C0stanza

Wow, legitimately good news! Did not expect them to back down, guess they underestimated the amount of backlash.

There's a lot to really like about cloud gaming services. I'm not familiar with GeForce Now specifically but I've heard good things. That being said, there are more than a few things about it that aren't ideal. Often you can't download your save data (not positive if this is the case with GeForce Now), which is especially annoying given the fact that these services can be discontinued at any time (see Luna and Stadia). I'd be pretty sad if I wanted to go back to an old game after a few years only to find my save file had died with the streaming service. You're also reliant on a constant internet connection to game which can be really annoying for some use cases (gaming away from home in particular). Another potential issue is latency which can be brutal in some genres (fighting games for sure) or something you barely notice after a minute or so in others. Now, even given all these issues I still think cloud gaming services can provide killer value for the right user. In a world where a 60 series graphics card alone is $400+ I can definitely see the value in just paying $10 a month and dealing with a gaming experience that isn't 100% perfect.

Alright everyone seems in agreement that an email client is more trouble than its worth. I'm still curious as to why Thunderbird is so slow while the default mail app for MacOS and Windows both seem to work way better but I won't stress too much about it. Thanks for the responses everyone

Hey everyone. For years I've been looking for a solid email client that isn't the default one and every time I ask around I always have plenty of people suggesting Thunderbird. Problem is, whenever I try and use it the program takes forever to do anything. This is a problem I've had for years on different machines running Windows 7, 8.1, and now 10. When I start up Thunderbird, after connecting it to my old Gmail account, the program will hang for minutes at a time and sometimes fail to show me any new mail I've received no matter how long I wait. Are there some common config settings I don't have set properly? Does anyone here use Thunderbird? Its gotten to the point where I've seen this issue for so long I'd really like to understand what's going wrong, even if there are other ways I've long since settled on to check my mail.

Man the more you read about this the worse it gets. It'll be interesting to see if the new license that Paizo and a number of other creators are getting behind ends up existing, being any good, or enjoying widespread adoption. Its gonna have to be something that gets put together pretty quick if this new OGL is released anytime soon. If nothing else, its good to see that there's been some actual backlash from the community on this. Now its a question of how much and how long its sustained for. This story has stayed in the news cycle for a week now which is longer than I thought it would.

I'm no lawyer but I have used Creative Commons 4 licensed material in games I've worked on and its very permissive. Generally it means you have to provide credit (I usually link the content and creator in a credits page) and indicate if changes were made. There's also some stuff in there about not making your attribution claim the creator endorses you. Here's a link to the CC4 license page of the creative commons site: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ I still generally don't like this. Having some pages of the SRD licensed separately than others is at best going to be confusing, plus I still don't like/trust the reasoning for any of the changes being made to the original OGL. Still, like @Drazil100 said, its good to get it in writing that they aren't going to send their lawyers after old OGL 1.0a content creators while they hopefully find a way to pivot to safer legal ground. Looks like we're in for a long saga here. We're probably gonna have weekly(ish) PR updates from Wizards while we simultaneously see how each business that relies on OGL reacts to all this.

Really terrible for everyone this is hitting. I hope it isn’t a precursor of tough times to come but its hard to tell with the way things are now.

This is true and is definitely the best case scenario. In this scenario the OGL is basically what it was originally meant to be regardless of what Wizards wants. In my opinion this still has the potential to be damaging to existing OGL products. Maybe the previously released content is alright, but do new expansions on that content need to use the new license? This could put a lot of games in a weird state where they might want to just release a new version that isn't based on d20 and work off that as a base.

I agree that this statement is way better but the cat is kinda out of the bag as to what they really want from changes to the OGL at this point. Its hard for me to imagine them doing anything other than slow boiling us with small crappy changes over a longer period of time to get what they want without backlash. Pretty clear to me, and more importantly anyone who’s based their business around the OGL, that relying on any legal document controlled by Wizards is a huge risk. To be honest, I really wouldn’t wanna have my creative content live and die by a license controlled by community polls either (even if they were legitimate).

I see the merit in complaining about top end products being such terrible value but, as others here have mentioned, its the inflated price of “entry level” cards that really stops people from going PC. If I’m a younger person and I have to choose between a 60 series card or an entire PS5/Xbox theres just no way to sell me on the GPU.

I’ll definitely give Heroes 4th edition a look. I guess I’m in the market for a new system so I’ll read up on it while I shop around. Gonna be interesting seeing how this develops. If/when the community moves off OGL where do we go? I know Paizo is trying to launch some new Open License but I haven’t played their games so I can’t vouch for quality and adoption is far from guaranteed. A bunch of unique systems would be cool but its hard to argue against the standardized d20 system’s effectiveness getting players into lots of games these past 23 years.

Regardless of what you think about OGL and d20, this is a real sad way for things to end up. Ever since 3rd Edition the OGL has helped foster this vibrant tabletop gaming ecosystem that everyone in my generation, including me, grew up with. Now its basically impossible to view it as anything other than a long con. Wizards let the entire community build products and expansions on what they tricked everyone into thinking was an open standard, only to turn around and try and use it as a trojan horse to get its competitors to pay royalties. Its such a terrible way to end a huge era in tabletop gaming. On top of that we get that hilarious defense of it. Wizards needs to take a huge cut of profits and complete intellectual ownership of everything developed in the space because its concerned about hate speech? Being spoken to like I'm as stupid as Wizards seems to think I am is actually kind of humbling. On an unrelated note, @Radium_Angel what are some of the better systems out there in your opinion. I've spent plenty of time playing ttrpgs but almost all of it was 3.5 (and some 5e). I'm curious as to what some of the good stuff out there is.

This whole thing is gonna be a mess. Even if Wizards’ argument falls through and old games don’t have to update their existing products to the new ogl we’ll still have to deal with how it impacts new content. Are these small game companies gonna have to update their current games to new versions if they don’t wanna get milked by Wizards?

As a few others have said, keeping the fan/heatsink clean has always been more important on my system. Unless theres something wrong with your computer’s thermals there isn’t really a need to reapply.

Really hoping by the time I need to replace my SE 2020 they have something reasonably priced. My car has Carplay but no Android Auto so if I don’t want my car’s entertainment system to suddenly stop working I’m stuck with Apple.