Oh I thought they said Thursday on the news. But I didn't listen closely anyway.

So, unrelated, what games are you playing at the moment?
Well let's hope you don't run out of beer, cheeseburgers and cigarettes then.

Good near-noon everybody ;)

Doing fine I hope?

I was going to try and say something sensible about the situation in Greece, but I shan't. We don't get a good overview anymore because all the news we get here is: "oh no, the Greeks didn't budge again, they're going too drag europe after them while that red hazard premier is ruling them!"

Personally my vision is also painted by my own extreme left view of the world. Suffice to say I do not at all support the exsanguination of the Greek people to save some wallets.

I'm playing F1 2014 on my xbo 360, what about you?

Endless supply. It all has its own tree, which stand right next to the money tree where all the money comes from.

Moin moin,

Doing fine. Typing thesis stuff. How are you?

At some point I stopped arguing about it as well, due to my extreme view of the world. Neither right nor left, but with ulterior motives that do not align well with current (German/Greek/European) politics. I basically jump from happy to sad, because there are aspects that suit me and aspects that don't.
Working right now. Played some Baldur's Gate 2 this morning. And some Spellforce yesterday evening.

Good to hear, I hope you're having fun with your thesis? What's the subject you're talking about if I may ask?

I'm coming along fine. My music creation software doesn't play nice with linux so I'm going to try porting some VST's from sonar X3 to ocenaudio.

Unfortunately I've hit upon a writer's impasse for D&D; The story was coming nicely and the players said they were really fascinated (which is a big compliment for me as DM), but now it won't compute in my head anymore. We do Cossacks and supcom and star ruler mini-lan parties inside the house now as opposed to D&D, but I hope I'll be able to cobble some stuff together soon ;(

I remember a few years ago there was a Linux open source alternative to FL Studio, it was basic and in development but looked promising, maybe you've got some idea of what I'm blabbering on about? That might be of some use.

Tonight... beer. Beer beer beer, lovely beer!

A what way doesn't it compute anymore?
A way I used to tackle this is by pretending I'm a player and what story would my character go through. My characters were always Lawful or Neutral Evil, so it aligns well. Then I just finish that story in my head and let the characters fight through the aftermath of what my character already went through.
So for example my character wants to destroy a city, so he sculpts and enchants a statue of a local deity and offers it to the unknowing city. They place the statue in their temple, but the enchantment causes the statue to send of waves of vibration that start destroying the stone walls of surrounding buildings, whenever no one is in the temple. After weeks people panic and start believing in a punishment of the gods. And the radius of destruction increases slowly. Now I just let the heroes come to this city on their travels and they have to find out, what is tormenting the city. Hindrances can be zealots that don't allow them to abduct or destroy the statue of the gods and they have to sneak into the temple at night through the catacombs where some enemies lurk. But first they have to do a detective part to find out what changed etc.

I think in literature every villain wants to be stopped at the end. So it's easy to take this approach.

Hm, I've heard of FL but I've only ever used musescore (for writing the score) and Sonar X3 (for getting better sound effects and messing about).

I basicly pulled up a Linux DAW list and looked for something that could both support midi (what I export in musescore) files and VST's. Ocenauio is free and had these prerequisites so I went with that. This is the list.

edit: Perhaps you mean "Qtractor"?

This is what I was talking about https://lmms.io/

That's some great advice and an angle I haven't tried out yet, thank you :)

Allow me to sketch the situation:

A lawful evil city state combine is bullying and battling their neighbours into submission. They have a totalitarian government with eyes and ears everywhere, and "Secular Inquisitors" who aren't above butchering the elders of a town, draging the middle aged people to mines and fields for forced labour, and taking the children to indoctrination centers. They use the aid of devils with sanctioned authorization and support from a nearby mage oriented state.

The city states are:
-the totalitarians (big bad guys)
-the militarist (support the big bad guys)
-the mages (in league with the bad guys)
-the merchants (engaged diplomaticly and economicly with the bad guys, and no match in raw power)
-the hippies (a plain, nature oriented people living next to an elven forest)
-the assassins (a city ruled by a mysterious assissin house, holding it's own and refusing to be dragged into the situation, but no match for the bad guys)

As of now, the players traveled into that elven forest to get the support of the ancient mighty elven king of elfvenistan and his army.

We had about 6 full sessions of chasing changelings detective work and story-related side quests in the city before the audience with the king, who said he would out of principle and concern fight the bad guys. Unfortunatly, fighting a war in that region might damage relations with the nearby metropolitan empire; after all the bad guys live in a region right across their border, and are an ex-protectorate they get along with nicely. On the other side of the empire across the city state region lie the dwarven holds of Stone Hold and Iron fort city; On two sides they are protected by mountians, but on one side they will soon have the bad guy hegemony if they "unite" all the cities under their reign, and on the other side the Darklands ... which is basicly the land of the vampire counts from Warhammer fantasy.

Therefore, the elven king wants: 1- a no-aggression treaty with the metropolitan empire; and 2- a mutual attack pact and support of the dwarves in liberating the city states.

The players take care of 2, while their NPC Mescenas (Led Zeppelin, pelor inquisitor with a big airship) takes care of item 1.

Beyond the player's knowledge, and this is crucial for later; The bad guys have got contact through the tunnels of the drow with the far awy wastes where demons and black paladins thrive galore. Once the bad guys have taken over, they will form the anvil that will crush the Elves and Dwarves with aid from the Darklands (to the west, beyond the dwarves), and the northern wastes (above the elven forest).

A hint of the above will be dropped when the players are underway to the dwarf kings, in the form of a big Chaos paladin who will knock them about and try to turn them away from their quest through ... persuasion ...

The rest depends on wether the players make enough haste or can/cannot complete their quest. I'm not above dooming an entire fantasy world if the players can't get their act together :p

But I can't seem to get good session material together in a way that would deepen the story and give the players a good chance at finding out on themselves the true direness of the situation.

I added a little sketch of the lay of the lands

Good morning, conversationalists!

So... It is now Thursday, and I don't see a new release on the front page... I'm getting impatient :-p
If it is NOLF, I will probably pee my pants from excitement... If it is anything else, I'm going to burn something to the ground :-)
If nothing is released... I'll personally see that the world is destroyed by the end of the day.

*Moves to another seat further away from Agent in case the release is NOLF. And grabs a fire extinguisher just in case it's not NOLF* :-)

Some people think that something big is coming, due to the delayed release.

*big morning hug*

*hugs and waves*
Meh... a minute ago my chat got broken... I now only see the spinning circle.