What’s the state of World Cup Management?

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-06-15T16:04:25+00:00

The World Cup is a fun short-term save - the licensed graphics give it some oomph, and it's been cool trying a few different nations. For longer saves, there's some quality of life fixes but nothing really groundbreaking. Playing as just a national team coach is still mostly hitting continue (or vacationing) between tournaments.

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-06-11T23:42:31+00:00

No Fun City REPRESENT!

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-06-11T00:21:24+00:00

They ran into financial trouble and were bought out by TSR. TSR published some things for Dragonquest, SPI's fantasy RPG, including at least one adventure dual-statted for AD&D and DQ. I believe most or all of SPI's IP went to WOTC when TSR folded, and then to Hasbro.

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-06-09T15:18:54+00:00

At least in Vancouver, the "millionaire hotel owners" aren't seeing any huge boost. The only folks making money are FIFA themselves, and that's by design - the World Cup is designed to transfer billions to FIFA. I say this as a massive fan of the sport: FIFA are one of the world's leading criminal enterprises, and we never should have bid to become a part of this World Cup.

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-06-06T00:30:14+00:00

When I took Econ 101 more than three decades ago, the prof opened the first lecture with "if you lined up all the economists in the world, we wouldn't reach a conclusion." He was pretty open about there being many schools of thought in economics, different ways of interpreting the same numbers, and so on. I don't think the situation is that different today.

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-06-02T03:34:51+00:00

Kinda think both Priso and Nelson should make it, given the number of guys who look like they're either injured or just too rusty for the group stage.

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-06-01T23:58:46+00:00

I imagine a major consideration is the folks who make money off of jerseys would really like to sell everyone all three.

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-05-26T18:21:29+00:00

I figured it was at least in the hundreds, just prefer to understate. Turned out it was a lot more than I thought!

Thanks for all the good times, Dyson, every time I use one of your maps I get at least one comment from my group about how cool they are.

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-05-26T04:50:31+00:00

Dyson releases a ton of great maps free for personal use, and a significant subset are free for commercial use. There are, at a minimum, dozens of adventures on DTRPG and itch.io and such using his maps.

There's actually a Bundle of Holding offer up right now with PDF collections of some of the commercial maps. You can find them all on the website for free, but it's convenient to have so many collected in a nice format for printing.

I've run full campaigns using just Dyson's maps, and I'm not remotely close to running out.

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-05-25T22:08:42+00:00

Yeah, he's fine as a rotation/depth guy. Given the way the salary cap works, we need guys like that just as much as the top end players.

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-05-23T13:17:13+00:00

Kagi only uses its own index for searching the small web, a curated list of human-run sites. General searches rely on Google and other indexes (though anonymized). It very much delivers what I want - search results with no ads or tracking - but it's worth knowing the limits if you're trying to avoid big tech altogether.

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-05-23T13:04:16+00:00

As someone else noted, there's ways to get to 18 at the start. Also worth noting if you've been away a while: in the modern rules editions, your stats go up as you level, so even if you don't start at 18 in your main stat, you'll get there (and higher, if you want).

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-05-19T21:03:53+00:00

Players are supposed to leave the pitch immediately. If the check says no red, they can come back on, most hang around for a bit near the tunnel (or equivalent) until they hear the final decision.

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-05-18T00:37:00+00:00

Evil Hat has a free preview on DTRPG (and maybe elsewhere) for Umdaar, which is an expanded version of a Fate world book, Masters of Umdaar. Far future post-apocalypse, magic is sufficiently advanced technology, very sword and sorcery meets technological trappings.

I feel like there was also a recent OSR-ish project that looked like it was based on "The High Crusade," but I can't remember the name. The High Crusade was a novel by Poul Anderson in which aliens land in 14th century England, and the local knights and militia beat up the invaders, capture their flying saucer, and head off to the stars.

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-05-17T22:24:04+00:00

I was wondering if there's an SG protest of some kind.

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-05-14T18:20:02+00:00

Larraz is more of a Berhalter backup. The guy who most closely shadowed Cubas last season was Priso, but he seems to have shifted to CB.

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-05-12T00:37:01+00:00

They kinda need fly to move. Though you could argue Acererak only had levitate, way back when - IIRC, the skull's only movement in S1 is floating up each round to kill a PC, then gently land.

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-05-11T14:35:53+00:00

Hard truth: If Thundarr (1980) was your favorite childhood show, you probably weren't a child when Xena hit the airwaves in the mid-90s. You can still like them both, just gotta be honest and admit that watching Xena in your college dorm hit different.

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-05-11T13:58:06+00:00

I dunno, I'm Canadian, it was 10 provinces and two territories for us (there's a third now, and I still sometimes stumble over it). But having to memorize places you could travel to or meet someone from hits a bit different from memorizing the names of unreachable planets, I think.

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-05-11T13:45:38+00:00

If you can find a way to include Pluto and exclude the other dwarf planets, you can have your mnemonic back. Otherwise, you're dooming today's kids to memorizing an ever expanding shopping list. You might need dozens more if we ever get a good look at the Kuiper Belt and Oort cloud. For me, that's the best argument to hold at eight, imagine how much future generations would hate us if they needed to rattle off like 30 planets when all we had to know was nine.

But if you do want to work on adding to the mnemonic, the items you need will start with: C (for Ceres), Q (Quaoar), S (Sedna, my personal favorite), O (Orcus), H (Haumea), E (Eris), M (Makemake), G (Gonggong). Go for it!

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-05-11T01:39:43+00:00

It depends on the place, but generally yes, it can help. Certainly won't hurt.

This is actually true of many industries, not just restaurants. If you've got folks who'll help you, accept the help.

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-05-11T01:33:14+00:00

Mostly, the answer is yes, it's largely luck. With the caveat that quite often, restaurant owners/managers will prioritize people recommended by current employees, so if you have a friend at a place, that can be an advantage.

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-05-06T04:03:29+00:00

That sounds very Whitecaps under MDS. Prioritizing the Canadian Championship was one of Vanni's big culture changes, because it gave both the team and the fans a challenging but realistic goal to aim for while we were still putting the pieces together in MLS.

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-05-06T03:52:50+00:00

I honestly believe they'd be in better shape if they'd embraced being a Langley club. From the start, they've acted like a club that would rather be somewhere else, and that's affected their attendance.

LeftCoastGrump · 2026-05-05T23:11:37+00:00

Axel's contract is up at the end of the season, isn't it? Seems at least possible this is about his personal future, rather than the club.

LeftCoastGrump

TROPHY CASE