I was texting with a player of mine today after they had let me know they'd be unable to come to the game this evening. They recalled that they had been laid out unconscious by a bear's paw in the previous session, a few weeks ago when we last played before the holidays.
Then they said to me something like "I guess I'll see if I have any possessions left when I return."
This struck me as odd, so I asked whether they were used to other players taking their stuff when unconscious. The player's response, paraphrased: "No, but we aren't exactly scrupulous people, and in character there's not much reason for loyalty or camaraderie." Emphasis mine.
This post is quite simple. In the six months since I began this blog I've slowly added items to the trade table I wrote about in the very first post. Recently, I reached and then surpassed 148 items, which is a milestone because it's double the number of items in the original posting.
To celebrate, here is the table as it stands. The pretty version is buggy right now, unfortunately, so this is the less-pretty version. If you are having trouble reading them, click the images for full size.
I read this in Chinese. Anyone lauding The Three-Body Problem has not read enough classic 20th-century science fiction, which expected some effort from its readers. Occasional memorable scenes (like the ship assault) and the solid Cultural Revolution sections cannot save the daft plot. One example: the alien "videogame" lacks the features of an actual videogame -- motivation, progression, reward -- and is more like a series of weird lectures. While people do play bad videogames, the way this one is described, it's hard to understand why Earthlings would play it in large numbers.
Before bothering with this, read Roadside Picnic, Dune, and Starship Troopers. [And don't whine to me about Heinlein.]
