Depending on how medieval the setting is, hops were not the common bittering in many beers, it was a mix of herbs called gruit. If this mix’s ingredients are secret (or regulated), it would be easy to monopolize and drive the price up.

The price may be going up due to the cost of some profane adulterants being added in ever greater quantities…

You seem to be arguing for choosing a major with some job prospect, but Ford seems to be arguing for not taking any courses that aren’t directly beneficial to some economic purpose.

I disagree with Ford’s stance at least. As an old tech person, my non-tech uni courses were most beneficial to my overall capabilities in my tech job, at least in the long run. Creative writing, ethics, history, and tort law were things I took because they were interesting (to me at least). None of these had much relevance to tech as far as I could see, but I’ve been much better off for them.

Sorry for the long reply

Running Amber DRPG as a diplomacy focused story is certainly an option, especially if you’re doing a throne war campaign. There are certainly other setups beyond this (we started immediately following book 5 as grandchildren of Oberon). While every PC and NPC certainly has their own motivations and schemes, there is no requirements as to how political you need to be (Gerard notoriously hated the petty scheming of his siblings; Benedict doesn’t care as long as Amber remains stable).

As for advancement (which I think is what you’re alluding to with ranking change): if you’re following the book’s rules as written, the #1 in each rank for each generation cannot change (Benedict will always lead in warfare). Advancement is also blind, so you will no longer know your stats.

As for why it has run a long time: thankfully, I have a great GM that has crafted a compelling story and wonderful players that agree on the tone of the game and are reliable. It also helps that we started as 100pt characters, so there has been room for growth and development.

In my mind, it very quickly went from something implausible (how would that system work well) to one of my favorites after playing. Still lucky enough to be in a long Amber campaign with an awesome group.

I distinctly remember enjoying Encarta 95 back in the day. Otherwise, no.

Of course they should. Where else would I get my snilk from?

https://youtu.be/8mx2MfFMe9E

Horchata

It took my old ass way too long to realize that you were talking about the Imagine Dragons song (which was definitely overplayed) and not the absolute banger of a song from The Firm.

I don’t hate sales as a concept. I just dislike the sociopaths who tend to work there.

Hell, R was being used in colleges in 2000. Unfortunately, whether it was SPSS for the soft sciences or forcing stats work in Matlab for the engineers, professors always seemed bad at promoting the right tool for the job.

Dirt is an aggregate material that contains plenty of feces. If I were your GM I’d allow it.

[Bracket City]
June 12, 2025

https://www.theatlantic.com/games/bracket-city/

Rank: 💼 (Power Broker)
❌ Wrong guesses: 1

Total Score: 98.0
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Gose

Fred Rogers (of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood). For my generation, he helped to shape our views on kindness and compassion for humankind. He fought for public access funding in the United States. He helped break color barriers on television. He helped us enjoy jazz.

I have not encountered another media personality who was so genuinely invested in making sure that kids had the tools they needed to deal with the emotional parts of existence. I’m tearing up again thinking about how much he did for us.

You just described the vibe of Peter Jackson’s “Meet the Feebles”…

Seminal fluid.

If you’re in a union already, that is not something that can generally be asked about by management, both at hiring or during your employment. Being in a union is not the same as being in a unionized workplace.

When employees of a store/factory/etc decide to unionize, there’s a point at which a specific larger union can be chosen to represent them (AFL-CIO, IBEW, Teamsters, etc). If successful, this is what allows for collective bargaining led by a union representative.

I did not. It was strongly tied in my childhood brain to the BRATT diet (recovering from nausea and vomiting).

If this offends your sensibilities then I can’t wait until you look at what someone did to C:

https://gist.github.com/shakna-israel/4fd31ee469274aa49f8f9793c3e71163#file-letsdestroyc-md

It is sad that this guy just can’t let go.

Honestly though, if he can preemptively put sufficient funds into escrow dedicated to managing all aspects of the site and engineering plans for digging with minimal perturbation of each waste cell, then let him have it*.

(* Escrow amount should be approximately $780m)