Life

This is a long time coming. Managed to find the spreadsheet so feel free to look at it. Thoughts before game: As many of you know, I prefer OC to NOC. Allows for more freedom and for any given player to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat with work behind the scenes. The issue is that in a standard Mafia game, most people send in an action and do nothing. Which I wanted to avoid especially since people hate the "follow the village leader" strategy (for good reason too). So I made this game multi-faction. There were three teams of 3 with a wolf. Each team had its own strengths and weaknesses when it came to the roles given in order to make it as fair as possible. Moley, moley, MOLE: I created the game so of course I was going to implement moles. It's one of my favourite roles. However, I designed the moles with the idea that they would be quiet saboteurs of the team they were moling instead of just dishing information back to their regular faction. As such, I told all the moles that if they were to reveal to their faction that they were a mole, they would be godkilled. This restriction was only going to be lifted once the mole within their faction was dead. All three of the moles played very well and it pleased me to no end. Combating inaction: My favourite part about the set-up was starting the factions disjointed. I wanted to promote the idea of talking to other people so I purposely gave each person the name of another one in their faction. The mole was also included in this loop which lead to a lot of people thinking that the set-up was 4-3-3 for a long time (until Night 1, if I'm not mistaken). This caused a lot of hilarity for both me and Gaius as we watched people trying to figure out what was going on. Unfortunately, people weren't as active as I would have liked in the lategame. Oh well. Priorities: You know those logic puzzle where John sits next to Judy but across the hall from Janet if she's wearing a red sweater? Like those that you need to figure out how to slot everything in? Same idea here. I don't like the idea of static priorities (especially kills) because they're not practical. Why can't a Safeguard be hooked? If a Hooker acts first, then can their target never be Safeguarded? Is it possible to put both a BG and SG on the same player or does the BG fail? My personal idea is that you should puzzle them all together to make as many actions work as possible. Same thing with kills and this one played a huge factor. Since the Wolf was a one-man-show, he had to have top priority when it came to kills, especially with 3 other kills flying around per night and no night-time protection. But after that, what about the factions? So I came up with this plan that each faction would be faster than another faction when it came to kills. The HC was faster than the CR. The CR beat out the Bandits. And the Bandits would kill before the HC. This basically meant that there would be no double kills and you could effectively change the scope of the game by targeting the right faction and person. But even I didn't realize the mind-fuck it would cause me on Night 1. Regardless, I would do this again in a heartbeat. ​ ​Hyperion Corporation: There's a lot here to mention so let's start with Mitsuki. In short, Mitsuki (the mole) was the only reason why the HC even stood a chance. Diego was subbed in late and AssassinMercenary read his Role PM incorrectly (he was an SG, not BG) and then proceeded to leak every single bit of information that Mitsuki had collected. She eventually figured that out and told him to shut up but the damage was done. But the killer blow for HC was losing Mitsuki on Night 1 and the way it went down. Mitsuki and Baldrick targeted each other for kills. Due to my system of priorities, Baldrick would kill her first... except then I realized that Mitsuki was actually performing the Crimson Raider kill while Diego was doing the Hyperion Corp kill (I didn't want a mole performing two kills in a single night). So the question was if Mitsuki's Crimson Raider kill would be considered as a Crimson Raider or Hyperion Corp kill. The later kills Mitsuki and the former kills Baldrick. I thought about this one for about a half hour after phase end (it was pretty much the only scenario I didn't envision happening because the odds were stupid) and finally went with the second option because it felt a lot more consistent. Sorry sweetie. As for Diego and AM, I'd have Diego back again but not AM. He was god awful. I actually cringed at one point while watching him. The faction itself was designed as more of a diplomatic style. Their abilities were a 1-time lynch stop and Safeguard. Since the lynch-stop could actually win the game for the HC if they used it correctly, I didn't feel the need to give them a good role with that. The Safeguard was actually supposed to be used as a trading tool for either information or required actions. Waste of two roles if you ask me. ​Bandits:​ It's amazing how you can put three pretty good players (based on my experience) on the same team and just watch an entire clusterfuck. I already mentioned N1 when it comes to Baldrick so let's skip to D2. While I was at work (or sleeping before work, don't remember), Lord Gaius gave someone an extension on the phase without telling me. So I get back with an hour left to go and I see that there's an extension. That doesn't fly with me since I had explicitly planned cycles around my work schedule. I announced that there would be no extension (bare in mind that this is with an hour left in the cycle) and the lynch would go on as planned. Now I get Baldrick's point about this being bullshit and I can almost sympathize... except for one thing. Baldrick had been changing his vote all day and was the last vote at the time. And he chose to leave the vote as a tie with Paperblade who was on his own faction and silenced for the second time in a row (that was amazing). Baldrick essentially put himself in a bad position by no fault other than his own. As such, they both got lynched and that eliminated the Bandits from the game. The last person I need to mention is kirsche and this was the paragraph I had written up about him in my notes. The backlash from people not understanding what was going on made me giggle like a little girl. It was the wolf's only protection and it managed to put him in a position to win the game (not that he deserved it if you ask me). Faction-wise, the Bandits had the strongest duo of roles (BG and Hooker) and were designed to rule the night. The Hooker was faster than everything but the SG (but if he hooked the SG, protection would fail) and the BG could even block the Wolf's kill despite it being faster than the factions. Overall, not impressed by this team whatsoever. Crimson Raiders:​​ It was such a shame that these guys lost. As a team, they easily played the best. Refa managed to live to the end but didn't realize that he was the kingmaker. Since Clarinets took out Diego (who was planning on killing Refa), Refa essentially picked the winner since the Crimson Raider kill was slower than both the Wolf's and the HC's. However, had he silenced Clarinets, he would have won for the Crimson Raiders. By bad luck, he chose to silence Diego who died anyway. Speaking of Silencer, that role made me giggle because of the havoc that Refa caused. He silenced Paperblade twice which immediately led to the Bandits' eliminated. The N1 Silence meant that kirsche had no back-up from Paperblade and the N2 silence created the Baldrick situation since Paper couldn't vote. In fact, Paperblade couldn't even Fuck Tiger the lynch because it was tied between him and Baldrick. Amazing. BBM played a solid game as Cop and helped organize the faction well. And then there was 3rd. Mitsuki was originally going to be my MVP choice but I can't give it to her since she only put her team in a position where they required some serious luck to win, despite being 2-1-1 during N3. 3rd actually put his faction in a position to flat out win if Refa chooses correctly on a 50/50 Silence choice (like I said, silencing Clarinets gives the CR the win). I don't know where the fuck this guy came from but he played like a beast. He moled the shit out the Bandits and kept them from being organized whatsoever. And when I refer to AM as an information leak, 3rd was the sieve that caught everything and filtered out the important shit. This guy knew basically everything that was going on and was simply spouting random bullshit that other people believed without question. Even though Mitsuki was the only person to figure out how the moles work, 3rd didn't give a shit. But the downside to this was that because 3rd moled the fuck out of everyone, ​his own faction locked him out of their faction talks and brought Mitsuki in instead.​ ​Call me crazy but I thought that shit was hilarious. He also organized the lynching of kirsche (the last mole) in a very smooth way. Therefore, I give the honour of MVP to 3rd. I was incredibly impressed by his play and he only lasted until N1. I really wish he had lasted longer. I already mentioned Silencer being absolutely key and Cop was basically useless. I knew that Silencer would be near broken in this game but I wanted the CR to have a bit of an information lead in order to use Silencer efficiently. As I said above, if both 3rd and BBM survived the night, BBM would have gotten back the Mole role of 3rd and tried to lynch him. ​Eridian: Wolf roles are difficult to balance correctly in order to give them a fighting chance without handing the game to them. I've seen no less than 3 games that I've played in dominated by a wolf who was just too strong for anyone to handle (Train Mafia 2 from about 5 years back is the best example). As such, I decided that the wolf would be immune to the first lynch of the game and have the quickest kill possible. That meant that with 9 people left in the game after the first lynch, he was fair game and had to communicate with the factions in order to get to a point where he could win. Based on the results of this game, I think I balanced the Wolf perfectly. Clarinets avoided the first lynch with Kirsche dying solo instead (which was hilarious) and then got incredibly lucky. His existence was hidden for a bit due to the N1 clusterfuck of Mitsuki/Baldrick and his N2 kill of Diego sealed his win even with Diego dying before getting the kill off. Even if AM had used the kill instead on Refa, Clarinets would have won. Having saying all that, I don't think that Clarinets played well. He was incredibly inactive early and then basically just handed out the fact that he was the wolf on a silver platter to a bunch of people. Had the HC not been shooting themselves in the foot all game, Clarinets would have lost badly. But they did and he won so... congratulations are in order. That's done. Thank you and good day. If you have anymore questions, go ahead and ask.

I wonder how long it takes until someone realizes that I'm playing in an OC game. This will be fun.

WELL HOW DARE THEY GIVE A SHIT MORE ABOUT THEIR OWN COUNTRIES THAN GERMANY'S WELLBEING AND THE CONCEPT OF THE EU! I hope you understand the absurdity of your statement. The only thing that should be on David Cameron's (and the entire British Parliament too) mind is the well being of... England, not Germany. In addition, the EU is a glorified trade agreement but it does not mean that Germany and England are sisters and should be forced to live in the attic together when one of them can afford their own mansion. Don't throw the word "traitor" around if you don't fully understand the concept. If Cameron was putting Germany first rather than his own nation, then he'd be a traitor.

You can't honestly tell me that religion doesn't rule in Syria, even before the civil war. In the past thirty years alone, almost every country in the Middle East (Iran/Iraq/Lebanon/Syria/Egypt...) have regressed culturally. Sure, some haven't but those are the Gulf States that have money to burn. But with the exception of Jordan, all of my neighbours now resemble barbarians rather than a current society.

So we have an issue. Any given episode is going to be over 4 hours long and to make it remotely watchable, I'll need to split it into videos of 10 to 15 minutes. That's a lot of high time. It also means I need to restart. I'm going to get this shit correct. But I need more drugs.

I'm going to say something that is very unpopular but y'all need to understand that I have personal baggage when it comes to Arabs. I think the Arabs (not Muslims, Arabs) need to get the fuck out of Europe and North America and return to the Middle East to sort that shit out. If it means more wars with us, it'll suck but it'll cause much fewer problems. I'm completely serious. They fuck up their own countries, they do the same to others and still cry victim. You can say that it's not their fault because look at the war-torn countries they came from. I say that they deserve it if you look at their history. Since about the 1800s, very few Arabic nations have contributed anything positive to society with the exception of oil. Am I missing something here? Did Syria and Lebanon give anything to the world in the last hundred years that was meaningful? No. They simply let their respective countries regress to the Middle Ages by equating state and religion. This might have worked in a world that felt this way back then but this is a modern world where the vast amount of countries are not ruled by religion primarily. As for the argument of these people being human beings, it doesn't fucking matter. A lot of them act like animals rather than human beings. And yet the Arabs are the only people in the world where we have to find excuses for their behavior. I know that I'm going to ostracized for saying that they should return to the Middle East but my people (Jews) have been treated like that all through history and are still getting that treatment. Right now, we're being told to leave "Palestine" because we stole it from the poor Arabs (which completely ignores history). You know what that message was in the 1930s? Jews, leave Europe and go to Palestine because you're not wanted here. I don't get it. I really don't. Why the fuck should I be expected to offer hospitality and refuge to a group of people who metaphorically (and literally) spit in my face when the rest of the world will refuse to do the same for me? I get that I'm making this argument a bit about myself but these are the thoughts that go through my head whenever I discuss this. As a Jew, I'm sick and tired of being treated like a punching bag. I want someone else to take my spot for once and the Arabs are giving you more than enough reasons as for why.

No. We hate the Steelers because we think you're a terrible fan.

What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

This shit is fucking long. I might have to revert to screenshots. First 100 turns of my first game is almost 2 hours long and I was high so I didn't exactly go fast. EDIT: I love the sound of my own voice but... no. Screenshots it is. Too high to pull this off.

OC? I'm down.

Generic until my last game. I'm also going to slowly increase the difficulty of the game and probably rage hard by the end. Episode 1x01 should be coming out in about 18 hours or so.

Coming from a Bills fan, I really wish that the Pats cheated but at the same time, I never thought they did.

So I recently bought Civ V on Steam and it's excellent. So I'm going to do an LP with all the Civs available (Vanilla only). Couple of things: 1) I am not a good human being. I blame a lot of things (one example is a recent court case against my ex-roommate) but that doesn't matter. What this means is that this LP is rated M for "Mature, motherfucker". There will be obscenity. There will be drug, alcohol and sexual comments. There may also be a bit of racism and other things. There will also be a lot of East Coast Rap playing and I know a lot of lyrics. Long story short, if you are offended easily, don't watch. It's that simple. 2) I'm not a good Civ V player. If you want to comment with "you suck", I'll simply respond with a shot about how it's still not at the level of your mother based on last night. If you want to throw out helpful criticism, that is not only accepted but encouraged. 3) I only have the Vanilla version of Civ V because I'm poor. If you want to gift me GnK and BNW on Steam, please do. This means that there is no religion, spies, tourism and a lot of Civs in my LP. I'll try to figure out a way on how to hook up a way to record both my voice and the game at the same time for when I start. I will also add a poll for the first Civ to start with when I get home. But for the time being, get prepared. Shit is going to get real. EDIT: The poll is now up. I haven't used any of these Civs properly so I want to start with one of them. And if someone can help me with figuring out how to record my screen and mic using the best program possible, I'd appreciate it. [spoiler=Songhai]1x1 1x2

Has nobody played Baten Kaitos Origins? That's how you create a card battle system.

I have a question. Are you an immigrant? No? Then you don't know how difficult it is to assimilate into a completely different society. Beyond learning an entire new language in order to do simple tasks such as work or paying bills, there's also the fact that a lot of these people (my favourite example are Eritreans because they've fled true horrors) have no education, no skills and no money. As a result, they will live together in small communities and if they end up staying in said country permanently, they'll carve out their own little society where it might be Germany but it feels like Eritrea. I know this firsthand because I am an immigrant myself.

Two questions. 1) How can you "not be a rapist at the moment"? Moshe Katzav is sitting in jail for rape. Since he's probably not assaulting any women there, does that mean that he's not a rapist anymore? 2) I get the feeling that if Ben Roethlisberger was the QB for any team other than Carolina or Pittsburgh, you'd think that he was a rapist and a terrible human being. Don't respond to this, it's going to be a waste of yours and our time.

Religion.

Maybe not but your points for why the Panthers' D was not being second best were quite terrible. Can't let you slide on those. As for Cards D vs. Panthers D, just looking at the scores makes me say that Carolina was crap in comparison.

Same reason why a lot of countries bought into the idea of Communism really hard. It sounds excellent in theory but that's all it is. Theory. Maybe it'll work in actuality. Maybe it won't. There are arguments for and against this and both are logically sound in certain aspects. I'm all for raising minimum wage but a 200% increase is not feasible in my eyes. If I follow the logical path, it leads me to inflation.

I blame the hash but I couldn't make it through the entire article. I did read enough to understand the point you're trying to make and I can empathise a bit. But I do disagree when it comes to speaking about restaurants. I agree with the fact that raising a minimum wage is not helpful for a business and it make complete logical sense. Minimum wage is the absolute minimum that an employer should have to pay a worker with a minimum skillset to perform a job that takes minimum effort. Such as working as an attendant at a gasoline station. Why should that person be paid $15 an hour for not needing any skills or effort when $5.25 is enough for said person to theoretically support themselves? As someone who has made minimum wage as a skilled work (I'm a line cook), I refuse to sympathize with cashiers at burger joints that want to make the same amount of money as I do. My place of work is more demanding and requires more skill than punching numbers on a screen and saying "next". Note that this doesn't include actual waitresses and bartenders who provide service by waiting on the customer for more than 2 minutes at a time. However, you mentioned restaurants. And restaurants are money sinks if the goal is to be successful while providing quality food and service. They'll make some money but just enough to keep themselves afloat, not to expand without actively downgrading either food or service. I know this for a fact since I've worked at a few over the past two years including one that opened 3 weeks before I began working there. The amount of money that gets sunk into a restaurant is staggering (gas, water, electric, rent, repairs and maintenance, worker salaries, stock for both food and drink, taxes, cleaning supplies... the list just keeps going on and on). It's the worst place to talk about minimum wage since nobody (not even owners) make a lot of money if the goal is to keep quality up and going. So it's a fine article but you've brought a terrible example to the table.

Actually, I'm going to side with Ana on this one, bro. First off, the Panthers beat Atlanta 38-0 in Carolina. The reverse game was two weeks later (week 16) where the Panthers had already locked up a playoff spot and possibly first round bye (I wasn't following NFC at all) and it was 20-13 in Atlanta. It doesn't take a genius to point out that that loss didn't matter. In addition, giving up 38 to the Saints wasn't great but 1) it was in the Superdome and 2) the Saints offense isn't as bad as you want it to be. They dropped 52 on the Giants (you remember that game) and scored 20+ points in all but 5 games. That's nearly 75% of the season. You're really selling the Panthers short here. I also think that they're overall better than the Broncos, despite that defense that Denver brings to the table.

With regards to FFVI, there was a Christmas sale going on in the Play Store and I bought that shit for about 30 NIS (equivalent to $10). As opposed to my original cart on the GBA for $25 a good 10 years ago. Having Bushido fixed is worth the 30 NIS right there. It's double the price now, of course. As for the guy who wanted to know where to start, VI and IX are my choices. IV is not a well designed game (this one isn't arguable because the game leaves very little to the imagination), V is slightly difficult for beginners and I/II can be pains in the ass. VII hasn't aged well, VIII isn't the first game you want to try since it'll turn you off of the series and while I love X and XIII (especially XIII and its sequels), don't go there for a while. VI has it all. Vibrant characters with personalities (something that Aeris, Cait Sith and Red XIII desperately need in the remake), an excellent battle system where each character feels distinctive but the mix and match possibilities are endless and an expansive world where you can legitimately explore to your heart's content. Granted, the last point applies to the second half of the game but once you get there (and you will know when), the game literally says "alright, now it's on you to find my goodies if you want or to put the final boss in the ground if that pleases your fancy". And then there's Kefka. Probably the single best villain in FF history (Kuja ranks a close second), he's very well fleshed out and he's the kind of villain that you love to hate. You just want to take him out for all the misery he's caused because he doesn't give two shits about anyone else. That's all I'll say in order to avoid ruining the story but since you meet Kefka within the first 10 minutes of the game, you'll understand what I mean. IX is the other game I put up and that's a great console entry for FF newbies. Like VI, you have a diverse team with amazing personalities (it's always nice when the main love interest for the protagonist isn't dumb as a rock), a very accessible and fun battle system that is similar to IV and VI and another amazing villain. The world itself is quite fleshed out and even the philosophical tones of questions of existence work within the story. It's another excellent starting point for those new to the series.

This is absolutely correct. Most Eritreans who come to Europe or North America are usually passing through Israel/Ethopia/Sudan... other countries where they're treated like indentured servants. And yes, that does include Israel at times. I work with a bunch of Eritreans and have done so for the past two years.

Ray Rice was given a 2 game suspension. Considering that he knocked his girlfriend out cold on camera... doesn't add up.

Agreed. Just understand that the "joke" of the NFL will always belong to the team that made the Superbowl year after year and found a way on how to lose every single time in increasingly embarrassing ways.