cthonctic

IBM sure does suck donkey balls but I really don’t think that particular thing is their fault.

"If you didn’t like what I said then I’m sorry you see it that way. But if you did like what I said - you’re welcome. wink "

Straight out of the neoliberal / right-wing playbook.

That is true and I have also muted a ton of my less-than-friend-level contacts in regards to stories. But that nag screen to subscribe to channels seems so terribly gauche.

Can this “feature” be removed or deactivated somehow? I guess not because that would be too convenient.

Very much agreed. A couple months back it would have been the token “I looked at BGG and the #1 board game there looks pretty D&D like so here we are” recommendation.

I’m happy it’s there because it is a very good game - but also highly likely to leave the article’s target audience frustrated and confused.

That’s the actually good Catan version though.

Is it also bland and old-fashioned yet still somehow popular?

We don’t have our devs on call at all. Infra / platform ops are and I think they get 750€ per on-call week (not more than one week out of four) which includes two calls or two hours of call duration whichever is reached first.

After that it’s another 70€ per call or started hour and it’s the same if an expert who is not on call is asked to help out with an issue reported to on-call (but they may not answer / decline as there’s never an expectation to be “soft on-call”)

Overall that’s an okay deal and some sorely needed extra money for the ops guys and gals. But all the same I’m happy that my devs don’t need to plan their lives around an on-call schedule.

Edit: Ah sorry, didn’t even answer all the questions in OP…

We’re in Germany and there is a cooldown time after you fielded an emergency on-call report (which is outside of regular working hours by definition) which is either 8 or 10 hours (not entirely sure since my team doesn’t do on-call as previously stated) before you are allowed to start your regular work time for the following day.
Not sure how they tally up working hours for payroll but if you wake up to a call at 3am then certainly no one expects you to be online again at 8am. If you get a call at 10pm however then you get to start working normally the next day. (unless that issue took forever to troubleshoot ofc)

On-call rotations are one entire week per person who participates (which is not mandatory) and the participants per pool must be at least four - which is why they are pooling web admins, DBAs and other ops folk together.
That seems to work okay even though every so often more specialized know-how is required than the current on-call tech possesses for the topic at hand and then they request extraordinary assistance as described above.

Tell me you are a psychopath without telling me you are a psychopath.

From “don’t be evil” to “you know, what’s so bad about being evil anyway?”

I’ll be honest, I was a bit nervous when you compared your game to D&D and Shadowrun. Both have famously bad mechanics that shoot themselves in the foot compared to what the absolutely marvelous worldbuilding can do and are only the staples they are because they’ve been there decades ago…

But from a quick perusal this looks rather promising. I would love to commit some of my time to this project and its community but will have to see whether I can manage to free up some first. So, no promises at this point I’m afraid.

I really love the way you approach this, not as a commercial product but as hopeful community building. Can’t give you enough kudos for this! :)

So, Gloomhaven and Betrayal at the House on the Hill (D&D edition). It baffles me that they didn’t mention the actual D&D board games and instead listed two TTRPG systems plus the trashy campaign module for one of them.

Then again, people who are into D&D often really only are into D&D and not willing to branch out very far so that tracks.
Kind of surprised at Gloomhaven being suggested because it has a dungeon crawl theme over a good Euro hand-management engine and most D&Ders are probably scratching their heads at that.

The Isofarian Guard is amazing if you happen to be up for a story-heavy campaign game to play either solo or with another person. I got the first printing and am exstatic, that they only charge 39€ for the new content and previous backers get all of the updated materials bundled in for free. That is exactly how you turn me into a loyal customer.

On the other hand, Board Game Tycoon decided that everything outside of the US no longer exists, so I can’t even buy the Everdell-related stuff I’d like because it simply isn’t available in the EU at all. That is how you spit into a (formerly loyal) customer’s face.

The ones that don’t fit inside a Kallax cube - you should hear my guttural growl when the smaller side is exactly 1 centimeter larger than the cube width - then it goes on top of one of the Kallaxes.

Thankfully it’s not too many games that don’t fit and I have four Kalaxes (ranging from 3x4 to 5x5) to put stuff on top of.
Still, I wish game designers and publishers tried to respect those standard measurements whenever possible.

His poor son, family, and basically everyone he knows.

7 Pro since launch, no issues whatsoever.

“Unrelenting darkness within him”? I thought that’s why Uncle Xenu installed his Thetan pump so those can be sucked out like some sort of anti-midichlorians.

Yeah that’s really cool for all those Linux phones out there. Oh wait, there are like two and a half models in total and none of them are great? Damn.

Avi Loeb is a pathetic crackpot hack who is abusing his prestigious academia position to flood journals with worthless papers. He really needs to be ignored by society at large because he has no clue what he is talking about.

Let Angela explain everything to you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY985qzn7oI

And in the end the lying salesman died because of snakeoil therapy. I wish more stories had such a happy ending.