i also think that "fuzzy random magic" is just bad if you actually want to like. play a game

and that's at least partially because the field still has areas where it's an open question about "can we make the computer do this"

also also, there's of course a fair chunk of stuff that's still an open question; there's a lot of people today who don't know what a computer program (for instance) can or can't do

"how many spellcasters are in the world" is usually not, like, nobody but it's certainly one of the parameters that gets tuned from setting to setting

yeah i basically agree that education means that they're certainly aware that magic exists, but I don't actually think that they have, like, a solid grasp of the spell list and all. they probably know about sleep and fireball and fly and stuff

it's like people who complain about metagaming in d&d. we all know what the book monsters do. stop making me pretend that i don't know how to kill a troll and come up with something i haven't heard of

i haven't done a complete tour of every d&d-like game out there but my firm belief is that they were done after advanced D&D. maybe something that writes down my personal interpretation of the core rules and adds ascending AC

or not even bad (i'm sure there are many fine mugs and plushies and t-shirts) but like. there's a line at which you cannot keep milking fear of the unknown out of shit we all recognize all the time. make up your own monster

i think that like many popular scary screatures it may have been good, like, the first time but every repetition has been bad.

and of course because it's an engineering degree everyone has high exam weightings for everything

yeah i think my favorite professor at university was really good about this. he was coordinator for engineering math and was widely noted for talking about his views on academic misconduct, how he would find you and fail you, how he had found and failed x number of people.

i would be running so many games. people would be asking me "emily how is this possible" and "emily why aren't you dead of a heart attack" and "emily i don't think this is healthy" but i would persist

hard to get it even with such a little piece of toast

and under the geneva convention you're supposed to take these people prisoner if you can and not cause any further harm to them, because they can't carry on fighting (which is what it means in french)

of course the crew on that boat were never "combatants" (unless you're a fish) but that's the idea

"hors de combat" is a specific term in international law referring to people who were at one point combatants (that is you're allowed to shoot them) but are no longer able to keep fighting (like people on a sinking ship or lifeboat, or badly wounded people, or parachuting aircraft crews)

luz didn't you know that any media that doesn't appeal to my particular tastes is fascist and any media that does appeal to my particular tastes is communist. it's dialectics