#I cut a huge chunk of that article it's very long and worth a read !

[thebusylilbee]

The Last of Us Part II focuses on what has been broadly defined by some of its creators as a "cycle of violence." [...] More specifically, the cycle of violence in The Last of Us Part II appears to be largely modeled after the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I suspect that some players, if they consciously clock the parallels at all, will think The Last of Us Part II is taking a balanced and fair perspective on that conflict, humanizing and exposing flaws in both sides of its in-game analogues. But as someone who grew up in Israel, I recognized a familiar, firmly Israeli way of seeing and explaining the conflict which tries to appear evenhanded and even enlightened, but in practice marginalizes Palestinian experience in a manner that perpetuates a horrific status quo.

The game's co-director and co-writer Neil Druckmann, an Israeli who was born and raised in the West Bank before his family moved to the U.S., told the Washington Post that the game's themes of revenge can be traced back to the 2000 killing of two Israeli soldiers by a mob in Ramallah. [...] “I landed on this emotional idea of, can we, over the course of the game, make you feel this intense hate that is universal in the same way that unconditional love is universal?” Druckmann told the Post. “This hate that people feel has the same kind of universality. You hate someone so much that you want them to suffer in the way they’ve made someone you love suffer.”

Druckmann drew parallels between The Last of Us and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict again on the official The Last of Us podcast. When discussing the first time Joel kills another man to protect his daughter and the extraordinary measures people will take to protect the ones they love, Druckmann said he follows "a lot of Israeli politics," and compared the incident to Israel's release of hundreds of Palestinians prisoners in exchange for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011. He said that his father thought that the exchange was overall bad for Israel, but that his father would release every prisoner in every prison to free his own son. [...]

But "cycles of violence" are a poor way to understand a conflict in a meaningful way, especially if one is interested in finding a solution. The United States, for example, hasn't been at war in Afghanistan for almost 20 years because it's trapped in a "cycle of violence" with the Taliban. It is deliberately choosing to engage with a problem in a way that perpetuates a conflict. Just as the fantasy of escaping violence by simply walking away from it is one that only those with the means to do so can entertain, the myth of the "cycle of violence" is one that benefits the side that can survive the status quo.

In The Last of Us Part II's Seattle, Scars and Wolves [two opposing factions] hurt each other terribly, and the same can be said about Israel and Palestine. The difference is that when flashes of violence abate and the smoke clears, one side continues to live freely and prosper, while the other goes back to a life of occupation and humiliation. One side continues to expand while the other continues to lose the land it needs to live. Imagining this process as some kind of symmetric cycle benefits one side more than the other, and allows it to continue.

As a result, The Last of Us Part II never quite justifies its fatalism. As Rob Zacny wrote in his review and again in his closer examination of The Last of Us Part II's ending, at the end of the day Ellie's journey of revenge seems especially cruel, even idiotic, because we are never given a good reason for why she keeps recommitting to it. Acts of cruelty along the way, like Ellie's torturing another character to get information, are presented as inevitable.

This seems to be The Last of Us Part II's thesis: humans experience a kind of "intense hate that is universal," as Druckmann told The Post, which keep us trapped in these cycles. But is intense hate really a universal feeling? It's certainly not one that I share. I, too, have seen the video of the 2000 mob killing of the Israeli soldiers in Ramallah, and it's horrific. Yet, my immediate response wasn't "Oh, man, if I could just push a button and kill all these people that committed this horrible act, I would make them feel the same pain that they inflicted on these people," as Druckmann said.

This is not a universal feeling as much as it's a learned way of seeing the world. There are many other ways to react to that video: compassion for the victims, compassion for the killers, questioning why these soldiers had to drive into the West Bank in the first place, questioning what would drive a mob to this kind of violence. Revenge and hate is just one option.

The Last of Us Part II is an incredible journey that provides not only one of the most mesmerizing spectacles that we've seen from big budget video games, but one that manages to ask difficult questions along the way. It's clearly coming from an emotionally authentic and self-examining place. The trouble with it, and the reason that Ellie's journey ultimately feels nonsensical, is that it begins from a place that accepts "intense hate that is universal" as a fact of life, rather than examining where and why this behavior is learned.

Critically, by not asking these questions, and by masking its point of view as being evenhanded, it perpetuates the very cycles of violence it's supposedly so troubled by.

[heatherc1212]

Story Links and Deep Thoughts

So just in case you haven’t seen it this summer, I started a new Dawsey fanfic and it’s actually going really well (UPDATE: Story is now complete!). I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback which has been so encouraging for me. That story is now completely done but I all ready have plans for another one to write in conjunction with the new CF season (if I’m not gonna get any good Dawsey on the show, then I sure as heck am gonna write some, both for myself and for the other fans) and I’m super excited about tackling that story. I’m going to post the links to both stories here and this Tumblr post will be pinned on my Twitter profile page.

You are the Reason: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12944940/1/You-Are-the-Reason-A-Dawsey-Fanfic

Luckiest Souls: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13065660/1/Luckiest-Souls

Hopefully you guys are interested in reading that second story because I cannot wait to start putting that one together! The outline for it is all ready over 3 pages long if that tells you how much thought and love is going into it, LOL ;)

I also need to post a rant about some things that have been bothering me this summer. This is gonna be long so bear with me while I try to put all my thoughts together. There are two parts to this rant and I apologize now if none of this makes any sense. I think I just need to get it all out of my system.

A.  Since when does everything happen in absolutes? This has been on my mind a lot lately as I continue to process the thought of watching CF without Gabby Dawson. There are so many people that seem to think she’s never coming back and I can’t quite figure out how they got there. I don’t live in that sort of absolute world and I know from being a fan of TV for a very long time that the TV world can be fluid and also very uncertain. This could turn out to be a rambling rant of unreadable garbage regarding CF but I need to get it all out (this is rant number one).

First off, here are just a few reasons that I came up with to completely dispute the theory that Monica is never coming back to CF (I seriously cannot figure out how people got there…)

1.    Monica didn’t leave on bad terms: We have absolutely no reason to believe that she hates the show, hates the network (heck, she’s on this big directing initiative thing with the SAME network so clearly she has no issues with them), or hates her coworkers. She’s been in touch with Derek off and on since she left and we saw her recently return to Chicago and attend a concert with some of the other One Chicago ladies. Why on earth would she not be receptive to coming back? That makes no sense to me. If she had cut everyone out of her life or something then I might believe it but she didn’t so that makes no sense.

2.    This Director’s Initiative is only for one year:  This director’s program is only for one TV season so it won’t keep her busy for longer than that and quite frankly, I feel like it could open the door more for her to come back in S8. She’s mentioned in the past how much she would love to direct an episode of CF and learning and working with another director for a solid year could give her a leg up on getting that opportunity with her old show. I’ve checked around and she doesn’t seem to have any other projects lined up during this gig either and usually when a person leaves a show for good, their project list starts filling up on IMDB and hers hasn’t done that. That’s public information that goes into that database so why wouldn’t she be lining up other things if she’s gone for good?

3.    The Storyline: Gabby and Matt are definitely in a rough place right now but I don’t see it as the final ending that other people seem to see (and honestly, I think the only people who see this as a final ending are the asshats who hate Gabby and just want her gone…they’re seeing what they want to see and not what’s actually happened). I can easily see Gabby needing time to process the news that she shouldn’t get pregnant because of the risk to her own life because that is a HUGE deal to women. She’s been yearning for a family with Matt since they lost their baby in S4 and now someone is basically taking that away from them. That is a freaking GIGANTIC blow to this little family. Heck, I’m in my early 40s right now and I’m constantly wondering if being a mom will ever be in my future (i.e. my age now makes it riskier to get pregnant, plus I’m not even dating anyone right now and I won’t have a baby without a husband). That isn’t something that’s easy for women to process and Gabby is such a strong willed and passionate person that being told she can’t or shouldn’t get pregnant is a hard pill to swallow. We saw how much she wanted to give Matt a baby, it’s the one thing he’s wanted his whole life, and how she didn’t care how risky it was….she was going to give that to him no matter what. She’s not seeing things beyond that and Matt isn’t seeing things beyond the possibility of losing her which IMO, has caused them to talk AT each other more than talk TO each other. Time apart is not a bad thing for these two to process the shock and sadness of that baby news and I would understand completely if it takes Gabby a while to come to grips with it because I haven’t come to grips with my own issues yet (and I don’t even have any female problems). If the writers thought that Monica was never going to come back, they would have killed Gabby off IMO because it would be the only way to get Matt to move on at some point. Keeping her alive, the fact that they’ve done research about long distance relationships, and having Matt still processing everything himself screams to me that they have a long term story that they still want to tell and are putting things on hold with the hope of getting her back someday to finish it right. Derek admitted recently that he knows he messed up her exit back in the spring….I can see him not wanting to give up on their story so easily and again, the fact that he’s spoken to her a few times since she left the show should give us hope that she wouldn’t be opposed to coming back to complete Dawsey’s story. And seriously, Monica is such a passionate, intelligent, and creative person herself…do you honestly think she would be okay with her character being left in such a bad place? This season will tell us more as it goes on because if they keep her and Matt together long distance for S7, then I will absolutely believe that she’s coming back sooner rather than later. We will have to wait and see on that one but she’s not dead guys…she’s just in PR. (I’ll refrain from going on my rant about how military families have to deal with long distance stuff all the time and how those couples don’t just give up on their marriages when they go through hard stuff or are apart for a while. There’s definitely a way they could tell a Dawsey story without having Monica around and I will be watching intently to see if they actually do this or not. The lazy story is to just end them and throw Matt into something else at some point but the challenging and more interesting story is to figure out this long distance thing and get Monica back at some point so my preference is for them to go that way. Again, we’ll have to wait and see though.)

4.    The fanbase is a little fragile right now: This might seem like a weird reason but bear with me for a moment. Dawsey fans are on edge because we don’t know the details of how they’re going to handle this whole story. Dawsey haters are all dancing because their most hated character isn’t there and they seem to think that Matt will just jump into another relationship like two weeks into the season. General CF fans are on edge because the writing was lazy at times in S6 and storylines are getting repetitive. The show’s ratings have been way down from what they were on Tuesday nights and now they’re the show that got sandwiched right between the other two Chicago shows for this upcoming season. I firmly believe that NBC did this on purpose because the fanbase is so fragile right now and they’re worried about ratings. You piss off the Dawsey fans and you’re gonna lose a giant chunk of your audience. You piss off the non Dawsey fans and you’re gonna lose a different chunk of your audience. If you keep telling the SAME stories in different ways over and over again, your audience is still going to shrink because the general fans that don’t really ship anyone will jump off the bandwagon and move on as well. This show cannot afford to lose more fans and I’ve seen a lot of posts on social media or online articles from both Dawsey fans and general show fans who all ready won’t be watching S7 for the two reasons I shared earlier in this paragraph. CF has to be really careful with how they tell their stories in S7 because from what all I can see, if they don’t pay attention to this sort of thing, then they’re gonna be in genuine danger of not getting a S8. BTW-The other thing I’m seeing from the fanbase is apathy which is the WORST thing that can happen to a show. When fans stop caring, they stop watching and CF is in danger of that too as people lose trust in the writers to create something worth watching. This will definitely be an interesting year for the show and as annoyed as I still am with that S6 finale, I don’t want the show to fail (I still genuinely like all the actors and people there) but I also won’t watch a show that doesn’t entertain me anymore. I’ve quit shows that were on my all-time favorites list before and I won’t hesitate to drop CF like a rock if they stop entertaining me this season.

5.    Monica’s note: “See you on the ice.” When I read the message she posted on Twitter earlier this summer, that phrase stuck out to me like a sore thumb because I had no clue what it meant. Well, it turns out it means something very interesting. From Urban Dictionary:

“Something you say when you know there is going to be a long period of time before seeing someone again however the intention is that day will come.”

Monica doesn’t just write or share things for no reason. She’s not stupid and maybe this is just my opinion, but I think that was her way of telling her fans that she doesn’t plan to be gone forever and that we will see her on the show again someday. I have no idea when that someday will come (I’m gonna be bold and predict that she comes back at the end of S7 so that Casey can actually have a good cliffhanger for once) but the proof of a possible return is right there on her note IMO and I choose to believe that she does have every intention of returning someday.

DISCLAIMER: I totally understand if there are people out there who don’t agree with all my thoughts here and that’s fine. This is all my opinion and the the last time I checked, I was allowed to have one without being ridiculed or being treated badly. This fanbase has had some bad apples out there treating people horribly simply because they don’t share the same opinion and boy does that need to stop. No one deserves to be treated badly simply because they have a different point of view than someone else. “Do undo others as you would have them do unto you.”

B. The other thing that’s been bothering me this summer is harder for me to talk about but I’m going to try to put my thoughts into words now. This will be rant number two but this is more of a confession than an actual rant.

I have been struggling hard to process this whole CF thing with Monica leaving and what that’s going to do with my OTP but that struggle has been more of a personal nature than anything else. That Dawsey fight and finding out about Monica leaving hit me deep in a place that I hadn’t felt since OUAT killed off Neal years ago. Normally I can deal with changes to my TV shows or when people come and go pretty well but this was literally my only OTP left and watching it fall apart in the finale was beyond difficult. I’m still struggling with it all these months later to be honest and that’s become a big concern for me.

Why does this affect me so much? Its a fictional TV show, with fictional people, and it just isn’t that important in the grand scheme of life. Yet I find myself thinking about it often and the emotional reaction I had to it actually woke up my creative side and now has me writing fanfic just so I can fix the mess that CF left behind (I do love writing but I hadn’t felt compelled to do it in nearly a decade so that caught me off guard even though I find myself enjoying it). It bothers me that I’m so affected by a stupid TV show and I have found myself wishing that I could turn my heart off so I can just forget about it and move on. That would make life so much easier (and I’m truly envious of people who are able to watch TV and just not care that much about anything that happens there). Unfortunately I can’t do that though and now, all these months later, I’m not sure I want to do that anymore.

Perspective is a funny thing and I’ve been getting a lot of lessons in that this summer from things that are happening to the lives in people I consider some of my best friends. One of my closest friends has basically been watching her mother die of pancreatic cancer for over five years (mom has been going through chemo and other sorts of treatments and this year has been particularly hard). Earlier this year they thought they were going to lose her and it was a scary and emotional time for all of us wondering about mom’s condition. They went on a family vacation in July and things seemed to be improving but about two weeks ago, mom ended up back in the hospital to get fluid taken off her heart again and she made the decision to stop all of her treatments. The doctors told them that she might have about two months left, if even that, so now the family has to deal with all these emotional choices and my friend is struggling because of all those decisions that they have to make now. I’m doing my best to support her but its hard because I’m such a passionate and emotional person so while trying to be strong, I’m also hurting for her and her family (I’ve known her mom for a while and she’s one of the sweetest and kindest people out there). In addition to that news, I also found out this week that another of my best friends is about to lose an uncle to cancer and not only is that hard because it’s her dad’s brother and it’s all happened so suddenly, it’s also rough on the rest of her family because of a bunch of drama going on with some other family members. Its really quite a mess and I just saw her tonight so I could see how much it’s taking out of her to be there for her dad while worrying about her uncle’s health. I also have a sister in my Christian women’s sorority who is dying of cancer (she’s in hospice right now) and that’s been emotionally breaking me since I’ve known that sweet lady since I was in college years ago. She is by far one of the most precious ladies I’ve ever known and seeing her struggle just hurts my heart along with all my other sisters hearts too. I don’t know how much longer she has but it’s very likely that we won’t see her at our national council next summer and that thought is hard for me to process since she’s been there ever since I joined the group. Real life has definitely been tough this summer and I’ve been stuck in this emotionally draining place going back and forth between processing things in my real life and in my TV fandom.

This brings me back to the CF mess and two questions that I’ve been asking myself all summer: 1. Why am I letting this fictional show mess me up so much when there are SOOOO many other more important things I should be concerned about, and 2. How do I get past this so I can truly be there for my friends and family that need me. I wish I had some answers but I don’t have any right now. I don’t think this is something I can get past in the blink of an eye. I can’t just turn off my heart because that wouldn’t allow me to be there for those who need me and I still haven’t come to grips with how the show is going to change so the struggle continues for me. As a person of faith, I know I should be lifting these things up in prayer but I find myself unable to put things into words. I know I’m not the only one trying to figure out how to move forward after getting so invested in a fictional story and that actually helps because I know it’s not just me. This probably sounds silly to those of you who are able to turn your hearts off and move forward (and I have no problem with that...more power to you) but it’s something I’ve been working through this summer and all I can hope now is that I find some peace at some point before the TV season starts.

I’m not sure what all I wanted to accomplish by posting all of this stuff but I really felt compelled to share it just in case anyone else is feeling the same way that I do. Please know you’re not alone in feeling a bit lost, emotional, confused, frustrated, and wishing for some peace and a happy ending regarding the CF mess and I hope you all know that you can reach out to me if you want to talk about anything. I’m just a message or a tweet away. Thanks as always for reading one of my epicly long posts! =)

/end rant (and more power to you if you actually read this entire post)

[purple-spring]

How long did it take you to become this well of a writer? Do you have any tips or suggestions? I want to make my writing more exciting and vibrant like yours is. I feel like it's not as good as yours and I want it to be the best it can be.

Hey there, @fangirlthatreads​! I’ve been sitting on this ask for a while and I do apologise for that, but I was so incredibly touched that you came to me with this kind of question that I wanted to answer it as best as I could, and create a sort of masterpost for writing in the process. I’m devoting my whole day to answering this, so hopefully it’s worth the wait :)

So, to answer your first question, I guess I’ve always enjoyed and have been fairly competent in writing. I wrote all throughout school, but never really got the opportunity to continue that in college, so I got a bit rusty. I only really started again recently (Sprousehart and Bughead were too tempting to resist), which has just been the most joyful, creativity-unleashing thing. I started simply by writing the beginning for “Tomorrow” because I couldn’t get the idea out of my head, and I had a very vocal cheerleader (hi, @jandjsalmon​) encouraging me to write the whole thing. I haven’t looked back since then. 

As for tips and suggestions, I thought about this for a long time and came up with the following, which I’ve tried to divide into three sections after the cut - READ, LISTEN, WRITE. 

Anyway, without any further ado, I give you –

paperlesscrown’s personal guide to writing 

—-READ—-

I mean, your account name kind of gives it away, but I’m sure you read a lot! But my #1 tip for writers is to read voraciously. I often think of it as fuel for the tank: you can’t put out what you don’t put in. When I run into writers’ block, it’s the first thing I do - I purchase a book for my Kindle and bunker down and read.

Three kinds of reading that I do:

Fanfic - This is a no-brainer. It’s important to expose yourself to the different interpretations of the canon and the characters you are writing about. I must admit that I’m not always the most up-to-date fanfic reader, but I am always hitting up @blueandgoldoffice​ and my dear friend @theatreofexpression​ for suggestions and recommendations. 

Literature - This is important, too. As amazing as fanfic writers are, there is a whole other universe out there of incredibly written original fiction (and poetry!). Anything I can get my hands on, I get onto it. It’s why I bought myself a Kindle - I carry it around with me everywhere to make sure that I am constantly feeding my brain with exciting plots and engaging characters and beautifully turned phrases. 

I often try to read specifically, too. What do I mean by this? So, for example, when I was writing “Apparitions”, which included huge chunks of dialogue between Cole and Lili, I chose to read One Day by David Nicholls, which I knew had a lot of earthy, realistic dialogue between a couple in love. When I was writing my first smutty fic (“In here, too”), I made sure to read The Boss by Abigail Barnette, which is an INCREDIBLE Dom/Sub series (which honestly every Dom!Jug writer should read) with amazingly written sex scenes.

I also make sure I read different formats - not just chapter books, but also longform articles, poetry, etc. I read a lot of short stories because I write exclusively in one-shots, so reading them allows me to see how writers develop plot within a limited word count. 

Writers’ resources - This is something I’ve started doing recently, and it’s made such a huge difference. There is a whole world of writers’ resources out there. I recently bought the Emotion Thesaurus, which is described as “a writers’ guide to character expression.” It. Is. Amazing. It catalogues an emotion and the different ways a character could express them (that way I’m able to avoid cliches or vary the way that the emotion is expressed). It’s formatted like this:

It’s quite cheap on Amazon and such a worthwhile purchase. You should also check out websites such as Reference for Writers, which has SO MANY amazing resources for writers, plus links to similar websites. 

Meta - Read analysis on your characters, whether it’s a recap from website like Vulture and AV Club or (with Riverdale specifically) meta posts from places like @riverdalemeta, which compiles all the incredible theorising from around the fandom. It helps you think about your characters more clearly. A good story always comes from a good grasp of character, and sometimes meta posts make a world of difference in understanding a character. 

—-LISTEN—-

Listen to…

1. A beta. I cannot emphasise this enough. Betas make all the difference between a good piece of writing and a great one. My forever beta, @jandjsalmon, has saved from terrible writing decisions and has also steered me towards incredible ones. @theatreofexpression is a constant source of ideas, headcanons and discussions about the show. The thing about betas is that they are essentially your first audience and an important first filter for your work. They are able to pick up on inconsistencies, disruptions to flow, awkward phrasing, spelling and grammar errors, etc. I often think about them as the midwives for our stories. I may be the one giving birth to it, but it’s the beta who guides me with how to breathe, stand, position myself, etc. and essentially get the baby out into the world (sorry for the weird metaphor, lol). Always, always try and work with one.  

2. The characters you are writing about. A handy tip - whenever I am writing, I put the show on in the background (as long as it’s not distracting), or interviews with the actors (if I’m writing RPF). It helps me to get a good grasp on their voice. With Bughead, I’m not much of an AU author - I prefer writing and expanding on canon scenes, so it’s important for me to try and get the voice, tone and phrasing of each character right (as well as the overall tone and atmosphere of the scene).

3. Music. Music can activate some really strong emotions and neurological reactions in us that help us to write well. Some people like writing to playlists (I made one for “What she wanted”), while others like listening to instrumental music. Both are fine, although sometimes I can find lyrics quite distracting. In terms of instrumental music, I listen to a lot of Philip Glass (classical and heavy) and Explosions in the Sky (indie and atmospheric) when I write. 

—-WRITE—-

I guess there’s nothing left to do but to write! 

Start small. I write a lot of drabbles, as you may have noticed, and those are just small writing exercises for me to keep the words flowing. Not everything you write will contribute to an amazing story, but it’s important to keep putting ideas to paper. 

Engage in writing prompts. These don’t have to be Bughead-specific. There are plenty of writing prompts on the net - Pinterest is a great place to find some good ones!

Do writing sprints. I actually learned about this idea from the incredible @tory-b​, who does this with other writers on the wonderful Bughead Family Discord. It’s basically stretches of 30 minutes to an hour where you do nothing but write. It doesn’t have to be perfect - it just needs to be written down. It’s a way for you to knuckle down and focus and not have any sort of pressure in terms of getting everything perfect. While my job and life often prevent me from engaging in these, they’re an awesome idea for any budding writer.

Practical tip: Google Docs is your friend. This is a tip just for logistics, but I write on Google Docs rather than Microsoft Word because it’s a lot more portable and I work on multiple devices throughout the day. I have Google Docs installed on my phone and I access it via my web browser off my laptop. This just means I can work on a story when I’m travelling, when I’m at home, even when I’m standing in line at a grocery store. I’m often hit by inspiration quite randomly, so this works really well for me. It’s also the best tool for betas - they are able to edit and make comments in a way that’s easy for them and doesn’t involve multiple file-sending.

…

Anyway. I truly apologise for that insane essay, but I hope this can help you (and anyone else). If you have any other questions, please feel free to send them to me! I hope we can read more of your work soon! xx

[lichlairs]

Checkout our new post over at https://lichlair.com/daily-monster-27-tiamat

Daily Monster #27: Tiamat

Yeah. You read that right. Of all the 1561++ monsters currently available over at dndbeyond I somehow managed to roll the living avatar of an actual god. Now you get why I had to reroll yesterday’s monster, right? This is why. Luckily for us (mostly me, really) it so happens that I’ve felt Tiamat’s wrath first hand. Without any further ado, let us talk about one of Dungeons and Dragons most well known figures...

Tiamat

The numbers

Oh boy, where to start with this one. There’s a reason Dungeons and Dragons has mostly stayed away from giving Gods and deity like monsters their own statblocks. Even this statted version of an avatar of Tiamat has some truly game breaking stats. We’re talking about a +8 in WIS and INT, +9 in CHA, and +10 STR and CON. Even their lowest stat, DEX, is an average +0.

Tiamat’s saving throws are very much as godly as she is with a +9 to DEX, +17 to WIS, and ridiculous +19 to her STR. She could literally roll a Nat 2 and still succeed most saves without even needing to burn a legendary resistance.

Speaking of which, “resistance” is definitely a word that pops up a few times in this creature’s block. Like any boss monster worth his or her salt, Tiamat has not one, not three, but FIVE Legendary Resistances. Sorry, did I say resistances? I meant to say immunities. We’re talking about immunity to Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, Poison, a bunch of conditions, and the typical non-magical weapon attack resi– immunity. Oh yeah, also? Anything below a 6th level spell immediately fails since Tiamat has Limited Magic Immunity. If you’re wondering how your players are supposed to stop her, well, the simple answer is they can’t but do keep reading for the longer version.

If you thought we were done with the crazy numbers, you’re in for a treat. This gargantuan fiend (yeah, not a dragon or celestial for some reason) has an AC of 25, a hit point pool of 30d20+300, a flying speed of 120ft, and a passive perception of 36.

Yeah, that’s a +26 to any perception checks. Say goodbye to your Sneak Attacks, my fellow rogues. Oh, Invisibility? Enjoy Tiamat’s 120ft Truesight, as well as her 240ft Darkvision.

As if we didn’t have enough resistances and hit points to blow through, Tiamat also has a pretty neat Regeneration feature that just, tops her off for 30hp at the start of each of her turns.

But let’s talk about some of the damage that she can dish out instead. Of course the main “feature” if we want to call it that for this creature is that fact that, like a Hydra, there are multiple heads to deal with. Each of which has their own possible Legendary action for a Breath Weapon, at a cost of 2 of her 5 available at each round. I’ll spare you the details but just know that the averages for damages are between high 60s and low 90s. If you’re wondering what exactly you’re supposed to do with that last Legendary Action, well, you can just take a big chunk out of the Paladin with a Bite attack. Or you know, just take 5 bite attacks per round on top of your Claw-Claw-Tail Multiattack for a total of 8 attack rolls per round.

As if this monster didn’t already have enough things at its disposal, Tiamat also gets a 3/day access to the 7th level spell Divine Word, which can just instantly kill player depending on their current number of hit points.

I know I was trash talking the huge numbers this creature gets earlier in the article but, if anything I think the 240ft area to her Frightful presence should be increased. Just make it like two miles or something because holy sh–.

Oh, and just in case you somehow manage to “kill” her, she can’t actually die. She’ll just reform back at her place and plot revenge on whoever did the do.

The lore

Drawn from Babylonian and Sumerian mythology, Tiamat was known as the Goddess of the Sea. Although there are slightly different versions of the stories, basics are that she get betrayed by other gods and eventually births dragons as part of her revenge.

In terms of Dungeons and Dragons, she has been part of the world ever since 1975 when she was introduced as The Dragon Queen and although she has accumulated many other titles throughout the years, she continues to be an iconic figure in 5th edition.

She is known are one of the two primary Draconic Gods. Together with her brother Bahamut, she was once part of a single dragon deity named Io, who represented creation and was thought to have created the multiverse. Flash forward an unknown number of millennia and Io was defeated and cut through cleanly into two parts from which spawned Bahamut and Tiamat.

Chances are that if you’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons for a bit, you will have heard of Tiamat’s and Bahamut’s rocky relationship. While their rivalry and hatred for each other is well known, this wasn’t always the case. Nowadays though, it is most certain that if Tiamat were to escape her imprisonment she would focus on bringing about the destruction of all Metallic Dragons as one of her very first acts.

Although no longer included in her statblock for 5th edition (thank god), some of the lore for older editions described Tiamat as being able to watch and listen up to a 10mile radius around her, and being able to “poison” water or any substance containing water such as potions. She could also charm reptiles and teleport around planes and locations as wished. Just when you think she couldn’t get any more broken, am I right? Thankfully, as mentioned before, none of those seem to be current parts of her 5th edition skill set. What does remain as part of her stat block is the fact that she simply cannot be killed and will eventually reform and reappear to cause trouble.

Similar to most of her dragon children, Tiamat often presents herself a woman with dark hair, a sorceress sometimes known as the Dark Lady.

If you’ve ever fought an ancient chromatic dragon in your campaign, there’s a slight chance that they were in fact spawned directly from Tiamat and one of her multiple consorts.

As a Greater God, Tiamat doesn’t just represent all even dragons and reptiles, but also the ideals of conquest, greed, destruction, tyranny and a bunch of other nice stuff. Her hunger for power is such that she has in fact been killing and absorbing other Gods and their power for a very long time. Many believe this to be one of the reasons that prompted her getting banished.

If you’re wondering where exactly you can find this fiendish creature so that you may slay her once and for all, look no further than Avernus; first layer of the Nine Hells. Although trapped here, she is free to roam as wished. In the untold years since her imprisonment she has built a massive fortress from which she rules as she continues to seek for means to escape her imprisonment. Of course if you are thinking of approaching her there, you might have to deal with large numbers of other devils, as the Dragon Queen has a decent amount of support from Asmodeus himself.

Back on the Material Plane, the Cult of the Dragon, also known as Church of Tiamat, and the Keepers of the Secret Hoard are always hard at work attempting to free the Dragon Queen. The cult is explored in great detail in the 5th edition modules Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat, but for now, just know that Tiamat’s followers tend to be just a greedy and power hungry as she is. Those who achieve a certain amount of power and notoriety within the ranks become known as Wyrmspeakers. In terms of her dragon followers, chromatic dragons often commit atrocities and mass destruction in her name.

The execution

Look man, I get it. Dragons are cool and in a game half named after them, we definitely want to fight them, but Tiamat? Seriously? It’s your fiery funeral, but okay, let’s see…

Actually, let us start by discussing how we’re meant to fight her in one of WoC’s own modules. I suppose the whole article is a giant spoiler for the Rise of Tiamat Module as it is but just in case: Spoilers ahead!

At the end of the Rise of Tiamat module (second part of the Tyranny of Dragons adventure set) the party of heroes is meant to race against the Cult of the Dragon as the rush to complete a ritual that will free Tiamat from her imprisonment in the Nine Hells. It is stated several times throughout the book that the chances for the players to defeat Tiamat, if she is successfully summoned, are extremely slim. So slim in fact, that the adventure places several ‘clauses’ for the ritual that allow the players multiple ways to either stop the ritual completely or greatly weaken Tiamat’s avatar once she comes through into the Material Plane. From reducing her hit points and number of Legendary actions and resistances to lowering her AC, all so that the players might have a chance, just a chance, of sending her back to Avernus.

I bring this up because, unless you’re planning on this encounter to TPK your players and wipe out the board, you will definitely need to come up with some ways to give your players and edge and weaken Tiamat.

And this is just Tiamat (ha!) that we’re talking about here. If we’re going by lore alone she will definitely not be by herself when the time comes to rise. She will have a massive array of allies from cultists, to chromatic dragons and devils. What I’m saying here is that this is definitely not an encounter to through at your players lightly. It will require extreme balancing and preparation on your part as the Dungeon Master.

If your Rise of Tiamat players are unfortunate enough to not stop the ritual in time, or if you’re still set on subjecting your group to Tiamat’s wrath, do try your best to make the encounter memorable! Go all out and don’t be afraid to get creative with combat. This should be the kind of be all or end all final battle where all the player’s effort finally pays out as their allies assemble and prepare for a final assault against Tiamat’s forces.

Oh boy, that was a long one but I definitely enjoyed doing all the research needed for this piece. Even learned a few things I didn’t know despite having played through the Tyranny of Dragons module.

As always, thank you for reading and, if you enjoyed this article, consider following us on our social media to never miss out on our new content. We post new articles every day.

[jasper-rolls]

i talked about this a bit on twitter but i wanna elucidate on it here so here’s another fucking post about the fucking dream daddy shit because i cant stop myself from being annoyed by the back and forth and misrepresentation and vague posts trying to act like they’re just talking in general when its very obviously about this

strap in cause this is gonna be a long one

there are three points i want to make

1) criticism of media is important and needed, particularly in the realm of discussing representation and creator intent, since its overall purpose is to further discussion and foster overall improvement in future. criticism of a work isn’t always an attack on the people who like it

i mean, we’ve all been there. it sucks to read when someone’s talking down something you like a lot, especially if its something that’s very meaningful to you. it happens to me too - i can’t count the number of times i’ve read an article or essay ripping apart something i love and found it very difficult to disengage my personal feelings from it.

but unless the person making the criticism is specifically going out of their way to say “and all the people who LIKE this thing are fucking gibbering idiots who wouldn’t know good quality if it punched them in the face”, then the criticism isn’t an attack on you personally, and you have to find the place to disengage that emotional attachment and at least tolerate the criticism of the work. you may accept and agree with it or not, but understand that the critic is (probably) not directly attacking you

and raising potential problems on the representation side of the work is important, because it highlights potential problems for people interested in it that they might not have been aware of before, like creator’s personal views influencing development of the work, or unfortunate implications of plot beats within the work

there’s definitely legitimate cause for concern in game grumps involvement with dream daddy. in my personal experience, the grumps aren’t particularly forward thinking in a lot of respects - arin and danny are quick to lapse into bottom of the barrel racist accent humor (particularly with asian characters), or “hey, isn’t being gay kind of weird” straight guy nonsense. the understanding they’ve showcased of lgbt concepts and issues leaves a lot to be desired (last i remember, arin still considered “cisgender” to be a slur despite being told what it actually means)

and every time this is brought up, i see fans saying “oh but they’re better now, they’ve learned!” and i have to say, i still watch them fairly regularly and...they really haven’t! the “progress” is minimal at best, its like watching someone push a boulder up a hill. they haven’t really changed all that much in the last few years to be frank. so the concern with them being involved with, and putting their name on, a game where the focus is on mlm (and has transgender characters) has definite grounding, given how they’ve acted before.

and the cult ending naturally has unfortunate implications - the idea that every character in the game is being tricked into being forever single, their misery being used to fuel some sort of demon...i mean, given how gay people have been treated throughout history and in media, at the very least it’s pretty regressive. you can’t fault someone for reading the transcript and feeling a little sick

the raising and highlighting of these things isn’t a personal attack. it’s overall, to help people make an informed decision, and be aware of the things that aren’t so great - that might be a dealbreaker, on a personal level. criticism is valuable, and useful, and we should recognize it as such

-----------------------------

2) on the opposite hand, EVERYTHING we read, watch, or play is guaranteed to have a problematic element of some sort, and nothing you ever enjoy is perfect. expecting something to conform to a 100% ideologically pure standard is unreasonable and ultimately a fool’s game

my personal favourite game of all time, ever, is killer7. it’s the game that bought suda51 to prominence in the west. it’s a weird blend of first-person shooter, rail shooter, and rpg. the story is outright bizarre, with disorienting visuals and surreal events like a lucha wrestler headbutting a bullet out of midair, a ghostly man wrapped in bdsm gear popping up to give you advice, and giggling zombies that explode on contact

its also got quite a share of shitty moments - a rape scene, the female characters leave a lot to be desired, its got a frankly weird interpretation of a lot of psychological disorders, and a good chunk of the game is dedicated to character development of a pedophile

suffice to say it probably wouldn’t be a big hit with a lot of people here. but does this stuff mean its completely reprehensible, and not worth spending any time with? i did just tell you it’s my favourite game so you can probably guess how i’m going to respond to that rhetorical question. this post is long enough without me spending several more paragraphs explaining to you why i think killer7 is worth giving a shot, so i’m going to skip to the point that this example is illustrating - the things we love, our favourite things, are probably just as, or maybe even more problematic than the things we don’t.

i’m not going to cite any further examples since i don’t know what you, the reader, personally enjoys or loves, but like...i guarantee you, its probably done something pretty shitty with its running time. i’m fairly confident i’ve never read or enjoyed something that didn’t at some point play into some shitty trope about lgbt people, or people of colour, or women - and if didn’t somehow, chances are it’s because it never showed them in the first place, because its focus is on straight, white, cis men, which is, naturally a problem of its own

if you’re willing to shrug off shitty opinions of creators of things you love, or bad tropes and plot elements in things you love, then why is it so different for the things you dislike? to write off dream daddy entirely, because of the involvement of game grumps, and the existence of one bad ending with shitty implications, and ignoring its more positive elements while praising the things you love that have more than likely done shitty stuff too is...frankly ridiculous

it perhaps may not seem like much to you, but dream daddy getting the kind of coverage and attention it has is...kind of a big deal as far as i’m concerned! games with narrative tend to be pretty hostile towards gay men*, so for a game that presents an overall sincere and positive representation of gay men to see this much attention and get to no. 1 seller on steam a significant step forward, i think. it’s not revolutionary, but personally, as a gay man, it means a lot to me, and i know a few other gay men who would feel the same, and that surely counts for something

and as far as killer7 goes, well...waypoint explains it better than i could, but i would just like to say: that pedophile character i mentioned? that part of the game ends with you beating him in a duel so hard, he falls over and gets eviscerated by a machine designed to cut out organs. so it’s not all bad.

-----------------------------

3) (this is the big one) this site has a big fucking problem with virtue signalling 

perhaps its bad of me to assume something of people, but i’m going to go out on a limb and say at least one person immediately closed the tab the moment they read that line, and i wouldn’t blame them, because the problem with saying something like “virtue signalling” is that the alt-right and gamergaters have tried their absolute hardest to make that phrase essentially mean nothing by throwing it at anyone who shares a dissenting opinion of any kind. but despite their efforts, virtue signalling is a phrase that does actually have a meaning, and its the meaning i’m using here

i’m going to take a quick excerpt from hbomberguy’s video on the subject (it’s worth watching, it’s only 10 minutes long and pretty funny)  - “The term was originally coined[...]to decry people who say, ‘I don’t like this thing very much’, in order to feel good about themselves, and then just, vote Labour every few years or whatever and take no stake in actually making things better.”

tumblr (or at least, the part of tumblr i engage with) does this, a LOT. it’s in the smug, one line “uhhhh, yikes, lmao 💅” rebuttals to arguments against the thesis of a given post. it’s in the strawman cartoons and chat posts that cast opponents of the OP as self-contradicting fools. it’s in the “so jot that down” responses, the “i’m side-eyeing everyone who isn’t reblogging this”, etc. etc. everyone has done this. you have probably engaged with this. i definitely have - at least one of my popular posts, if not more is, basically me, doing this thing! to be fair i had no intention those posts being popular, but then one never does, do they?

in the case of dream daddy, it’s “me: y’all:” image edits snarkily demonstrating how they’re SWERVING “that dad dating shit”, chat posts casting defenders points as “WHY CAN’T YOU JUST NEVER CRITICIZE ANYTHING EVER”, posts smugly announcing they’re going to pirate the game just to take money from arin hanson, as if that’s how game development works, and i think it’s what’s led to a huge amount of misrepresentation about this game in particular

i’ve seen people acting like the game grumps are like, directing and writing the game, when, as far as i’m aware, all they did was provide funding and voice acting. and the big thing that really got my goat, was someone describing the cult ending, and listing the implications i’ve already gone over myself, and then saying that this was the game’s true ending

this...literally could not be further from the truth. for starters, no-one has actually gotten this ending from playing through the game naturally. the reason? because you CAN’T. it was found through data-mining - it isn’t accessible through regular play. it’s either content that was cut from the game late in development, or, as the theory goes, intended to be a non-canonical or fake ending added in as halloween DLC come october (given the tone of the whole thing it sounds reasonable to me) which has, unfortunately, now been ruined due to this whole debacle

to do this kind of thing, to describe this as “the true ending” borders on being an out and out lie for the purpose of making dream daddy look way, way worse than it actually is. there’s no justice here, there’s no attempt to inform accurately. it’s “hey, check out how shitty this thing is! i’m good for disliking it, aren’t i? ignore the context, or the fact that i’m literally lying about what this is”

look, okay, i’m getting a little vitriolic - people can make mistakes, misunderstand things, it happens. everyone does it. me too. but this posing, this “look how good and cool i am, for not liking this thing”, it helps nothing at best and actively harms at worse. misrepresenting positions, context, and events for the purpose of satisfying the ego of whoever is making the statement - it helps no-one, except that person, in the most minor and meaningless of ways

i want to be clear - this final bit is just as much a memo for myself as it is for everyone reading this

be critical. don’t take things at face value. read into issues, understand context. get as close to the source of the issue at hand as you can, and determine the truth from there. resist the urge to be smug, detached, and dismiss those who disagree with your position - resist the urge to laugh at them, they may just not know. try and engage them in honest debate. if they resist that, if they don’t want to meet you on an equal footing you are within your rights to disengage.

be strong. support the things you love, and remember where the line is

we can all be better

*i’m not saying that other groups aren’t treated with hostility in games and gaming - trans women certainly get it really, really bad. just personally saying, in my experience as a gay man, the gaming community, and subsequently games with a focus on narrative themselves, have a sort of...special hatred of mlm. not necessarily worse, just...uniquely hostile

[sunshineweb]

The Risks of Speculating During Rising Markets

It was sometime during late 1999 through early 2000, near the peak of the dot-com bubble, the legendary George Soros and his hedge-fund team were working on how to prepare for the inevitable sell-off in technology stocks.

The man in charge of Soros’ high profile technology funds was Stanley Druckenmiller – one of the best-performing hedge fund managers of all time, till date – and he was busy warning his team that the sell-off could be near and could be brutal.

As the markets soared further in March 2000, Druckenmiller was quoted as saying, “I don’t like this market. I think we should probably lighten up.” Soros himself would regularly warn his team that tech stocks were a bubble set to burst.

Despite this, when the sell-off finally did begin in mid-March 2000, Soros Fund Management wasn’t ready for it. His funds were still loaded with high-tech and biotech stocks. Just in five days, starting 15th March, Soros’s flagship Quantum Fund saw what had been a 2% year-to-date gain turn into an 11% loss. By the end of April, the Quantum Fund was down 22% since the start of the year, and the smaller Quota Fund was down 32%.

Post that, in April 2000, Soros said at a conference, “Maybe I don’t understand the market. Maybe the music has stopped, but people are still dancing.”

Same month, at another conference, Druckenmiller confessed, “It would have been nice to go out on top, like Michael Jordan. But I overplayed my hand.”

Here is how Druckenmiller summarized his experience of 2000 in an interview late last year (Nov. 2013) –

I bought the top of the tech market in March of 2000 [after quickly making money in the same space in mid-late 1999] in an emotional fit I had because I couldn’t stand the fact that it was going up so much and it violated every rule I learned in 25 years.

I bought the tech market very well in mid-1999 and sold everything out in January and was sitting pretty; and I had two internal managers who were making about 5% a day and I just couldn’t stand it. And I put billions of dollars in within hours of the top. And, boy, did I get killed the next couple months.

How to Get Killed at the Top, the Newton Way Let’s cut across to the middle of 1720 in Great Britain. Sir Isaac Newton – the inventor of calculus (the branch of mathematics that describes change over time), and the man who framed the laws of motion and set physics on its modern trajectory, put a sizable chunk of his personal fortune into shares of the South Sea Company.

The company had then pursued a new and increasingly risky banking deal – and as insiders began to talk up the trading profits (that turned out fictitious) the company expected from another venture, the stock began to leap, starting January 1720.

The bubble burst that September. Newton lost 90% of his stake, which was a large portion of his total net worth.

Here is how MIT professor Thomas Levinson described Newton’s and South Sea’s antics in a 2009 article…

Newton…made his first investment in the South Sea issue early, in 1713, and held it for several years, marking a modest paper profit. He held on through early 1720…That got the desired result, a sudden leap in stock prices. Starting at £128 in January, the price for South Sea securities rose to £175 in February and then £330 in March.

…Newton sold in April, content with his (quite spectacular) gains to date. But then, between April and June, share prices tripled, reaching over £1,000…which is precisely when he could stand it no longer.

Having “lost” two-thirds of his potential gain, Newton bought again at the very top and bought more after a slight decline in July.

The South Sea stock price held up through August 1720, and then the bubble led by over-expectations of huge returns was pricked in September.

…South Sea share prices collapsed to roughly their pre-bubble level. Newton’s losses totalled as much as £20,000, between $4 million and $5 million in 21st century terms…It was a terrific blow for Newton.

What Brought Druckenmiller and Newton Down? You know the answer, I believe.

Most people get in during rising markets, or when bubbles are building up because they desire to earn money fast because they are envious of seeing others doing so.

“If he could make money fast in stocks,” one would normally ask during such times, “So why couldn’t I?”

If geniuses like Druckenmiller and Newton couldn’t stand to watch as others made money, and they carried on with full knowledge that they were purely speculating (re-read Druckenmiller’s confession mentioned above), what chance do we non-geniuses have to survive a bubble and its subsequent and certain burst?

The Real Tragedy of Our Life Charlie Munger says…

If you are comfortably rich and someone else is getting richer faster than you by, for example, investing in risky stocks, so what? Someone will always be getting richer faster than you. This is not a tragedy.

You see, the real tragedy of our life is not that someone else is getting richer or healthier than us, but that he is getting there faster than us.

Another tragedy is that when we fall into this comparison trap, it’s hard to stop.

Look at fund managers. Most of them have similar stocks in their portfolios, and most still claim to have the skills to outperform others.

Read stock forums. Most of them are filled with the noise of people comparing their portfolios with others’.

Why do you think any mention of “5 stocks to buy” or “best stocks to buy now” raises your brain’s antennae? This is because you want to compare those best stocks to your existing portfolio and buy whatever you don’t have already.

This habit of unintelligently buying things because someone else is making fast money on them comes to the fore when the markets have been rising for some time.

Here is what Citigroup’s boss Chuck Prince said to a newspaper in July 2007, shortly before the subprime bubble burst…

When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.

So, even as people know that things are not right around them, they keep dancing to the bubble’s music because everyone else is dancing and making merry.

After all, not dancing to the rising market’s tune is same as underperforming. Isn’t it terrible to sit quietly, doing nothing, when some people are predicting the Sensex to touch six-figures soon, and others are dancing to their tunes? Of course, it’s terrible!

But if you can’t ignore and avoid the temptation that comes from watching other people get rich due to a sharp rise in stock prices, it’s best to know sooner than later that that’s often a path to destruction.

You can “get killed”, like Druckenmiller in 2000 and Newton 280 years prior to that.

Of course, like Druckenmiller did so perfectly, no one can predict when the sell-off is near and how bad it could get, but it’s very important to learn from what Druckenmiller didn’t do – listen to his gut instead of following the herd.

That, I believe, is one of the best lessons you can learn on how and why not to speculate, especially when all others are speculating.

Getting Rich Vs Staying Rich Morgan Housel of Collaborative Fund has written a wonderful article on getting rich versus staying rich, where he suggested how getting rich can be the biggest impediment to staying rich…

It goes like this. The more successful you are at something, the more convinced you become that you’re doing it right. The more convinced you are that you’re doing it right, the less open you are to change. The less open you are to change, the more likely you are to tripping in a world that changes all the time.

There are a million ways to get rich. But there’s only one way to stay rich: Humility, often to the point of paranoia. The irony is that few things squash humility like getting rich in the first place.

A couple of years ago, I attended a lecture from the legendary Howard Marks, where he talked about these points on the subject of ‘humility’ –

Very few investors have the nerve to say, “I don’t know.” But that’s how you build integrity in your investment process.

If you start with “I don’t know,” then you are unlikely to act so boldly as to get into trouble.

Our business is full of people who got famous for being right once in a row.

One of the reasons why the future is unknowable is randomness. Events often fail to materialize as we think they should. Improbable things happen all the time.

Anytime you think you know something others don’t, you should examine the basis. Ask yourself – Who doesn’t know better? Why should I be privy to exceptional information? How do I know this that nobody else knows? Am I really that smart, or am I just wrong? Am I certain that I am right and everyone else is wrong? If it’s an advice from some else, ask – Why would somebody give me potentially valuable information? And why would he give it to me? And why is he still working for a living if he knows the future so well? I am always skeptical of people who will tell you the future for five dollars.

The concept of market efficiency – that price of each asset accurately reflects its underlying intrinsic value, or that the market price is fair – must not be ignored. You can know something and it’s possible to know more than others. But the going in presumption should be that everybody is well-informed, and if you think you know something they don’t, you should be able to express the reason for that. It’s not easy because everyone is trying just as hard as you are.

In dealing with a complex adaptive system that the stock market is, humility is your best protection. Being tentative in your decision making, changing your mind when the facts change, diversifying adequately and not going around boasting about your recent successes are all signs of such humility.

However, when we’re repeatedly or massively successful – like Druckenmiller and Newton – we’re tempted to believe that we’ve found the formula for success and are no longer subject to human fallibility. This is devastating, especially in a world that is continually changing, and where every right idea is eventually the wrong one.

Beware the Madness After the South Sea disaster, Newton could not bear to hear the phrase “South Sea” mentioned in his presence. But just once he admitted that while he knew how to predict the motions of the cosmos, he could not calculate the madness of the people.

We still can’t, so please be very careful…especially because we are passing through a rising market.

Also Read: 1. Speculating In Bubbles With Stan Druckenmiller And Sir Isaac Newton 2. Even a Genius Can Get Suckered

The post The Risks of Speculating During Rising Markets appeared first on Safal Niveshak.

The Risks of Speculating During Rising Markets published first on https://mbploans.tumblr.com/

[mredwinsmith]

The Old Man and The Barbell: An Ultimate Athlete Project Review

This article is sponsored by the Ultimate Athlete Project.

Story as old as time: a guy walks into a gym. Guy sees another guy training for something, glances over inconspicuously a few times, and thinks, this other guy really seems to know what he’s doing. One of these guys is an ultimate frisbee player, the other an athletic basketball player. Guy 1 walks up to Other Guy and says, “Hey Other Guy, I like what you’re doing, what are you training for?” Other Guy responds back “Ultimate Frisbee”, and he expects to go into the tired, obligatory explanation of what that is. Instead, Guy 1 is intrigued and eager to learn more. The conversation ends with Athletic Basketball Player asking to train with Ultimate Frisbee Player (who was merely warming up with some bodyweight SLDLs, psh).

I probably did look like I knew what I was doing. I’m a veteran of the Ultimate Athlete Project, with two full seasons of training and more under my drawstring. A person on a program can give off an air of confidence and sense of direction at the gym. They walk into the gym with a job to do, and it shows. But I’ve definitely been on the other end, walking into the gym without a real plan except to pick up some heavy things and put them back down.

I wasn’t always the envy of every athlete at the gym… I didn’t start lifting weights until my senior year of college, in the form of a one-credit weight training class. We met for one hour a week. I learned some basics and some safety–don’t be too proud to not have a spotter for that bench press.

The thought of lifting for ultimate hadn’t crossed my mind. I played on a team called the Grundlebugs–a name that might speak for itself…we’ll say a very “fun-focused” squad. So, while I enjoyed this lifting once a week, I didn’t get much out of it but a small base off of which to build.

Training for frisbee really started for me in 2010 when I joined a serious club team–the Virginia Squires (R.I.P.). I did the training the team prescribed, which involved beastly track workouts, “vomit runs” (tabatas for 20-30 minutes), and five-hour practices on Saturdays and Sundays. I was in very good shape that season, but feeling sore was regular. I had this feeling that that style wasn’t sustainable, especially when I got into my late twenties.

UAP Beginnings: Is this right for me?

I joined the UAP the next season in 2011, basically when it first launched. I was an OG UAPer, even if I didn’t use it much back then. I thought it was totally tubular that someone had created a training regimen specifically tailored for frisbee. I wanted to be a part of that.

I gave that first year the old college try. Most of the lifts seemed new and unfamiliar to me with my one-credit-lifting-class-worth of experience. Melissa Witmer, the UAP architect, did a good job of explaining each one, along with introduction videos, including “How to Read the Workouts”. I lifted here and there, but didn’t dive full into the program just yet–I wasn’t fully sold.

Coming from track workouts, the UAP’s Conditioning and SAQ seemed short. I know I’m not the only one who has felt this with UAP. The lifting challenged me, but the running workouts rarely seemed to, likely because I was used to long track workouts that made it hard to walk the next day.

However, as time went on, and as I worked my way through my twenties, I started to change my training philosophy. I introduced yoga into my life, which brought a refreshed energy and eagerness to exercise. I started to exercise every day, even if it was just something shorter.

Exercising every day is part of the deal if you decide to dive fully into the UAP. Melissa’s program is built around working out almost every day. These workouts aren’t monstrous 3-hour sessions, though. They’re consumable, but when put together over a season, they’ll turn you into a different athlete. More on that later. So yes, the running workouts are shorter, but when combined with all of the weight training, I felt like I had similar endurance on the field. The biggest difference was that I recovered much faster the next day.

A Second (Real) Try at the UAP

In 2016, after living and playing abroad for three years, I decided to try out for DC’s top men’s team, Truck Stop. I had always wanted to play on a Club Nationals-level team, but life took me elsewhere. Then life brought me back. In the two months before I returned home, I picked up Melissa’s shorter, less comprehensive program “12 Weeks to Game Time.” That built some confidence. But I had a feeling two months wasn’t enough. I wasn’t sure if, at 27, I could be a rookie on a team this good.

I was right. I got cut. And that’s when I decided to do my first full year of the Ultimate Athlete Project.

When I returned to the UAP in that 2016-2017 off-season, I came back to a hugely improved website, along with nutrition tips, seminars from other trainers and players, and more. I’m still finding new things on the site, and I know there are aspects I have yet to take advantage of, like the app. I’m convinced that If you use the UAP in its entirety, it’s like having an affordable trainer.

I was still a lifting toddler at this point, as I’d only done the UAP in small chunks. So when I started the program back up, I found the video and notes for each exercise helpful, and essential. It seems like video demos are becoming standard now for workout programs, but Melissa’s video explanations, along with her cues and written tips, give a complete picture on how each lift should go.

What’s missing? I think it would be cool to understand what muscle groups each lift is focusing on. To take it next level, it would be even cooler to hear how each lift or movement can translate to frisbee. That’d be icing on the cake.

UAP Now

I made the team the next year as a 28 year-old rookie. Now I’m 29 and in my second season with Truck. After my second year in a row of using all six offseason phases, all three preseason and all three in-season phases, I feel confident in my lifting ability. My goal was to peak at Club Nationals in 2017. I did–and it’s probably the best my body has ever felt during and after playing ultimate. I wasn’t once sore at Nationals. I felt stronger, springier, and more powerful. I also felt really confident–the confidence that only a whole heap of preparation can give you.

I haven’t seen Athletic Basketball Player since that conversation we had at the gym. Maybe he moved away. Or maybe he just didn’t have a program to follow regularly, like I do.

P.S.

Here are my UAP Exercise Greatest Hits–my favorite exercises, along with a corresponding superlative. Current UAPers can weigh in and future UAPers can look forward to them. Whether especially challenging, creative, or just fun, these are the ones that brought the house down for me:

 Backward Lunge to SLDL: “Most unforgettable”. In-season Phase 3, Lower. This one’s a marathon, and a lot of form to think about. Feel the burn! Never failed to be sore the next day from this one.

 Split Squat Cable Row: “Cutest Couple” I’m unable to find which phase this one’s in. I love exercises that recruit a lot of muscles, so these two exercises working in tandem is full body bliss.

Typewriter pull-ups: “Most Creative”. Offseason Phase 6 Upper 1 is where you’ll find the half typewriter variant. The one I remember is the full version. Wanna turn heads at the gym? Do these and look sweet!

DB Row: “Most Likely to Succeed” Here’s what I’d do if Ahhnold walked into the gym. Used throughout many phases, I think I like this one because it’s my best exercise (probably because it’s used throughout many phases).

Wall Overhead Iso Squat: “Most Thoughtful” Preseason Phase 1, Lower: This one could seem like it lasted forever. I’d try to meditate in the pose and focus on breathing so I wouldn’t count down the seconds.

Deadlift “Most Popular” Offseason 3 Lower 2: not unique to UAP, but such a complex and challenging exercise. I had never done deadlifts before UAP. This is the exercise I did the most research on. I just wanted to get better all the time. It reminds me that weightlifting can be like a new sport in that sense, a new challenge that I can always improve on.

The post The Old Man and The Barbell: An Ultimate Athlete Project Review appeared first on Skyd Magazine.

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[altusfl]

1. Welcome to My Alternate History of the USFL

“If GOD had wanted football in the Spring, he wouldn’t have created baseball.”

---Donald Trump, owner of the New Jersey Generals,  a team in the United States Football League, a spring football league.

Trump made that statement to the media as part of an active campaign to discredit the idea of spring-time professional football.  

Trump’s fellow USFL owners were content with the spring when Trump finally got around to buying into the league prior to its second season, so Trump wanted to create momentum for a move to the fall.  So he went to the media.

As a teenager I remember thinking, “Doesn’t he realize that he is hurting the businesses of all of his fellow owners?”

The thoughts of children.... 

About a year ago I decided to write an alternate history of the United States Football League after reading a post by Allen Bertsche (a.k.a. “Wide Right”) who wrote an alternative history of the USFL, beginning after the 1984 season that I thought was quite inspiring.

I have long thought the USFL had a shot if Donald Trump and Eddie Einhorn had not taken the league off a cliff.  

I have read a ton of articles, websites, and books about the USFL.

After reading Mr. Bertsche’s writing I became even more convinced that the league walked away from a viable product specifically due to that vote.

Survival may have been surprisingly possible

Now some of Allen’s premises I found to be very, very unlikely, but as I read, I was sucked into the fact that his contentions overall didn’t seem all that unreasonable.

I wasn’t prepared for that.

I couldn’t escape the underlying premise that had some minor actions changed for the USFL — even after what I had always considered “the point of no return” — the 1984 season — the league could have been saved.

Some of his ideas about which players might head to the USFL after 1984 are incredibly insightful and, if things had unfolded in a different manner, probably would have happened. So from time to time in my chronology, you’ll see some parallels to his timeline as I steal / plagiarize certain things from his chronology. (Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Mr. Bertsche.)

I began to write and soon my normal blog, The Sports Minority Report, was filled to the brim with posts about this alternate timeline for the USFL.  

Eventually, I couldn’t stand it anymore and decided to move it to the dedicated blog you are reading now.

........

This may be all you want to read in this first post. Things get moving and shaking in post #2.

To get there, you can skip to the end of this article.  On every page there is a link to the next piece of this alternate history.

The rest of this post is an FAQ.

Q: You had this formatted differently in the old blog...Why reformat everything?

A: I have tried to cut the articles into more bite sized pieces here with each post covering a specific subject.

My goal was to paint a three dimensional picture of what could have been if people with interests contrary to running Spring football teams didn’t convince the struggling USFL owners to jump off a cliff, taking down several solid franchises.

One of my goals was to show that this wasn’t just a non-viable idea.   This was a typical business with struggles, that a pair of corporate raiders skunked.

But in fleshing that out, I ended up with posts that were just too long.

I have tried to make this more reader friendly by “chunking” it more by main ideas.  

Doing so also makes it easier for me to write future seasons as the membership swells.

Q: “Who cares about the USFL?  It was bush league football.”

A: I do for one, and No... it really wasn’t.

A lot of USFL superstars went to the NFL after the league ended and those superstars dominated there too on their way to Hall of Fame careers.

I think the USFL was on a better than parallel development path to the one the American Football League took.  And the Jets beat the NFL’s champ in Superbowl III!

The USFL had a LOT more star talent, and a lot more talent overall than the AFL, much earlier in their existence. If you look around you will find that no one disputes that point..

And a lot of that was due to George Allen.  Allen organized tryouts all over the nation.  He was a bit gluttonous (signing ----no joke --- about 350 players who flashed in his workout to contracts to his initial Chicago Blitz team, lol...) but a ton of those players made it on to USFL rosters in year one.

The league started in year one with a talent level leagues like the XFL and UFL couldn’t touch.

I read a news article written by Hall of Fame Pittsburgh WR turned TV analyst Lynn Swann published after the USFL’s initial season.  Swann had just recently retired from the NFL after the 1982 season. 

After watching the USFL’s first season, the difference he saw in terms of level of play with the USFL was that the new league had little depth at that point compared to NFL rosters and they played with more simplistic coverage schemes to cover a lack of secondary talent and depth. 

That said, Swann said that several USFL teams’ starting lineups could compete with NFL teams.  

Given Swann’s comments , I feel safe in saying good USFL teams would not have dominated in the NFL, but it is fairly likely at least the top 4 teams in year one (Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Boston) could have beaten a fair number of NFL teams.  

They might have been 6-9 win teams in the NFL...even with their lack of depth.

And the USFL’s talent level improved every year. 

A lot of USFL players have made the comment that in year one maybe a third of team’s starting lineup were legitimate pro players. By year two, it might be 2/3 of their starting roster.  By year 3 the entire starting units were legitimate pros.

(I think you can look at this as the natural payoff to having a league worth of players spending two paid offseasons training and improving their games under the supervision of quality coaches. Everyone with talent gets better with practice.)

Now the NFL HAD more talent, but you need to wrap your head around what that really means...

Something like 3% of Division I-A players will ever play for an NFL team.

With the USFL around, that number swelled to about 5%.

Do you really think a team comprised of players from the 4th and 5th percentile could not beat a team comprised from the top 3%?  That is Oklahoma beating Texas or Michigan State beating Michigan or Auburn beating Alabama. 

It happens all the time.

A lot of NFL coaches will tell you that the guys they cut in the final cut are just as talented as the backups they keep on the roster.

If you think about it, that makes a ton of sense.   A coach might keep a guy on the roster who he trusts over a guy with more talent who he can’t trust. 

The USFL starting lineups were made of those guys, with a sprinkle of high profile 1%ers.

One only has to look at the Superbowl III champion Jets to see what those kinds of guys can do against the “elite” if given 4-5 years of on the job football training.

At that 5% level, it is all about how you select and coach the talent.

A skilled solid NFL receiver might be a lower to mid tier star in the USFL ....if he landed with a coach who would maximize his talent.  

Jim Kelly’s Run and Shoot offense dominated USFL secondaries by flooding the field with what the NFL at the time would have considered 3rd or 4th WRs.  In the cookie cutter NFL world where everyone ran pro set offenses, those tiny receivers were a dime a dozen.

But then Jim Kelly explodes and one of his receivers (Ricky Sanders) goes to the NFL and dominates.

A sound NFL QB might be a star in the USFL because in the USFL’s early years the league’s secondary talent was a half step slower, turning NFL INTs into USFL completions.

That isn’t to say that the real superstars of the USFL --- Jim Kelly, Herschel Walker, Reggie White, etc. ---- the 1%ers wouldn’t also be superstars in the NFL. 

It is important to get that.  AND that the USFL was catching up to the NFL’s level of play faster than the AFL did.

It was legitimately a pro league.  And that’s why people like myself still like thinking about it to this day.

Disclaimers

Alternate timelines involve a lot of wishful thinking and optimal decision making.  It is easy to get lost in that. 

I’ve tried to keep the sheer optimism to a minimum, and instead have focused on strategies that involved people might have employed if things had gone slightly differently.  

But things go better for the USFL if they stay in the spring.

The money increases geometrically as new principles become involved and frankly the league gets better at being a league. It matches and then surpasses their spending rate, much as the AFL did.

The way to view this in writing it, is as if I have “tuned in” to an alternate timeline where the USFL made a couple optimal decisions early on, and now I am just reporting what happened.

I have made every effort to write this “organically”.  I tried to make it realistic, with bumps and flubs along the way based on my perceptions of the owners, coaches, and front office personnel. 

Principles on this chronology make pointed stances only to back off them a year later when the circumstances change.  

That is how the USFL was.

Just like in the first two seasons where the LA Express, then the expansion Pittburgh Maulers franchise, both skipped on Dan Marino ---- opportunities are missed in my timeline when the principles involved would actively pass on a great option.

You’ll see years where the conditions financially are rough for USFL owners. You’ll see them really pass for the most part on name prospects, resigned to sign rookies who will take the league minimum or backups on other teams.

One of the reasons I keep writing entries is that I am absolutely taken with how many top college players the survival of this league could have employed. 

And how few it hurts. With the exception of Brett Farve. (Poor, poor Brett Farve....But that season is very far up the list.)

Three areas with big mistakes

This blog is setup to trace this league into late 80′s and beyond. That created a lot of hugely time consuming issues.

I curse myself for adding annual breakdowns of notable players on each team’s rosters.  I have players on multiple rosters here and there. I have to have those lists to keep the players straight, but it is a major pain to fix a misplaced or duplicate player over several seasons.

I also have some of these guys playing WAAAAY too long.  Some of these guys were on their last legs when the league started and wouldn’t be backups or starters even in 1985.  I don’t think those guys retiring dramatically change how I would think the teams would finish.  Most teams maybe had 1 or 2 old difference makers and I caught those.  George Allens team had many and I think I had that team basically getting old overnight.

What I am more talking about are the middling starters and notable backups that were old. I will fix that in time.

Stadium capacities are also an area where I may have mistakes here or there.  I have made every effort to get the stadiums capacities right for the years, but human errors occur.

Also as the league survives their home stadiums would be updated or in certain situations, like San Antonio, replaced. 

I have tried to show that. 

Reallocation

Every time there is expansion, players are reallocated.   As I was doing this I noticed that sometimes I reallocated players a couple times.  At first I thought that was just lazy and bad writing. (and admittedly some of it may be...)

But I thought about reallocation in real leagues and you see the same thing occurring. 

There are “types” of players who are just more likely to get reallocated in real life and in alternate timelines.

When you are building a team via an allocation draft, you generally want players from the following categories:

1) The one year, older, expensive guy.  A name player past his prime your fans know and can cheer for.  If the allocation requires teams to take on salary, this guy may have one expensive year remaining and he may be picked exclusively for that reason and not for how he played.

2) The cheap guy with minimal talent but a great attitude, work ethic, and techniques.  The idea is that you are going to draft and sign talented players that will steal these guys’ jobs.  You want as many of these guys as possible to create that kind of environment.  You want to see your system being executed right, even if your players have marginal talent.

3) The cheap young guy with great raw talent that hasn’t been tapped either due to lack of playing time, a bad system fit, or poor coaching. 

I have tried to apply that. 

That is why I have a guy like WR Neil Bahlholm who tied for 9th in the league in receptions in year 1 with 63, getting reallocated a few times. Bahlholm averaged 11.2 yards on those catches. He was a BYU product at a time when BYU was cranking out a lot of very polished slow white receivers with great hands.

He hits me as a category 2 guy.

If you catch 63 passes in any league and aren’t on crack, teams will give you the benefit of the doubt. 

Some transactions may or may not make sense at first glance

I have far too much pro football minutia in my head.  It is booth a boon and a hindrance in writing this.  It is a big factor in transactions and injury assessments.

Arizona Wrangler coach George Allen had a method. He ran a 4-3 defense he filled with veterans who didn’t make mistakes that he would stock with defensive linemen who could pass rush playing from multiple positions in order to protect his team from injuries.

I feel confident in saying if George Allen left the league and came back at some point he would build a team using that same model.  Now did I chose the right kind of defensive linemen? I don’t know, but I have tried to use a logic path that might make sense for George Allen.

I have former Atlanta Falcons coach Leeman Bennett coaching a USFL team. At one point that team needs a RB.  When Leeman Bennett was the head coach of the NFL’s Tampa Bay team, the Bucs brought in RB Vagas Ferguson.  I had Vagas Ferguson backing up on another USFL team, so I assumed Ferguson was Bennett’s kind of back, so I had him move to Bennett’s team.

While some of the moves I list are not as well thought out as that, There are a lot of moves that have an unstated logic behind them.

I know that Brian Bosworth had a degenerative shoulder condition that pretty much destroyed his pro career.  I write about Bosworth assuming you all know that and don’t think, “well, if he played in a lesser league he wouldn’t have incurred that problem.”  

No, not the case.  He was going down anyway. Regardless of the pro league he had about 2 years of painful tackles in him before he’d have to retire.

Now Syracuse NT Ted Gregory was a great college player who had a damaged knee when he was drafted by the NFL Broncos in the first round.  The NFL has no patience for that.  They have too much invested for a #1 pick to not show anything for a year and a half.  Bring on the next guy.  And no other NFL team is chomping at the bit for a damaged player who his team was embarrassed about drafting. His career was done.

In the USFL could he have rehabbed his knee and been at least a backup? I can’t say, but I can’t write it off as impossible. If he could play at some point, a USFL team would take him. So I have him kicking around on the roster of the USFL team that drafted him for a few years.

You may wonder why I assume some other players who had injuries that killed their NFL careers would not have ended up playing in the USFL.  

It is because some injuries that ended careers prevented the players from ever playing like they could while other  injuries just prevented the player from ever getting another contract.  There is a big difference. 

Draft day Busts and player movement between leagues

This is a hot button of mine.  I get annoyed when people pronounce a player a bust. 

To me, a bust is a player who doesn’t work at the game for whatever reason.

Oakland QB Demarcus Russell got fat and didn’t get back into shape.  He was a bust.  (I hear much of the problem with him was that he had a father figure Ray Ray Russell who died and it messed with his head. I am sorry for him having to go through that, but at the end of the day he didn’t do what he needed to succeed.  Bust.)

Oakland QB Todd Marinovich had a drug problem. (Probably in no small part due to his parents divorce messing with his head. Again, sad, but still a bust.)

San Diego QB Ryan Leaf fucked up his wrist on his throwing arm big time in his NFL rookie season.  Ryan Leaf may have been immature.  He may have been a crap leader,  but he wasn’t a bust.  I saw him play a lot when he was trying a comeback with Dallas and you could see flashes of why teams loved him.  If he doesn’t fuck up his wrist losing consistent accuracy, he is Jeff George.  Still an asshole, but nobody is calling him a bust.

Oakland Raider Bob Buczkowski had a ridiculous 2 year run of injuries after the Raiders drafted him.   Were some of those “out of shape” injuries?  I don’t know, but I am not really comfortable hanging him with the bust tab either.  He could have just been the victim of a horrible run of bad luck.

Denver first round pick QB Tommy Maddox came into the league early and predictably washed out.  Then he matured, got a fresh start in the XFL where he could display his talent and then became a successful starting QB in Pittsburgh for a few years. 

So was he a bust or wasn’t he? I would say he totally was a bust.  ....But he got better.

Steve Young was was one of like 7 first round prospects signed by the LA Express that year for the media attention.  He was a hard to contain player in the USFL, but his passing was a major disappointment vs. his collegiate excellence.  Probably he was a bad fit in John Hadl’s offense. He went on to Tampa Bay and stunk up the joint.  He worked hard but he was just bad. Then he lands in a system that accentuates his skills in San Francisco and becomes a Hall of Famer.

You could argue he was kind of a bust in the USFL and became an NFL hall of famer.  How does that fit in your world view?

The problem with calling someone a bust is that you are lumping too many reasons together so you can have a quick one word description on why your pick didn’t work out.

The NFL has a real knack of drafting good players and slotting them in to systems where they don’t fit.  

They draft a 6′7″ edge rusher to play inside linebacker.  

They draft a 6′3″ 280 lb 3-4 DE who never had more than 7 sacks in a season in college, but they think he will be a terror as a 4-3 DE in the pros because he runs a 4.7 forty ---- even though he doesn’t show any pass rushing technique on film.

They draft killer collegiate 5′10″ safeties who run 4.4s and can tackle, play the ball in the air and pick off passes but can’t cover at all and NFL coaches want to make them all CBs. 

A startup league like the USFL needed to hit on every player they gave big money to, so for the most part they made damned sure the player had a proven history of executing what they needed him to do.  If they don’t think he will work out, they pick someone else.

They don’t have the luxury of an unlimited budget. 

The NFL generally has a pretty hard divide between coaching and personnel.  Coaches get players they can’t stand all they time.  And they bury them thinking, “I’ll get a better replacement next year.”

In the USFL the staffs were smaller and they had a territorial player acquisition system so they didn’t have to scout the whole country.  The coaches were much more involved and their coaching regimes had much shorter leashes, so you had a lot less of that.

It is an entirely different mindset.

All of this adds up to the fact that the USFL was well suited to “rehab” “NFL busts” and I would argue to successfully develop the college talent they signed..  

Why would USFL teams sign NFL players?

In the early days of the USFL,  the league would sign former NFL players to fairly big deals.  They never seemed to get as much out of that payout as when they signed collegiate players.

And it was part of why their spending went out of control.

In writing this, I tried to put myself in the shoes of each USFL GM.  There are years where they just don’t have any money and they league signs almost no NFL rejects.  Then there are expansion years where expansion teams suck up excess talent and NFL players get signed.

I have tried to list it when it “makes sense” for a team to do it.  For example when former TCU star RB Kenneth Davis became a free agent, Buffalo offered him the most money among NFL teams.  I am sure he didn’t want to play in Buffalo, but as I was looking through USFL teams, there was no team at the time that it made sense for them to pursue Davis, even though Davis totally could have been at least an 800 yard rusher in the USFL.

I have tried to honor “supply and demand” in that way.

Defections in year 2

In our world, a number of notable names would walk away from the USFL in year 2 as the owners moved towards playing in the fall.  

New Orleans offensive Coordinator Jim Fassel, who had coached in the WFL, bolted for the University of Utah.   Players like Michigan RB Ken Lacy, Arizona CB Frank Minnefield, and others took off for the NFL.

This timeline is one where the decision not to move stops a lot of that movement dead in its tracks.

Retirements, draft nightmares, and deaths

People die.  I am saddened as I write this that so many of the people I write about who made the USFL great (or might have down the road), are in jail or dead, often tragically. 

I can’t help but wonder if they had had a consistent career the lasted for 4-15 years, helping them mature through their wild youth and putting a little money in their pockets if their lives would have taken a different path. 

I can’t help but wonder if X player who flamed out in the NFL because he was drafted by a coach with an ill fitting scheme, or by a GM over the objections of his coach, or landed on a team with a bad position coach might have had an amazing life after playing in the USFL.

But that was taken from them and US, the fans. 

And frankly, at times in my writing I have probably ignorantly listed people who may have died by that point. 

There were probably backups who I mention as hanging around for future years who may have died in car accidents or other ways and their stories simply aren’t recorded on the sources I used.  To them and their families, I apologize. 

I hope people get that this is my love letter to those players, the people who made the USFL.  It is me screaming out to the world that what they built was fantastic and could easily have lasted. 

Re-Writes

I’ve re-written this a few times, consider this version 3.0.

If, from a logical standpoint, I’ve totally missed the mark at certain points in your opinion, please let me know and I’ll incorporate it into version 4.0, when I write that at some point down the road.

The role of a USFL Commissioner

Chet Simmons, the league’s first commissioner was concerned with building consensus. He was seen as a weak commissioner by the owners.  They would eventually make that perception reality by creating committees that took away Simmons’ various powers.

Harry Usher, the league’s second commissioner, was hired specifically because Simmons was seen as a weak leader.  The expectations were Usher would lead.

I have Harry Usher turning to Peter Hadhazy in an early incident in the Usher tenure, that working, and Usher going back to the well time after time.    (I credit Hadhazy with seeing my own view that a bigger league is better/ more leikely to survive, but I have no idea if he thought that way. The league was pretty much imploding in our timeline when Usher took over, due to the vote to play in the fall. He plays a much larger role in this alternate timeline where it wasn’t .)

So at a point you’ll see decisions coming “top down” more than they were in our timeline.

High concept struggles

What Key Moment?

The USFL had several 'key moments’ that could have dramatically changed the direction of the league. An early one was the decision by David Dixon not to start a franchise himself.  If Dixon had “skin” in the league, his sway over the other owners would have been much more pronounced and they likely would not have gotten as deeply into financial trouble as they did in the first season.

That in turn might have kept several financially conservative owners in the league following that first season.

But the decision most USFL fans look at as the point of no return was the 1984 vote to start playing in the fall beginning in the 1986 season.  

Championed by New Jersey Generals owner Donald Trump and Chicago “franchise” “owner” Eddie Einhorn, that vote is the moment where several former USFL stars say they knew the league was dead.  

That is the moment that my 13 year old heart broke because I knew the league was a dead man walking.

Over the years I have found that most USFL players appear to blame Trump for the league’s demise and over the years some high profile owners like Houston’s Jerry Argovitz have come to publicly concede that point.

A sadder, wiser Ted Diethrich, second owner of the Arizona Wranglers, would say many years later, “I think it [agreeing with Trump and Einhorn to move to a fall schedule in 1986] was a big mistake. When that decision was made, the course for this was charted....and it was going to be a wreck.”

Both Diethrich and Argovitz are named in books on the subject as having voted to play the 1986 season in the fall.

The league would never play that 1986 fall season.  

Shortly before the season was to start, a lawsuit by a former player against the Tampa Bay Bandits for back pay would cause the Tampa Bay Bandits’ equipment to be seized.  Down one team, the league would be inclined to press on, but they would turn to their surviving leader Donald Trump and Trump would advise them he changed his mind.  Again.

He would not field his all-star merged New Jersey team with the league’s two superstars, RB Herschel Walker and QB Jim Kelly.

With no team in New Jersey, there was no hope for TV money.  Trump had pulled the plug on the league. 

The rest of the owners quit...

Why focus on the 1984 vote?

That 1984 vote is the key moment I address in this blog.

The 1984 vote boils down to the league deciding A) if they wanted to continue to run things like struggling businesses shy of their break even point or B) just treat the entire endeavor like a game of poker with the NFL, pushing in all their chips?  

The USFL was not doomed to fail. Not everyone was broke.

What is lost on most people is that only about 1/3 of the league was financially distressed.  These owners were looking for a magic bullet solution to fix their issues. They were susceptible to Trump and Eddie Einhorn’s pro-fall bullshit. (And in a lot of cases it was described as intentionally fabricated bullshit.) 

These struggling owners outvoted the owners with the most financially solid positions, forcing the league out of several well performing markets, creating a “lame duck” final spring season when the fans stopped paying attention, and dramatically weakening the league.  

In the lame duck season, the league would see attendance totally collapse to franchise failure levels in all of their teams in the western half the US as westerners wrote off the league as dead.

This blog answers the question, “What if the owners who had the USFL’s prospering teams won that vote?”

The over extended league owners chose ‘B’.  This blog is about what would have happened if they had chosen ‘A’.

The USFL was not a harmonious group activity

Every owner had their own agenda that they put ahead of the best interest of the league.  It is crazy, but yeah, they did.

I’ve tried to retain that too, even if I had the pro-spring teams “win” the key “play in the fall” vote.

The USFL owners frankly flocked to Alphas who generated money. This made Einhorn a big player in our reality and is something that plays a big role in this alternate history.

Bigger is better

Conceptually the biggest stretches I’ve taken are assuming that the league would generally support a “bigger (more teams) is better” philosophy in terms of survival if they were choosing good TV Markets.  

This is definitely contrary to most people’s thinking.  The 1970′s World Football League would have had a much better chance at survival if they hadn’t started each of their seasons with 12 teams. (They had a lot of problems.)

But the USFL was a different beast.  Their plan eliminated most of the mistakes that sunk the WFL.  They had the potential of TV paying them at quite a good rate for stringing together big media markets.

I contend for the USFL business model, more big market teams was better.  It created more TV attraction. It created protection if a team failed.

I think that just makes sense, but it is at best a “neutral position” in terms of the PERSONAL investments of each team owner.  (ie. More mouths to feed means slightly less revenue, potentially even with expansion fees, and can put the league at risk if non-viable locations are chosen or if teams are very poorly run, but on the other hand expansion does create more wins for established teams and wins can help a team survive.)  

Player retirements, injuries, and lost opportunities

In real terms, most players retire when no one will pay them to play anymore.  Some retire due to injuries.  That is a real problem in writing this.  

Marcus Dupree was probably the second most talented RB in the USFL behind Herschel Walker and the 3rd most talented back in football at the time behind Eric Dickerson. (I am only talking talent here, Kelvin Bryant fans....)

His team moved to Portland where the the turf was horrifically unsafe.  Dupree blew out a knee and his USFL career was over.  If the vote to move to the fall fails, Dupree’s team stays in New Orleans and he never blows out his knee on that Portland turf.  

Would he blow out his knee somewhere else?  Can I predict that?  Should I?  I had to think, “No,the other turfs were good, so he probably would not.”  So in that, I am being very optimistic about the health of players in the USFL.

Ken Talton ran for a 1000 yards for Birmingham in year 1.  He had talent, was trusted, and given plenty of opportunities.  That happens for talented unknown pros when the league is growing. 

Then he was replaced by Joe Cribbs as Birtmingham’s primary rushing threat in year 2 and only ran for like 150 yards.  He was 28.  He didn’t play in year 3.  Did he piss someone off in Birmingham?  RBs fall off around that age... Did it happen to him?  Or did the contraction of the league cause him and several other solid players to be forced into retirement?

I think the later is more likely.

Ken Talton may have played and carried the ball for several more years if the league survived and the number of teams was growing instead of shrinking. 

Eventually teams take a hard look at a player’s age.  A lot of older players can still play at a high level for 1-3 more years at that point but teams get scared of their age (and their salary demands) and go for younger players.  

Other teams assume the players have less in the tank or they wouldn’t have been let go. Or they assume (sometimes correctly) that the player’s salary demands might be cost prohibitive.

What I am getting at is that a lot of players retire with “meat left on the bone” of their playing career.  That is increased when the league is contracting and jobs are going away like the USFL in year 3.

Also, it is plainly obvious that the NFL blackballed most USFL players. There were simply too many good starters in the USFL who never got a legit opportunity when the league went down.

The level of play in the USFL was legitimately lower than in the NFL overall, but really what happened to a lot of these players --- like Oakland star WR Fred Banks --- is they went from a team that trusted them and used them correctly to a team where they had no trust equity, in a league that really kind of wanted USFL players to fail overall.  

If the USFL survives,  If USFL guys stay with their USFL teams, they likely have careers that mirror NFL starters in terms of consistency of play and length of careers.

So you will see that in my work.

It doesn’t mean that they would be stars in the NFL if they were stars in the USFL, but it is still pretty darned prestigious company.

But I say this only to explain the logic behind why, in this blog, you will see players playing longer than they did and often at higher levels than you might expect if your only knowledge of them is looking at their NFL stats.

With that said, lets get into this...

Click here to continue to the next post

[thecoroutfitters]

Written by R. Ann Parris on The Prepper Journal.

An overabundance of eggs or milk is a good problem to have. It’s one some families will never experience, but it’s a common enough problem that it pops up annually on Facebook groups, homesteading and preparedness forums, and family gatherings.

I’m a huge proponent of various preservation methods, from freezing and oiling eggs to churning and pressing home-raised milk into salted butters and hard cheeses for later use. I’m especially a fan of the pre-modern storage methods. Sometimes, though, there’s just not enough time or space to develop skills or store it all.

If we have livestock and pets, they’re happy to help us deal with those gluts, as well as our table and garden scraps. In many cases, they’ll reward us with increased health or production as a result. Almost always, if we’re paying for our feed anyway, labor or cash, using our gluts can help us cut some of the costs.

Incredible Edible Egg

One of those things that so commonly pops up at day classes, tours, and online is an overabundance of eggs. There are many ways to use and store them, but sometimes there are still eggs ad nauseam.

Easy fix. It starts with scrambling them. You can cook a whole lot of eggs really quickly in either a steam table tray or a lasagna dish. You can even use a big metal mixing bowl.

  You do want to scramble them, or boil and mince them. Otherwise, birds and other animals start associating those ovals with tasty nibbles.

Once that habits starts, it’s hard to break and it regularly spreads.

(Psst … Watch hogs – They don’t need the introduction to know eggs are tasty. It’s in their genetic coding to eat eggs of pretty much any kind.)

Eggs are fantastic due to the protein content – it’s usually proteins we’re paying the most for in our pet and livestock feeds. And while rich, most animals have no problem consuming them.

That makes them an excellent addition or replacement for dogs, cats, any poultry, and pigs – especially the young birds that need higher levels of protein to grow, carnivourous pets, and high-production laying hens.

  Whole, Raw Milk

Like eggs, milk is an excellent source of protein and calories. Most poultry is sensitive to milk and other dairy products, however, cats, dogs, and pigs can handle raw milks and pasteurized goat or sheep milk just fine, even if they’re lactose intolerant with supermarket milks.

Pasteurization destroys some of the milk enzymes as well as bacteria and viruses that cause illness. It’s those enzymes – still present in raw milk and soft products made from raw milk – that make it more digestible. Goat and sheep milk have different types of fats and enzymes, which leave them more consumable for more of the population than cattle milks.

(Psst … Penn State did a dairy waste milk study in 2015. They suggest not giving finishing hogs commercial milk due to antibiotic presence, but saw 6-7% cost decreases when nursery hogs were offered that waste milk.)

Whole milk is too rich a resource to let it go to waste. It’s also rich enough that if it’s being given as more than a dribble for cats and dogs, or a quart or half gallon for hogs, it’s worth doing some figuring with a Pearson square for proteins (and calories) so you can cut back on other feeds.

That’s the point, after all. Using up our gluts, but doing it in a way that doesn’t increase the cost we’ve already put into producing those gluts.

Livestock Trash Compactors

In many cases, chickens and hogs will eat anything that doesn’t eat them first. It’s one of the things that makes them useful on a homestead of any size. Goats that can help keep fields and fences cleared are also big winners.

Chickens especially, though, sometimes just aren’t capable of being foragers, and won’t survive or thrive on the same levels of feed substitution.

There’s a big difference between homestead-bred dual-purpose heritage breed birds that hunt but are easy to handle like the Dominique, and something like the white cross hybrids that would die of heart attacks or develop broken legs from their own body weight by 9-12 months of age.

There’s also a big difference in birds that have no idea you can peck into the big orange thing for tasty squash and seeds, and birds that grew up thinking it was totally natural to at least attempt to munch anything in the same space as them.

It’s not just the egg-meat yields. As with dipping a chick’s beak to show it how to eat and drink, some of our livestock have lost the skill to feed themselves, even heritage breeds.

If you’re going to try to use some of the garden produce to replace feeds, especially, you’ll want one that’s been bred to have an adaptable stomach.

If you’re specifically looking for livestock that will do well on a varied diet, especially if you’re after bug hunters and foraging birds, the Livestock Conservancy is a good site to visit. The mypetchickens.com site is also an excellent resource, but the Livestock Conservancy is nice enough to make at-a-glance comparison charts for us.

They compile ratings that include foraging skills (and predator savviness) along with other breed information.

Working with breeds that can do well on self-found foods, rough browse over higher-protein, higher-calorie hays and grains – even if their production is lower – isn’t just useful for decreasing glut wastes. The ability to replace feeds, not just give a treat, becomes a sustainability issue for truly long-term disasters.

Cats and ferrets, too, may take a while to warm up to the idea of new foods if they’re straight bag-can animals. I hear there are picky dogs, too. I haven’t actually run into any that aren’t delighted by milk or eggs and scraps, but I hear they’re out there. Somewhere.

  Calories Matter

Sometimes as I follow along various blogs and social media, I end up feeling sorry for somebody. That was the case when I read this article http://farmfolly.com/2011/03/complete-costs-of-raising-pigs/. It’s a fabulous write-up about home-raised hogs, with excellent price and input-output charting.

What I want to draw attention to is what they fed their hogs, and the realizations they reached once it was all said and done.

Two market-sized hogs of a lean, meat-heavy breed consumed 1,350# swine feed, 50# squash (pumpkins), and 38# of eggs (ten eggs per pound, 380 eggs). They got other garden produce as well, but those were the significant sources of proteins and calories.

And in the end, all the labor, cost, water and feed/fertilizer that went into those eggs and pumpkins amounted to barely more than 1 percent of the hogs’ diets.

The author surmises that feeding hogs on grain is inefficient. I have to assume that’s a typo, or a reflection of hogs’ efficiency – not grain efficiency. I feel safer in that assumption since the author makes the point, “We had hoped these would reduce our feed bill. The numbers tell a different story … One really gains a sense for how calorie dense grain is when you realize that 380 eggs and 50 pounds of squash represent the calorie contents of just 18 pounds of grain.”

That’s not intended to blast a hole in everything I’ve said about using up gluts. It’s intended to make us aware of the effort-reward scale that will be vital if we’re trying to cut cords now or planning to live off our land at some point.

What we feed – to which animals – should factor in the type of animals.

Those 380 eggs go almost nowhere between two hogs – 1.4-1.6% of their total feed for the ones raised by that blogger. That’s about 2 days at market weight, off the annual yield of a high-producing layer – which is being fed as well, and high-quality specialized feed at that.

However, 380 eggs between my two smaller hounds (45-55#) is protein and a big chunk of calories for 95 meals.

In prepper world-down conversions, I can just about keep those dogs for two months off the annual yield of a single high-yielding hen on bagged feed or a pair of hens fed off mixed forage, garden patrol, and worm bins.

  Then, being me, I bang my head at the thought of feeding an animal that can thrive as an herbivore pumpkins instead of grain.

(Psst … if you can produce 50# of pumpkins, you can produce 18# of wheat, barley and oats – usually with fewer pests, irrigation, and fertilizer, regularly in less time, and reap far higher protein yields while you’re at it, along with bedding straw or mulch.)

When we opt to feed gluts, or aim for production, we need to consider each component in our system, and weigh where our efforts are being placed.  I’m better served using my glut for an animal where it makes a significant difference than I am something where it barely even registers in their feed needs.

That’s one place where a SWOT analysis intended for business practice can be a huge benefit.

For that, I need to have done my homework on each animal. How efficiently they convert those foods depends on calorie and proteins and total bulk needs. It goes back to size, type, and specific breed – and the specific genetic lines of those breeds.

Switching Diets

Whenever we change feeds, it’s a good idea to do so slowly. We also want to be careful how much rich foods we offer at once.

The 10 percent-10 days rule works like a charm for most animals, although I rarely use it since I’ve been hugely lucky with my stock and pets.

If your animals have a history of intolerance or sensitivity, and with young or senior animals, consider moving very slowly indeed. However, animals that often get a variety of foods commonly keep diverse gut bacteria that decreases the risk of having negative reactions.

At some point, if we’re looking at a long-term disaster – whether it’s an extended job loss, an issue that interrupts shipping or our ability to fetch feeds, or a major national or international disaster – we’ll have to consider the sustainability of our animals. Having some tricks in the back pocket to make use of gluts can help us make plans, as well as avoid waste.

    The post Preppers – Got Glut? Cut Feed Bills! appeared first on The Prepper Journal.

from The Prepper Journal Don't forget to visit the store and pick up some gear at The COR Outfitters. How prepared are you for emergencies? #SurvivalFirestarter #SurvivalBugOutBackpack #PrepperSurvivalPack #SHTFGear #SHTFBag

[symbianosgames]

Games Have Too Many Words: A Case Study.

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

In this chapter, I unwisely critique the work of my betters.

I recently wrote an article about how video games have too many words. We designers don't properly edit our writing to make sure our words are worth a player’s time reading them.

I want to do a case study where I go through a wordy game, step-by-step, and show what it's doing right and wrong and how it could be doing better. Most game criticism frustrates me. It tends to deal with generalities and floaty ideas, instead of dirtying its hands with specifics that could actually help make for better games. This is my chance to egotistically provide a different approach.

This breakdown will be long and gritty, but I'll try to include a lot of solid pointers. I'll throw in some jokes along the way.

The Subject

Let's look at the very beginning of Pillars of Eternity, developed by Obsidian and released in 2015. This game was a huge hit, critically and financially, taking advantage of a shortage of quality Baldur's Gate-style, gritty, isometric-view, story-heavy titles.

I really wanted a game like that, so I bought it. I finished it in a little over 20 hours. The combat was fine, though really chaotic and hard to follow. (The best description I read was "clusterf***y".) The story was OK, but the game is loaded with words, many of them written by Kickstarter backers. I ended up getting through all the conversations in the back third of the game by typing the '1' key as fast as I could.

I did play Pillars until the end, which is rare for me. Overall, it was pretty good. It made a lot of money, and the crowdfunding for the sequel is doing quite well.

I don't usually like being negative about the work of other sincere, industrious creators. Luckily this game got enough cash and acclaim that its creators can comfortably ignore the nattering of a non-entity like me.

This is how I picture the devs of Pillars of Eternity. They walk everywhere with big clip art watermarks floating over their chests.

"So What's Your Complaint?"

Too many words.

Pillars of Eternity wants to have a really elaborate world and story, which is fine. It wants to have a creative game system, with new, innovative sorts of character classes and spells, which is great.

However, it doesn't do a good job of communicating stuff to the player, because there's no editing and care in giving out information. The game just floods the player with text, important bits buried in gushes of irrelevant detail, practically training the player to think that the words aren't really important. (Again, I played a huge chunk of the game without reading anything but the quest log.)

To illustrate this, I'm going to go, step by step, through the introduction and character creation, the stuff anyone who tries the game is sure to see. Let's see what the game thinks is worth the player's time and how good a job it does splitting up vital knowledge from static.

"So What? You're Just Scared of Words, You Sub-Literate?"

No, I have a problem with the pacing. The human brain can only absorb so many random facts about game systems and lore at one sitting. This stuff needs to be carefully paced out, or it'll just slide off of the brain.

But character creation in this game floods the player with tons of facts, both about the game and the world. I came out of it feeling numb and confused, and almost none of it stuck.

So. You start the game. You pick your difficulty. And then you begin the eleven (!!!) steps of character creation.

I. Introduction.

A pretty graphic and some basic text saying what is going on (you're on a caravan going to some fantasy town, you feel sick), read by an old guy. About 140 words. It's fine.

II. Pick Your Sex

And now the troubles begin. You need to choose whether you are male or female. Here's a description:

Describing the sexes is about 160 words total. But look, it mentions a bunch of different countries. Let's mouse over one of them and see what their deal is.

Yikes! That's a lot of words. All the descriptions together are about 330 words, much of it references to random game locations the player has no knowledge of. "Ein Glanfath" "Dyrwood" "Glanfathan" "Ixamitl" "Naasitaq" How can anyone get anything coherent from this tangle? This is literally the second thing the game shows you.

Seriously, try this: Read the description of "Eir Glanfath" above. Then close your eyes and count to ten. Then say everything you recall about Eir Glanfath. I'll bet you retained very little. And that's setting aside whether this stuff is actually necessary to play the game. (Not really.)

And, worse, it's all irrelevant to the actual choice the player has to make, because the vast majority of players will know whether they want to play a man or a woman before they even launch the game. If a woman only ever plays female characters, telling her, "The men of the Derpaderp Tribe of Sirius XII are in charge of all of their basket-weaving!" isn't going to turn her head around.

My Friendly Suggestion - Go through all these random facts and see if there are one or two of them the player MUST know. Pluck them out and put them in the Introduction. Cram the rest of the lore in books the player finds in the game world. Then make Male/Female be a toggle in the next screen.

III. Pick Your Race

OK, we're into solid fantasy RPG territory now. Here are six races to choose from:

You've never heard of three of the races. This is good. Pillars's desire to create new, weird things is one of its good points. Each race has about fifty words of description:

Now, this is a description of a "dwarf." But, if you have even the slightest familiarity with fantasy, you know what we're talking about here: Standard-issue, Tolkein dwarves. Short. Stocky. Like digging holes, gold, and ale. Grumpy. Scottish accents. We get it. All you need to say here is, "Strong, durable, great warriors."

For each of the races, the description mainly says the lands they live in. Let's be clear. This is useless information. If I tell you dwarves come from New Jersey, whether or not you've heard of New Jersey, this tells you nothing about whether you want to be a dwarf in your adolescent power fantasy.

It's a total cliche to say, "Show, Don't Tell," but this is a PERFECT example of why this is a key concept in writing. If I say, "Dwarves come from New Jersey," and you've never even heard of New Jersey (or dwarves), you won't care. But if you go to New Jersey, look around, and see nothing but dwarves, you'll instantly be all, "Oh, I get it! I'm in Dwarfland!"

But it gets trickier. This is the first choice you make that has actual impact on the gameplay. There are six statistics in the game, and your race affects what you start with. Each statistic description is 50 more words. Let's take a look at one:

What "Might" means is important information. The player needs this. This text needs to be punchy and clear. Something like, "Improves damage from all attacks. Gives a bonus when healing. Helps intimidate people in conversation."

And this description does that, but messily and with lots of extra words. Pillars tries to do a lot of things differently from other RPGs, so it needs to be extra-clear about the surprising stuff. Having the strength skill also improve spells and healing is neat, but it's also really unusual. ("Dwarves are better wizards? Wut!?")

My Friendly Suggestion - Editing pass. Shorter and clearer. Ask, "Why does the player need to know this?" If you don't have a good answer, save this lore for much later.

IV. Pick your Sub-Race

This is where the seriously over-designed quality of Pillars starts to show up. Picking a race isn't enough. You have to pick your sub-race:

So about 160 words (not counting rollover text), to learn about the woods dwarves and the mountain dwarves:

None of this lore has anything to do with the actual game.

What bugs me here is that this choice has gameplay significance. One choice gives you resistance to Poison and Disease (though you have no idea how serious these conditions are or how often they appear in the game), and one gives you a bonus against "Wilder" and "Primordial" creatures (though you have no idea what on Earth those are, let alone how often they show up in the game).

Giving a player seemingly high-impact decisions with no ability to tell which one is correct is stressful and confusing.

My Friendly Suggestion - Ditch sub-races. Instead, give Dwarves BOTH of these bonuses. This creates more distinction between the races and getting multiple bonuses helps the player feel more powerful instead of confused and stressed.

"Cutting Out Lore? What Is Your Problem With Lore In Games, You Jerk?"

Lore in games is great, as long is it's not thrown at the player too quickly and without any gameplay context that makes it mean something.

If you love lore, I want you to get lore, but in a way that spares the people who find huge dumps of it grueling. There are ways to make everyone happy!

Anyway, let's keep going. There's a LOT more screens to go.

V. Pick Your Class

Hokay! At last, this is the big one! This makes a huge difference in your play experience. Here are your eleven choices:

One of the coolest things about Pillars is that they tried to make some weird classes unlike anything in other games. The cost of creativity, however, is that you have to be extra-careful when explaining to the player the weird stuff they've never seen before.

When I started the game, my eyes were instantly drawn to "Cipher". That sounds neat! And here is the description ...

Yikes.

The main description of the class is four long sentences, but only the second sentence actually says much about what the class does. Then a very vague description of the powers, which involve something vitally important called a "Soul Whip," with no explanation of what that actually is. Then a bunch of algebra.

That's about 120 words, for one class. You have to go through all of it to get a vague idea of how the class plays. The other ten class descriptions are comparably complex.

This is just too much stuff to muck through, too early, for a choice so important to the play experience. Bear in mind that we are still less than halfway to actually playing a game.

My Friendly Suggestion - For each class, only show the stat bonuses and two or three carefully written sentences describing what it's like. Move all the weird lore and mathematical formulae to a different tab that can be opened by those who care. When the player starts using the class in the game, bring up some tutorial windows saying the key details of how to actually use it, like what a "Soul Whip" is.

VI. Pick Your Class Details.

If you're a priest, you have to pick your god. If you're a caster, you have to select a spell or two from the starting list. For the Cipher, the list looks like this ...

The spell descriptions look like this ...

Again, a ton of reading, referring to statistics, distances, statuses, damage amounts, damage types, etc. that mean nothing because you've never actually played the game.

My Friendly Suggestion - Lose this screen entirely. Pick one basic, useful ability (the best one) and give it to the character automatically to get through the tutorial. Then, after the first bunch of fights, have the player meet a trainer and be able to choose new abilities in an informed way.

VII. Edit Your Character Attributes.

Figure out how many points of Strength, Constitution, etc. you have. The game, to its credit, says which ones are most important for your class. Standard RPG fare.

VIII. Pick Your Culture

IF YOU'RE JUST SPEED-SCROLLING THROUGH THIS ARTICLE, STOP HERE AND READ THIS!!!!

Yeah, I know you aren't reading all of this. This post is wayyyyy too long and gritty and nit-picky and tedious. But reading this article takes much less time than actually picking through all of these windows in the game. Which is too long. That is my main point. Now scroll to the end and call me an idiot in comments.

Anyway, yeah, pick some country you're from ...

Each of the 7 contures has about 70 words of description.

None of this has anything to do with playing the game.

This is the most unnecessary step in the whole process. When making an RPG character, you need to build two things: Its stats/abilities and its personality.

Knowing your character is from "The White that Wends" tells you nothing about its abilities, and it's a lousy way to determine his or her personality. If you read the description of "The White that Wends," and learn that people from there are mean and selfish, that's still not the way you want to player to create a mean, selfish character. You do that by giving play options in the game that are mean and selfish and letting the player pick them. Show, don't tell.

My Friendly Suggestion - Lose it entirely.

IX. Pick Your Background.

Choose from one of nine backgrounds.

The main thing this affects is that, every once in a while, it will open up a new dialogue option. This never makes a big difference.

My Friendly Suggestion - There's a real lost opportunity here. Once again, "Show, Don't Tell." Instead of having me declare that my character is a Slave or Aristocrat or whatever, why not, once you’re in the game, make every conversation option for all of these different nine backgrounds available to me when the game starts.

Then, if I keep making the "Aristocrat" pick, start removing the other options, so that I end up always talking like an Aristocrat. Then my character's personality emerges organically from the sort of dialogue choices I make in the actual game.

X. Choose Appearance and Voice.

Standard appearance editor and list of different voices. It's fine.

XI. Choose Your Name.

Gladly.

XII. The Game.

And, finally, the games starts with the tutorial. Which begins with a long conversation. Which I barely pay attention to, because my stupid brain is tired.

It's all way too much. Too many words, too many irrelevant choices, exhausting when it should be informative. Not that they will listen to me, but it might be an improvement to look for in Pillars of Eternity 2, because the market is not what it was in 2015.

"But Who Cares? The Game Was a Hit, Right?"

The real test of how good a game it is, is not how it sells, but how much its sequel sells. And it is entirely fair to ask what business a pissant like me has criticizing a hit game written by a bunch of big names.

Let's leave behind the idea of craftsmanship and a desire to always keep improving our work.

Lately, sequels to hit RPGs have been selling far worse than their predecessors. Obsidian's successor to Pillars, Tyranny, by their own words, underperformed.

Also, I looked at the Steam achievement statistics for Pillars of Eternity. According to those, fewer than half of players finished the first chapter. Only about 10% of players completed the game.

Now granted, this is not unusual. Most games remain unfinished. But that still invites this question: If the vast majority of players didn't want to experience the Pillars of Eternity they already paid for, why think that they will want to buy more?

Everyone should keep improving, if just for their survival in this mercilessly competitive business.

Video games are a new art form, and there is still so much we have to figure out. That's the terrifying and awesome thing about making them. And now, having already written way too many words, I will take my own advice and cease.

###

The author sells his own flawed, wordy, old-school RPGs at Spiderweb Software. He opines on Twitter.

[heliosfinance]

Why Not to Speculate During Bull Markets: Lessons from Newton and Druckenmiller

It was sometime during late 1999 through early 2000, near the peak of the dot-com bubble, the legendary George Soros and his hedge-fund team were working on how to prepare for the inevitable sell-off in technology stocks.

The man in charge of Soros’ high profile technology funds was Stanley Druckenmiller – one of the best-performing hedge fund managers of all time, till date – and he was busy warning his team that the sell-off could be near and could be brutal.

As the markets soared further in March 2000, Druckenmiller was quoted as saying, “I don’t like this market. I think we should probably lighten up.” Soros himself would regularly warn his team that tech stocks were a bubble set to burst.

Despite this, when the sell-off finally did begin in mid-March 2000, Soros Fund Management wasn’t ready for it. His funds were still loaded with high-tech and biotech stocks. Just in five days, starting 15th March, Soros’s flagship Quantum Fund saw what had been a 2% year-to-date gain turn into an 11% loss. By the end of April, the Quantum Fund was down 22% since the start of the year, and the smaller Quota Fund was down 32%.

Post that, in April 2000, Soros said at a conference, “Maybe I don’t understand the market. Maybe the music has stopped, but people are still dancing.”

Same month, at another conference, Druckenmiller confessed, “It would have been nice to go out on top, like Michael Jordan. But I overplayed my hand.”

Here is how Druckenmiller summarized his experience of 2000 in an interview late last year (Nov. 2013) –

I bought the top of the tech market in March of 2000 [after quickly making money in the same space in mid-late 1999] in an emotional fit I had because I couldn’t stand the fact that it was going up so much and it violated every rule I learned in 25 years.

I bought the tech market very well in mid-1999 and sold everything out in January and was sitting pretty; and I had two internal managers who were making about 5% a day and I just couldn’t stand it. And I put billions of dollars in within hours of the top. And, boy, did I get killed the next couple months.

How to Get Killed at the Top, the Newton Way Let’s cut across to the middle of 1720 in Great Britain. Sir Isaac Newton – the inventor of calculus (the branch of mathematics that describes change over time), and the man who framed the laws of motion and set physics on its modern trajectory, put a sizable chunk of his personal fortune into shares of the South Sea Company.

The company had then pursued a new and increasingly risky banking deal – and as insiders began to talk up the trading profits (that turned out fictitious) the company expected from another venture, the stock began to leap, starting January 1720.

The bubble burst that September. Newton lost 90% of his stake, which was a large portion of his total net worth.

Here is how MIT professor Thomas Levinson described Newton’s and South Sea’s antics in a 2009 article…

Newton…made his first investment in the South Sea issue early, in 1713, and held it for several years, marking a modest paper profit. He held on through early 1720…That got the desired result, a sudden leap in stock prices. Starting at £128 in January, the price for South Sea securities rose to £175 in February and then £330 in March.

…Newton sold in April, content with his (quite spectacular) gains to date. But then, between April and June, share prices tripled, reaching over £1,000…which is precisely when he could stand it no longer.

Having “lost” two-thirds of his potential gain, Newton bought again at the very top and bought more after a slight decline in July.

The South Sea stock price held up through August 1720, and then the bubble led by over-expectations of huge returns was pricked in September.

…South Sea share prices collapsed to roughly their pre-bubble level. Newton’s losses totalled as much as £20,000, between $4 million and $5 million in 21st century terms…It was a terrific blow for Newton.

What Brought Druckenmiller and Newton Down? You know the answer, I believe.

During bull markets, or when bubbles are building up, most people come to the stock market because they desire to earn money fast because they are envious of seeing others doing so.

“If he could make money fast in stocks,” one would normally ask during such times, “So why couldn’t I?”

If geniuses like Druckenmiller and Newton couldn’t stand to watch as others made money, and they carried on with full knowledge that they were purely speculating (re-read Druckenmiller’s confession mentioned above), what chance do we non-geniuses have to survive a bubble and its subsequent and certain burst?

The Real Tragedy of Our Life Charlie Munger says…

If you are comfortably rich and someone else is getting richer faster than you by, for example, investing in risky stocks, so what? Someone will always be getting richer faster than you. This is not a tragedy.

You see, the real tragedy of our life is not that someone else is getting richer or healthier than us, but that he is getting there faster than us.

Another tragedy is that when we fall into this comparison trap, it’s hard to stop.

Look at fund managers. Most of them have similar stocks in their portfolios, and most still claim to have the skills to outperform others.

Read stock forums. Most of them are filled with the noise of people comparing their portfolios with others’.

Why do you think any mention of “5 stocks to buy” or “best stocks to buy now” raises your brain’s antennae? This is because you want to compare those best stocks to your existing portfolio and buy whatever you don’t have already.

This habit of unintelligently buying things because someone else is making fast money on them comes to the fore when the markets have been rising for some time.

Here is what Citigroup’s boss Chuck Prince said to a newspaper in July 2007, shortly before the subprime bubble burst…

When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.

So, even as people know that things are not right around them, they keep dancing to the bubble’s music because everyone else is dancing and making merry.

After all, not dancing to the rising market’s tune is same as underperforming. Isn’t it terrible to sit quietly, doing nothing, when some people are predicting the Sensex to touch six-figures soon, and others are dancing to their tunes? Of course, it’s terrible!

But if you can’t ignore and avoid the temptation that comes from watching other people get rich due to a sharp rise in stock prices, it’s best to know sooner than later that that’s often a path to destruction.

You can “get killed”, like Druckenmiller in 2000 and Newton 280 years prior to that.

Of course, like Druckenmiller did so perfectly, no one can predict when the sell-off is near and how bad it could get, but it’s very important to learn from what Druckenmiller didn’t do – listen to his gut instead of following the herd.

That, I believe, is one of the best lessons you can learn on how and why not to speculate, especially when all others are speculating.

Getting Rich Vs Staying Rich Morgan Housel of Collaborative Fund recently wrote a wonderful article on getting rich versus staying rich, where he suggested how getting rich can be the biggest impediment to staying rich…

It goes like this. The more successful you are at something, the more convinced you become that you’re doing it right. The more convinced you are that you’re doing it right, the less open you are to change. The less open you are to change, the more likely you are to tripping in a world that changes all the time.

There are a million ways to get rich. But there’s only one way to stay rich: Humility, often to the point of paranoia. The irony is that few things squash humility like getting rich in the first place.

I recently attended a lecture from the legendary Howard Marks, where he talked about these points on the subject of ‘humility’ –

Very few investors have the nerve to say, “I don’t know.” But that’s how you build integrity in your investment process.

If you start with “I don’t know,” then you are unlikely to act so boldly as to get into trouble.

Our business is full of people who got famous for being right once in a row.

One of the reasons why the future is unknowable is randomness. Events often fail to materialize as we think they should. Improbable things happen all the time.

Anytime you think you know something others don’t, you should examine the basis. Ask yourself – Who doesn’t know better? Why should I be privy to exceptional information? How do I know this that nobody else knows? Am I really that smart, or am I just wrong? Am I certain that I am right and everyone else is wrong? If it’s an advice from some else, ask – Why would somebody give me potentially valuable information? And why would he give it to me? And why is he still working for a living if he knows the future so well? I am always skeptical of people who will tell you the future for five dollars.

The concept of market efficiency – that price of each asset accurately reflects its underlying intrinsic value, or that the market price is fair – must not be ignored. You can know something and it’s possible to know more than others. But the going in presumption should be that everybody is well-informed, and if you think you know something they don’t, you should be able to express the reason for that. It’s not easy because everyone is trying just as hard as you are.

In dealing with a complex system that the stock market is, humility is your best protection. Being tentative in your decision making, changing your mind when the facts change, diversifying adequately and not going around boasting about your recent successes are all signs of such humility.

However, when we’re repeatedly or massively successful – like Druckenmiller and Newton – we’re tempted to believe that we’ve found the formula for success and are no longer subject to human fallibility. This is devastating, especially in a world that is continually changing, and where every right idea is eventually the wrong one.

Beware the Madness After the South Sea disaster, Newton could not bear to hear the phrase “South Sea” mentioned in his presence. But just once he admitted that while he knew how to predict the motions of the cosmos, he could not calculate the madness of the people.

We still can’t, so please be very careful…especially because we are passing through a bull market.

Also Read: 1. Speculating In Bubbles With Stan Druckenmiller And Sir Isaac Newton 2. Even a Genius Can Get Suckered

The post Why Not to Speculate During Bull Markets: Lessons from Newton and Druckenmiller appeared first on Safal Niveshak.

Why Not to Speculate During Bull Markets: Lessons from Newton and Druckenmiller published first on http://ift.tt/2ljLF4B

[timothyakoonce]

Entrepreneurs: Affiliate Marketing and the Balance of Trust

[NOTE: This is the fourth in a series of posts exploring the topic of entrepreneurship. While my focus has and will continue to be on Facebook ads, I have plenty to share about what I’ve learned while building my business.]

This isn’t your typical blog post about affiliate marketing for entrepreneurs. I’m not going to lay down how you can make a whole bunch of money doing it. It’s not the savior of your business.

Affiliate marketing does have its place for entrepreneurs. It had a place in my business. It has a diminishing — but still existent — role now. However, I don’t believe it is a good central, or long-term, strategy.

The purpose of this post isn’t for you to run away scared of affiliate marketing. Some of my marketing friends are very effective at it. They profit from it. And most importantly, they do so ethically while not losing the trust of their audience.

But that’s what takes me to the central focus of this post. It’s a balance. It’s a huge freaking balance. For me, it’s not worth it. I leave many thousands of dollars on the table because affiliate marketing makes me feel dirty.

When done right, there’s nothing dirty about it. But the problem is that there’s a very thin line you walk when recommending a product in exchange for money.

I don’t send emails about other people’s products. I rarely mention products that aren’t mine in my articles, webinars, or podcasts. When I do, it’s common that I’m not using an affiliate link.

Some likely think I’m crazy as a result. Some will be offended by this post. Some will point to the few, great affiliate marketers (many who are my friends) who have figured out the balance.

But I want you to understand that it’s not easy. How you approach this has long-term implications. While I’ve likely been way too conservative on this topic in the eyes of many marketers, I can confidently say that my approach has benefited me in the long-term.

Let’s take a closer look at affiliate marketing, its place in my business, and my recommendation for you…

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing relies on a relationship where one party (the affiliate) sells another party’s product and receives a commission — usually a set dollar amount or percentage of the sale.

In the online world, this is often tracked through the use of affiliate links (custom links to the seller’s website) and promo codes. When sales are made via these special links and promo codes, the affiliate gets a cut.

You may see this in a number of ways:

1) Dedicated Emails: The affiliate will send an email to their entire list or list segment promoting a product. The product company is leveraging the affiliate’s relationships in the form of a direct email recommendation.

2) Product Reviews: You’ll see this in the form of written and video reviews. What may appear to be an unbiased take on a product is actually a veiled sales pitch. Click on the links (which should be marked as affiliate links) and make a purchase, and the reviewer will get a cut.

3) Product Mentions: Other times, a product may get mentioned in an article when the context calls for it. Once again, the affiliate link needs to be called out so that it’s clear the author has a monetary incentive, but that product may be mentioned more casually as a product the affiliate uses as a solution to a common problem.

The Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a way for marketers to supplement their current income. Particularly for businesses struggling to sell their own products early on, affiliate sales can make a big difference.

While the majority of affiliate marketers can’t expect to make a living on commissions, those with large audiences are in an advantageous position. They can bring in significant income while putting in a fraction of the effort of the company that created the product.

The Drawbacks of Affiliate Marketing

I would not recommend starting a business solely as an affiliate marketer. Many do it. Few truly succeed for the long-term.

The biggest drawback is how affiliate marketing impacts the relationship between the affiliate and their audience. The danger is that the marketer makes a purchase recommendation — or directly promotes a product — while being motivated more by monetary reward than helping the customer.

First, let’s think about the affiliate marketer who is most likely to succeed. They’ve built a significant audience. How? They’ve offered lots of value and built long-term trust. When this person recommends something, their audience listens.

But damn… Isn’t that a contradiction? You’ve built trust. You’ve assembled this amazing audience of people who will do anything for you. Why waste that trust on selling someone else’s product?

Do you use that product? Does it have a great reputation? What if it fails? What if the brand suffers a PR hit? What if your customer has a terrible experience? And what if that ultimately reflects on you?

It’s one thing when it’s your own product. People understand when you push something of your own. And if it fails, you have ownership and can handle it.

[On a related note — but a tangent — feel free to tell people your product isn’t right for them. It’s not all about the sale right now. They’ll appreciate you more if you’re honest and you don’t believe it’s a good match.]

Let’s look at affiliate marketing in the simplest terms. What type of recommendation is most valuable: 1) One that has no monetary incentive, or 2) one that results in a commission?

It should be pretty obvious that the no-strings recommendation is most likely to provide the most value. It’s coming — it would appear — from a place of helping rather than of resulting in direct revenue.

If I see a Facebook post of yours featuring a photo of you with someone else’s book, I’m much more likely to buy that book if I know that you’ve read it, love it, and aren’t getting a dime for talking about it. But the minute I know money is involved (and affiliate links are easy to spot), trust begins to drop.

Understand that even if the intentions are pure, it doesn’t necessarily matter. All that matters is perception. If the customer thinks that money impacts whether or not you recommend a product, that alters trust.

Trust, once lost, can be difficult to regain. That’s lost revenue.

My Relationship with Affiliate Marketing

I’ve always had an uncomfortable relationship with affiliate marketing. I know how much it can impact trust, and I value my audience way too much.

Earlier in my business, affiliate marketing made up a decent chunk of my revenue. I relied on affiliate commissions while I struggled to sell my own products — and before I created any.

I wrote product reviews. I wrote a post about the products I used and loved. I sent the occasional email. I had ads on my site with affiliate links.

But as I found more and more success selling my own products, I involved myself in affiliate marketing less and less. I pulled myself out.

To me, this migration has been easy. Why would I waste valuable real estate on my website promoting someone else’s product (for which I get a small percentage) instead of my own (for which I get 100%)?

Why would I send you an email about someone else’s product, when I can tell you about my own? I’m already conscious of how many emails I send you. Why would I send that one extra email that makes you unsubscribe by pushing someone else’s product?

I rarely use affiliate links these days. I care very little about them. You’d still be able to search my site and find a few. But they make up about .5% of my revenue. It’s not consequential.

When I make product recommendations these days, I rarely use affiliate links. When I do, I make it very clear that it’s an affiliate link. However, it’s a product I know and love. And you’ll probably sense my discomfort.

The counter argument is, “What’s the big deal? If you love the product already, why not get a few bucks in the process?” And really, you’re not maximizing the value of your audience by leaving that money on the table (or so the argument would go).

But even when it’s a product I know and love, I’m finding little desire to use the affiliate link. I value the trust of my audience more than the few dollars that may result in a commission.

That may sound cheesy, but I consider it a sound business model. I’ve been in business for more than five years. I want to keep people for years at a time. Their trust is incredibly important to me.

I don’t want you to buy one product today. I want you to buy that one product today, but only if it’s a good time for it. And I want you to have such a great experience that you eventually buy five more.

On the flip side of all of this, you may wonder if I offer an affiliate program. People often email me, asking if they can sell my products. They’ll say that they’ve been reading my site for years, and recommend me all the time.

My response: I would hope that whether or not I offer an affiliate program wouldn’t impact whether or not you’d recommend my product.

Maybe that makes me sound like a dick. But so many problems come from an affiliate relationship.

I’ve toyed with affiliate programs. But I’ve never paid out a single commission. I don’t want people to recommend my product only because it may result in a commission. I want people recommending my product because they genuinely find it valuable.

Maybe that will result in fewer people recommending my products. I’m perfectly fine with that.

Granted, some people genuinely find my products valuable and need affiliate revenue to keep their business going. I understand that. But it’s a bad match for my business.

Understand that when motivated by money, some will sell your product at all costs. Some will mislead. Some will deceive. And that will reflect poorly on you.

Ultimately, I haven’t found affiliate marketing — whether accepting commissions or paying them out — to be worth the risk.

Short-Term vs. Long-Term

I see affiliate marketing, in most cases, as a short-term play. You know that some will be turned off by your pushing another product for a commission. But you’re out for that payday.

If you don’t rely on affiliate revenues, you can focus entirely on your products. And when you recommend someone else’s product, you can do so with a clear conscience knowing that it was pure — and that it can be perceived only as such.

I’ve found that my audience appreciates this. There is a ton of crap out there. They don’t know what to believe and whom to trust. And if they know you are simply trying to help, they’ll thank you over and over again.

Honestly? It feels freaking great to recommend a product, knowing I get nothing in return. It feels amazing when I can tell someone that my product isn’t right for them, that it isn’t a good fit.

Short-term, you bet. I’m leaving some silly money on the table. But I’m doing just fine.

My goal is to build a long-term business. While this month’s revenue matters, it shouldn’t be at the expense of future months and years. I’m trying to build an audience of loyal customers who will stick around for years to come.

The Balance of Trust

I, by no means, have perfected affiliate marketing. I don’t enjoy doing it. So maybe I’m not an expert on it and you should listen to someone else.

However… I can speak from the perspective of a consumer. I do not feel like the typical marketer — I don’t enjoy selling. As a result, maybe I see things that other marketers don’t.

Try to see through the eyes of your consumer. What are the things that chip away at trust? What builds trust? What makes them love you? What sends them away?

As a consumer, I see how the typical marketer is perceived. Slimy. Not trustworthy. Deceptive. Willing to say anything for a buck. Shallow. Lacking substance.

So understand that many — if not most — consumers are thinking something similar. How you act will determine whether you gain trust or fall into the slimy category.

It’s really, really easy to start slipping around in the slime when you get involved in affiliate marketing. You can do it ethically, but it’s a constant dodge of puddles.

There Are Exceptions

Before you send me hate mail, I know. I have good friends who are ridiculously successful and they rely pretty heavily on affiliate marketing.

And by “ridiculously successful,” I don’t just mean they make lots of money. I mean that they make lots of money while also having an impeccable reputation.

But remember that they are exceptions. Use them as a model. Notice how they retain your trust. See how they call out affiliate relationships.

The most successful affiliate marketers don’t deceive you. They are personable and transparent. That’s how you can do it long-term.

My Recommendation

I won’t tell you to avoid affiliate marketing. I’ve done it. I still get the occasional affiliate commission check.

But be very careful. Understand that there’s a cost to making a recommendation in exchange for a commission. Even if the dollars are coming in right now.

Supplement your income with affiliate revenue when it’s needed. You need to put food on the table. Put the kids through school. Every dollar counts.

Just remember that there’s a balance. You have long-term goals. Build your own product. Aim to eventually ween yourself off completely of affiliate commissions. Envision the day when you can recommend a product without needing a commission — because your business will be fine without it.

Always take a long-term approach.

Free Webinar for Entrepreneurs

I will be hosting a free webinar for entrepreneurs on February 6, 2017. It will focus on lessons I learned while starting my business. You can learn more about the details of the webinar here, or simply register below…

DATE: Monday, February 6, 2017 TIME: 3pm EST (New York)

The post Entrepreneurs: Affiliate Marketing and the Balance of Trust appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

from Jon Loomer Digital http://www.jonloomer.com/2017/01/25/entrepreneurs-affiliate-marketing/

[marketingplaybook]

Entrepreneurs: Affiliate Marketing and the Balance of Trust

[NOTE: This is the fourth in a series of posts exploring the topic of entrepreneurship. While my focus has and will continue to be on Facebook ads, I have plenty to share about what I’ve learned while building my business.]

This isn’t your typical blog post about affiliate marketing for entrepreneurs. I’m not going to lay down how you can make a whole bunch of money doing it. It’s not the savior of your business.

Affiliate marketing does have its place for entrepreneurs. It had a place in my business. It has a diminishing — but still existent — role now. However, I don’t believe it is a good central, or long-term, strategy.

The purpose of this post isn’t for you to run away scared of affiliate marketing. Some of my marketing friends are very effective at it. They profit from it. And most importantly, they do so ethically while not losing the trust of their audience.

But that’s what takes me to the central focus of this post. It’s a balance. It’s a huge freaking balance. For me, it’s not worth it. I leave many thousands of dollars on the table because affiliate marketing makes me feel dirty.

When done right, there’s nothing dirty about it. But the problem is that there’s a very thin line you walk when recommending a product in exchange for money.

I don’t send emails about other people’s products. I rarely mention products that aren’t mine in my articles, webinars, or podcasts. When I do, it’s common that I’m not using an affiliate link.

Some likely think I’m crazy as a result. Some will be offended by this post. Some will point to the few, great affiliate marketers (many who are my friends) who have figured out the balance.

But I want you to understand that it’s not easy. How you approach this has long-term implications. While I’ve likely been way too conservative on this topic in the eyes of many marketers, I can confidently say that my approach has benefited me in the long-term.

Let’s take a closer look at affiliate marketing, its place in my business, and my recommendation for you…

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing relies on a relationship where one party (the affiliate) sells another party’s product and receives a commission — usually a set dollar amount or percentage of the sale.

In the online world, this is often tracked through the use of affiliate links (custom links to the seller’s website) and promo codes. When sales are made via these special links and promo codes, the affiliate gets a cut.

You may see this in a number of ways:

1) Dedicated Emails: The affiliate will send an email to their entire list or list segment promoting a product. The product company is leveraging the affiliate’s relationships in the form of a direct email recommendation.

2) Product Reviews: You’ll see this in the form of written and video reviews. What may appear to be an unbiased take on a product is actually a veiled sales pitch. Click on the links (which should be marked as affiliate links) and make a purchase, and the reviewer will get a cut.

3) Product Mentions: Other times, a product may get mentioned in an article when the context calls for it. Once again, the affiliate link needs to be called out so that it’s clear the author has a monetary incentive, but that product may be mentioned more casually as a product the affiliate uses as a solution to a common problem.

The Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a way for marketers to supplement their current income. Particularly for businesses struggling to sell their own products early on, affiliate sales can make a big difference.

While the majority of affiliate marketers can’t expect to make a living on commissions, those with large audiences are in an advantageous position. They can bring in significant income while putting in a fraction of the effort of the company that created the product.

The Drawbacks of Affiliate Marketing

I would not recommend starting a business solely as an affiliate marketer. Many do it. Few truly succeed for the long-term.

The biggest drawback is how affiliate marketing impacts the relationship between the affiliate and their audience. The danger is that the marketer makes a purchase recommendation — or directly promotes a product — while being motivated more by monetary reward than helping the customer.

First, let’s think about the affiliate marketer who is most likely to succeed. They’ve built a significant audience. How? They’ve offered lots of value and built long-term trust. When this person recommends something, their audience listens.

But damn… Isn’t that a contradiction? You’ve built trust. You’ve assembled this amazing audience of people who will do anything for you. Why waste that trust on selling someone else’s product?

Do you use that product? Does it have a great reputation? What if it fails? What if the brand suffers a PR hit? What if your customer has a terrible experience? And what if that ultimately reflects on you?

It’s one thing when it’s your own product. People understand when you push something of your own. And if it fails, you have ownership and can handle it.

[On a related note — but a tangent — feel free to tell people your product isn’t right for them. It’s not all about the sale right now. They’ll appreciate you more if you’re honest and you don’t believe it’s a good match.]

Let’s look at affiliate marketing in the simplest terms. What type of recommendation is most valuable: 1) One that has no monetary incentive, or 2) one that results in a commission?

It should be pretty obvious that the no-strings recommendation is most likely to provide the most value. It’s coming — it would appear — from a place of helping rather than of resulting in direct revenue.

If I see a Facebook post of yours featuring a photo of you with someone else’s book, I’m much more likely to buy that book if I know that you’ve read it, love it, and aren’t getting a dime for talking about it. But the minute I know money is involved (and affiliate links are easy to spot), trust begins to drop.

Understand that even if the intentions are pure, it doesn’t necessarily matter. All that matters is perception. If the customer thinks that money impacts whether or not you recommend a product, that alters trust.

Trust, once lost, can be difficult to regain. That’s lost revenue.

My Relationship with Affiliate Marketing

I’ve always had an uncomfortable relationship with affiliate marketing. I know how much it can impact trust, and I value my audience way too much.

Earlier in my business, affiliate marketing made up a decent chunk of my revenue. I relied on affiliate commissions while I struggled to sell my own products — and before I created any.

I wrote product reviews. I wrote a post about the products I used and loved. I sent the occasional email. I had ads on my site with affiliate links.

But as I found more and more success selling my own products, I involved myself in affiliate marketing less and less. I pulled myself out.

To me, this migration has been easy. Why would I waste valuable real estate on my website promoting someone else’s product (for which I get a small percentage) instead of my own (for which I get 100%)?

Why would I send you an email about someone else’s product, when I can tell you about my own? I’m already conscious of how many emails I send you. Why would I send that one extra email that makes you unsubscribe by pushing someone else’s product?

I rarely use affiliate links these days. I care very little about them. You’d still be able to search my site and find a few. But they make up about .5% of my revenue. It’s not consequential.

When I make product recommendations these days, I rarely use affiliate links. When I do, I make it very clear that it’s an affiliate link. However, it’s a product I know and love. And you’ll probably sense my discomfort.

The counter argument is, “What’s the big deal? If you love the product already, why not get a few bucks in the process?” And really, you’re not maximizing the value of your audience by leaving that money on the table (or so the argument would go).

But even when it’s a product I know and love, I’m finding little desire to use the affiliate link. I value the trust of my audience more than the few dollars that may result in a commission.

That may sound cheesy, but I consider it a sound business model. I’ve been in business for more than five years. I want to keep people for years at a time. Their trust is incredibly important to me.

I don’t want you to buy one product today. I want you to buy that one product today, but only if it’s a good time for it. And I want you to have such a great experience that you eventually buy five more.

On the flip side of all of this, you may wonder if I offer an affiliate program. People often email me, asking if they can sell my products. They’ll say that they’ve been reading my site for years, and recommend me all the time.

My response: I would hope that whether or not I offer an affiliate program wouldn’t impact whether or not you’d recommend my product.

Maybe that makes me sound like a dick. But so many problems come from an affiliate relationship.

I’ve toyed with affiliate programs. But I’ve never paid out a single commission. I don’t want people to recommend my product only because it may result in a commission. I want people recommending my product because they genuinely find it valuable.

Maybe that will result in fewer people recommending my products. I’m perfectly fine with that.

Granted, some people genuinely find my products valuable and need affiliate revenue to keep their business going. I understand that. But it’s a bad match for my business.

Understand that when motivated by money, some will sell your product at all costs. Some will mislead. Some will deceive. And that will reflect poorly on you.

Ultimately, I haven’t found affiliate marketing — whether accepting commissions or paying them out — to be worth the risk.

Short-Term vs. Long-Term

I see affiliate marketing, in most cases, as a short-term play. You know that some will be turned off by your pushing another product for a commission. But you’re out for that payday.

If you don’t rely on affiliate revenues, you can focus entirely on your products. And when you recommend someone else’s product, you can do so with a clear conscience knowing that it was pure — and that it can be perceived only as such.

I’ve found that my audience appreciates this. There is a ton of crap out there. They don’t know what to believe and whom to trust. And if they know you are simply trying to help, they’ll thank you over and over again.

Honestly? It feels freaking great to recommend a product, knowing I get nothing in return. It feels amazing when I can tell someone that my product isn’t right for them, that it isn’t a good fit.

Short-term, you bet. I’m leaving some silly money on the table. But I’m doing just fine.

My goal is to build a long-term business. While this month’s revenue matters, it shouldn’t be at the expense of future months and years. I’m trying to build an audience of loyal customers who will stick around for years to come.

The Balance of Trust

I, by no means, have perfected affiliate marketing. I don’t enjoy doing it. So maybe I’m not an expert on it and you should listen to someone else.

However… I can speak from the perspective of a consumer. I do not feel like the typical marketer — I don’t enjoy selling. As a result, maybe I see things that other marketers don’t.

Try to see through the eyes of your consumer. What are the things that chip away at trust? What builds trust? What makes them love you? What sends them away?

As a consumer, I see how the typical marketer is perceived. Slimy. Not trustworthy. Deceptive. Willing to say anything for a buck. Shallow. Lacking substance.

So understand that many — if not most — consumers are thinking something similar. How you act will determine whether you gain trust or fall into the slimy category.

It’s really, really easy to start slipping around in the slime when you get involved in affiliate marketing. You can do it ethically, but it’s a constant dodge of puddles.

There Are Exceptions

Before you send me hate mail, I know. I have good friends who are ridiculously successful and they rely pretty heavily on affiliate marketing.

And by “ridiculously successful,” I don’t just mean they make lots of money. I mean that they make lots of money while also having an impeccable reputation.

But remember that they are exceptions. Use them as a model. Notice how they retain your trust. See how they call out affiliate relationships.

The most successful affiliate marketers don’t deceive you. They are personable and transparent. That’s how you can do it long-term.

My Recommendation

I won’t tell you to avoid affiliate marketing. I’ve done it. I still get the occasional affiliate commission check.

But be very careful. Understand that there’s a cost to making a recommendation in exchange for a commission. Even if the dollars are coming in right now.

Supplement your income with affiliate revenue when it’s needed. You need to put food on the table. Put the kids through school. Every dollar counts.

Just remember that there’s a balance. You have long-term goals. Build your own product. Aim to eventually ween yourself off completely of affiliate commissions. Envision the day when you can recommend a product without needing a commission — because your business will be fine without it.

Always take a long-term approach.

Free Webinar for Entrepreneurs

I will be hosting a free webinar for entrepreneurs on February 6, 2017. It will focus on lessons I learned while starting my business. You can learn more about the details of the webinar here, or simply register below…

DATE: Monday, February 6, 2017 TIME: 3pm EST (New York)

The post Entrepreneurs: Affiliate Marketing and the Balance of Trust appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

[symbianosgames]

Games Have Too Many Words: A Case Study.

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

In this chapter, I unwisely critique the work of my betters.

I recently wrote an article about how video games have too many words. We designers don't properly edit our writing to make sure our words are worth a player’s time reading them.

I want to do a case study where I go through a wordy game, step-by-step, and show what it's doing right and wrong and how it could be doing better. Most game criticism frustrates me. It tends to deal with generalities and floaty ideas, instead of dirtying its hands with specifics that could actually help make for better games. This is my chance to egotistically provide a different approach.

This breakdown will be long and gritty, but I'll try to include a lot of solid pointers. I'll throw in some jokes along the way.

The Subject

Let's look at the very beginning of Pillars of Eternity, developed by Obsidian and released in 2015. This game was a huge hit, critically and financially, taking advantage of a shortage of quality Baldur's Gate-style, gritty, isometric-view, story-heavy titles.

I really wanted a game like that, so I bought it. I finished it in a little over 20 hours. The combat was fine, though really chaotic and hard to follow. (The best description I read was "clusterf***y".) The story was OK, but the game is loaded with words, many of them written by Kickstarter backers. I ended up getting through all the conversations in the back third of the game by typing the '1' key as fast as I could.

I did play Pillars until the end, which is rare for me. Overall, it was pretty good. It made a lot of money, and the crowdfunding for the sequel is doing quite well.

I don't usually like being negative about the work of other sincere, industrious creators. Luckily this game got enough cash and acclaim that its creators can comfortably ignore the nattering of a non-entity like me.

This is how I picture the devs of Pillars of Eternity. They walk everywhere with big clip art watermarks floating over their chests.

"So What's Your Complaint?"

Too many words.

Pillars of Eternity wants to have a really elaborate world and story, which is fine. It wants to have a creative game system, with new, innovative sorts of character classes and spells, which is great.

However, it doesn't do a good job of communicating stuff to the player, because there's no editing and care in giving out information. The game just floods the player with text, important bits buried in gushes of irrelevant detail, practically training the player to think that the words aren't really important. (Again, I played a huge chunk of the game without reading anything but the quest log.)

To illustrate this, I'm going to go, step by step, through the introduction and character creation, the stuff anyone who tries the game is sure to see. Let's see what the game thinks is worth the player's time and how good a job it does splitting up vital knowledge from static.

"So What? You're Just Scared of Words, You Sub-Literate?"

No, I have a problem with the pacing. The human brain can only absorb so many random facts about game systems and lore at one sitting. This stuff needs to be carefully paced out, or it'll just slide off of the brain.

But character creation in this game floods the player with tons of facts, both about the game and the world. I came out of it feeling numb and confused, and almost none of it stuck.

So. You start the game. You pick your difficulty. And then you begin the eleven (!!!) steps of character creation.

I. Introduction.

A pretty graphic and some basic text saying what is going on (you're on a caravan going to some fantasy town, you feel sick), read by an old guy. About 140 words. It's fine.

II. Pick Your Sex

And now the troubles begin. You need to choose whether you are male or female. Here's a description:

Describing the sexes is about 160 words total. But look, it mentions a bunch of different countries. Let's mouse over one of them and see what their deal is.

Yikes! That's a lot of words. All the descriptions together are about 330 words, much of it references to random game locations the player has no knowledge of. "Ein Glanfath" "Dyrwood" "Glanfathan" "Ixamitl" "Naasitaq" How can anyone get anything coherent from this tangle? This is literally the second thing the game shows you.

Seriously, try this: Read the description of "Eir Glanfath" above. Then close your eyes and count to ten. Then say everything you recall about Eir Glanfath. I'll bet you retained very little. And that's setting aside whether this stuff is actually necessary to play the game. (Not really.)

And, worse, it's all irrelevant to the actual choice the player has to make, because the vast majority of players will know whether they want to play a man or a woman before they even launch the game. If a woman only ever plays female characters, telling her, "The men of the Derpaderp Tribe of Sirius XII are in charge of all of their basket-weaving!" isn't going to turn her head around.

My Friendly Suggestion - Go through all these random facts and see if there are one or two of them the player MUST know. Pluck them out and put them in the Introduction. Cram the rest of the lore in books the player finds in the game world. Then make Male/Female be a toggle in the next screen.

III. Pick Your Race

OK, we're into solid fantasy RPG territory now. Here are six races to choose from:

You've never heard of three of the races. This is good. Pillars's desire to create new, weird things is one of its good points. Each race has about fifty words of description:

Now, this is a description of a "dwarf." But, if you have even the slightest familiarity with fantasy, you know what we're talking about here: Standard-issue, Tolkein dwarves. Short. Stocky. Like digging holes, gold, and ale. Grumpy. Scottish accents. We get it. All you need to say here is, "Strong, durable, great warriors."

For each of the races, the description mainly says the lands they live in. Let's be clear. This is useless information. If I tell you dwarves come from New Jersey, whether or not you've heard of New Jersey, this tells you nothing about whether you want to be a dwarf in your adolescent power fantasy.

It's a total cliche to say, "Show, Don't Tell," but this is a PERFECT example of why this is a key concept in writing. If I say, "Dwarves come from New Jersey," and you've never even heard of New Jersey (or dwarves), you won't care. But if you go to New Jersey, look around, and see nothing but dwarves, you'll instantly be all, "Oh, I get it! I'm in Dwarfland!"

But it gets trickier. This is the first choice you make that has actual impact on the gameplay. There are six statistics in the game, and your race affects what you start with. Each statistic description is 50 more words. Let's take a look at one:

What "Might" means is important information. The player needs this. This text needs to be punchy and clear. Something like, "Improves damage from all attacks. Gives a bonus when healing. Helps intimidate people in conversation."

And this description does that, but messily and with lots of extra words. Pillars tries to do a lot of things differently from other RPGs, so it needs to be extra-clear about the surprising stuff. Having the strength skill also improve spells and healing is neat, but it's also really unusual. ("Dwarves are better wizards? Wut!?")

My Friendly Suggestion - Editing pass. Shorter and clearer. Ask, "Why does the player need to know this?" If you don't have a good answer, save this lore for much later.

IV. Pick your Sub-Race

This is where the seriously over-designed quality of Pillars starts to show up. Picking a race isn't enough. You have to pick your sub-race:

So about 160 words (not counting rollover text), to learn about the woods dwarves and the mountain dwarves:

None of this lore has anything to do with the actual game.

What bugs me here is that this choice has gameplay significance. One choice gives you resistance to Poison and Disease (though you have no idea how serious these conditions are or how often they appear in the game), and one gives you a bonus against "Wilder" and "Primordial" creatures (though you have no idea what on Earth those are, let alone how often they show up in the game).

Giving a player seemingly high-impact decisions with no ability to tell which one is correct is stressful and confusing.

My Friendly Suggestion - Ditch sub-races. Instead, give Dwarves BOTH of these bonuses. This creates more distinction between the races and getting multiple bonuses helps the player feel more powerful instead of confused and stressed.

"Cutting Out Lore? What Is Your Problem With Lore In Games, You Jerk?"

Lore in games is great, as long is it's not thrown at the player too quickly and without any gameplay context that makes it mean something.

If you love lore, I want you to get lore, but in a way that spares the people who find huge dumps of it grueling. There are ways to make everyone happy!

Anyway, let's keep going. There's a LOT more screens to go.

V. Pick Your Class

Hokay! At last, this is the big one! This makes a huge difference in your play experience. Here are your eleven choices:

One of the coolest things about Pillars is that they tried to make some weird classes unlike anything in other games. The cost of creativity, however, is that you have to be extra-careful when explaining to the player the weird stuff they've never seen before.

When I started the game, my eyes were instantly drawn to "Cipher". That sounds neat! And here is the description ...

Yikes.

The main description of the class is four long sentences, but only the second sentence actually says much about what the class does. Then a very vague description of the powers, which involve something vitally important called a "Soul Whip," with no explanation of what that actually is. Then a bunch of algebra.

That's about 120 words, for one class. You have to go through all of it to get a vague idea of how the class plays. The other ten class descriptions are comparably complex.

This is just too much stuff to muck through, too early, for a choice so important to the play experience. Bear in mind that we are still less than halfway to actually playing a game.

My Friendly Suggestion - For each class, only show the stat bonuses and two or three carefully written sentences describing what it's like. Move all the weird lore and mathematical formulae to a different tab that can be opened by those who care. When the player starts using the class in the game, bring up some tutorial windows saying the key details of how to actually use it, like what a "Soul Whip" is.

VI. Pick Your Class Details.

If you're a priest, you have to pick your god. If you're a caster, you have to select a spell or two from the starting list. For the Cipher, the list looks like this ...

The spell descriptions look like this ...

Again, a ton of reading, referring to statistics, distances, statuses, damage amounts, damage types, etc. that mean nothing because you've never actually played the game.

My Friendly Suggestion - Lose this screen entirely. Pick one basic, useful ability (the best one) and give it to the character automatically to get through the tutorial. Then, after the first bunch of fights, have the player meet a trainer and be able to choose new abilities in an informed way.

VII. Edit Your Character Attributes.

Figure out how many points of Strength, Constitution, etc. you have. The game, to its credit, says which ones are most important for your class. Standard RPG fare.

VIII. Pick Your Culture

IF YOU'RE JUST SPEED-SCROLLING THROUGH THIS ARTICLE, STOP HERE AND READ THIS!!!!

Yeah, I know you aren't reading all of this. This post is wayyyyy too long and gritty and nit-picky and tedious. But reading this article takes much less time than actually picking through all of these windows in the game. Which is too long. That is my main point. Now scroll to the end and call me an idiot in comments.

Anyway, yeah, pick some country you're from ...

Each of the 7 contures has about 70 words of description.

None of this has anything to do with playing the game.

This is the most unnecessary step in the whole process. When making an RPG character, you need to build two things: Its stats/abilities and its personality.

Knowing your character is from "The White that Wends" tells you nothing about its abilities, and it's a lousy way to determine his or her personality. If you read the description of "The White that Wends," and learn that people from there are mean and selfish, that's still not the way you want to player to create a mean, selfish character. You do that by giving play options in the game that are mean and selfish and letting the player pick them. Show, don't tell.

My Friendly Suggestion - Lose it entirely.

IX. Pick Your Background.

Choose from one of nine backgrounds.

The main thing this affects is that, every once in a while, it will open up a new dialogue option. This never makes a big difference.

My Friendly Suggestion - There's a real lost opportunity here. Once again, "Show, Don't Tell." Instead of having me declare that my character is a Slave or Aristocrat or whatever, why not, once you’re in the game, make every conversation option for all of these different nine backgrounds available to me when the game starts.

Then, if I keep making the "Aristocrat" pick, start removing the other options, so that I end up always talking like an Aristocrat. Then my character's personality emerges organically from the sort of dialogue choices I make in the actual game.

X. Choose Appearance and Voice.

Standard appearance editor and list of different voices. It's fine.

XI. Choose Your Name.

Gladly.

XII. The Game.

And, finally, the games starts with the tutorial. Which begins with a long conversation. Which I barely pay attention to, because my stupid brain is tired.

It's all way too much. Too many words, too many irrelevant choices, exhausting when it should be informative. Not that they will listen to me, but it might be an improvement to look for in Pillars of Eternity 2, because the market is not what it was in 2015.

"But Who Cares? The Game Was a Hit, Right?"

The real test of how good a game it is, is not how it sells, but how much its sequel sells. And it is entirely fair to ask what business a pissant like me has criticizing a hit game written by a bunch of big names.

Let's leave behind the idea of craftsmanship and a desire to always keep improving our work.

Lately, sequels to hit RPGs have been selling far worse than their predecessors. Obsidian's successor to Pillars, Tyranny, by their own words, underperformed.

Also, I looked at the Steam achievement statistics for Pillars of Eternity. According to those, fewer than half of players finished the first chapter. Only about 10% of players completed the game.

Now granted, this is not unusual. Most games remain unfinished. But that still invites this question: If the vast majority of players didn't want to experience the Pillars of Eternity they already paid for, why think that they will want to buy more?

Everyone should keep improving, if just for their survival in this mercilessly competitive business.

Video games are a new art form, and there is still so much we have to figure out. That's the terrifying and awesome thing about making them. And now, having already written way too many words, I will take my own advice and cease.

###

The author sells his own flawed, wordy, old-school RPGs at Spiderweb Software. He opines on Twitter.