andrewrgross

"I have to have two houses, one which is shared with Great Grandma (the elderly retired geneticist who did the uplift upbringing), and one which is the PC's Mom's Pack (and she's a forester) so the forest lodge elements make sense. For the Latter definitely going with a great room for mixed species guests and socialization, and two layers of Dens (well within capsule hotel standards) with those rough slopes for the upper levels. After consulting with a forester who trains work dogs, going with a Water shower with a bristle spinner, and giant hot air dryer, for the cleaning oneself when coming inside. He hadn't thought of the giant hamster wheels but laughed when I mentioned it, and says it makes perfect sense."

Some quotes from responses:

"The mind goes straight to a forest lodge, although that is unfair stereotyping I should move past! (But who doesn't want a forest lodge? College students!)

Lots of giant hamster wheels! Seriously, they need how many miles a day to keep their bowels working? Maybe a vibration massage plate bed for grandma.

Some equivalent of a shoe rack - maybe a wax tray you can rub your paws on for protection against hot/cold pavement, and a cleansing tray with bristles to clean your paws on the way back in. More extreme climates might need dog boots secured with velcro straps.

Steep rough slopes (duckboard ramp) rather than stairs. Maybe fixed on half the stairs width if it is shared accommodation with plains apes.

Western humans still tend to have liminal guest space and kitchens ect on the ground floor with bedrooms placed defensibly above on the next floor.

There may be a slight tendency among wolves to favour basements/enclosed/bunker like spaces for the bedrooms, and very large open communal rooms up top for guests. No point having seperate kitchen areas when you can smell everything anyway, just lots of flop down futons."

That's actually a great pitch.

Well that's dystopian and dark.

Sounds interesting. The FF are characters that I really like in concept, but if you ask me my favorite stories I can't think of one's outside my head. We'll see what they do with them.

That's nuts. I was hoping it might explain how, but nope: they're like, "We've got no idea."

Remarkable. It's nice to be reminded how much about our world still lies undiscovered.

I shouldn't bother responding to this, but I have to point out that this weird assumption that scholars of Christianity are all Christian partisans seems pretty similar to people who say that climatologists are all biased in favor of a global warming hoax.

You don't think anyone goes into studying a field to challenge the orthodoxy? That's the fastest way to get famous. Even if the rest of your field hates you, you can make an incredibly lucrative career out of being "the outsider". I literally linked to a collection of experts who agree with you.

If you don't believe the experts, I guess it's fine. But it's weird when people use expertise on a subject as proof of bias to discredit expertise. It's just such a silly thing to do.

I didn't say which side I come down on. I just said that there is lots of information with plenty of high quality citations.

I'm really happy that everyone is a winner.

It's weird how many people in this thread are vaguely debating the validity of the historical research into this question when one person has posted a link to a well cited article on this very very heavily studied subject.

There's even a link to a well cited article examining the skepticism of the historicity of Jesus: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory

I don't feel compelled to argue an interpretation. The facts are well documented and their interpretations by experts available. What anyone chooses to do with these are of no real concern to me.

Agree 100%

I agree with that. Looking through, I find understanding the basic rules to be kind of a burden. It took me a while to realize that "Operations" is the rules section.

I think it makes sense to show players the character sheet early, because that's the nexus through which they really experience the game. I like the demo scene towards the beginning, but I think a quickstart guide to explain basic rules to the players very, VERY clearly is usually a good idea.

Still, I'm continuously impressed at how well this adapts Star Trek to an RPG. I was initially skeptical that an RPG could take all the nonsense we see in decades of different shows and create a cohesive basis for all of it, but this is really impressive. I'd have to play to see if the rules feel balanced and natural, but at a glance, they make far more sense than plenty of other RPGs I've seen. I think this looks like a really fun game.

I really try not to get into litigating each and every instance, but I feel compelled sometimes to point out a few things:

The claim that Abdallah Aljamal was holding hostages is not credible. This claim was made by the IDF without evidence, and they have a very long history of fabricating post-hoc justifications for killing people they weren't targeting or supposed to target. Examples include the assassination of American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022 and the killing of medic Rouzan al-Najjar in 2018. In both cases, the IDF was caught lying to justify their murders, and I don't think the claims about Abdallah Aljamal hold up at all. From what I read, he lived in the building one of the hostages was recovered from, but he wasn't known as a target before he was killed. He was characterized as one after he was dead.

Overall, the concept of "valid targets" is bullshit. It is used to assuage our innate understanding that killing people -- particularly the young, the innocent, the defenseless, the elderly -- is WRONG. Israel has, in this particular war, extended the concept in a way that is clearly genocidal. Their target selection, as covered by 972, was wildly more vicious than their own historical limits on collateral damage. An anonymous Israeli intelligence officer called it "a mass assassination factory".

I'm glad we agree that all the responsible parties for atrocities deserve to be held accountable. I don't intend the above as a provocation to fight, but I want to make sure anyone reading this comment section is aware of this context.