Meme Monday: Melty Summer Memes

It's Summer, and yes, it's hot. You know, "Welcome to Summer."

Both, Dude.
From Pinterest.

Very astute of you, madam.
From Imgflip.

The heat dome went that-a-way.
From Imgflip.

Or, as my oldest put it, you could put
"allergies" for all seasons and it'd be accurate.
from Facebook Memes.

I'm Not a Monk, You Know, But Come On...

I sometimes wonder about the YouTube algorithm and what shows up on my YouTube front page.

For every video that appears that's from a channel I subscribed to --or one in which I've watched videos of without subscribing-- I get some suggestions that came from out of nowhere. 

Like this:

I don't play Final Fantasy VII, never have, and probably
never will. But I ain't blind, you know.

Or this:

As if you didn't know, the picture --and likely
the rain sounds-- are AI generated.

Or even this:

What I did not know was that tents that use inflatable
"tubes" as supports are apparently a thing. Not exactly
sure how that'd work, but it is a thing.

And that's not even counting the YouTube videos of women "trying on" see through clothing, which suddenly blew through my feed and then vanished after a couple of weeks. To which I had to ask just how those videos got past the YouTube "adult" filters.

I mean, I get where all of the screencaps of the videos above are similar --I am a guy, after all-- but why these videos suddenly made their appearance is beyond my understanding. But there they were, intermixed with videos about D&D, sports, woodworking, MMOs,  and other forms of gaming.

Oh well. If I don't respond to their pretty obvious clickbait, they'll go away after a few weeks. But even my oldest has been getting these sorts of videos in her feed, and she's been annoyed by them as well.

Meme Monday: Questing Memes

Presented without comment, because I'm pretty sure we've all been there before.

Apparently boars don't have livers.
From Pinterest.

Judging from the background,
probably Shattrath City.
From Pinterest.

Remind me again how you're the Champion
of Azeroth. From quickmeme.

The bane of quests: the escort quest.
From @pepevaro3.

And, of course, there's the quest reward sent by mail:

Amazing what they can stuff into a fantasy
mailbox. From Pinterest. Again.

Meme Monday: Scheduling Memes

I thought about having this Meme Monday cover one of the things people love to do during Summer, which is go to the beach.

Well, I started collecting a few of my memes I'd left over that cover this, and realizing I needed some filler, I went in search of some more RPG or MMO beach memes.

Given what I found --sometimes I can be quite naïve, particularly where fandom is concerned--  I think it's safer going to Plan B: trying to schedule an RPG game!

This is highly topical, since my game group that plays 3-4 times a year is having some difficulty with that Summer scheduling slot. We were supposed to play this coming Saturday, but conflicts by several people kept this from working. So... we worked on our July schedules, and... No go there either.

Oof.

So, it's a work in progress.

Yeah, that's another way of putting it. From d20.pub.

In a post-pandemic world, this actually works.
From Pinterest.

Heh. From Facebook's DnD_Memes.

Hey, it's better than nothing!
From Pinterest.

Speaking of Pandora's Box

Long time blogger Kurn has tried out Follower Dungeons in Retail WoW recently, and wrote about her experience with it on her latest blog post. To say she was impressed with the NPC groups she had is an understatement.

My original comment on her post, that it was a technical solution to a people problem, is likely the most obvious take. After all, MMOs in general --and WoW in particular-- is infamous for toxic behavior toward tanks and healers in instance and raid groups. This solution, presented in Retail, is an obvious way toward allowing people to see group content without actually fixing the toxicity itself. 

The more I've thought about it, however, the more I wonder whether this will become the ultimate goal toward making an otherwise dead or empty location in an MMO feel alive. 

If you go to a place such as Silvermoon City or The Exodar --both out of the way cities that first saw light in WoW's Burning Crusade expansion-- other than a few bank alts and some new toons running here and there both cities are dead.

Blizzard tried to make them seem more alive by having a few groups of NPCs roam both cities, but the paths followed and statements made are pretty much on repeat. There are similar instances of in-game NPC interactions throughout Azeroth that are gradually more elaborate but still on rails throughout all of the expansions I've played. While I give Blizz credit for trying, it isn't even close to what it's like to having a real vibrant community.

If you hop over to Guild Wars 2 and Divinity's Reach, that's a bit more of what I believe Blizzard is attempting to do. By comparison, Divinity's Reach is a lot more "alive" with NPCs --namely that there are more of them around so that the place feels less empty-- although NPC interactions with the game world are still pretty limited. 

But what if you programmed NPCs to act more like what you find in Follower Dungeons, but interacting in the game world itself?

You know, a step or two away from Westworld...

It's from Pinterest, but it's a screencap
of HBO's Westworld.

Of course, Westworld is what you'd get if a Renaissance Faire were entirely composed of robots who never broke the fourth wall (or never were aware there was a fourth wall).

The bane of MMOs isn't toxicity, but apathy. If there's nobody to interact with, the main selling point of MMOs is dead. But if a game company can fill a game world with NPCs that interact with the game world as if they were real players (minus the toxicity) then you can negate the worst problem of the MMO genre.*

It's a tempting proposition, isn't it?

And holy crap, I just realized how this could be used in "adult" MMOs. (Again, just like Westworld.) 

Yikes.

Whether or not we like it, I think that there will be some game companies that will move video games toward truly immersive experiences, with NPCs that interact in a more lifelike fashion with each iteration of generative AI. 

And I'm not exactly sure what I think about that.

*I guess the bots would quickly follow suit and up their own game, wouldn't they?

EtA: Corrected a sentence from "to to" to "to do". Got all that?

Meme Monday: Age Disparity Memes

No, I'm not talking about what is colloquially known as "robbing the cradle", where one adult has a relationship with a much younger adult. It's more an issue with Fantasy as a genre in novels, movies, and video games. Inter-species romance aside --and I have issues with that as well-- there's the issue of age disparity in relationships. 

Hell, never mind relationships, there's the issue of skill level disparity:

From REIQ.

But yes, relationships.

The Doctor: You can spend the rest of your life with me. But I can't spend the rest of mine with you. I have to live on, alone. That's the curse of the Timelords.* 

 

 

That. Pretty much that. So... some of those memes.

From imgflip.

I wish I knew who did this meme; it's great.

Obviously this person never knew about
Beren and Luthien. From Owlturd.
(Really? Sheesh, what a name.)

And leave it to Spidey to have the
last word. From Reddit's r/dndmemes.

*From School ReunionSchool Reunion. the third episode of the revived Doctor Who's second season.

Me and My Big Mouth

After that post on my upcoming deck project, I've been reading up on the building code for said deck. 

And I've found a few problems.

You know how I mentioned that I had no idea how the deck passed inspection because of the slope of the stairs? Yeah, I found that if there's three or more steps in place then a rail has to be there. That 3 steps is kind of critical, because the north steps have only one step, and a very steep one at that, so I guessed right and that they avoided needing stair rails there because of the lack of steps and barely making the minimum slope for the steps. Still, it's not optimal.

However, I did find out that the gap in the balusters around the deck was required so that a 4 inch sphere could not pass through the gap. Not because they don't want a ball falling off of the deck, but a toddler being able to stick their head through the gap.

And the gap in our balusters is 5 inches. 

/sigh

While I was measuring, I also found out that our railings were 35 inches high, while the code minimum for the railings is... 36 inches. That may sound bad, but I can actually make 36 inches by changing a few things on the rails. I was going to rebuild them anyway, but it is annoying.

I mean, really? REALLY? How close
can you get and still mess this up?
But yeah, putting a 2x4 or 2x6 on top
will push me over 36 inches.

For a few anxious moments I thought the length of the deck railing wasn't up to code either, as the "how to" deck books I was reading mentioned a 6 foot maximum length between railing posts, and ours were a maximum of 6.5 feet. It turns out that the building code for the county states a maximum length of 8 feet, so I don't have to do major surgery on said deck. 

And at least the spacing on joists is 14 inches, not wider than the absolute minimum of 16 inches.

Rebuilding the rails isn't that big of a deal, and I'd been considering it anyway as the railings had been out there, exposed to the elements, for 35 years. However, if I'd have needed an extra 5 or so rail posts, that might have been enough to require a rebuild.

And a reinspection.

/ugh

What I've decided to do is do what I can right now that is most important, and that is to redo the deck boards themselves. After that, if I've the time and money, I'll fix the north steps, the skirting, and the west steps in that order. Last on the list will be the deck railing, because a) it's been like that for years so an extra year won't hurt, and b) I don't have little kids who could stick their head through the railing. (Any more, anyway.)