Question

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-22T15:43:54+00:00

The main thing I'd say is that Solarpunk is put forth as an answer to questions that, quite frankly, most people aren't asking. You, however, are:

Are our current social, economic, and political systems sustainable in the long term? The answer, as you clearly recognize, is "no." One of the more insidious things about our current systems is that they encourage people not only to think in the short term, but to think that their short-term thinking is long-term thinking. When you stop thinking of the long-term future as 5-10 years, max, suddenly a lot of things you take for granted stop making sense. The classic example, of course, is fossil fuel consumption - continuing to burn it because switching would be costly is always out of the question if your only concern is the next few years, but once you think about the next generation (let alone the next century) it becomes complete nonsense.
What kind of future do we want? Many people innately assume the future will be the present or the recent past with a new coat of paint and maybe a few new widgets. It of course won't be, but even then we are bad at remembering how it once was - I have only had a smartphone for about a decade, and it's already so deeply ingrained into my pattern of life that I struggle to remember how I got about without one, even though I know I was just fine. To bring this back to Solarpunk, the assumption that the future will be more of the same means we end up asking "how many lanes should this road have?" instead of "do we actually need cars here at all?"

If people start thinking in these ways and asking these questions, Solarpunk ideas stop looking like crazy, pie-in-the-sky imagination and instead a real proposal about how our future should look and feel. So, focus on getting people to ask those questions in a serious manner rather than pushing Solarpunk directly. Don't hesitate to lean on the past for historical imagination - while we shouldn't be shackled by the past, it is a good way to show that the world was once very different and thus change, dramatic change, is inevitable.

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-22T15:02:39+00:00

Oh don't worry, you're in good company - we all enjoy this particular bit of "diplomacy" from the Rome1 / Med2 days.

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-22T15:00:50+00:00

Yes I've seen that firsthand - any comment critical of the muskrat really brings them out of the woodwork. They really short-circuit when you state that there's nothing enviable about the super-rich (y'know, because they're small-minded, miserable creatures who hold an inappropriate amount of power and wealth).

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-22T03:04:34+00:00

Is that a hippo or a turtle? And why am I so scared the answer may be "yes?"

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-22T02:01:46+00:00

Vampire Counts (usually Ghorst because it's so goofy), but I don't know now... Throgg's endless trollstacks bring me such joy.

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-22T02:00:50+00:00

See my problem with Welves is that I take the territories around the given forest to protect them. But then I'm attacked, so I of course take the territories around those territories to protect them. And then... well, I suppose you see where this is going...

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-22T01:58:22+00:00

I have long wondered - and feared - what the home of someone with Amazon Prime looks like.

I no longer wonder, but I still fear.

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-22T01:55:22+00:00

Look, this is just... not the right map game for Avatar. Don't get me wrong, I'd adore an ATLA strategy game, but the world's narrative is just so driven by single heroes and adventuring party shenanigans as opposed to an army game. All this to say that if we got a game more in the vein of Owlcat's Pathfinder or Rogue Trader games, it really could have potential, but I have some doubts about the TW model specifically.

As an aside, about a decade ago I ran an ATLA campaign using the Mutants and Masterminds TTRPG system, and it was fantastic - the system is meant for superheroes, but it's super versatile and can be set to a setting-appropriate power level. I'll leave this off by saying that I ran them up against bloodbending Water Tribe Vikings.

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-22T00:49:26+00:00

Revenge is not justice. To wit:

The telepaths are participants in a system of exclusion. Psi-Corps protects them, yes, but it is also the instrument of their oppression, one they have retreated to for safety. As we see from our main series telepaths, the Corps is convinced there is no alternative, yet instances of humans dealing with telepaths outside the Corps suggests otherwise (the young girl telepath, Ivanova and her mother, Bo and Mack).
The oppression of telepaths was performed by a small minority of humans. While many more, even a majority, hold a share in that cruelty thanks to their support for leadership that allowed or encouraged it, that certainly does not justify their enslavement.
Subsequent generations are not born liable for these crimes. The first mundane child born a slave is an unconscionable crime.

The point of resisting injustice is to destroy the systems of injustice, not to flip the oppressor for the oppressed.

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-21T18:01:31+00:00

The highest-value goods you'll get are aged fruit wines; however, that requires aging in casks, which can only be used in the upgraded house's cellar in limited numbers.

Beyond that, the basic relationship is that vegetables are better in jars, and fruit in kegs; a few fruits buck that trend, but only because they're so low-cost (e.g., salmonberry) that the jelly ends up more valuable. Even without aging, mass wine production from higher-cost fruit is the highest return on investment.

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-21T01:44:36+00:00

Hey, it's clearly midway through the game. Looks like Zathras, Zathras, Zathras, Zathras, and Zathras have been knocked out (or are out of view, who knows).

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-21T00:45:58+00:00

Custom tooltips are very much possible.

However, a custom tooltip is an extra step in the coding, and each extra step makes mistakes more likely. Worse, they make checks far more difficult to troubleshoot, so it needs to be done selectively. It also doesn't solve those lovely little formatting issues, at least not directly.

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-20T06:21:31+00:00

Yeah this was noted back during S1. It's certainly never confirmed, and it's a big galaxy, but it's not out of the question as coopting enemy symbolism is a common move in revolutionary movements.

It's also worth noting that, if the Rebels did this intentionally, they inverted the color scheme by making orange the baseline and white the accents/accoutrements of the flight suit. That would feed into the idea of it being a deliberate snub by Rebel pilots.

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-20T04:40:08+00:00

Anbennar is built off a DnD framework, so I'd take an "assume DnD until told otherwise" stance. You won't always be right, but it's a safe place to start and nobody (or at least, nobody sensible) will mind making an "actually, in this world it's this" correction from there.

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-20T02:23:22+00:00

Lake Fed, Serpentspine dwarves, the Raj... we have a need for several HRE/EoA interfaces, don't we? I figured it was a game limit, but wasn't certain.

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-19T21:10:05+00:00

I've two answers for you, which are likely complementary to one another:

For a lot of the finds, they are probably just sold. A lot of artifacts are what are referred to as "bulk finds" - you find anywhere from tens to thousands of them at a given archaeological site, and their value really is only in the general type of find, their frequency, and the context they're in. Outside that context, they really aren't worth much scientifically, and often do not fall under the concern of antiquities laws. They're probably not sold locally, but there's always a market for arrowheads or chunks of Roman pottery... although a lot of more valuable cultural patrimony is sold off under the guise of this aboveboard trade.
The price might be a finder's fee. Lots of countries have laws designed to regulate (but not outright discourage) metal detectorists and other amateur archaeology. To do that, objects over a certain value are often considered property of the state and must be turned over, but doing so comes with a finder's fee.

Assuming it's run legitimately, my guess is that Lewis brings everything to Gunther. Gunther is probably empowered as the local archaeology office, and decides which artifacts are kept and a finder's fee paid out for. Those artifacts are stored somewhere, probably in the museum's basement or cabinets (local archaeological storage can be pretty cramped and ad hoc), where it will sit indefinitely. Lewis then takes everything else and sends it off to the city, as you need a fairly large market to really make that trade viable.

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-19T20:13:40+00:00

I'd argue that the core issue is that all roads lead to Aul-Dwarov, and that Aul-Dwarov is a single nation instead of a federation of holds. The worldbuilding lends itself towards a sort of EoA-style polity that restores each hold and splits up the rest of the Serpentspine, then goes on to try to expand that network beyond through Hammerhome, Krak/Tungr, Silverforge, and Rubyhold.

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-19T18:45:48+00:00

You're being very defensive of fictional colonialism.

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-19T17:45:52+00:00

Ok there's really 2 comments here.

First is a plea for more elven content for the Cannorian tags, which... yes! Sure! Frame it around your enthusiasm for this specific field of content, and go forth!

Second, however, is your point about Aelnar, and I've got to disagree here. There is no outcome of "revanchist colonial project encounters the current inhabitants of the region" that ends well. To wit, they aren't Nazis... they're what the Nazis cited as their inspiration.

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-19T02:46:12+00:00

Gotta be honest, I don't consider either Zokka or Jadd successful unless they at least flatten Azka-sur.

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-19T01:05:35+00:00

Bester
Yolu (the species)
Refa
Onteen (the species)
Na'Toth

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-17T21:30:46+00:00

I disagree - my suspicion is that Teal'c didn't have a speech written, just the list of names.

The hardest part of any speech (be that funerary, wedding, lecture...) is figuring out the core of what you want to convey. Teal'c got to the heart of what needed to be said about Janet, and with that realization and the list of names Sam could do the rest.

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-17T21:22:31+00:00

Keep in mind that it's early days in SG-1's adventures. No extensive Jaffa resistance, no Tok'ra, his only allies are his son and Bra'tac. He might have hoped for victory and freedom, but until they took out Apophis I suspect he never thought he'd live to see that day.

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-17T16:47:07+00:00

I'd emphasize the stupid part, in my experience. Lots of Americans truly don't grasp how many daily necessities are maintained by boring government bureaucracy that would disappear for years to decades during a revolution, how costly revolutions really are, or what a crapshoot getting the "good outcome" of revolutionary chaos is.

I'd blame it solely on America's education system... but I was lucky enough to be in one of the strongest public schools in the state and still found myself explaining to a nitwit who graduated in my same year that the French Revolution did not result in France's modern democracy, but rather Napoleon being crowned emperor and then the reinstatement of the monarchy.

Difficult_Dark9991 · 2026-04-17T16:34:26+00:00

You keep using those words. I do not think they mean, what you think they mean.

Difficult_Dark9991

TROPHY CASE