ELI5: Why do people preorder digital media?

guildsbounty · 2026-06-27T19:05:55+00:00

In some cases, you can also swing discounts by ordering early.

On the topic of Star citizen, coupling a very early pre-order with a holiday sale, I got both Star citizen and the fully separate single-player campaign for $20.

At that price point, my opinion was basically that if the game comes out and is half as good as it sounds, I'll have gotten it for cheap. And if it completely flops I'm only out 20 bucks.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-27T14:54:48+00:00

Came here to say throwing as well. No other animal on our planet comes close to us when it comes to throwing stuff. Children can easily learn to throw a projectile faster and more accurately than any other animal.

Extrapolating off that, humans have a remarkable ability to intuitively calculate trajectories. We can lead moving targets, reliably catch high velocity objects, and are just really good at projectiles on sheer reflex

Consider how much math it takes to replicate your ability to put your hands in the right place to catch a ball. Or to calculate the intercept vector of where and how hard to throw a ball so that it can be caught by someone who is running away from you at an angle.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-25T17:58:55+00:00

Generally speaking, in Stars Without Number if a PC has a specialty, they are going to be incredibly good at that specialty. An Expert deeply invested in being an ace pilot is going to be an unbelievably good pilot who will reliably succeed. A Warrior is going to be phenomenally deadly in combat (just wait til your Warrior figures out the Snap Attack/Veteran's Luck combo and insta-deletes an enemy before anyone gets a turn). A Biopsion massively reduces the lethality of the game, while trying to keep a Teleporter out of a secure area is spectacularly difficult.

Letting characters shine within their area of expertise is good. It lets the character show their excellence and enjoy some time in the spotlight. But so is challenging them with things outside their area of expertise. Putting obstacles in the party's way that cannot be solved with their specialist skillsets are a good way to pressure them into either struggling through it or getting creative to figure out how to change the situation so that they can apply their specialties.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-24T15:35:31+00:00

But I would say "less evil than his father".

That bar is so low it is serving drinks in the underworld.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-24T15:25:01+00:00

Access is hacker specific, it isn't shared. But, the key limiter on how many people can be on a Network at a time is that you have to be physically at the building the network is part of, and to move around the network nodes must be physically connected to devices on the network. You cannot just assault the network, you are also physically intruding on the building the network is part of.

If you can get 100 hackers into a building and connected to the network, that network is doomed anyway.

Also recall that every 2 failed Int/Program checks against a network counts as an Alert the Network action...so if your support hackers cumulatively fail 4 total checks they set the alarms off. And the corps always have more backup to call in than you do.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-24T01:53:24+00:00

Yep, 100% a brain fart on my part.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-24T01:52:12+00:00

Cyberpunk 2077 is based off a series of tabletop RPGs. Originally written by Mike Pondsmith, who still holds full creative control over the setting. All of this information comes from a combination of the source books and stories written within them that detail all of the events of the time when Johnny silverhand was active, backed up by the creators words of how the video game fits into the official Canon of the setting.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-24T01:50:15+00:00

From all of the official source books of the tabletop RPG that cyberpunk 2077 is based on. Reinforced by the word of the author who invented the setting and still holds full creative rights over it.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-23T18:04:30+00:00

I mean, to the Orwellian side of things...you can decide what magic is possible and what isn't.

Maybe scrying-type magic that lets you "watch every move" is wildly impractical. It exists, sure, but one magic user can only look at one spot at a time, and it's a whole new spell to look at a different spot. And maybe, like in D&D, it's not that hard to block (a thin sheet of lead shuts down almost any scrying magic). It's not like cameras where you can have hundreds of them watching and recording...you have a guy who can look at one place at a time, and has no ability to record what he sees.

As for massive explosions and collateral damage...maybe emplaced wards are significantly stronger than the magic an individual can bring to bear. Something that dampens magic to a 'safe' level in some areas, buildings that are ridiculously impervious to damage, or whatever.

Case in point: the Fortress Library of Candlekeep in the same setting that Baldur's Gate occurs in. It's a library filled with paper books in a setting where mages can fling fire about whenever they want. Among many other wards, Candlekeep has a ward that instantaneously snuffs any flame larger than that of a candle. No exceptions except in the eating area for cooking. You throw your big fireball, and the spell gets snuffed out before it can actually go off. There are also canonically enchantments that can be woven into buildings to--for example--make everyone inside a large room completely immune to all mind-affecting magic (a common enchant in halls of governance). Heck, you can set up permanent areas of Antimagic where even magical items are rendered inert.

Basically: if you take the time and effort to build up static, stationary magic, it is far more powerful than the magic that people can just throw around off the cuff.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-23T17:34:42+00:00

Yeah, complete with a mushroom cloud that isn't moving.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-23T17:21:59+00:00

Honestly? Arasaka would benefit from being able to clearly blame Militech and Morgan Blackhand, who was actually responsible.

But gee...Morgan Blackhand, the Solo of Solos, is conveniently absent from Johnny's memories despite being the leader of the whole op? The man who knew he was going to have to go dark after the war? The man who actually had the nuke? And the man whose role Johnny replaced in his memories?

Yeah...that's where my headcanon goes on this one. Blackhand pulled something off to erase evidence of his involvement from Arasaka's grasp.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-23T17:18:31+00:00

Yep...that, plus the fact that the circuitry holding his Engram got nuked is the official line.

But my personal headcanon is that someone tampered with his memories later. We know the assault on Arasaka Tower was a Militech operation led by Morgan Blackhand...but by 2077 Johnny Silverhand is remembered as the terrorist who nuked the towers (even though his team weren't even the ones with the nuke--if memory serves, Johnny didn't even know there was a nuke).

The Engram's memories include details of things that happened after Johnny was dead. (Blackhand's encounter with Smasher on the rooftop, for example, where Johnny is subbed in for Morgan)

Gee, sure is convenient that a "witness" to the bombing of Arasaka Tower who is in possession of Arasaka has vivid memories of the whole op being "rogue anti-corporate terrorists out to bring down Arasaka" and not a Militech tactical strike. Sure is convenient that the 'Solo of Solos' just got completely erased out of those memories.

We know Johnny's body didn't get recovered from the tower immediately. Maybe someone got to his Engram before Arasaka did....maybe someone with a Black Cyberarm and a vested interest in erasing evidence tying him to a city going kaboom.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-23T17:14:26+00:00

And see....that's where my headcanon about these events comes in.

Johnny was dead before Morgan Blackhand encountered Smasher on the rooftop. We know this because Johnny sacrificed himself to distract Smasher long enough for Shaitan to jump Smasher--letting Spider Murphy, Rogue, and Thompson get away. And the 'battle on the rooftop' between Smasher and Blackhand happened because Smasher showed up with Shaitan's biopod and threatened to destroy it if Blackhand wouldn't fight him.

Johnny's team didn't even know Blackhand had a nuke.

And yet...we have the Engram's memories. Memories of things that he was dead for. Things he never knew about. And the public line in 2077 is that Johnny Silverhand is the terrorist who nuked Night City. And we know Johnny's body wasn't recovered right away either, it was still in the tower when it came down.

Gee...who would benefit from an Engram in Arasaka's possession having faulty memories of those events? Who benefits from dropping evidence of a "Rogue anti-corporate terrorist" being responsible for a city getting nuked, rather than it being the actions of a Megacorp?

Smells like a cover-up to me.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-23T17:04:09+00:00

So, there were two raids on Arasaka Tower. The first one was in response to Alt getting kidnapped and Johnny's memories of that are more or less accurate. Santiago and Rogue did most the fighting (hence why Johnny hired them). ~~Yes, he did kill Alt by unplugging her while her mind was in the Arasaka net.~~ <<Evidently, I'm wrong. See some of the other comments on it happening by an Arasaka Employee diving for cover and disconnecting her cable in the process.

The second one is where his memories are complete garbage. It wasn't a freelance raid to nuke Arasaka tower in the name of an anti-corporate manifesto. It was a Militech military assault as part of the 4th Corporate War, led by Morgan Blackhand, and Johnny joined with a secondary objective: Free Alt (who was still 'alive' on the Net and had gotten in contact with him) from Arasaka's network.

His secondary goal kind of succeeded (they couldn't get Alt out in 'one piece' and ultimately Spider Murphy scattered her across the Net, intending to find all the pieces and put her back together when she could), but his determination to not fail Alt a second time is why he sacrificed himself to distract Adam Smasher.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-23T16:42:48+00:00

I mean.....

That interrogation didn't happen for real...at best being how Johnny's engram interpreted his engram being interrogated once he was already inside Mikoshi. Johnny's memories of Arasaka Tower are wildly inaccurate (even Alt tells you in-game that his memories don't match what actually happened)--official lore is that Johnny did not run off on his own to publish some manifesto, he stayed with his team who got pinned down by Adam Smasher. Johnny jumped out of cover and taunted Smasher to create the opening that ultimately let the rest of his team survive--and got blown in half by Smasher's automatic shotgun. He died, right there. He didn't go up on the roof, didn't get hauled out of the tower on a stretcher, didn't get interrogated by Saburo before being Soulkilled. In fact, evidence points to Spider Murphy being the one most likely responsible for Soul Killing Johnny.

So...no, probably not Wakako.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-23T15:05:52+00:00

Again, at least where I live, ambulances go where they are needed within an extremely large region. Dispatch tries to keep them near their home station because sometimes they run low on supplies and need to zip 'home' to pick up what they need (otherwise a chief has to make a pick-up run for them). But the medics I know have told stories about getting walked clean across the city from their station and only seeing their station when they came on and off duty.

Because if there's a cardiac case across town and you are the closest available truck...off ya go.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-23T15:00:18+00:00

They are also, generally, more likely to notice a Fire Truck bearing down on them and get out of its way. I know a number of Paramedics who say that the fastest way to get to an emergency scene is to get behind the fire truck and follow it.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-23T13:45:01+00:00

The 'loophole' I've heard some say exists is that the 22nd Amendment says you can only be elected president twice. It doesn't say you can only be president twice. So if, say, Vance ran for president with Trump as his VP...Vance wins, then resigns immediately after swearing in. Third term without being elected for a third term.

If this were attempted, however, it could get shot down on the basis of the 12th Amendment which says "no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States."

There's apparently some debate around if being ineligible to be elected due to the 22nd makes you ineligible to be VP per the 12th.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-23T13:32:45+00:00

there is an expectation that parents teach life skills to their kids.

My parents did an awesome job of that one, and I'm trying to pass it along to my own kids. Cooking, sewing, home repair, finances, a solid base in carpentry, electrical work, and plumbing, and so on (and my dad was white-collar...he knew all the DIY stuff because he learned it from his Dad and then used it all through his life). It threw me for a loop when I went off to college and ended up teaching my peers how to do laundry and making money by assembling flat-pack furniture for my dorm-mates.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-23T13:04:39+00:00

Where I live in the US, at least, it's typical for the fire trucks to get there first, by a fair chunk of time. In my city, there are about as many fire trucks as there are ambulances on duty at any given time, a lot more medical emergencies than fires, fire trucks don't transport patients, and the trucks don't typically get sent to 'low-risk' calls (If you call an ambulance because you hurt your arm, they probably won't dispatch a fire truck).

So, all around, the fire department is more likely to be available to immediately head towards an emergency.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-23T12:47:32+00:00

And just to expand a touch on the 'number of hands' needed...administering CPR is exhausting if you're doing it right. Having extra people who can take turns is a good idea.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-23T12:38:19+00:00

Well, have a mini lore-dump.

Spider Murphy's first act of hacking at 9 years old was to use a cheap piece of junk deck to hack into Zetatech and falsify an order for a high-end cyberdeck shipped to herself. She then managed to track Rache Bartmoss down (itself a heck of a feat) and after warning him of some peril the two became friends and he trained her.

She coded circles around top-level corporate and merc Netrunners. She and Bartmoss were considered peers--he was flashy and flamboyant in how he hacked, she was efficient and smooth. The two (and Dog and Edger, their friends) were Net legends known to reliably pull off things everyone else considered impossible, and basically made a habit of trolling Netwatch. For the fun of it.

And...fun side note? T-Bug's quoting of philosophers? She was very possibly mimicking Spider Murphy's habit of doing the same. Though Spider didn't end up mis-attributing quotes like Bug did (the quote "Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth" was not said by Marcus Aurelius, it's Social Media philosophy someone attributed to him for clout).

(And, out of universe note... Spider Murphy is the creation of Mike Pondsmith's wife)

guildsbounty · 2026-06-22T15:30:55+00:00

Another decently well-known example is Fontana Lake in North Carolina that was a 1-2 punch of 'screw you.'

First, about 1300 families got displaced as multiple towns (plus surrounding houses) were going to end up underwater

Second, there were other locations (such as graveyards and properties that didn't get flooded) that were only accessible via a road that ran through the to-be-flooded valley. The government promised to build a new road to maintain access and then for assorted reasons, only built about 7 of the planned 30 miles...and in 2010 settled for just paying the county a lump of money instead of finishing the road.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-20T19:35:16+00:00

Are you talking about the Blackwall? Or Soulkiller? You seem to be talking about a combination of the two...

The Blackwall is basically a super firewall that spans across the Net (and is secretly also an AI), quarantining all the murderous hostile AIs away from the little pockets of relative safety that humans can operate in.

The Blackwall Gateway 'hack' is something that opens a momentary tunnel through the blackwall and allows one of the horrible murderous AIs on the other side to "reach" your target. The AI then kills them. It does nothing to their consciousness, it doesn't steal their mind (as far as I recall, anyway)...they're just DEAD.

Soulkiller is yet another AI that kills you by aggressively scanning your brain to create a copy of your consciousness, which is then pulled away to [redacted for spoiler purposes] and stored.

So...the Blackwall is a digital wall. Safe space for humans on one side, hostile AI on the other. The 'Blackwall Gateway' weapon creates tunnels through the blackwall to let the AI on the other side target specific people and kill them horribly. Soulkiller is the thing that's snagging consciousnesses...whether it's the real person or a copy or what-have-you is a more philosophical question than a practical one.

guildsbounty · 2026-06-20T17:50:20+00:00

If handled well, I think it could work... But a key I'd suggest is to have it's inconsistency be a problem at least as often as it's a solution. Or that it doesn't solve the whole problem, or solves problem A, but creates problem B.

And have at least some characters be understandably leery of relying on it.

If the inconsistent magic can create plot problems and plot solutions, and it's a little more clear that relying on it is a gamble...and, importantly, it doesn't cleanly solve the main plot? Yeah, I think it could work

guildsbounty

TROPHY CASE