one spot we ended up having spells of Darkness, Blade Barrier and Silence landing right on top of one another in rapid succession. This was entirely unplanned by anyone and thus no-one (apart from me, who could hardly believe my own eyes) knew exactly what had happened except for the caster of the Blade Barrier who stood inside the dark and silent area and so couldn't warn anyone. In the following round two player characters charged into the darkness to get at the caster and both got horribly mutilated by the Barrier. They staggered back out, bleeding and terrified, unsure what had happened as I of course had not specified precisely what sort of thing they had stumbled into. There was of course only one thing for the rest of the group to do and they did it. They charged into the darkness to get at whatever thing had so badly hurt their friends. (No, they didn't win that fight, why do you ask?)

Maybe they get automated updates from Snapchat?

I have to admit that it takes a special kind of stupid to overconfidently charge into a cloud of darkness a wizard just created. Me, I'd much rather throw something in there that would make remaining inside it a bad idea. A grenade, maybe a handful of caltrops... I just don't see the tactical value of deliberately blinding yourself.

And tomorrow we should have FIVE GOOOOLD RINGS?

Hrm. He got at least a hint in this situation, but I'll still agree with your point. That wasn't enough to really predict what Susan would act like during a time of actual crisis.

Batman, of course.

I don't think so, no.

Me too.

Of course not, he saved time.

I dunno if I would really call slavery a 'job.'

Big talk from the Pharaoh who based his entire kingdom on a pyramid scheme.

You just gave me a horrible flashback to a time when I was happy if I got like 3.5 KB/sec. The net has come so far in the last twenty years.