The Witcher novels are one of the few epic fantasy franchises I've read and man, I didn't really like them.
Unsurprisingly, I came from the playing the Witcher 3, and I loved the first two books; the collections of short stories. The actual main plot felt that it never knew clearly where it was going, and it often suddenly meandered at times that killed the pacing, and man was it horny.
I don't mind horny either. I really enjoyed reading Murakami's The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, and the authors horniness is prevalent throughout the novel, but it actually works to complement the narrative. Even in the Song of Ice and Fire series where GRRM can get distractedly horny, it doesn't read as off-puttingly as Sapkowski's "edgy horny" style.
This is my favourite novel of all time. It's interesting how the conversation is always about if it's adaptable into film, where many famous novels are accepted as totally unable to be adapted.
Part of it comes from McCarthy's very external style of writing. It's basically impossible to covert the layers of subtext in Ulysses to screen, or the introspection of The Bell Jar.
Hell in university I adapted the first chapter into a screenplay to pass the time and I was super happy with the outcome. I'm paraphrasing here but when the Coen Brothers adapted No Country for Old Men they made a joke that the adaptation was as simple as Ethan turning the page and Joel writing the words. McCarthy's work screams to be adapted.
On the flipside, Blood Meridian's meandering, epic nature may be what makes it unable to be adapted, not it's cruelty. Any and all adaptations for screen would need to reimagine swathes of the book, which is a disservice to it's structure. Many novels have this difficulty in adaptation but for reasons I struggle to explain, it feels it would hurt this novel more than most. Even if it were to be adapted into a 10 or 20 episode high budget show, I'd doubt it would adapt naturally in it's flow.
On a totally unrelated note, chapter 14 is such a great chapter. I often pick the book back up to read that chapter again. It's got fantastic prose, a great monologue from the judge, and covers in my opinion the most critical point of choosing evil for the Glanton gang.
On the D&D side, the final big adventure is releasing for D&D now before they refresh the rules starting in autumn. That adventure is high level and the main antagonist is Vecna, with him effectively having lieutenants of many of the other popular villains.
This isn't just a D&D tie in, it's an ad for Vecna: Eve of Ruin.
Id assume that's a liability thing? I'm not too sure as I believe it's legal to be topless in NYC, although probably not Dublin, but it's almost definitely not a crime to show 9/11 imagery.
I'm only talking from watching PF2e actual plays and playing a lot of 5e but I'd say PF2e combats would run 1.2x longer under the same conditions as a 5e game.
I'd say DM style is easily the biggest influence, I've played in games where a one hour combat is the significant boss battle of a campaign, but rules for 6 rounds, and I've played in games where a 6 hour battle may be normal, potentially with as few as 4 rounds passing (the latter one absolutely does kill me though, I think my character in that game has actually developed to avoid a fight because I dont want the faff). I'd say DM style can influence a combat length by 3x or more.
Similarly an understanding of general efficiency in combat from the players too can half a combat length pretty easily.
I wouldn't worry about it extending the game length, any extra time is pretty negligible compared to steps you can take to stop the time of combat unraveling.
I was so amazed at how common they were. I spent a year in Australia and probably saw more kangaroos day by day than I see all wild animals combined day by day here in the UK (excluding birds).
Hell I grew up in North Wales and may have seen as many kangaroos day by day as I saw sheep here, and that's saying something.
Idk if anyone else follows the rule of thumb of "let the party pull the same trick 3 times before you make it backfire".
In a story, it would fail on the third try, in a game, it would never fail. I find 4th time doesn't leave many people dissatisfied but also doesn't let every encounter be trivialised.
Bust out your fireball empowered cultists responsibly.
I wrote an essay on this exact thing back in college. Basically every backdrop, including every mountain range the action actually took place in was totally digitally created, furthermore many of the explosions were beefed up in post production. Some obvious stuff like the sandstorm were of course CGI too. Sometimes the ground would just be reshaped a little for the aesthetics of the final shot when it's basically just changing desert to desert.
The thing is, practically every vehicle and person you saw was real, and most of the special effects like the explosions were real and looked incredible on the day, with things like shrapnel and the like being added in post.
Fury Road barely used CGI for the content people care about, the stuff that's exciting to know was done for real on location. But beyond that, it was used liberally.
I'm happy with this approach and I'm curious to see how much the new film adheres to this choice.
Yeah I absolutely adored the concept and would love.to see it picked up. I discovered it after pitching to a friend Tony Hawk's Borderlands 4 and gradually realising the proof of concept existed.
Yeah is bet this is it. Born in 1785 is the right time to easily still live off the inherited wealth of a founded city, and even more than now, law is a particularly favourable career for members of that class to retain their wealth and enter politics.
I occasionally get pulled into the YouTube shorts and hate howuch time I lose to them. Worse was that although I barely use Instagram beyond keeping in contact with friends who only use it, I happened to watch the reels for a little yesterday and they were really entertaining.
A lot of amateur video creators don't have the experience to keep their work engaging for long periods of time, half the internet feels like SNL sketches that make their best punchline in the first 20 seconds and then milk the same joke for the next 3 minutes. The way short form content cuts through the crap is actually quite nice. It obviously has a whole bunch of its own issues but that's mostly due to chasing the algorithms favour, not the short form nature of the content.
Yeah I absolutely do not miss snagging my headphone cable on every door or drawer handle in a 1 mine radius. Also I think I used to go through 3-4 sets of headphones a year by wearing out the cable, spending the last few weeks precariously holding the cable 24/7 to enjoy the music.
Wireless does have it's issues but I'm on my 2nd wireless pair, both bought in the £30 region and it's probably been 5+ years since I used wired now. Battery hasn't been an issue really, and although I lost one headphone on my previous wireless set, I can live with it.
I absolutely support the want for a headphone jack so people can choose wired, but I'd still choose wireless.
I find I really need to get over the hump into it feeling like a parasocial relationship, which is kinda a shame. The only time I've enjoyed actual plays is when I've seen people who I was already fond of from other internet content play, and on top of that, never in a gimmicky setting like a promotion one-shot.
Basically it's not for the actual play, it's for living through their friendship, then occasionally the drama of the game spills forth and gives it an extra kick.
I believe they're arguing that AI is particularly used in news, and when looking up news, you're typically seeking current events, in which case excluding post 2023 content doesn't work.
In my opinion, the place I encounter AI content the most is in list content, not just clickbait lists but also stuff where multiple products are compared. If I'm looking up what laptop to get, AI articles pop up comparing 10 products with inaccurate and messy details, but also I don't want to see old products.
Also IMO, in many cases Google search has been useless for 6+ years now. I think it was around 2018 where I started ending my search terms in 'reddit' because the first few articles were poorly advised clickbait, especially when looking for any advice (Reddit of course went to shit anyway). Google is only useful now for navigating to popular sites that will inevitably float to the top of any search query due to popularity. The only other common use for me is correcting typos when autocorrect is stumped.
2-3 years of pumping shit video games is 2-3 years that they aren't fucking with the core product, which is the only part I don't want ruined. The can make bad games, bad merch, bad brand tie-ins or anything else for all I care as long as they don't harm the game.
The Witcher novels are one of the few epic fantasy franchises I've read and man, I didn't really like them.
Unsurprisingly, I came from the playing the Witcher 3, and I loved the first two books; the collections of short stories. The actual main plot felt that it never knew clearly where it was going, and it often suddenly meandered at times that killed the pacing, and man was it horny.
I don't mind horny either. I really enjoyed reading Murakami's The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, and the authors horniness is prevalent throughout the novel, but it actually works to complement the narrative. Even in the Song of Ice and Fire series where GRRM can get distractedly horny, it doesn't read as off-puttingly as Sapkowski's "edgy horny" style.