I was interested in Funcom's new game, Conan Exiles, for about half a minute when I was reading about a survival game with exploration and crafting. Then the interest ended abruptly when I realized that it was yet another PvP game. Free for all PvP games are designed specifically for loser jerks who still live in their mother's basement and who need the success experience of PvP griefing in order to feel better about their pathetic existence. For the developers it is a lot cheaper to have players serve as "content" for each other rather than try to balance decent PvE content. The result is usually pretty much unplayable for normal people, although the sadists appear to enjoy it.

I haven't found a good multiplayer survival game yet which isn't based on PvP griefing as source of content. Probably because it is so difficult to make a good system that isn't overwhelmed by the action of the players. Ultima Online had an artificial life engine that didn't survive the onslaught of the players and was scrapped. In games like A Tale in the Desert you needed to carefully choose the place you wanted to build your house: Too close to the other players meant getting into each other's way, while too far away in the wilderness meant having to run very far for access to necessary common locations like temples.

I do think a good game could be made based on those principles, competition over resources without the easy way out of PvP. The world just has to be large enough so that an accumulation can only lead to a local scarcity of let's say wood when players did fell all trees, and not to a global one. A system in which players can make laws, like in A Tale in the Desert, is much more realistic of human history than a game of anarchic free-for-all PvP.

Most consoles have the ability to connect several controllers and play games in local multi-player mode, whether that be co-op or against each other. PC games don't often offer local multi-player modes. Usually there is just one set of keyboard + mouse controls, and that makes everything but "hot seat" multi-player somewhat difficult. Eon Altar is claiming to have found the solution for that: Everybody has a smart phone or tablet anyways, so why not use those as controllers for a local co-op RPG for up to 4 players?

Not only do the mobile devices serve as controllers, but they also allow each player to have secrets like personal quests or personalized thoughts. And only the player in question sees his dialogue options and menus. While other players need to wait for dialogue choices, other character management menus can be used without holding up the rest of the party.

Sounds like a good idea, but in reality there are some flaws in the plan: Console controllers are made in a way that you don't need to look at them while you use them, leaving you free to watch the screen. That doesn't work for touch screens, so in Eon Altar you constantly need to switch between looking at the main screen and looking at your mobile device screen. I tried to play Eon Altar solo and the controls were so awkward that I gave up after half an hour. I don't have a PC connected to a living room TV either, so local multi-player would at most work for two in my little office. Not that I'm sure that 4 people sitting on a couch around a living room screen would want to play an epic, episodic RPG instead of something shorter.

The turn-based combat isn't bad, except for the friendly fire. My crusader had an ability to swing his sword in a circle, damaging everybody around him, including his allies. Either I missed it, or the range of it wasn't clearly displayed, and as players act simultaneously others could easily run into your area effect even if you didn't want to hit them. On the positive side the game is sold in episodes, so buying the first episode and testing it out with your friends to see whether you like it is relatively cheap. The mobile app is free, and only one player needs to buy the game.

Maybe I'm spoiled by having a group of friends for real pen & paper role-playing, but Eon Altar isn't a game I personally need. Uninstalled!

In the previous session the group finished the second adventure of the Zeitgeist adventure path, The Dying Skyseer. So this time we started adventure 3, Digging for Lies. After having arrested Mayor Reed Macbannin, who then committed suicide in custody, the constables were removed from the case by Lady Inspectress Margaret Saxby, who doesn't like other members of the RHC getting too much press. Now they are on duty to supervise the Kaybeau Arms and Technology Exposition (imagine an early World Exposition). While the local police is in charge of pickpockets and drunkards, the RHC is supposed to keep an eye out for more sinister plots, like industrial espionage, or illegal arms trading.

Arriving at the fair they meet their police contact, Sergeant Sara Lockheart. The police is mainly concentrating around the three main pavilions, for military, railway, and industry. The group decides not to have a look around this main area, but heads for the more interesting gun alley stage to the north. Here they find different vendors of classic and futuristic firearms and armor, as well as ammunition, holsters, and other gun related stuff. Famed explorer and musician Rock Rackus also has his tent in this area, preparing a show about his daring travel to the moon. A shooting range is offering people the opportunity to test fire or try out their newly acquired guns.

Somewhat dispersed among these various activities, the constables watch what is going on. A young mage with long, blond hair, carrying a wooden staff, enters the shooting range and negotiates its use for testing out his magical staff. Suddenly, out of nowhere, several strange monsters appear. They are unlike any monsters the group has ever heard of, and they are phasing and insubstantial. Aria the spirit medium, as well as the two psionics James and Artus, are able to identify that as a property called "thoughtform". They believe the monsters have something to do with thought, or could be influenced by thought, but without knowing exactly how. The young mage fires a magic missile from his staff at one of the monsters, but that appears to summon yet another monster next to him. It is also curious that when he uses his staff as an implement, the wooden staff turns into solid gold for a round.

Combat ensues, but in spite of that the constables are able to persuade the mage to stop using his staff. However the already existing monster prove to be very tough, due to their insubstantial trait reducing all damage by half. Artus has a spell that gives all allies around him the ability to hit insubstantial monsters with full damage from melee attacks, but the group is so dispersed that no melee combatant is close to him. For several rounds the group just doesn't move much and each constable hits the monster closest to him. This lack of concentrated fire doesn't make the fight easier or shorter. So because of real life time constraints we had to stop in the middle of the battle and leave the rest of the fight for the next session.

Back in 1990 president George H.W. Bush said that he hated broccoli, a statement that led to outrage by the California broccoli industry. Since then the joke has become a staple of every political sitcom: A politician makes a remark that would be considered completely harmless by most people, only to then face a huge backlash, forcing all sorts of funny spin-doctoring. The popular impression is that as a politician you just can't say anything! Obama even got into trouble for saying he liked broccoli.

In that sense the Trump administration is certainly an improvement on presidential freedom of speech. A president should have the same right to an opinion on everyday stuff like broccoli as anybody else, regardless of special interest groups trying to censor him. And as long as he is consistent the president should also be able to say what he thinks about politics, even if much of it is necessarily going to be divisive. Trump, after being elected on a protectionist, anti-globalisation platform can hardly be blamed for now saying (and enacting in the case of the TPP) protectionist stuff against globalisation. I don't think "you can't say that, it would upset somebody" is a viable demand towards politicians. The idea to please every single special interest group out there in order to maximize votes is flawed from the outset, and doesn't lead to anywhere good.

Having said that, words have consequences, even for presidents. Being a straight talker usually isn't helpful in diplomacy. A president should have the right to defend his country against foreign interests in word and deed, but sometimes you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. And if you want to hurt another country, you better consider first how that country might hurt you back. Sometimes you just need to pick your fights, instead of fighting in all directions simultaneously. Why insult Europe needlessly if you are already in a fight with the developing countries that benefited most from globalisation?

And while I do think that the president should have the freedom of speech to say what he thinks (which is much better than forcing him to lie), a president also needs a skin thick enough to deal with the freedom of speech of others. Persecuting others for disagreeing with him is not a good presidential trait. It makes him look like the spoiled brat dictator of Trumpistan instead of the most powerful statesman of the world. Without the use of a Stalinist system of tyranny a politician can never get 99.8% approval rating. And the cost of silencing dissenting voices is far, far higher than the benefit, as every dictator sooner or later learned. Freedom of speech is not just for presidents, it is for everybody.

Apart from other claims to faim, Magic the Gathering might also be the game that invented Pay2Win. There is a cap to it, so tournament play becomes possible because all tournament players have all the cards they need. But for the average player with a small to medium-sized collection, added cards mean more options for deckbuilding and improved chance to win.

As I said, in Magic Duels (iOS) I have all the available cards from the basis set and the 6 expansions. At the start I spent some money on the basis set, but through regular playing I earned so much gold that these days I can buy a complete expansion the day it comes out. Maximum options for deckbuilding, but not a huge challenge. Especially since the PvP system is so bad.

So I started a new project: I started Magic Duels the PC version, available for free on Steam. And I'm playing really for free. I played the story mode enough to buy one booster from each expansion, which also unlocks the starter cards from each of those expansions. So now I have a tiny collection of 197 cards, mostly commons, compared to the 1159 cards I have in the iOS version. And that fundamentally changes the way I build decks.

I don't think I'll play this long enough to get all cards, but right now it is a nice little challenge to try and build some decent decks with such a limited card pool. And when I earn enough gold to buy a booster, it is more exciting to see whether there are cards in it useful for one of my existing decks.

Sorry, second Magic Duels post in a row, and somewhat related to the first one. I used my accumulated gold to buy the whole Aether Revolt expansion in Magic Duels (iOS). Whenever you buy a large number of Magic cards in one go, you need some time to understand what all those cards do. The best way to do so is by playing with them. So I built a rather crazy deck: 20 plains, 4 evolving wilds (for deck thinning and powering revolt abilitities), 1 each of every white card in the Aether Revolt expansion, 1 each of every vehicle card in the Aether Revolt expansion, fill the remaining slots with a second copy of low casting cost white creatures from Aether Revolt.

This is basically building a deck without even looking much at the cards you put in. Which means that it shouldn't work. The surprise is that it does, I'm actually winning a rather good percentage of games against the AI at medium difficulty with it. Well, I did look a bit and saw lots of effects regarding vehicles, which is why I put the vehicles in the deck. But the other cards of the expansion are also all designed to work with each other, as long as you stick to one color.

Of course by having only one or two copies of each card in the deck, it isn't very reliable to produce combos. But sometimes you end up having the one mana vehicle that is very strong but hard to activate, and the enchantment that permanently activates it, and you end up with a huge, flying monstrosity. Some cards are just single-card miracles, like Call for Unity, which makes your creatures stronger every time one of your cards leave the battlefield. Or the enchantment for two mana that you can return to your hand for one mana, and power all those neat new revolt abilities every turn.

By playing the deck repeatedly I have now a rather good idea of the white cards in Aether Revolt. Obvious next step is doing the same with the other 4 colors. Oodles of fun, and I haven't even begun with real deckbuilding.

I am still playing Magic the Gathering in the form of Magic Duels on iOS every day. Today a new expansion, Aether Revolt, came out and I'm looking forward to playing with the new cards. While I spent some money on Magic Duels at the start, my daily playing gives me enough gold that I can buy a complete new expansion the day it comes out without having to spend any real money. So far, so good.

Like most other games, in Magic Duels I mostly play PvE against the artificial intelligence. I don't know how many people play Magic Duels on the iOS, but if you choose a PvP game you frequently wait a long time before you find an opponent, so long it sometimes even times out. And then you run into the usual problems of PvP, with people throwing games as soon as they run into the first difficulties. So while theoretically a PvP game could give you a much bigger challenge than a PvE game, in practice it frequently doesn't.

So where is the fun in playing against moderately challenging AI opponents? Well, for me Magic the Gathering was never about building the unbeatable deck and refining it to absolute perfection. There are a lot of people on the tournament circuit out there who do that. The result is always the same, an environment in which only a small handful of decks is viable. Many other deck ideas are more fun, but less efficient, and thus get weeded out. By playing against a moderate player in the form of the Magic Duels AI, the fun decks become viable options. So I can amuse myself all day building crazy decks and trying them out.

In the basic set of the early editions of Magic the Gathering there was a creature card called Grizzly Bears. It never was a particularly good card, costing 2 mana for a 2/2 vanilla creature. But it resulted in an interesting thought experiment: What if your opponent was playing a deck consisting of 20 forests and 40 grizzly bears? (Not a tournament legal deck by any standards, it's a thought experiment). What that opponent would play every turn and how he would attack is rather predictable, so you know you would face the first grizzly bear in turn 2, another in turn 3, possibly two more in round 4, etc. The argument of the thought experiment was that if the fanciful combo deck that you just imagined can't beat this imaginary Grizzly Bears deck, you should throw your deck away and try a different idea. The Grizzly Bears deck isn't a real opponent, but it provides a minimum challenge that your deck must be able to beat in order to be not completely ridiculous.

For me the AI decks in Magic Duels are somewhat improved Grizzly Bears decks. They usually are all about playing more and more, bigger and bigger creatures. There is sometimes a bit of removal, but never any mass removal that would completely change the environment. And there are sometimes cute tricks with enchantments and artifacts, but never devastating combos that one-shot kill you. They are far from the decks a tournament player would play, but they provide a good challenge between easy and medium (depending on the difficulty level you choose). And that gives me the perfect environment to try out fun decks.

By the way, even a tournament deck can lose a game against a Grizzly Bears deck, due to the inherent randomness of Magic the Gathering. If you draw only lands, or not enough lands, or lands that don't fit the color of your spells, or any other combination of cards that just don't fit together, even a mediocre AI with a mediocre deck will win the game. In Magic Duels I have some doubts about the random numbers generator, which appears to produce clumping far more often than statistical probability would predict. In any case, a deck I build as a fun idea is far from being an automatic win, even if I win far more than half of my games. There is never "no challenge at all".

There has been a lot of discussion lately about fake news, so much that politicians are now considering what to do about them. Which is pretty much doomed from the start. I don't think there is a single news outlet existing in the world in which each and every report contains only objective truth, not even scientific journals. And what exactly is fake news? A newspaper headline stating "Trump says Obama wasn't born in America" is both true (Trump said that) and fake (Obama was born in America). The same can be said about "Intelligence organizations have dossier about Trump visiting prostitutes in Russia", or "Woman claims Trump sexually assaulted her". By reporting that somebody else says something a newspaper can always claim that their report is true, even if the root of the news is fake. "Trump says X" will always be news, even if we all know that not everything Trump says is the truth.

What the discussion about fake news reveals is two major societal weaknesses: One is that news outlets are mostly copying news and doing very little investigative journalism. The other is that most news outlets don't even try to be unbiased any more. Something happens, both Fox News and the Huffington Post copy the same source, but put a very different spin on it that is designed to help their side rather than to communicate any actual truth. People don't read news to be informed, they read the news to be comforted in their existing bias and choose a news outlet that shares their bias.

If you wanted to purge the news from fake news, you would first need to agree on what the truth is. It is pretty obvious that even on the most outrageous claims there is never any agreement on that. You can't put politicians in jail for telling lies about their opponents, and you can't put journalists in jail for printing those lies. What you can do is establish a tyranny in which the word of the ruler is absolute truth and everybody disagreeing will be persecuted, but very few people in the USA actually want that.

The only way out is media competency. People need to be aware that news isn't reality, isn't truth, isn't unbiased. If you storm a pizza restaurant with an assault rifle because you read that Hilary Clinton is running a child sex operation from there, you obviously didn't have the media competency required to make even the most basic reality check on stuff you read. What we need is more fake news, until media outlets become wary of copying stuff that gets them into trouble later and start investigating the truth themselves instead of looking for it online. We need more fake news until everybody realizes that news aren't truth.

Wikipedia describes Amazon as "the largest Internet-based retailer in the world". But once you scratch the surface a little bit it turns out that instead of having one large international company, Amazon is run as a bundle of now 19 local companies. And if you don't live in one of those 19 countries, things sometimes get a little weird.

Last month I signed up for Amazon Prime, a service that bundles access to a video streaming service with other advantages like free one-day shipping. However it quickly turned out that this is a very local offer. If I sign up from Belgium, I sign up for Amazon.fr and nothing else. Free shipping only from Amazon.fr, and access to Prime Video only to the selection of Amazon.fr. Unfortunately Amazon.fr is frequently more expensive than let's say Amazon.de, and the Prime Video catalog is by far the smallest. And often dubbing or subtitles are only available in French, which is my least favorite language of the three I speak. That is especially annoying for the Dutch speaking half of Belgium, but isn't ideal for expats either.

During my Christmas holidays in Germany I thus signed up for Amazon Prime for Amazon.de. I had to use a different e-mail address for that, as signing up for Amazon Prime on two Amazon sites with the same e-mail is causing an error message. The big upside of Amazon.de over Amazon.fr is cheaper prices and a much larger selection of films and series on Prime Video. The downside is that the free shipping only applies to shipping addresses in Germany and Austria. And as soon as you leave the country your Prime Video access is limited to Prime original series. Just like Netflix you can circumvent that using a good VPN like ExpressVPN.

In balance I finally cancelled the French Prime and went for the German one. I only get free shipping when I send things to friends and family in Germany, but for the items I send to Belgium the lower price on the German site more or less makes up for the shipping cost. And I never subscribed to the notion that circumventing regional restrictions for media somehow constitutes "piracy", there is a big difference between smugglers and pirates. The one series I really want to watch, The Grand Tour with Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May is a Prime original anyway and can be watched without regional restrictions. Maybe one day services like Amazon and Netflix become really international and serve people not living in their native countries better.

In the previous session the group finally killed Cillian Creed, whose killing of a young girl had kicked of this adventure. They had arrested Mayor Reed Macbannin and thus taken care of the main characters behind the production of witchoil. What remained to do now was to stop that production and prevent what could best be described as the first industrial disaster of that world. Besides the mayor, who was willing to help to stop the catastrophe, the constables also relied on the help of a technician whom they found hiding in one of the rooms of the witchoil laboratory. They kept the two apart so that they couldn't agree on a story and could be questioned separately on the technical details.

The problem as the mayor told them was that on the lower floor there was an enchanted eldritch machine which tapped a rift in the Shadowfell plane to produce an endless flow of witchoil. Normally that witchoil was then pumped deeper into the mountain for a purpose the mayor couldn't talk about. Couldn't as in really couldn't, as apparently he was under a geas type of spell that prevented him from talking about the purpose of the witchoil operation. The earthquake had stopped the pumps and the power supply, but the group had already managed to restore the power.

Now they went downstairs, where they found the room where the eldritch engine was supposed to be already flooded with witchoil. An alarm rang out from the pump room, but no pumps were running. With the help of the technician they disabled the alarm and started the pump. However that caused another alarm, and the technician quickly shut down the pump again. He showed the group a pressure gauge that indicated a dangerous rise in pressure when the pump was turned on. Apparently the relief outflow pipe of witchoil had been crushed. The group went to the room and crossed some catwalks to reach the outflow pipes. A big lever was set to "relief", and they moved it in the other position, "down". Now they could restart the pumps and the level of the witchoil dropped. Once the level was low enough to empty the room with the eldritch engine, the mayor warned them to stop pumping oil down because of serious consequences he still couldn't talk about. So they stopped the pumps, went to the eldritch engine and turned the spigot off. Eldion even managed to close the rift and permanently disabled the eldritch engine.

They discussed destroying the witchoil laboratory completely, but the lab was their main piece of evidence of the wrongdoings of Mayor Reed Macbannin. So instead they sent two group members to fetch their boss, Assistant Chief Inspector Stover Delft. Delft was somewhat reluctant, because his boss, Lady Inspectress Margaret Saxby was absent, but they could persuade him that this was urgent and so he came with soldiers and other constables to secure the witchoil laboratory. The manor was on fire from the earthquake, so the group couldn't search it. So they followed their boss's instructions and transported Macbannin to the court house, where a special hearing was convened for the next day. Not allowed to stay and guard the mayor, the constables returned with their boss to the Royal Homeland Constabulary HQ. There Lady Saxby had returned and gave Delft a bollocking for having acted without her approval. The group was nevertheless commended, but removed from the case in order to "prevent negative effects from their rising notoriety" (while Lady Saxby then went to give an interview to the newspapers how she personally had overcome this danger to the city).

The next day the court hearing started, but the accused wasn't present. The constables went to the holding cells, where they found the guards in disarray and Macbannin dead. Apparently the mayor had first started talking to himself (one guard thought he heard mention of "the council"), then asked a guard for a cigarette; after smoking that Macbannin repeatedly crushed his skull into the cell wall and died before the guards could open the cell door and restrain him. Thus the hearing ended prematurely and the constables returned to the HQ. There they were told to not involve themselves any more with the witchoil case or Gale, but to prepare security for the Kaybeau Arms and Technology Exposition in two and a half months time. With that we ended the session, and the characters reached level 5. Soon we will start the next adventure of the campaign, Digging for Lies.

The video streaming business must be the weirdest failure of capitalism. No other business is so inherently suited to globalisation, because anyone, anywhere with a broadband internet connection can theoretically be a customer. And no other business fails so dismally to live up to that promise of globalisation. If you live in the USA you are up to your eyeballs in offers of video streaming services like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO, and lots of others. If you live in Belgium most of these services refuse to sell to you, and actually have security measures in place to prevent you to sign up with a fake address or something.

Last year Netflix went global, although local regional content is much more limited than what is on offer in the USA. Today Amazon Prime Video went global, and expanded its coverage from the 19 countries which have a local Amazon site to 200 countries, that is pretty much everywhere except China. That is especially nice for Belgium, because while I could freely buy films on DVD from the three neighboring country Amazon sites without regional restriction, and when I searched for a film or TV show the Amazon video offer was displayed, I was then unable to access the videos previously. Today I was able to sign up for Amazon Prime and get access.

I don't know yet how the number of films and TV shows on Amazon Prime Video compares to Netflix, especially since the catalog on Amazon is a limited, local one, just like Netflix's. However Amazon Prime is cheaper than Netflix and is bundled with other services like fast free shipping, cloud storage for photos, and free Kindle eBooks. The user interface of Amazon Prime Video is a carbon copy of the Netflix UI. And both now have the ability to download videos and watch them when you don't have access to internet.

Previously I could have signed up for Amazon Prime, but would have only received the other services like the free shipping, and not the video. The added video streaming service, and especially The Grand Tour (the spiritual successor of Top Gear) now made me sign up for Amazon Prime. As I am a frequent customer of physical goods on Amazon, I'm nearly certain that the service is going to pay for itself, with the free shipping alone being worth the fee. So I don't mind being now subscribed to both Netflix and Amazon Prime.

I will have to see how the offer on the two services evolves over time. The Netflix video streaming business is the main business of Netflix. Amazon video is a minor part of Amazon. They can offer me more videos for cheaper, because they can count on me buying stuff on Amazon more often with the bundled free shipping. But both Amazon and Netflix still suffer from not having the right to show all of their content globally. We will see which one of them overcomes that restriction.

The talk of the week on sites discussing technology is that Apple released its AirPods, the $150 wireless earphones, for sale. Now I'm not one of the people who queue before Apple Stores to always have the latest and greatest in technology. But on AirPods I am way ahead of the curve, as I have been wearing $4000 wireless earphones that work with iPads and iPhones for half a year now. Only they aren't called AirPods, they are called hearing aids, and are more usually associated with senior citizens than with technology geeks.

I am over 50 years old and while I am neither blind nor deaf, I do see better with glasses and I hear better with hearing aids. That is just a fact of life that your body peaks around age 35 and then various functions decrease over the rest of your life. Technology can help you to stem that decrease of abilities. Unlike glasses, where new technology is mostly in the area of high-refraction polymer materials, hearing aids are electronic devices and benefit from the general progress in miniaturization of electronics. And as good hearing aids are already rather expensive, you can add additional technology like Bluetooth data transfer to it without that affecting the price too much.

iOS (unlike Android) has built in support for Bluetooth hearing aids. So the hearing aids I am wearing work perfectly well as wireless earphones. The main difference to AirPods is that my hearing aids are "receiver in ear", which means that they don't block outside sound. In some situations that is better, because you can watch a movie in an airport lounge without risking to miss an announcement about your flight. But if there is a lot of noise around that can be a disadvantage too.

Overall the iOS integration has turned my hearing aids from a crutch against a handicap into a useful device that allows me to do more. And I can ignore the heated discussion about AirPods.