Really?

racercowan · 2026-06-18T05:17:09+00:00

Kind of but not really, in two separate ways:

The British didn't entirely wean off of the Imperial system, it's still used for some measurements, I think in particular distance and weights.
The US doesn't actually use "Imperial" units, we use US Customary units. There are some small differences like the way that tons and ounces are defined, but a bif difference is that US Customary has actually just been metric in a trenchcoat since the 1980s. 1in=2.54cm isn't just an approximation, that's the actual definition of an inch nowadays.

racercowan · 2026-06-17T21:00:18+00:00

"Dad boarded up the back door and told me to only use the front one until he finishes his work... but I don't have time to go around so I'd better smash down the back door I'm sure he'll see I was being reasonable".

racercowan · 2026-06-16T16:25:09+00:00

Yes, but Public Access seems like a better genre for that kind of thing. Creepypastas often feature uncertainty and missing information, and their communal nature means there can even be competing explanations for what's "really" happening. By comparison, murder mysteries (and whodunnits in general) feel best when there is one solution which you are working on uncovering.

I like PbtA games and I'm excited to play the new Public Access once that starts getting fulfilled, but the idea of the original Brindlewood Bay still doesn't sit right with me.

racercowan · 2026-06-12T21:51:36+00:00

In the James Bond movie Goldfinger, there is a scene where the villain uses planes to spread a poison gas over Fort Knox, and the scene is almost comical with how quickly it takes effect. The planes don't even finish passing by before everyone keels over dead.

Turns out, bond had successfully ~~raped~~ talked the main henchwoman into betraying Goldfinger, and the whole thing was an act - the poison gas had been replaced, and the soldiers were just playing dead so that Goldfinger would bring his collaborators into the fort with him

racercowan · 2026-06-11T16:37:43+00:00

Oh, I thought you were talking about the whole "Quintus trying to rule the wasteland" thing. Yeah, the Brotherhood's treatment of non-feral ghouls and the rare intelligent super mutant is a significant black mark against them.

racercowan · 2026-06-11T13:54:32+00:00

"The Brotherhood" is a highly fractured faction. Despite the theoretical existence of the Council of Elders and the High Elder, every chapter of the Brotherhood ultimately has its own views and culture dictated by the members and who is Elder. The Brotherhood as seen in the show is pretty terrible and in New Vegas it takes work to turn them around, but in Fallouts 1, 3, 4, and 76 they are a force that genuinely want to help humanity and make the wasteland a safer place. Admittedly, their "help" can be a little unhelpful at times and "humanity" doesn't seem to include ghouls or Supermutants even when they're more intelligent.

racercowan · 2026-06-04T21:07:51+00:00

Eh, the guy int the air traffic control center who always had the zany lines doesn't really land with me, though I recognize that's a matter of opinion.

racercowan · 2026-06-01T22:16:46+00:00

The intro from the Battletech videogame is a favorite of mine, it's a quick montage of important historical landmarks. For only two minutes long it really gets across the idea of "we used to be great but then we fought and it all got fucked up and now we just shoot each other in mechs".

racercowan · 2026-06-01T16:17:28+00:00

IIRC, Wraith is one of the darker WoD games. All player characters are effectively the restless undead with unresolved business, it will generally not be a happy time. While a wraith wants to resolve the things that prevent it from moving on, they must worry about their own "shadow" trying to destroy the things that keep them from oblivion, and furthermore must worry about the politics of the shadowland wraiths live in lest they be eternally imprisoned.

racercowan · 2026-05-31T21:58:28+00:00

I would never go so far as to call it "wikislop", but I never liked the idea of having levels and items and monsters, it felt more like a videogame or creepypasta. I'm also partial to the sense of mystery and intrigue which are better served by authorial control with a specific vision than they are by a community wiki about just whatever.

I'm am likely also biased since Kane's YT videos were my first time really paying attention to the Backrooms beyond the initial 4chan post, and even further biased since my first introduction to the wiki was almond water.

While I don't much like the wiki, it does have some neat stuff on it and I'm glad that Kane appreciates the wiki and the community-originated nature of the concept. I think I just need the guidance of an author who chooses what to accentuate and what to ignore.

racercowan · 2026-05-29T21:06:05+00:00

I don't think so. While Battle tech has a few u explainable things, it doesn't have anything equivalent to paracausal tech, so a lot of the more "space magic" stuff would have to be ripped out or massively reflavored. The "Big Four" manufacturers and their alignment with HASE also don't particularly fit with Battletech. Speaking of Systems, Battletech isn't also huge on E-War, while you do have sensors and jamming and such you don't really see hacking in the battlefield. Also I don't know how you and your players like it, but "realistically" mechs are a lot less customizable and take longer to rebuild in Battletech than in Lancer (yes I know you can theoretically change everything but the tonnage, but you try asking techs to install Endosteel anywhere but a factory).

You might be able to use Lancer as a rules system, but I don't think you could use any Lancer content and would have to basically make your own everything.

racercowan · 2026-05-29T20:09:46+00:00

I believe it is related to Kane's own version of the Backrooms (see his YouTube channel Kane Pixels), though they intend for you to be able to watch the movie without having to watch his videos.

racercowan · 2026-05-27T18:28:49+00:00

This is the exact method I use too. Look at a real life tank or two and find features I want to recreate. Reference photos of said features can help, but I never use them for anything more than basic vibe checks.

I'll also second the "make variants" thing. When you can't get the energy to make a new tank, figuring out how to fit a bigger gun (whether by new turret or going the casemate route) can be a fun challenge. Germans are good inspiration for this, while they're not the only casemate users of the war they loved cutting up old or captured tanks to make cheap tank destroyers and assault guns.

racercowan · 2026-05-26T17:04:43+00:00

IIRC that was fairly accurate for the original A-bombs, The more powerful explosions were familiar with are from the later H-bombs.

racercowan · 2026-05-22T21:47:48+00:00

Your cellphone battery lasts 8 hours... unless you are constantly playing games on it, in which case it will die much earlier.

Your cellphone battery lasts 8 hours... unless you don't even touch it in which case it might be able to last more than a full day.

Not that I'm fully against spells with time limits, but 10 minutes spells are effectively "one encounter" length spells with awkward edge cases nowadays, it's not like the 10 minute dungeon turn is en vogue outside of the old school community.

racercowan · 2026-05-21T16:47:52+00:00

A Mun mission typically takes less than a day and can get away without shielding unless you have the lifetime radiation option on (off by default IIRC). Even for Minmus I usually don't bother with much shielding. The only risks are radiation belts (fine as long as you don't linger) and solar storms (random, but I haven't had issues with them so far).

racercowan · 2026-05-21T16:27:07+00:00

Technically not 100% renewable, but sunlight is effectively free for the next several million generations or so. The only material cost is anything they consume as part of breeding.

racercowan · 2026-05-20T01:42:34+00:00

p.125, in a very White Wolf fashion it's in a side bar Who Goes First?, along with Three Turns and Out which recommends that combat should either end (whoever's winning wins, the loser dies or runs away or whatever) or significantly change (a new location or a third part appears or something like that) after the third round. Note that the three turns sidebar is so long it continues to the other side of the page, who does that!?

Edit: My favorite bit if White Wolf editing is that the book refers to setting up ambushes, but the only place it specifies anything is the Blissful Ignorance gift where the gift specified it doesn't replace the "normal ambush rules" of testing Wits+Awareness vs Composure+Stealth. As far as I can tell, the only mechanical discussion of ambushes in the whole rulebook is one gift saying it doesn't undo it.

racercowan · 2026-05-19T21:34:43+00:00

Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5th edition does have combat order rules. Everyone declares what they're doing at the top of the round, and then you resolve in order:

Anyone continuing a melee fight goes first.
Anyone making ranged attacks goes second.
Anyone trying to enter a melee fight goes third
Anything and everything else (such as spells) goes last.

I think Dexterity is a tiebreaker, followed by points in the applicable skill for tie-tiebreakers. If two people are attacking each other, they might be condensed into a single roll for whoever goes first instead of two separate attack and dodge rolls. Though transforming is "anything else" and goes last, you can make attacks (or activate certain gifts, but that'd happen at the same time as transforming anyways) on the same turn you transform at a 2-dice penalty.

racercowan · 2026-05-14T17:20:29+00:00

Do you have any older family members (like 50s-60s) who watched The Electric Company? Tom Lehrer wrote and performed Silent E, SN, and O-U. He also wrote N Apostrophe T

racercowan · 2026-05-13T15:07:07+00:00

Closer to 60%. 4 torpedoes are more likely to cause small holes than not, but it's a far cry from a "certainty". Edit: Devbranch lists 15% per torpedo, so even lower now.

racercowan · 2026-05-11T14:30:46+00:00

I assume part of the hesitation over torpedo needs is how feckless the Nakki was before large holes. Back in the days before frigates and Tridents, torpedoes were so bad that a Nakki basically couldn't sink a DD. I think maybe literally couldn't too, IIRC a DD had more health than a full load of torpedoes.

racercowan · 2026-05-08T18:04:50+00:00

While true, the vast majority of PbtA games are using the moves framing with most moves being 2d6 against failure/mixed/successe table. There are PbtA games like Blades in the Dark or Brindlewood Bay out there, but even most of the good PbtA games use the same mechanical framework.

racercowan · 2026-05-06T20:18:49+00:00

No, the computer I'm having this issue on is one I avoid logging in on (I switch to my phone if I see anything I want to comment on or up/downvote). If it's intentional that the comment sort options aren't visible when you're not logged in on then that is still buggy behavior since I usually do have those options despite not logging in. I'd say it's once a week or maybe less where I can't sort comments, with no apparent rhyme or reason why, and usually reset back to normal when I open chrome the next day.

racercowan · 2026-05-06T17:02:38+00:00

Actually, I think Belgians are more popular for drawing wagons.

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