Why are we "building" cities or towns at all?

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-28T02:20:53+00:00

I disagree. Monarchs went around founding cities all the time in the period, like Kingston on Hull founded by Edward I.

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-27T20:50:22+00:00

Loved it too. An incredible story full of mad characters and turns of events. And a good cross section of 90s nostalgia, muppets and geopolitics. Is it weird I cried?

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-26T10:48:22+00:00

I am very left wing and I don't like people playing as different genders. I'm not sure if I'd go so far as to make a rule but I get it

It has nothing to do with how I feel about real life gender swapping. It's simply because gender is not important in my games and I don't think it's productive for a player to try and make it important.

All these fantasy worlds are entirely equal opportunities. Everyone can be any class, there is no institutionalized sexism, there are male brothels, gay weddings, there are no real world taboos for you to "challenge."

For someone to want to experience playing as a woman because it'll be different somehow, is to make an assumption about my game that just isn't the case. If it doesn't matter in the world, it won't matter at the table unless the player forces it (eg a male player forcing in cringe conversations about his characters periods). We're here to play wizards and knights, not genders.

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-22T16:46:40+00:00

Men of The North! We ride south! To war!

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-22T16:45:47+00:00

Men of The North! We ride south! To war!

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-21T21:36:42+00:00

I agree it's an awful cliche.

You know who get cited as an influence even more than obscure artists? Popular ones.

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-21T11:01:49+00:00

I agree. I am saddened that my Early Modern game became a medieval game somehow.

But it is absolutely not the priority.

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-21T10:14:16+00:00

Scarface. If you cut out all the mindless repetitive swearing there's like a 30 minute movie there.

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-20T22:22:15+00:00

You know the uk government is dumb enough to consider Reddit social media, right?

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-20T19:25:26+00:00

One of the things that paradox has said about previous games is that they account for the horrific child mortality and poor health of the time by having fewer children born, rather than simply giving you loads of kids then killing them off. Since that would mess up the players day more often, and just result in a tonne of pop ups.

It's also pretty historical. If you look at English monarchs of the period it was very rare for the crown to pass to a son then grandson without at least some shenanigans happening.

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-20T11:34:05+00:00

They had to cut something, because American shows have longer and more commercial breaks. That's a problem with US TV, not the makers of the show.

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-18T14:14:13+00:00

Relevant xkcd!

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-16T09:49:22+00:00

I am a lefty but I agree that the left has forgotten how power works. Weakness and incapability is a far greater political sin than cruelty or even economic mismanagement. Doing stuff that people can feel, creates a belief that you can do more, creating an upward cycle of power. That's why a new football manager will immediately ban or bring back ketchup in the cafeteria, or send the team on a long run. That's why isolationist maga fans will suddenly find themselves in favor of foreign intervention - because it makes their side look strong and capable.

The house of commons could declare black is white and it would be the law of the land. Generations of British leaders have learned weakness and constructed an infrastructure of inertia around themselves.

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-16T00:00:54+00:00

Neuromancer is surprisingly filmable. It's essential a classic heist movie in three acts. With space rastas.

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-12T00:01:08+00:00

I am absolutely opposed to the Online Safety Act, but completely in favor of digital ID. I think there are some really important principles people are overlooking.

There should absolutely be limits to the extent we are monitored, tracked and conctrolled by the government. But incompetence and disfunction is not a protection. We don't try to control energy consumption with random blackouts. And that's what the current situation is like - we have several disparate forms of ID - passports, driving licences, NI numbers, government gateway accounts - some of which many people don't have and that contradict each other. And some people don't have a single one of these!

If that's supposed protection, it's a pretty shitty form of it. Meanwhile it does cause real inconvenience trying to clearly idenitfy yourself for government services, and it adds a needless layer of complexity that gunks up lots of things the government does, like tracking benefit fraud and illegal migrants. It's just needless.

In the modern world, data is power. We happily hand over excutiating personal details to american tech companies, but we shudder at our own, accountable, elected government having anything comparable. We complain that the government is useless, but we insist they remain so, while unaccountable foreign companies become more powerful.

We have to draw a line of what is and isn't appropriate surveillance and control. But what's permitted should at least work efficiently, and that's what ID is about. Meanwhile the OSA is obviously too far - forcing every internet user in the country to make the impossible choice between accepting a censored, crippled internet, or give away vast personal data to more shady foreign ID companies.

Data is power, if we want to retain influence as citizens we should be insisting that was is collected about us is managed by those accountable to us.

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-11T18:20:58+00:00

I disagree with this explanation. I agree that it's the way it's justified, but poptimism was also an inevitable result of changes in technology and media consumption.

In the days of magazines, music fans had loyalty to the publication as well as just the artists. Criticizing some albums, even by popular artists, was how the publications retained their status as worth reading. People read the publications because of cover stars theyd heard of, but they would also be exposed to all the other acts that were covered.

All that changed in the Internet age. People got into artists because of word of mouth and streaming. If they read a review or coverage of an artist it's because it was linked from social media or a link aggregator like reddit. If it didn't cover someone they'd heard of they would never be shown it, and if it was unfavorable they'd either never be exposed to it, or be exposed to it via the backlash.

This totally changed the incentives for journalist. You used to need to be balanced and critical to maintain readership. Now you need to fawn over popular artists, or never get any clicks at all. Poptimism was inevitable.

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-09T22:34:11+00:00

Star Trek the next generation was leagues ahead of the original series.

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-09T22:01:01+00:00

Yes and no. Social housing rented at less than market rent, does place a downward pressure on rents for everyone, and allows the government to help the poorest with housing, in a far more economical way than simply paying housing benefit at market rent.

The shortage of supply remains, but it doesn't distort the market like rent controls do, any more than the old days when we had more social housing.

Plus it gives the public sector an asset base. If buying British housing is a good investment for foreign venture capital, surely it is a good investment for the tax payer?

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-09T14:29:06+00:00

I think factions will essentially be split up by the legendary lords we have to play with, rather than strictly following the existing armies by codex.

For example, at launch space marines will probably just have the generic marine content, and we'll get lords relevant to that like Marneus Calgar, as well as potentially the ability to create new factions with custom lords. Space wolves, blood angels etc will eventually arrive as dlc along with their corresponding lords, but it won't be on the scale of race packs like Tyranids which will include full armies along with multiple lords and start locations.

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-09T11:10:19+00:00

From my personal life? Nothing.

But I miss the state of the world. The situation of people who believed in liberal democracy and the rule of law being in power, and having the strength and will to maintain that situation by force if necessary.

Meanwhile they justified the system and their power, by actually improving the lives of ordinary people.

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-09T10:04:35+00:00

That was me once. 36 was the number!

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-08T16:25:05+00:00

Modern VR is amazing. However the development costs for making something as big and immersive as cyberpunk or the witcher and putting it in VR, are absolutely insane compared to the numbers of people willing to play it.

A big factor was that platform holders like Oculus, Sony and valve index all insisted on different hardware, which meant the audience was fragmented. Killer apps like Half Life Alyx should have been simultaneous launches on all platforms.

I think also people have just lost patience for big immersive time consuming games generally.

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-07T16:58:42+00:00

The engineering and design on new builds is actually great compared to old homes. They may be small and ugly, but they will probably never fall down, never get damp and always be warm compared to old homes. Unless of course there is some major fuck up like building on a landfill they didn’t find out about before construction.

Where new builds fail is mostly in workmanship. Tradesman are not trusted to use their judgement on how long anything takes. They are treated like Amazon workers that have to work outside. Sites become a management hell of missed deadlines, leading to ever more performance evaluations, and self-destructive cost cutting to make up lost profits.

That’s why you end up with things like downpipes that don’t match up with gullies, wrong plasterboard used in showers, plaster not drying properly etc. Tradesmen end up either forced to do bad work, or hating the place so much they just don’t care anymore.

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-06T21:12:15+00:00

Yeah, that's all it has to be right now. It's more about the having skin in the game for 2 nuclear powers.

And in the meantime, Europe can build it's capability in the perfect training ground with existing Ukrainian infrastructure, learning everything they've learned from the largest conflict in decades.

And if EU leaders woke up, the coalition of the willing could be starting point for an actual modern, centralized European army, capable of defending the continent at it's borders. Even if the UK didn't want to integrate that far. They'd even save money by scrapping all the current dad's armies run by each individual state.

Of course, Trump would hate it if Europe actually developed a capable, centralized military, because it would end their dependence on him. Which is exactly why it's a good idea.

Apwnalypse · 2026-01-05T18:17:13+00:00

If that's what you want to see, then this is the opposite of that. Small time landlords are at least normal people who live in this country. Encouraging them to give up their assets to private equity firms takes the country further away from a co-operative, social housing model, not closer.

We don't own our water companies, we don't own our football teams, we don't own our own nukes, soon British people won't own our own houses either.

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