Post · Hiti

@evildrganymede@wargamers.social · 18 hours ago

I don't really post much to social media anymore, but I thought I would report that after 29 years I finally watched all of #Babylon5 - I gave up during the telepath arc in season 5 when it was first shown.

Turns out that was a mistake, because it got pretty darn good after that! The Centauri story was really well done (and tragic, even though we basically knew what was going to happen).

The LotR analogies I've heard about the show held true given they gave each of the major characters a sending off at the end too 😁 (also "going beyond the Rim" is really obviously "sailing to the West"). And the last episode "Sleeping in Light" was really nicely done and very sad.

Though they did leave a few threads dangling... (like what happened to Bester's girlfriend, and what happened with that urn at the end)

But overall, it's a fantastic show and was really fun to watch it all again :). I'm off on vacation for a few weeks but maybe afterwards we'll watch Call to Arms and Crusade. #scifi

Winchell Chung ⚛🚀

@nyrath@spacey.space replied · 17 hours ago

@evildrganymede

The parts about President Clark (who was vice president before the suspicious death of the former president), and the sinister NightWatch are quite relevant today

evildrganymede

@evildrganymede@wargamers.social replied · 16 hours ago

@nyrath oh yeah we thought that was insanely relevant when we were watching those parts!

Winchell Chung ⚛🚀

@nyrath@spacey.space replied · 4 hours ago

@evildrganymede

Especially since those episodes were written in the 1990s. Very prescient.
But I guess it was predictable: fascists are gonna fas.

Isaac Ji Kuo

@isaackuo@spacey.space replied · 2 hours ago

@nyrath @evildrganymede Yeah, predictable.

At the time, assassination conspiracy theories about JFK were super popular, and the whole Iran-Contra thing made it clear the entire Republican Party was obsessed with making Watergate not even illegal the next time.

And TEOTWAKI was super trendy at the time, because the conspiracy theory nuts were going crazy over Bush's "New World Order" stuff.

Winchell Chung ⚛🚀

@nyrath@spacey.space replied · 18 hours ago

@evildrganymede

There was a supplement to the Babylon Five table top role playing game called the "Earthforce Sourcebook". Like most source books it is tedious to read.

Except the last half has a vector movement based space combat table top game which is fun to play. Including a card stock sheet of ship counters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthforce_Sourcebook

Earthforce Sourcebook - Wikipedia

nikink

@nikink@aus.social replied · 16 hours ago

@nyrath @evildrganymede I played a B5 space combat game back inthe day. Just once or twice. It was very fun. I think based on the Full Thrust game? Memory is hazy on that.

My friend who owned the game and asked me to play it with him passed away a couple of years ago and when his widow asked if I'd like to have any of his books and games these B5 games were in the top five to save.

Winchell Chung ⚛🚀

@nyrath@spacey.space replied · 4 hours ago

@nikink @evildrganymede

Yes, the Babylon 5 tabletop space combat game featured in The Earthforce Sourcebook was written by Tuffy, and is based on his game Full Thrust.

Isaac Ji Kuo

@isaackuo@spacey.space replied · 2 hours ago

@nyrath @nikink @evildrganymede The other B5 game - the one with the hexes made of 7 sub-hexes - was weird in a wonderfully unique way.

The scale was just so bizarre, with firing arcs that mattered by it took forever to turn around ... you could more easily just keep on going across the galaxy than you could turn around to reinforce things back home a hex or so behind you.

It made you think about strategy in weird ways.

Roger BW 😷

@RogerBW@discordian.social replied · 4 hours ago

@nyrath @nikink @evildrganymede Jon Tuffley. It was one of the few games at the time that even attempted vector movement.

Winchell Chung ⚛🚀

@nyrath@spacey.space replied · 3 hours ago

@RogerBW @nikink @evildrganymede

It hit the sweet spot of right between the simplistic Triplanetary (drawing vectors on the map) and the hyper-accurate Attack Vector: Tactical (three dimensional vectors and firing arcs.

Tuffley's Full Thrust added vectors to Full Thrust with additional rules found in Fleet Book One.

Roger BW 😷

@RogerBW@discordian.social replied · 2 hours ago

@nyrath @nikink @evildrganymede Indeed. I don't think AV:T existed at the time (and IMO it's not really playable beyond small engagements, which makes it a bizarre choice for the Honor Harrington game) Of course both Triplanetary and Full Thrust make the error of assuming that the full impulse is applied instantly at the start of the movement rather than being spread over the duration of the movement; the quick fix for this is that your displacement from _this turn's acceleration_ should be half what the game says it is. (I don't know whether AV:T does this; I find its prose both obfuscatory and soporific.)

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Hiti

हिति , in Nepāl Bhāṣā, is the word for a shared community water tap. Even in modern Newar cities, these ancient structures still pour out fresh mountain water piped through ancient underground filters and conduits. They are a place to wash, to talk, to drink, to meet the locals: a nourishing, refreshing social-ecological place.

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