22 Behind the Scenes Facts of the Movie Casino | Film Threat
22 Behind the Scenes Facts of the Movie Casino | Film Threat
Casino (1995) - Frequently Asked Questions - IMDb
Casino - Head In The Vice Scene
Casino Vice Scene
Casino: Head in a Vice | Greg Metcalf
20 Weird, Wonderful, Useless Facts About the Movie "Casino"
Casino 1995. The infamous head in a vice scene was based
casino vice scene
casino vice scene - win
Stokes's Bristol Nightclub incident in detail (From: The Comeback Summer by Geoff Lemon)
IF YOU’RE LOOKING for a place where misadventure could begin, you can’t go past Mbargo. The nightclub’s streetfront is painted a purple so bright you’ll see it in your dreams. Strings of giant sequins shimmer in the breeze. Its phonically inventive name is spelt in silver letters that climb its three-storey terrace facade. Inside are strips of burning neon, a few booths, floorboards so marinated in drink that they have an ingredients list. Bristol is a student city on England’s south coast crowded with music and nightlife and street art. This is Banksy’s home town, and the tourism board suggests in rather strong terms that ‘you would be a fool not to see his amazing work firsthand’. The same organisation describes Mbargo as ‘intimate’, which is fair for a place where you can catch an STI standing up. Students cram into its modest dimensions while people with names like DJ Klaud battle for billing with £1.50 drink deals over seven sloppy nights a week. To get a sense of the story about to come, consider that it’s the kind of place open until two o’clock on a Monday morning, and that at two o’clock on a Monday morning, Ben Stokes still thought it had closed too early. The Ashes of 2017–18 had disciplinary bookends. It was after that series that Australia’s two leaders went off the rails in South Africa. It was a few weeks before that Ashes tour that England’s biggest star windmilled his way into his own disaster. In the early hours of 25 September 2017, Stokes and teammate Alex Hales were barred from re-entering Mbargo after a night out on the piss. A Sunday thrashing of an abject West Indies in an ignored series at the fag-end of the season apparently required ample celebration. After arguing with the bouncer and hanging about at the door for a while, they wandered off to find a casino in the hope of more drinking. They’d barely made it around the corner before getting in the middle of a conflict between four locals. As is said on the internet, it escalated quickly. The 26 September reporting was bloodless. Withholding names, police stated that a man ‘was arrested on suspicion of causing actual bodily harm’ while another went to hospital with facial injuries. England’s director of cricket Andrew Strauss separately confirmed that Stokes was the arrestee, adding that he had been released without charge and that Hales had gamely offered to ‘help police with their enquiries’. Administrators had a good chance of hiding behind that investigation, and the next day Stokes was named in the upcoming Ashes squad as expected. But that night the video emerged. Bristol student Max Wilson had shot it on his phone, then offered it to The Sun. What he thought was playing hardball was actually lowball: his opening price of £3000 was snapped up by a tabloid that would have paid ten times that. The Sun went on to make a mint by syndicating the rights worldwide. From a window above the fray, the vision showed six men on the street below performing the muddled choreography of a melee. One was right at the centre of it. One was waving a bottle, one dipped in and out, one tried to calm it. Two others floated around the edges. The central figure was unmistakable: red hair burning even in the streetlight as he launched into a series of blows against two of the men, falling to grapple with them on the ground, then following both across the street, swinging punches the whole way. Hales trailed behind, repeatedly and impotently shouting ‘Stokes! Stop! Stokes! Enough!’ The ECB could fudge issues that existed only in thickets of legalese, but not those captured in moving colour. Stokes was stood down from the next West Indies match, then suspended indefinitely. It emerged that he had broken his hand during the fight, something he’d done twice before while punching objects in dressing rooms. The response in Australia was fierce: Stokes was a thug, a lowlife, a selection that would disgrace England. It was not entirely coincidental that a ban for England’s best player would be handy for the Aussie team, but there was also a cultural split. In England, plenty of people still minimise pub fights as lads letting off steam. In Australia, heavy media coverage as a succession of young men were killed had inverted that tolerance. The discourse now saw any punch as potentially deadly and accordingly reckless. This was more poignant in a cricket context given that David Hookes, the dashing Test batsman and state coach, was killed in 2004 by a pub bouncer’s fist. The PR situation was bad for Stokes as details emerged of the injuries to the men he’d hit, and that one was a young war veteran and father. Stokes wasn’t officially removed from the Ashes squad through October but stayed behind when his teammates left, hoping for police to dismiss the matter in time for a late dash to Australia. His annual contract was renewed on the due date in case that came to pass. Then 29 October brought a twist in the tale. ‘Ben Stokes praised by gay couple after defending them from homophobic thugs,’ ran the headline. Kai Barry and Billy O’Connell had emerged. Not entirely out of nowhere: while Stokes had made no public comment, this story in his defence had initially been leaked to TV host Piers Morgan after the fight, as soon as the video appeared. Police body-camera footage played in court would later show that Stokes had given the same story to the arresting officer on the night. But no-one knew the identities of the fifth and sixth men in the video, and police appeals had turned up nothing. It was The Sun again with the breakthrough. Kai and Billy were perfect for a readership not keen on nuance. ‘We couldn’t believe it when we found out they were famous cricketers. I just thought Ben and Alex were quite hot, fit guys,’ said Kai, who was memorably described as a ‘former House of Fraser sales assistant’. The paper had the pair do a full photo shoot: layering the fake tan, showing off chest waxes, mixing Ralph Lauren and Louis Vuitton into a range of outfits. Their best shot had them standing back to back, heads turned to the camera, in a mirror-image Zoolander moment. Suddenly The Sun was the England team’s best friend. ‘Their claims could lead to the all-rounder being cleared over the punch-up and freed to play in the First Test in Australia next month,’ it gushed, then gave a tasting platter of quotes: ‘We were so grateful to Ben for stepping in to help. He was a real hero.’ ‘If Ben hadn’t intervened it could have been a lot worse for us.’ ‘We could’ve been in real trouble. Ben was a real gentleman.’ Would it be known forever as Kai and Billy’s Ashes? No. While the Bristol boys provided spin for Stokes’ reputation they didn’t influence the police. With charges still pending there was little choice – not given Strauss had previously sacked Kevin Pietersen for being annoying. Stokes remained suspended through the Ashes and a one-day series in Australia, and lost the vice-captaincy. It was January 2018 before the Crown Prosecution Service laid a charge. That charge surprisingly came in as affray, a crime that can carry prison time but is classified as ‘a breach of the peace as a result of disorderly conduct’. The men he had punched, Ryan Ali and Ryan Hale, faced the same count, charged as equal participants in a fight rather than Stokes being charged with assaulting them. Alex Hales was not charged, despite being seen in the video to aim several kicks when Ryan Ali was lying on the ground. Given the underwhelming standing of the offence, Stokes was cleared by the ECB to tour New Zealand, and kept playing until his trial in August 2018, which he missed a Test to attend. None of the three defendants would be convicted. The reasoning behind the charges was never released and was attributed vaguely to ‘CPS lawyers’. The service gave the case to Alison Morgan, a prosecutor of a class known as Treasury Counsel who usually handle serious criminal matters. Morgan had a scheduling clash and never ended up court for the case, but in 2018 and 2019 she would go on to win damages and admissions of libel from The Daily Mail, The Times and The Daily Telegraph variously for incorrectly reporting that she had been responsible for the inadequate and inconsistent charging decisions. Morgan’s successor on the case was Nicholas Corsellis QC, who on the first day of trial was permitted by the CPS to request two assault charges be added against Stokes. ‘Upon further review,’ claimed a CPS statement, ‘we considered that additional assault charges would also be appropriate.’ This was patent nonsense from the service that eight months earlier had chosen the lesser charge. Any lawyer knows that no judge will allow new charges once a trial has begun, because the defence hasn’t had time to prepare. But such a request could deflect criticism of the prosecution service by technically making the judge the one who disallows the charge. Working through the story from the trial and the tape is complicated. You had a Ryan and a Ryan, a Hale and a Hales, a Billy and a Barry and a Ben. You had several versions of events as to who knew whom, who was drinking with whom, who had insulted whom and who had merely engaged in ‘banter’, a word that in modern Britain has to do an unconscionable amount of lifting. The reporting had constantly mixed up the Ryans as to who had which injury, who was in hospital, who had played which part in the fight, and whose mum had which stern words to say about it. Let’s agree that from now Ryan Ali is Ryan One, the firefighter who ended up with a fractured eye socket and a cracked tooth. Ryan Two can be Ryan Hale, the soldier who scored concussion and facial lacerations. Mr Barry and Mr O’Connell are best known per The Sun as Kai and Billy. In scorecard parlance we’ll leave the cricketers as Stokes and Hales. Amid the confusion, Stokes and his lawyers built his case in a straightforward way. The UK legal definition of affray is ‘if a person threatens or uses unlawful violence or force towards another person, which causes another person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for their safety’. That means it doesn’t account for violence that harms a target, but violence that might frighten a theoretical bystander. The wiggle room for Stokes was with ‘unlawful’, because the charge excuses violence in defending oneself or others. This interpretation hinged on the beginning of the video, where Ryan One waves a beer bottle about and takes a swing at Kai. The version from Stokes was that he was minding his own business walking down the street when he heard homophobic abuse. He intervened verbally and was threatened verbally by Ryan One – something that Ryan One denied but that couldn’t be proved or disproved. In fear for his safety Stokes had to nullify that threat by bashing Ryan One before it went the other way. He registered Ryan Two in his peripheral vision as another possible threat, and again had only one recourse. Stokes also had to convince the jury to disregard testimony from Mbargo’s bouncer that he had been looking for a fight. A solid lump of a man, Andrew Cunningham had not enjoyed his patron’s attempts to get back into the club after the bouncer declined an offer of a bribe. ‘He got a bit verbally abusive towards myself. He mentioned my gold teeth and he said I looked like a cunt and I replied, “Thank you very much.” He just looked at me and told me my tattoos were shit and to look at my job.’ Cunningham described these words as coming in ‘a spiteful tone, quite an angry tone’, and said that Stokes still seemed angry as he walked away. These were details the doorman had nothing to gain by inventing, but each of them Stokes denied. By his own accounting he had drunk a beer at the game and three pints at his hotel, then ‘potentially had some Jägerbombs’ along with half a dozen vodkas at the club. He insisted that after all of this he was not drunk. If I may take a moment here to call upon the wisdom of experience – a person who cannot definitively say whether they have had any Jägerbombs has definitely had some Jägerbombs. A Jägerbomb is an experience that does not pass one by. Further to that, a person who says they have ‘potentially’ done something has definitely done that thing and doesn’t want to admit it. A person who has had between 15 and 24 standard drinks in one evening is shitfaced. A person who tries to bribe a bouncer £300 – three hundred quid! – to get into Mbargo – Mbargo! – is beyond shitfaced. If Stokes admitted that he was drunk then the prosecution could say he was out of control. He claimed clear recall of assessing a threat, feeling fear and deciding to protect himself with force. He confidently denied details from the bouncer’s testimony, like using the word ‘cunt’ or mentioning gold teeth. Yet on other details he claimed a ‘significant memory blackout’. He didn’t remember the punch that saw Ryan One taken away by ambulance. He didn’t remember what the Ryans had said to Kai and Billy, only that those words were homophobic. With no head injury, as one of the few people who hadn’t been hit, he had supposedly suffered this memory loss despite being sober. The version from Kai and Billy was compatible but vague: they had been walking along, they ‘heard … shouts’ of abuse from an unspecified source, then Stokes ‘stepped in’ and thus they avoided possible harm. They claimed to have been bought a drink by Stokes at Mbargo, although CCTV showed them meeting outside. The overall implication from both accounts was that the cricketers had been pals with Kai and Billy, while the Ryans as per The Sun’s headline were a roving band of thugs. The reality though is that the Ryans were the ones hanging out with Kai and Billy at Mbargo. Police discussed CCTV from inside the club in questioning and at trial. On that footage the four Bristolians bought drinks for one another, danced together, and Kai was noted to have variously touched Ryan Two’s crotch and Ryan One’s buttock. Ryan One told police that all of this was taken lightheartedly and wasn’t a problem. Indeed, when the Ryans called it a night the other two left with them. This much is clear from footage out the front of Mbargo, which shows Kai and Billy exit the club and start talking with a subdued Hales and a demonstrative Stokes, who are stuck outside. The vision was played in court to determine whether Stokes was antagonistic towards Kai and Billy, as he appears to impersonate them and to throw a lit cigarette their way. More interesting is that after a few minutes the Ryans emerge, and all six actors in the fight video briefly form a prequel in the one frame. Ryan Two pats Billy on the chest in friendly fashion with his right hand before clapping him on the back with his left. He moves past and does the same to Kai before leaving the shot. Ryan One stops to speak to Kai. They lean in for a moment, talking, then Kai turns and they walk out of frame together. Billy hangs around for a few seconds at the door and then looks after them and races to catch up. Stokes and Hales remain outside the club to remonstrate further with the bouncers. Whatever discord develops around the corner is between four men who left amicably together minutes earlier. There’s no way to know what caused that friction. If Ryan One did use homophobic slurs, he might have been drunkenly obnoxious for no reason. He might have had an insecure macho response to some extra flirtation. He might have thought unkindness was funny – ‘banter’ once again. Or he might have said something that was misunderstood, as both Ryans insisted in court that they had not used nor had the impulse to use any abusive language. What clearly didn’t happen was an attack by bigots on random passers-by. This kind of crime is regular enough that an audience understands the horror of it, and this is what was evoked by the public accounts of Stokes, Billy and Kai. All we know is that there was some verbal dispute among the Bristol locals, and that Stokes came along behind them and put himself in the middle of it. Ryan One responded to the interference aggressively and away they went. There are plenty of reasons to look sideways at the idea that Stokes was a saviour. Foremost, neither Kai nor Billy was called upon as witnesses in court. You’d think it would be ideal to have Stokes’ story backed up by those who benefited from his selflessness. But his defence team had developed the impression that the pair had shown a changeable recall of events amid a hard-partying lifestyle, and would be dismantled by the prosecution on the stand. That raises the question of whether The Sun coached their quotes for the 2017 interview. Despite missing court, Kai and Billy clearly enjoyed the attention. In 2018 after the trial they did a follow-up spread in the same paper about how poor Ben had been mistreated. They got a television spot on Good Morning Britain and glowed about his heroism. In 2019 The Sun wheeled them out once more to say that Stokes should get a knighthood. In 2017 they had ‘never watched cricket’ but by 2019 were supposedly volunteering sentences like, ‘He saved us, now he’s saved the Ashes.’ Whether they were paid for these appearances is not known, but the chance to be famous for a day can be lure enough. If you find this cynical, consider that on the night in question, the Bristol boys were so deeply moved and thankful for Ben’s intervention that they left him to be arrested and never attempted to find out who he was. Seconds after the video ended, an off-duty policeman reached the scene. You might think that someone grateful to a saviour would speak on his behalf. Instead, said Kai, ‘it all got a bit scary so we walked off. It was too much for me and we went to Quigley’s takeaway for chicken burgers and cheesy chips.’ They didn’t give their hero a thought for over a month while police issued multiple appeals for witnesses. As for Stokes, he told his arresting officer that ‘his friends’ had been attacked. After three minutes of chat outside a nightclub, these friends were so dear to him that he has never contacted them again: not after the newspaper piece, not after the verdict. He didn’t want to see how they were or thank them for their support. He didn’t mention them by name in his solicitor’s statement after the trial. The Stokes defence rested on Ryan One’s bottle, which he had carried out of Mbargo to finish a beer, not to use in a Sharks versus Jets amateur production. But once he turned it over to hold it by the neck it became a weapon. Intent and interpretation can change the material nature of things. Part of Stokes’ justification in court was that the bottle implied that the two Ryans might have ‘other weapons’ hidden away. You can understand how a jury could decide that created doubt. Not being convicted, though, doesn’t give the contents of the video a big green tick. It does not, as his lawyer claimed, vindicate Stokes. Looking in detail, Ryan One is belligerent but his movements telegraph a bluff. Hales is the person he’s gesturing at, but they’re several metres apart when Ryan One cocks his arm ostentatiously, showing off the bottle rather than bracing to swing. He skips forward but Hales skips back and Ryan One doesn’t follow. Kai stretches out an arm to impede Ryan One, who has a drunken stumble, nearly eats pavement, then staggers towards Kai and hits him in the back. That hand is still holding the bottle, but his strike is a side-arm cuff on a soft part of the body. It’s all pretty tame. This is where Stokes gets involved. Having moved across to protect Hales, he now takes three large steps to run around Kai and booms his first punch at Ryan One. They fall to the ground and the bottle clinks away. Stokes gets to his feet to punch down at the fallen man, while Hales arrives to kick him ineffectively then runs off across the street for some unknown reason. Ice-cream van? Stokes is soon back in the grapple having his shirt pulled up to show off his Durham tan. Ryan Two steps in for the first time to pull Stokes away, prompting a couple more random punches at this new target, then Stokes trips backwards over Ryan One and sprawls in the street. Hales chooses this moment to return and aim some solid kicks at the head of the man on the ground. Nothing so far is a triumph of moral philosophy or the pugilistic arts. But if it all stopped here, perhaps you could say it was somewhere approaching fair. Ryan One has behaved like a turnip and it’s not an entirely unjust world that would give him a whack across the chops. The antagonists have disentangled, Stokes has some distance, it’s time to dust off and go home. Ryan Two steps forward for this purpose with his palm raised in conciliatory style and says, ‘Settle down, stop.’ So Stokes punches him. It’s roughly his fifth punch overall, and he really winds up into this one. He misses so hard that he stumbles away into the shadows of the shop awnings along the road. Hales starts shouting for him to stop. Ryan Two backs into the street, still holding his palm up. Stokes closes on him from about five metres away, six large steps, to where Ryan Two is standing on his own. Stokes pushes him a couple of times, as Ryan Two keeps trying to placate him and saying ‘Stop.’ Stokes throws his sixth punch, largely missing as his target ducks. Ryan Two keeps pulling away and reversing, into the middle of the street now. Stokes follows him, grabbing his sleeve to drag him back. By this point Ryan One has found his feet and walked around behind his friend. Both of them are in the same line of sight for Stokes, and both are backing away. Stokes aims his seventh and his eighth punches, which Ryan Two tries to deflect, as Hales walks up behind Stokes to grab him. Stokes yanks away from his friend and switches to Ryan One instead, taking seven paces to grab him before throwing his ninth punch of the night. He grabs again; Ryan One blocks that arm and pushes himself back away from Stokes. Ryan Two again intercedes, putting himself between the two with his palms up and his arm extended. Stokes throws his tenth punch, a right-hander at the face of Ryan Two, then shoves him backwards. Ryan Two backs away once more, four paces. Stokes follows, steadies, lines up, then launches his strongest punch yet, his eleventh, a proper right hook from a solid base, one that cracks across the man’s head and gives him concussion. Ryan Two ends up flat on his back in the middle of the street, his hands still outstretched for a moment in useless protest until they twitch and drop to the blacktop. Stokes isn’t done. He once more shoves away the restraining Hales and follows Ryan One, who keeps backing away saying, ‘Alright, alright, alright.’ Five more paces from Stokes before another blow at the man’s head. Kai and Billy are now standing over the poleaxed Ryan Two. The video ends, but seconds later Stokes will punch Ryan One hard enough to knock him out too, before off-duty cop Andrew Spure arrives on the scene to bring down the curtain. When the body-camera footage kicks in some minutes later, Stokes is in handcuffs but Ryan One is still laid out in the street. Ryan Two has regained consciousness, folded his shirt under his friend’s head and is asking police for an ambulance. ‘At this point, I felt vulnerable and frightened. I was concerned for myself and others.’ This was how Stokes described that sequence to the court. An elite athlete with years of gym work and training to snap a bat through the line of a ball with astounding power and precision, swinging fists as hard as he can at men with none of those advantages. Punching so hard that he breaks his hand, and repeatedly shoving away a friend so he can punch some more. Frightened and threatened by two targets shouting ‘Get back!’ and ‘Stop!’ The off-duty officer testified that Stokes ‘seemed to be the main aggressor or was progressing forward trying to get to’ Ryan One, who was ‘trying to back away or get away from the situation’. The student who filmed the video can be heard on the tape at one stage exclaiming ‘Fuck!’ and testified that it was because ‘I felt a little bit sorry about the lad that had been punched and it looked like he had his hands up’. That tallied with the prosecutor’s depiction of ‘a sustained episode of significant violence that left onlookers shocked at what was taking place’. The defendant stuck to his strategy. ‘No, my sole focus was to protect myself.’ All up, in the 33 seconds of footage after he falls over, Stokes takes 35 steps forward to keep hitting two men who keep trying to get away. Not once is he hit back. After the verdict, Stokes’ solicitor positioned him as the victim. It had been ‘an eleven-month ordeal for Ben … The jury’s decision fairly reflects the truth of what happened that night … He was minding his own business … It was only when others came under threat that Ben became physically engaged. The steps that he took were solely aimed at ensuring the safety of himself and the others present …’ The statement was impossibly self-righteous and self-absorbed. If there was anyone to feel sorry for it was Ryan Hale, the second of our two Ryans. He’s the one who emerged from the club with a friendly arm around the shoulder for Kai and Billy. He’s the one who interposed himself to end the fight, then kept putting himself back in the firing line, trying to calm an intimidating stranger while dodging blows. For his show of restraint he got laid out regardless, concussed in the street, then was issued a criminal charge equal to that of the man who hit him, and described in national media as a violent bigot in an untested story to support that man’s defence. Lawyers for Ryan Two made a more convincing post-trial statement, noting that Kai and Billy, ‘neither of whom were relied upon by the prosecution or the defence team for Mr Stokes, have taken the opportunity to speak with various media outlets about the alleged homophobic abuse that they received in the early hours of September 25. Mr Hale has passionately denied this allegation throughout the course of this case,’ it continued. ‘It is upsetting to Mr Hale that although he was acquitted, the accusation that he was the author of such abuse remains. Both Mr Hale and Mr Ali were knocked unconscious by Mr Stokes, and although Mr Stokes has been acquitted of an affray, Mr Hale struggles with the reasons why the Crown Prosecution Service did not treat him as a victim of an unlawful assault.’Good question. Avon and Somerset police were the investigating force, and they were frustrated by the decision. Ryan Two was filmed clearly not hurting anyone, but police were instructed by the CPS to proceed with a charge. Hales (the cricketer) was filmed fighting but ‘a decision was made at a senior level of the CPS’ not to proceed. Police expected Stokes to be charged with assault but the CPS declined. It doesn’t take a wild cynic to think that placing the same lukewarm charge on three men for vastly divergent behaviour might ensure that none would be convicted, even as the trial would maintain the pretence that a defendant of influential standing had not been given a free pass. A couple of years down the line, the original interview with Kai and Billy has disappeared. All traces have been scrubbed from The Sun website, its social media history, and even from the Wayback Machine internet archive. Given its headline of ‘homophobic thugs’ and text that names Ryan Two but not Ryan One, the libel liability isn’t hard to spot. Later interviews with Kai and Billy take the passive voice – they ‘suffered homophobic slurs outside a Bristol nightclub’. The article that was once claimed to exonerate brave Ben Stokes now links only to a missing content page, with a picture of a dropped ice-cream cone and the phrase ‘legal removal’ inserted into the web URL. In terms of consequences, Stokes missed one tour. When he resumed his career in January 2018, the Australians hadn’t yet ruined theirs. Their year-long bans looked much more stringent. But the Stokes case dragged on in other ways. With no criminal liability, the Australians confessed promptly enough for the sporting world to give them the full length of the lash. Their situation was ugly but there was closure. Stokes got stuck in legal stasis, unable to be fully backed or condemned. Instead his issue was always present, a browser full of open tabs that the ECB swore they would read any day now. Through 2018 Stokes was back but he wasn’t back, in the sunglasses and finger-guns sense. In his return one-day series he nearly cost England a match with 39 from 73 balls in Wellington. His first Test hit was a duck as England got rolled in Auckland for 58. At Trent Bridge while Stokes was injured, England posted a world record 481 against Australia. With Stokes three weeks later at the same ground they made 268. He crawled to 50 from 103, the second-slowest any Englishman had reached that milestone in 20 years. That span covered Alastair Cook’s whole career. It was apologetic batting, acting out responsibility via the scorecard. Stokes was creeping back into the team like he’d been kicked out in a blazing row and was hoping to tip-toe to the sofa. It was December 2018 before the ECB disciplinary committee ruled on him and Hales. In a ‘remarkable coincidence’, wrote Simon Heffer in The Telegraph, ‘the punishment both players faced in terms of bans from playing at international level was covered by the amount of games they had already missed when dropped by England’s selectors, in the furore that followed the incident’. The verdict compounded the omissions around the case by not addressing the violence at its heart. Nor did Stokes, apologising only ‘to my team-mates, coaches and support staff’, and then ‘to England supporters and to the public for bringing the game into disrepute’. The implicit next step was to rebuild that reputation. It might have been easier had his court defence not meant that he wasn’t game to admit any fault at all. It might have been easier if he or his advisers had been willing to change tack once the trial was done. Imagine a world where Stokes had stood outside court and apologised for overreacting, for the injuries he’d caused, and for the time and energy he had sucked out of other people’s lives. That would have been a show of responsibility beyond a scorecard. When the time came around to assess forgiveness, it might have meant forgiveness was deserved.
[Videogames] Zhengtu Online, The Original Sinner of free-to-play gaming and lootboxes
Hi everyone, this is my first contribution to HobbyDrama, I hope this is an entertaining read and also to the community's standards. Let's go!! Brief glossary before we begin (and some foreshadowing) MMORPG: massively multiplayer online role-playing game, MMO for short. A videogame genre that generally invites hundreds, or up to thousands, of players to share a space. Depending on the game, anything from general adventure to large-scale war to economy and politics can be simulated. I find it hard to believe that anyone reading this could possibly not know what this is but it's included anyway. Electro-convulsive therapy: ECT for short, it is a form of treatment where electrodes are "carefully" hooked up to a person's head and a "precise" level of electric shock is delivered, in order to treat major psychiatric disorders. Developed in 1938 when most psychiatric treatments was in their infancy, it is still used today occasionally for serious cases of depression, mania, or psychoses. In its early days however, there were widespread claims of abuse associated with its use. Pt1: The Root of all that is bullshit Zhengtu Online (hereafter referred to as ZT) was an immensely popular MMORPG that was developed in China and primarily served a Chinese playerbase. Released in 2006, at its peak it boasted more 2 million players, which while not particularly impressive relative to World of Warcraft (8mil worldwide at the same time), was a truly insane amount of success in a gaming scene that was very much in its embryonic stage. The game itself was an unimpressive Diablo-style top down fantasy setting, and its gameplay loop primarily revolved around improving your ability to kill various things, but what made it special was the overarching metagame: every player population (sharing a server) was divided into 10 kingdoms. Kings and generals were all individual players, and they dictated politics to their neighbors--primarily in the form of initiating player-vs-player (or PVP) warfare. Most contemporary MMOs had an upfront price plus a monthly subscription fee. In China, such pricing models were mostly replaced by paying oney for a set amount of ingame playing time. Unlike all of them, ZT was completely free to play (F2P). Free to play, however, meant pay-to-win: the best weapons and armor, and even leveling up your character, needed you to pay real money. Since so much of the game was focused on PVP, it also created an eternal arms race between players, each paying for the privilege of not being evaporated by a high level enemy. The way they did this was unique at the time. While F2P online games had already seen their rise in South Korea, equipment was generally priced explicitly via in-game currency and bought in virtual shops. ZT fused this with the sweet, sweet taste of gambling: gear in the game was primarily obtained in loot boxes, and you had to pay for keys to open them. It needs to be emphasized that gambling of any kind was illegal in China, but, in an eerie parallel of American CEOS in the future, ZT's developers said it wasn't gambling because, well, you weren't getting your money back. By combining this with multiple other exploitative practices, such as providing a small amount of premium currency like a casino giving you a free bet on the house, or awarding special items to the player with the highest number of lootboxes opened in a day, ZT was making money like taking candy from a candy-hating baby, and made gaming history. As far as what this means for gamers, this was Eve giving Adam the apple, Oppenhemier splitting the atom, Prometheus stealing fire, Caesar crossing the Rubicon, and goddamn Helen Keller signing "water". If you play any kind of videogames today, you've stepped through the long shadow that ZT had cast. Zynga (developers of Farmville) would be founded in 2007 and focused exclusively on free games with real-money integration. Lootboxes made it into Team Fortress 2 in 2010, one of the first major western-developed games to include them. Similar mechanics (with varying degrees of exploitative practices) came to FIFA in 2010, Mass Effect 3 in 2012, Counter-Strike in 2013, League of Legends in 2016, and NBA 2K in 2017, infecting every genre of gaming under the sun, including the most popular MMO, World of Warcraft. As an aside, corporate defense of lootboxes in Star Wars Battlefront II also led to the most downvoted Reddit comment of all time. Finally someone speaks out The System, an article published in the Chinese newspaper Southern Weekly in 2007, was a hard-hitting expose on the exploitive practices of ZT. It chronicled the rise and fall of a gamer who accidentally becomes the monarch of one of these in-game Kingdoms, her addiction to the game, and final disillusionment when she realized that in-game player behaviour was being explicitly manipulated by its designers for the purpose of creating addicts and selling more lootbox keys. The whole article is worth a read, even if it is sensationalist in a way that immediately tells you the writer was clearly a failed novelist of some kind - describing virtual destruction with the kind of prose most people would consider and then discard for a gang rape, for starters. But it had gotten its point across. It created an explosive backlash against the game in China, and was even translated into English and propagated across gaming forums. The fallout In an act of censorship usually reserved for the CCP government, this article--including its English translation--began to be scrubbed from the internet, with speculation pointing to the immensely powerful CEO behind ZT. I mean, who else could it be, right? This article would light the fire of China's first moral panic regarding videogames. In its wake, swift legislation would be enacted regarding internet gaming addiction as well as online proxy gambling. ZT would heed the new laws and remove its lootbox mechanics in the following years and many other similar games followed suit. Most tragically, the panic (which, to be fair, was fueled by a very real problem) allowed unscrupulous characters such as Yang Yongxin, vice chairman of a hospital in Shandong province, to create "internet addiction centres". With its legitimacy established by a docuseries ("Fighting the Internet Monster") on the state-run television channel CCTV, these centres charged terrified parents exorbitant prices in order to keep teens by force in, essentially, private hospitals and asylums, subjecting them to inhumane conditions and abusive ECT in order to "cure" them of their disease. It was estimated that Yang earned the equivalent of more than $6million USD from his addiction centre in the short space of 2 years. While his centre was eventually closed by state order, he received no punishment of any kind. As for ZT, it limped on until 2018. A mobile game reboot was made in 2015. A tie-in fantasy movie was released in 2020. it was not very good. ~~~~~~ Addendum: how we got here: Of Mice and levers In the 1950s, an American scientist named BF Skinner discovered the following: when mouse is put in a box with a small lever that, when pressed, dispenses a food pellet, they will quickly learn to start pressing on the lever as fast as possible. If you then stop the food from dispensing, the mouse will lose interest quickly after pressing a few times and seeing no food coming out. If, however, you hooked up the lever to dispense food at random intervals, the mouse will be practically glued to the lever and hammer on it nonstop, sometimes long after they become full, and long after any food has been dispensed. This discovery, known as variable outcome operant conditioning, formed the foundation of our understanding of addiction and gambling. Skinner would go on to try and fail to make bombs guided by pigeons, but we're not interested in that here. His research tool--the Skinner Box--would become a descriptor you may have come across when discussing exploitive game mechanics. Summary Once upon a time, a game combined the random outcome of videogaming with real-money gambling. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
This remaster has a lot of good improvements but there are also some changes that didn't make everyone happy, so I will be listing all the good and bad changes I noticed. (𝑾𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈: 𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝒔𝒑𝒐𝒊𝒍𝒆𝒓𝒔) 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙨: •Graphics improvements (obviously): the new graphics and shades are beautiful, there's absolutely nothing to complain about it. •New short cutscenes •You can now run (unlike the original PC version). •New Scenes for the opening •New music. •Changing the Soda Popper's pants from red to stripped, which made them look way more ridiculous than before. •You can now see what objects are clickable. •Sibyl's glasses now have temples 𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙨: •New voice actor for Bosco: the new voice actor performance is in fact inferior to the previous one, Bosco sounds too young and not paranoid at all. •In some episodes, Sybil's office is way too dark. •They changed the license plate of that car parked next to the DeSoto Original: DRG DLR (drug dealer) New: RMS DLR (arms dealer, I guess?) Which made the joke less funny (𝑨𝒑𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒍𝒚 𝒊𝒕 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒃𝒆 𝒇𝒊𝒙𝒆𝒅) •From episode 2 onwards, when you click on some objects, Max still has the old voice from episode 1 (unlike the original, where his voice completely changed from episode 1 onwards). (𝑨𝒑𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒍𝒚 𝒊𝒕 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒃𝒆 𝒇𝒊𝒙𝒆𝒅) Extra: •New opening theme. •The items in the car chase segments (such as the megaphone and the car horn) have been moved from left to right. 𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 1 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙨: •The lights turn off while interrogating Jimmy, which made the scene way better. •The location for the spray can got changed to a place that is now easier to find. •The time changes from day to night throughout the playthrough. 𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙨: •They changed some of the lines (or censored, like some people say), for instance: 𝐎𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞: Bosco: It's the latest in BoscoTech inovation, it'll clear out a room of militant college students in no time, guaranteed. 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞: It's the latest in BoscoTech inovation, it'll clear out a room in no time, guaranteed. 𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 2 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙨: •You can now see the outside of the WARP studios. •Fatherly has some new clothes •Fixed the bug from the original, where Max's voice didn't amplify when he used the megaphone. 𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙨: •The hypnobear head does not move while hypnotizing Myra. •They changed some of the lines (or censored, like some people say), for instance: 𝐎𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞: Bosco: Oh no, the Skinbodies are like Skinheads, but ten times worse! 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞: Oh no, the Skinbodies are like those horrible hairless cats, but ten times worse! Which ruined the joke, considering the "Skinbodies" themselves are a reference to the "Skinheads" •When you take a picture with Hugh Bliss, the picture still has the old models from the original. 𝐎𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞: Bosco: Tally-Ho, foo'! 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞: Tally-Ho! 𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 3 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙨: •You can now see the outside of the casino. •The Ted E. bear theme song will you play when you enter the casino. •Max will watch you play the rats games, just like he did in "Hit the Road". •Sam & Max can now wear the bear heads after they join the mafia. •When you click the bear head in the table Sam will stare at it, which is kinda funny. •You can now see Sam & Max running through the casino when it's about to explode and you can actually see the results of the explosion. 𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙨: •They changed some of the lines (or censored, like some people say), for instance: 𝐎𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞: Bosco: You may call me, Jean-Francois Sissypants, the cowardly French anarchist. 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞: You may call me, Jean-Francois Bonde-A-Part, the new wave French anarchist. Which doesn't make sense, considering Sam & Max still call him "Sissypants" (𝑨𝒑𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒍𝒚 𝒊𝒕 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒃𝒆 𝒇𝒊𝒙𝒆𝒅) 𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 4 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙨: •The windows of the Oval Office will close every time one of the Poppers say "war", which made the scene better. •The "War Song" now has subtitles. •You can now go back to the office from inside the war room •When you shoot the missile at the Lincoln statue, not only the statue will get destroyed, but the pavement as well (unlike the original where just the statue got destroyed). 𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙨: •When you shoot a missile at Antarctica and Krypton the screen won't update and the time estimate for the missile to hit Krypton does not show up. (𝑨𝒑𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒍𝒚 𝒊𝒕 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒃𝒆 𝒇𝒊𝒙𝒆𝒅) •The news for the results of the election still has the old blurry textures from the original. •When the "War Song" musical is playing, the pool and water where the secret agents jump in is the exact same low poly model from the original. •They changed the timing for one of the jokes: In the original when Max says he feels like someone is watching and judging his every move, he would slowly turn his head towards the camera while saying that and then Sam would look at the camera and say "That's me Max.". Now Max will say the whole phrase while looking at Bosco and then he will look angry at the camera after saying that, and Sam will not look at the the camera at all, which made the the joke way less funny. •Unlike the original, the camera does not closeup when reading the newspapers and Max doesn't show any animation (apart from the lipsync), especially when saying "I can dig it", which made the joke a little less funny. 𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 5 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙨: •Reality 2.0 visuals looks pretty. •A new visual effect got added when you remove the virtual reality goggles. •Fixed the bug from the original, where Max's voice didn't amplify when he used the megaphone. 𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙨: •They changed some of the lines (or censored, like some people say), for instance: 𝐎𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞: Bob: Take our complimentary goggles designed for special-needs children so that the little ones can play along. 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞: Take our complimentary wide-fit goggles designed for playing while bicycling or enjoying full-contact sports! 𝐎𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞: Bosco: It's 'cause everyone on the internet has to pick an avatar, like a dwarf or an orc or an hot young fifteen-year- old girl curious about the adult world and willing to experiment. 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞:: It's cause everyone on the internet has to pick an avatar, like a dwarf or an orc or a troll... But we've got enough trolls. 𝐎𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞: Bosco: Half-elf, foo'! 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞: Half- elf, troll! •The C.O.P.S. song wasn't synced up right, so the visuals were wrong and the end got cut off. •In a different part of the episode, Max just wanders off during part of the dialogue. 𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 6 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙨: •You can now see the DeSoto landing and leaving the moon. •The lighting on the "Blister of Tranquility" is beautiful. •Hugh Bliss bacteria form is way shiner an has little particles floating around him, which kinda looks like a real bacteria. 𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙨: •They changed some of the lines (or censored, like some people say), for instance: 𝐎𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞: Max: A hundred trillion?! You crazy, foo'! Bosco: Look man, all I know is, I keep making up the most ridiculous price I can think of, and you keep paying it! So I ask you, who's the foo'? 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞: Look man, all I know is, I keep making up the most ridiculous price I can think of, and you keep paying it! So I ask you, who's the crazy one? Him saying "crazy" doesn't make sense, since Max called him a "foo'". •They also removed some of the dialogue option, (some of them were pretty funny) such as: 𝟏-"𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐱 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞" Sam: Mind telling us how you came to be a woman? Max: Did you use lasers, or just do it the old-fashioned way? Bosco: Are you sassin' me? Boy I'll whup your behind so hard you won't be able to see straight! Max: But I don't see out of my behind. Bosco: You will after I get through with you! 𝟐- "𝐇𝐨𝐰'𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐰𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧?" Sam: So how are those BoscoTech breasts holdin' up? Bosco: Oh, these are all natural, honey. Max: I'm not gonna lie, I like 'em bosomy. Bosco: Oh, Max, you take after your father. Max: Okay, you just crossed the line, pal! Sam: Easy Max, theoretically, we have even more disturbed people to worry about right now. •In the original when you click on the bug, Sam will say "Hey Max, is this our bug?" and then the bug will repeat the same thing but with Sam's voice. Now when you click the bug, the bug will say the same thing, but in his own voice, which kinda removes the point of him being a "bug". •Unlike the original, Mr. Spatula's water cooler is still in the office, despite the same cooler being on the moon, removing the idea that the fish ran away with his water cooler and everything, making the joke less funny. Extra: •Max will now ask "Where are we going Sam?" even after Hugh removes his vices (Unlike the original, where he didn't say anything). These are all the changes I noticed, but If someone finds more changes (or even a typo), just let me know and I'll edit it right away!
Canada Goose Workers Allege Unsafe Working Conditions in Winnipeg Factories. “Before I came to Canada I was in Qatar and then Dubai and it’s the same here in Canada Goose: No humanity.” Comments || Link
Providing workers with a universal basic income did not reduce productivity or the amount of effort they put into their work, according to an experiment, a sign that the policy initiative could help mitigate inequalities and debunking a common criticism of the proposal. Comments || Link
Women who are young, “conventionally attractive” and appear and act feminine are more likely to be believed when making accusations of sexual harassment. Sexual harassment often stems from hostility toward women, the desire to dominate women, or backlash against women who violate gender norms. Comments || Link
Blue Origin launched and landed its reusable New Shepard spacecraft yesterday. The test flight sent a capsule containing 6 passenger seats and a test dummy named "Mannequin Skywalker" to an altitude of around 65 miles (105 km), paving the way for commercial flights as soon as April. Comments || Link
Raising the minimum wage by $1 reduces the teen birth rate by 3%, according to a new study examining U.S. state-level data. "For each $1 increase in the minimum wage, the number of children born to women who were 15 to 19 years old decreases by 2.8% to 3.4%" Comments || Link
TIL Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930 and further investigated it across his lifetime. He died in 1997 aged 90, less than a decade before the New Horizons launch to Pluto. To honour his wishes his ashes were launched inside the spacecraft, making it the longest post mortem fight ever recorded. Comments || Link
TIL: In 2018, doctors found that a patient, Kendra Jackson, had a leaky brain for 5 years. After an accident in 2013, she had a daily runny nose for years and suffered headaches. She lost half a pint of brain fluid a day through her nose. Comments || Link
TIL Patricia Demauro walked to a craps table at Atlantic City's Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa with $100. Four hours and 18 minutes later, Demauro had rolled the World Record for Craps Rolls. She rolled 154 times, the odds of accomplishing this is 1 in 1.56 trillion. Comments || Link
My dog giving his biscuit to his son. The dad thought the son didn’t get one and stood by the door until I opened it so he could give to his son. I cried. Comments || Link
Hello everyone, happy new year! With recent release of Cayo Perico but not much else I wanted to touch base with the community holding out for GTA Online in Liberty City or Vice City, and debrief from the Cayo Perico DLC. Even though Cayo Perico came out unexpectedly (to us), it is a small but welcome addition to the GTA Online world. I believe that we still have reason to cling onto hope that that Liberty City will sooner rather than later, and Cayo Perico is a stepping stone to that demonstrating the map expansions are possible. While I no longer think that we will see a remastered city come this generation of console, but we still have GTA V "Expanded and Enhanced" coming in 2021 which may have much more than just GTA V itself.
Reasons why I think that GTA V "Expanded and Enhanced" is more than just GTA V with updated graphics
GTA V XB1 & PS4 versions already work fine in XBSX/XBSS/PS5. It looks and runs great, similar to a PC level of detail/performance. Why would a significant update be needed if it will be much the same if they didn't have big plans on top of that?
Cayo Perico proves that Rockstar's idea of "Expanded" can mean land expansion
Cayo Perico sounds like it was more a like a side project during COVID-19 WFH than something in the works for a long time. It is not unreasonable to think that Rockstar, with all their global studios now merged together, haven't been working on something big since the bulk of RDR2 was finished.
Why are they being so vague about the details, even to go as far as using a PS3 trailer for it... are they doing this because they are hiding something? Even being so far to be anticlimactic to take off the pressure from fans, and surprise us later.
What Cyberpunk 2077 has taught the overall gaming community lately is what happens when you overpromise and underdeliver. However Rockstar already learnt this lesson back in 2015 when they promised Heists in GTA Online, which kept being reworked and delayed until near the end of the PS3/360 generation and copped a lot of criticism for it. Basically every social media comment was "Where are the Heists", fans were frustrated. From that time onwards they never released details until about 2 weeks out from launch for a DLC. RDR2 was a bit longer, but only because they had other partners to consider. For this they originally gave it 1 year from announcement to release date, but it was delayed to 2 years, with PC one more year after that (which also wasn't even announced until one month before that). Here is a quote about what went wrong with Heists:
We aren’t ready to give an official release date yet, but we are confident they will be ready early in 2015. As you may have read on IGN, Heists were a much bigger challenge to create than we had originally anticipated. Early versions were simply not good enough and had to be scrapped more than once as we honed in on how we thought they should work. We’re happy to say that the pack we are now finalizing is something we are excited by and eager to release as soon as it is ready. We, as a company, have always been about trying to make something that is good rather than hitting a date. We apologize when this gets frustrating but firmly believe that rushing out second-rate content does not do anyone any favors. Hopefully you agree that yesterday’s new Trailer is a sign that Heists are shaping up nicely, but we still need some time to fine tune them. Because we need a little time to get Heists right, we are going to give you a small Christmas gift to keep you entertained until we are done with them.
Reasons why I think something related to Liberty City is most likely to be the next major GTA Online expansion to come
GTA IV & EFLC is highly regarded as a masterpiece, it's fanbase is still strong - many still prefer it to GTA V for a variety reasons, so it is a good candidate for a remaster. They can always make the GTA IV car physics, ragdoll, etc. come back again, perhaps as a user configurable option. Having the map there is the gateway to bringing these highly valued games back to a new generation.
The availability of GTA IV is terrible. It is only a Backwards Compatibility title on Xbox One (non Enhanced), runs like rubbish on PC - performance wise (and multiplayer is now removed), and the PS4 & PS5 doesn't have it at all. Most other GTAs are available for purchase, at least on Mobile.
GTA V is now 7 years old and the GTA fanbase is now bigger than ever thanks to GTA V & Online. A lot of new fans haven't had the opportunity to experience GTA IV because of the above availability issue. The new fans are desperate for a new (to them) GTA game, especially since it doesn't look like GTA6 is coming any time soon. Or maybe I'm wrong and 6 is coming soon as well?
GTA Online is progressively getting new content referencing to Liberty City or content ported from Liberty City (i.e The Tugboat, QUB3D), so they are not above re-using GTA IV assets or dropping hints.
It is clear that they have been taking the "lazy" route as far as making new content for GTA Online DLCs by re-using existing assets. Don't get me wrong there is still a lot of work involved, but still it is less work than starting from scratch.
But it would make sense that they will continue their more recent M.O. to re-use existing assets rather than start from scratch to save time, effort and cost.
Porting the Liberty City map to GTA V engine can't be that difficult, given that even PC Modders have already been able to do it unofficially (FiveM/OpenIV), so just imagine what Rockstar can do when doing it properly.
There were only about 10 multiplayer modes in GTA IV Multiplayer, it wouldn't be hard to bring those back to GTA Online game modes to recreate that missing experience.
With high profile departures of the writers such as Leslie Benzies, Dan Houser & Lazlow there is no doubt going to be a brain drain. I'm sure they were working on stuff before their departures, and I'm sure that RockstaTake-Two with all their billions of dollars will be able to find other top talent to bring GTA into a new era, but this will take time, and they can get things out in the meantime. The story of GTA IV, Map & other assets are already made, so this gives them a head start to put out games while they rediscover their Mojo to make GTA6 using new talent.
GTA Online is a Big Money Maker, it will make the GTA IV & ELFC remaster worth it because the remastered map will be used for both GTA IV & Online: LC (maybe slight map differences according to time period).
Why did they put so much effort into issuing cease and desists to OpenIV team for OpenIV's LCinV project (even though it used original game files, no piracy) if they weren't planning on doing something in this space themselves.
Cayo Perico aside (which is still quite small), Los Santos as the primary setting of GTA Online is still a bit stale after 7 years. They can't use 2013 Los Santos forever, surely. Not to mention that a new GTA release is already well overdue.
GTA IV Music Licensing speculation/hints
A little while back, a lot of music track licenses expired and they were pulled from the PC version, most notably Vladivostok FM was most affected with most songs removed. They put in some new tracks to replace it, which wasn't quite as good but it seemed like that was as good as it's going to get. But then they went ahead and relicensed the original tracks anyway so all the music is now restored again (about 16 months after being originally cut). Why go though all that expense of relicensing all that music if they aren't planning to capitalise on it in a big way?
Cayo Perico speculation/hints
Not much here directly, but I have played with it a little bit. The way that it's programmed is interesting. As far as I can tell, travel to the island is sharing a session with Free Mode rather than being a different game mode, which you can tell by seeing the player list stay the same as whoever is in the Freemode session you were in. There is no loading of a different game mode, it is just a cut scene. On PC you can even chat to people who are still in Los Santos. When you look at the map, you are located South-East of LS (just past USS Luxington), and if you move the mouse you can get locations of LS show up, it's just the map itself which is hidden. There is a glitch you can do to "free roam" the whole Island, or just go to the Beach Party standalone, it is clear that you are in Free Mode of an existing Los Santos based lobby. When I was glitched, I was able to take a Dinghy back to LS, LS was visible. about halfway there, the whole Cayo Perico just de-spawned similar to how the USS Luxington does, and also the weathenight cycle changed instantly too. When I was glitched but still on the Island, a whole bunch of functions were disabled like spawning cars, calling contacts, etc. What this shows me is that perhaps they are experimenting with how integration with Future GTA Maps will look like. Instead of loading a whole different game, or loading a different game mode, it could be one big Free Mode made up of all locations, the locations can not be directly accessed without triggering a cut scene, and the properties of how a Free Mode works can change depending on what location on the broader map you are in. One challenge I anticipate is that they wouldn't want GTA$ earned in LS to be transferred to a totally new GTA Online area. It is well known that a lot of it glitched and they'd want us to start getting rich again. They have also been experimented with holding separate currencies such as Arena Points or Casino Chips. I could imagine that they come up with a storyline where all your GTA$ Cash gets deposited into Maze Bank but then can't be withdrawn to cash or moved to another bank, and in LC you are forced to use a competing bank like the Bank of Liberty. Basically LS = only get Maze Bank, LC = only get Bank of Liberty. Cars/Planes etc. Can be not widely transferable (i.e. You MKII or Babushka holding a car has engine failure mid flight and crashes, or maybe you need to go to the Airport marker on food), and maybe some planes (i.e. Luxor) can enter on a visiting basis via. Cutscene of that vehicle but can't be saved at the destination into a personal hangar.
Final words
I hope this gives some good for thought. Keep speculating! At least until we get some solid info Here's to 2021.
48 points: jesseaknight's comment in In the show St. Elsewhere, a character in the finale is shown to have thought of the whole series, which means he also made up all the shows that had crossovers with St. Elsewhere. This expands into the shows that were mentioned in the shows. There is at this point 419 shows in this universe
44 points: Derosa6037's comment in the longest single set at the laugh factory lasted 7h and 34m (by Dane Cook in 2008).
43 points: astronoob's comment in Margaret Hamilton, NASA's lead software engineer for the Apollo Program, stands next to the code she wrote by hand that took Humanity to the moon in 1969.
42 points: rus_reddit's comment in Rand Paul was the national debt for halloween in 2015. He said it was a very scary costume.
40 points: thejesiah's comment in Close Encounters of the Third Kind Geocache in Northern Italy
38 points: electro_hippie's comment in Why is smiling being frowned upon in the Russian culture?
37 points: SlideNERD's comment in The head of a tapeworm under an electron microscope
37 points: wtfisthisnoise's comment in Is U.S. income tax invalid because Ohio wasn’t legally a state when the 16th amendment was ratified?
35 points: Otterfan's comment in President Obama Roasts Donald Trump At White House Correspondents’ Dinner (2011)
35 points: _Foy's comment in Ways the Great Lakes try to Murder Ships - illustrated
(Eastern) Mysticism is a fundamental part of the show: some long sunday evening thoughts
TL;DR: The Sopranos was ultimately about suffering and the search for Enlightenment. So during my current rewatch I have been pondering about the fundmental role of mysticism, mainly Buddhism, in this thing of ours. I should say beforehand: despite the fancy title of this, I have no particular knowledge about buddhism bar the essentials (or any spiritual tradition for that matter) so I hope that people who can contribute more than I can feel encouraged to talk about it in this thread. Also, I haven't seen season 6, where the most visible connection is, for a long time so I'm sure I have misremembered things. Nevertheless I feel like this perspective on the story and ending isn't nearly talked about enough (if at all) espcially when you consider that some of the main actors were and are buddhists. Also David Chase, altough I'm not sure if he is a buddhist, has talked in interviews about mystics and its relation to the show and the many mystical and paranormal experiences in The Sopranos shows that he is definitely open to it. I've noticed that Eastern mysticism is a very recurrent theme in this show. There are multiple (Western) spiritual and philosohical traditions clearly visible in the story such as catholicism and existentialism, but I have always found all the references to eastern spirituality somewhat out of place for a late 90s mobster environment. From the top of my head from the first five seasons: Father Phil gives a book to Carmela about buddhism for her to read, Dr. Melfi mentions it regulary and seems quite aware of it, Richie Aprile's new perspective on life and his yoga, obviously Janice a.k.a fucking Parvati, Paulie and Sun Tazoo, Gloria was a buddhist, Tony uses multiple buddhist phrases (wrongly) from Gloria and Melfi, etc. I think, which becomes especially clear in season 6, that the story of Tony is that of a man looking to get rid of his suffering (which is the inevitable consequence of being human according to the Buddha) by searching for lasting and real hapiness, freedom and peace (the infinte nature of Enlightenment, the 'goal' of buddhism and all mystical traditions). Apart from finding out that enlightenment is everyones true nature, by meditation and living according to its implication, most spiritual traditions usually state it is possible to get a glimpse of the infinite, or to 'see behind the veil' of the finite mind, in the living realm by near-death experiences and by the use of sacred (psychedelic) plants. I would argue that Tony glimpses the infinite freedom and peace (Enlightenment) in season 6 on two occations, during his coma (near-death experience) and at the end of his peyote trip. In his coma dreams we see another direct reference to eastern spirituality: the buddhist monks and Tony's name, Kevin Finnity. In his dream, his subconcious is looking for Kevin Finnity, or if you remove the -Kev, in Finnity. In this scene, Tony says to the monks that he "came here [to the monks and monastry] to find Kevin Finnity." When he says how he has his wallet and his briefcase, but that he is not Him, the monks start to laugh. He is saying that he is not Infinnity, and that is funny to them, because the buddhist view is that everyones essence is that of the same and only enlightened and infinite Self. 'A man named Kevin Finnity walks into a monastry and says that he can't find Kevin Finnity' sounds like the beginning of a buddhist joke or Zen koan. It is worth noting that after waking up from his coma, Tony feels very happy and free from his psychological burdens for a short period of time (I forgot exactly how long this was, maybe a few days or an episode?) He doesn't know why, but he seems joyful and aprreciative of the small things in life. However, the hapiness quickly slips out of his hands and the weight of his human life proves to be to much: he 'relapses' as old routines and psychological habits come back in his life and they are worse than before because of the added frustration of his unability to catch and preserve the hapiness and peace he felt in the wake of his coma. As a result, Tony is doing worse than ever. Now to the peyote trip. Peyote has been a sacred plant since forever in shamanistic socieites and is seen as a way to communicate with God. The connection with the coma dream is established by the light of the lamp in the room where he does peyote, which is the same as the view he had in the hospital room. A bright and clear light represents in many traditions the light of the one Conciousness, or our God or Buddha-nature, or whatever words are used for THAT. Over the course of the season after the coma, we've seen Tony slowly and than quickly move away from the light. By taking Peyote, he enters back again. In the casino it is already established he ponders the nature of the Universe, by comparing the roulette table to the solar system. In the afterglow of the trip, the great scene in the dessert, he has a great insight; he GETS IT. Now we could argue what it is exactly he gets, but if the narrative I'm trying to create here holds any truth at all, it would make sense he has a revelation about the nature of himself and the universe. As you probably know, 'Ego Death' is a very common experience on psychedelics: the dissolution of seperation between subject ('me'; or Ego) and object (the 'outside' world). Everything simply 'is' and there is a true feeling of oneness with everything. Now, this experience is practically impossible to verbalise and conceptionalize to your peers; the best you could come up with is something like: ".....and the sun....... came up....." (OH YEAHH??) No worries, I'm coming to some sort of end as I'm getting hungry, but in this season we have seen two moments where Tony found what he truly longs for the most: two 'spiritual' experience that lead him to feel happy and at peace, but that quickly deteriorates because he, nor anyone in his environment, understands them and he feels like he has no-one to talk about it. Thus, old habitual ways of thinking, feeling, perceiving and behaving come back- and of course worse than ever before. We have seen the failed quest for enlightenment from Tony in this series. He longs, searches, finds, grasps and loses it over the course of the seasons. The only way he has been able to find it, is by diying. David Chase said the following when asked about the ending:
After a brief pause, Chase then said that he’d come across a quote from author Carlos Castaneda that came the closest to summing up everything that had been going through his head as he wrote the final sequence: “Warriors don’t venture into the unknown out of greed…to venture into that terifying loneliness of the unknown, one must have something greater than greed: love.” He then mentioned another quote from the finale that he felt was equally appropriate to the ending: Paulie Walnuts’ declaration that “even in the midst of death, we are in life. Or is that vice versa? Either way, you’re halfway up the ass.”
The cut to black is not a visualisation of death, but a representation of that what is written in the buddhist teachings as the essence of Tony, you, me and the entire universe: the Emptiness, Void, or primordal Awareness in which everything exist and ultimately out of which everything is made; including the cycles of life and death. The black screen is neither death or life: it points to that what contains both, our infinite awareness. I've been yapping worse than six barbers here so I would be impressed if people actually read it, but wha ya gonna do huh
Empire of Sin (Xbox) £15.99 delivered using code @ Boss Deals / eBay
The description of this deal was not provided by this subreddit and it's contributors. £15.99 - eBay Empire of Sin, the strategy game from Romero Games and Paradox Interactive, puts you at the heart of the ruthless criminal underworld of 1920s Prohibition-era Chicago. It’s up to you to hustle, charm and intimidate your way to the top of the pile and do whatever it takes to stay there. This character-driven game puts players smack dab in the glitz and glamor of roaring 20s all while having them work behind the scenes in the gritty underbelly of organized crime. Build A Crime Empire: Raise your criminal empire from the ground up by establishing rackets in your neighborhood (be it speakeasies, breweries, brothels, union skimming, protection rackets, or casinos) and recruiting a team of loyal mobsters to make your mark on the streets. Once you make a name for yourself, expand your influence by taking over rival territory and adding more ventures to your repertoire. Explore a Living, Breathing City: Take to the streets of vibrant 1920s Chicago and its distinct neighborhoods, such as Little Italy or West Loop, with real historical landmarks and events. Interact with a full cast of over 60 living, breathing characters with backgrounds that inform how they react to what you or other characters do. Each recruitable character has traits and relationships that significantly affect gameplay and vice versa. Schmooze, coerce, seduce, threaten, or kill them to get your way. Defend and Expand Territory: If it comes to blows, hypothetically of course, and your posse needs to send a message, face off in brutal turn-based combat. Recruit your goons strategically to build a strong chemistry within your crew to maximize combat damage and help secure your hold on the city. Wield Your Influence: Make and break alliances, bribe cops, and trade on the black market to gain an edge and expand the influence of your crime family. But always keep your enemies close and ensure you have a mole on the inside and eyes everywhere. Dominate the Neighborhood: Whether you make it to the top with violence, business smarts, or city-wide notoriety, there are a number of ways to become King or Queen of Chicago. With various starting conditions and constantly changing crew dynamics, no two playthroughs will ever be the same. This deal can be found at hotukdeals via this link: https://ift.tt/2LumSJi
A Big List of Challenges (Problems/Goals/Complications/Encounters) for your adventure (including Social, Exploration, Stealth, Mystery, and Combat).
Hi! I have compiled a big list of challenges your players can encounter during the adventure.
These challenges can be used as sub-goals the players will need to achieve on the path to their main goal, as obstacles they need to overcome to get what they want.
Most of them can also be used as the primary goal, an idea for the whole adventure (just make the stakes higher, make it important/interesting/exciting to accomplish, make it more difficult, add sub-goals and obstacles players need to get through to achieve it).
Challenges can be mixed and matched. In one adventure, challenge A can be the big primary goal, and challenge B can be a step towards accomplishing this big goal. In another adventure, it can be the other way around. In one adventure, the players need to obtain an item (a powerful weapon) to slay a monster, in another, they need to slay a monster to get their hands on the valuable item. In one adventure they need to rescue someone who has a clue to the mystery, in another they need to solve a mystery to be able to rescue someone.
Use multiple challenges together to add more depth, make the adventure more difficult/interesting, get players to fight on several fronts. Combine challenges to make them complications for each other, or use conflicting challenges that are incompatible with each other to create difficult choices. Players need to protect a person while also being on the run from the law, they need to spy on someone while traveling through the dangerous environment, they need to fight for political power while pretending to be someone they're not, they need to slay a big monster in the middle of the city while protecting people and avoiding collateral damage.
If you find this list useful - please help me to improve and extend it!
Share more challenge ideas, how can these challenge lists can be extended?
What other big challenge categories could I add? Please share a few challenge examples in those categories.
Share interesting examples for each kind of challenge.
Share interesting complications and combinations of challenges.
Share feedback/advice/ideas on improving this project.
Share good resources (books, random tables, articles) I can use to extend this list.
Action/Adventure Challenges
Defeat a villain and his minions.
Defeat a monstecreature/horde.
Obtain a McGuffin (item, vehicle, money, magic artifact, spell, your lost/stolen valuables, etc)
Obtain Information (an ancient book, a piece of gossip, a clue, secret codes, a way to break the curse).
Protect/Escort /Guard a person/creature (a rich merchant, a researcher, a young prince targeted for assassination, a last of its kind monster, tax collector, witness).
Deliver a person (make sure they don't escape).
Rescue a person/creature (rescue a hostage or a kidnapped person, break them out of captivity).
Track, Find, Chase, and Capture/Catch a person/creature/vehicle (a criminal, a runaway, a ship, a lost pet, an escaped experiment, the infected).
Find and save the missing person (lost kid, caravan, courier, spy.
Deliver a valuable/fragile item/cargo and protect it from danger (artwork, cursed artifact, mysterious crate, a treasure map, a message).
Destroy the target (an object, a cursed item, enemy weapon or infrastructure, the enemy base, a piece of blackmail on someone, a source of infection, close a portal).
Sabotage a plan (disrupt a ritual, prevent a prophecy, undermine the invasion, stop villain from achieving their goals).
Capture and secure the base/location (enemy city, friendly city under siege, a building, a military target).
Defend a location (protect a village from monsters, a city from the enemy army, prevent enemies from passing a bridge or a tunnel, protect a crime scene, meeting site, warehouse, protect a ritual to ensure it will get completed).
Your town/building/ship has been captured and overtaken by enemies. Survive under siege, liberate it.
Robbery/Heist (rob a train or a blimp, abduct a person, commandeer a ship, steal diamonds from the casino, steal wand from the mage tower).
Protect many innocent people (save people from a natural disaster for example, release the prisoners/slaves).
Win a competition (Complications: your team is bad, the other side cheats, you can only win by cheating, the event is more deadly than it was supposed to be. You are competing for other purpose than victory, such as to keep another contestant safe, to spy on someone, or to get into the place where the event goes down, to prevent villain from winning, to prove yourself, to impress someone).
Prepare for the mission. Get equipment/supplies/transportation/funding.
Deal with the consequences of a botched/evil magic ritual.
Distract the enemies. Act as bait for the ambush/trap.
Train a novice, keep a noble person safe while they go on adventure.
Build or repair an object (by collecting McGuffin ingredients).
Perform a Ritual.
Law Enforcement - act as a police for a town.
Intercept a delivery, escort, communications.
Prepare and execute an ambush.
Act as an experimental subject for a crazy scientist/wizard (for dangerous potions).
Exploration Challenges
Survive/avoid environmental dangers (think of the place itself as the “villain”, it is a monster without HP that "wants" to hurt players or drain their resources, and has certain powers to accomplish that. Traps, cave-ins, lava eruptions, rock-slides, avalanche, collapsing buildings, impenetrable mist, wild animals, dangerous/poisonous flora, falling into a pit, getting lost, etc).
Overcome environmental obstacles (a river on your way, a closed gate, climbing a mountain, a swamp, quick sand, slipping hazard above the abyss, thin ice, wild magic area. Retrieve an item from the bottom of the lake.).
Travel through multiple locations to reach the target.
Explore the location (to learn about it, to map it, to figure out what happened here. To find bandit camps, enemy encampments, monster nest, a way through, resources).
Find a lost location/person/item/treasure/clues.
Scout for information, survey the location/region (ahead of group, enemy territory, monster infested territory, uncharted wilderness).
Clear location of danger (creatures, traps, haunting ghosts, curses, infestation).
Track something/someone, find a trail.
Deal with a natural disaster (storm, earthquake, flood, meteor).
Survival (without food/water, deal with harsh weather, diseases. Find shelter. Repair a ship or a radio. Find a way to get back home.)
Enter a guarded area (overcome defenses, defeat security, sneak in unseen).
Escape guarded location (break out of prison).
Use environment to your advantage (start an avalanche to block a pass, assume the most optimal position for combat).
Social/Intrigue Challenges
Convince/Persuade a person to do/say/give you what you want.
Intimidate/Manipulate/Blackmail/Force someone to do what you want.
Befriend/Seduce someone, make allies.
Gain confidence or forgiveness of a person who doesn't like you.
Find a non-combat resolution.
Get caught lying/cheating/sneaking, and rectify the situation.
Persuade a group of people (an organization, an angry mob, snobby nobles. Persuade the army to take a route that will slow them down/lead them into an ambush, convince the bandits to raid the enemy, convince farmers to donate food).
Gain social status, power, political influence (prove your worth, gain respect, impress someone, get elected).
Change someone's social status (make them look good/bad, get them elected, overthrow a ruler).
Run a kingdom/village/team/organization/business, lead an army (build a new one, restore the failing one to former glory).
Change the society/group/organization (raise morale, lower the crime, stop witch hunts, deal with corruption).
Gain control over the territory (invade a country or repel the invasion).
Put down or incite rebellion/mutiny/conspiracy.
Negotiate a deal, bargain (political compromise, hostage negotiations, trade information, convince them to sign a document).
Resolve conflict, broker peace, unite rivaling factions, settle dispute.
Establish political/trade relationships .
Navigate a strange culture/customs (without offending anyone).
Cause conflict/rivalry/war, pit people/factions against each other (get enemy minions to mistrust each other).
Deceive a person.
Set someone up, shift the blame to someone else.
Infiltrate a group, conceal your identity (cult, bandits, enemy citadel, thieves guild).
Find the spy/traitomole.
Deal with being blackmailed, spied on, threatened, manipulated.
Deal with a nasty rumor or important information/secrets about yourself being out there.
Defend someone (or yourself) in the court.
Prosecute/judge someone in the court.
Put on a show, entertain.
Redeem or corrupt a person (teach someone a lesson, seduce someone to the dark/light side).
Recruit people to your cause.
Find a way to get someone to owe you a favor, find a way to repay the debt you owe to someone else.
Enforcement - apply pressure to a person to get them to do something or behave in a specific manner, without killing. (Calm down the rowdy gang, collect the debts).
Get enemy soldiers/minions to defect and switch sides.
Create a disinformation/propaganda campaign (feed it to the enemy spy, destroy someone's reputation, saw fear in the hearts of the enemy soldiers).
Perform a con.
Mystery/Investigation Challenges
Investigate a crime (murder, assault, theft, threats, blackmail, destruction of “x”, disappearances, corrupt law enforcer).
Spying/Surveillance, gather information on a person/creature/location without being noticed. (Are they up to something shady, are they who they claim to be, discover their secret techniques, how are they bypassing security, how do they create “x”, involvement in “x”, what secrets are they hiding, where are they hiding “x”, where do they keep disappearing to, enemy troops, ).
Search for clues and put them together to reach a conclusion.
Find and interview witnesses, interrogate suspects.
Figure out what's going on, unravel a plot.
Figure out what happened in this location.
Find evidence (proof of innocence or guilt, expose a corrupt official).
Find out if the person is lying or keeping secrets, and what they are.
Figure out someone's plot/motives.
Figure out who's behind the plot.
Do research (find and read ancient texts, talk to old wise people).
Stealth/Heist Challenges
Steal (or plant) an item/information (modify enemy maps, plant disinformation. Plant clues to frame a person).
Escape from danger (overwhelming force, ambush, pursuit of the law or criminals).
Hide, cover your tracks, lay low.
Sneak through undetected (sneak past enemy lines to deliver a message to allied forces, sneak past the bouncers into a party).
Assassinate stealthily (sneak into the king's chambers, lure them out, use poison, make it look like an accident).
Deal with getting noticed / drawing an unwanted attention.
Clean up evidence (yours, someone else's).
Exchange a real item for a fake or vice versa.
Return a (creature, item) before anyone notices it's missing.
Sabotage (device, ritual) without being noticed.
Smuggle (creature, person, item) into or out of a location.
Security Testing - breach the clients security unnoticed.
Frame a person/group/nation for a crime.
Fake someone's death.
Villain's Moves
Personally confront the players.
Send minions after the players.
Hire a rival team of adventurers or thugs to go after players..
Send an assassin.
Send a spy.
Set a bounty on their heads.
Set a trap.
Setup an ambush.
Take hostages.
Threaten an NPC players like.
Frame players for a crime, declare them traitors/outlaws.
Reveal player's secrets, crimes they have committed.
Bribe the authorities/police to act against players.
Convince authorities/police that players are evil.
Make the public dislike the heroes.
Have a "dead man switch" that will hurt people or destroy something valuable if the villain is killed.
Know some information valuable to the players (like where hostages are kept, where the treasure is hidden), so players can't kill them, and must negotiate.
Set a time-bomb. Something horrible will happen unless players do what they're told.
Possess/blackmail/threaten an innocent person into doing their bidding.
Pretend to be someone else to deceive the players.
Befriend players to use them and betray them later.
Kidnap one of the players.
Join forces with another enemy of the players.
Plant false clues, create decoy trails.
Frame someone else for their crimes.
Kill hero's mentoally.
Cause mistrust, disorder, confusion, infighting among players or general population.
Hire people to commit crimes while pretending to be someone else to create mistrust/conflict among two parties. (Example: the bandits "from another country" attacks "local merchants", Start a plague in an uneducated city and have the "foreign merchant" sell snake oil cures, "native patriot" kills a "alien anarchist, etc.)
Put difficult choices in front of the heroes (like forcing Batman to save one of the ferry boats, to save Harvey Dent or Rachel).
Take away resources from the players (steal their items).
Give people the wrong idea about his powers/weaknesses.
Push player's buttons, play on heroes' flaws, temptations, fears.
Develop a good public image, make friends in the government, be beloved by the public.
Seduce player's allies to the dark side, convince/threaten them into betraying players.
Complications
Do it under time pressure (before the ritual is complete, before people run out of air, before reinforcements arrive, before or during the event, in transit, while you still have the chance).
Do it while competing with the rival team.
Unrelated people are interfering with the objective.
Do it stealthily (don't attract attention, don't leave clues, no witnesses).
Do it while pretending to be someone else.
Do it without revealing that your client is involved.
Prevent collateral damage, protect the innocents who are around.
Avoid violence. Defeat/capture the villain/creature without it being harmed.
Mitigate the risk, there's a high probability of causing a lot of damage if you're not careful.
Two challenges conflict with each other (you must break your stealth to help someone in trouble, capture criminal or save people who are currently in danger).
Difficult choice. Choose lesser of two evils, choose which people to rescue. Requiring personal sacrifice, risk, compromise.
Opportunities that come with a difficulty, cost or have negative consequences.
Resolve moral dilemma (the creature is dangerous but doesn't deserve to die, you're working for a bad guy, both sides of the conflict have valid points, completing a quest will harm people/environment).
Do it with incomplete information.
Do it with limited resources or without preparation.
Do it without access to powers you're used to having (while sick/injured/debilitated, in an area where magic is outlawed/disabled, having lost your equipment).
Locals here are unhelpful/hostile to you. You have low social status.
You can't trust anyone.
Doing it is illegal, or against authorities best interests, or is threatening a powerful group.
There are regulations/restrictions on what you can do hindering your progress.
Do it while being supervised (the media is all over you, a brilliant detective is on your tail, you are under suspicion, the enemy knows you're coming, you have a spy/mole).
Do it despite your flaws/temptations/fears.
It causes conflict/infighting within the team (player characters will have opposite goals/reactions to it).
Do it while working together with antagonist or someone else you don't like.
The side you're working for turns out to be evil.
The villain is someone you know/like/respect.
The villain is a respected public figure, celebrity, is liked by people or has authority over you.
Bad guy has a dead man switch, if he dies the others will suffer or treasure will be lost. Bad guy is the only one who knows the valuable information.
The people you're helping don't want your help.
Vital information turns out to be wrong.
Deal with the betrayal.
Mission has been rigged to fail from the start (PCs may be used as a scapegoat).
Objective is stolen before the PCs arrive.
Objective must be undamaged.
The important item has been transmuted and needs to be changed back, locked in a safe and needs a code to unlock, is a mineral that needs to be refined by a specific process. A book or a message is written in a foreign language that requires a translator.
Only a bad/unpleasant person can provide the item/information/favor you need.
Please leave a comment and contribute to this project! Edit: I've had a few pretty huge epiphanies while writing this post:
Stories are fundamentally about problem solving. Roleplaying is fundamentally about problem solving. This is the fundamental "game loop" of RPGs - GM puts a problem in front of the players, and they find creative ways to solve it, that's what gives them fun stuff to do and feels satisfying to accomplish.
Adventure Ideas are fundamentally problems. They create an exciting, challenging, important goal for the players to accomplish.
Big problems are broken down into small challenges. But fundamentally, the big climactic adventure/campaign goals and the small challenges players encounter on their way are the same thing. Every scene the characters solve a small problem, and it drives them towards solving the big problem. That's what plot points are - players solving or failing to solve a problem, which moves them closer to or farther away from the goal. Which feels exciting/valuable/dramatic.
Conflict, obstacles, social/exploration/combat encounters are fundamentally just sources of problems. There probably are other sources that can generate problems.
It's all just nested challenges: Campaign Problem > Adventure Problem > Scene Problem. And any challenge can be used on any of these levels.
Therefore, the list above is a list of adventure ideas and plot points at the same time. Make any challenge very important/difficult/exciting to accomplish - and it becomes an idea for the adventure or a campaign. Make any adventure idea relatively small and simple - and it becomes a scene challenge (encounter). Put a number of smaller challenges in front of the players - and you've got your basic story structure (a list of encounters, the gameplay). Because goals and challenges are fundamentally the same, just the nested problems, they can be combined in any order to create any number of unique adventures.
Also, it means that you can take big story ideas from movies, TV episodes, published modules, and use them as ideas for small encounters. Shawshank Redemption, Alien, Jaws, Incredibles - they can be big campaign ideas, small adventure ideas, or just a thing characters do in a scene (escape from the prison, hide from a monster, defeat a big golem).
Game mechanics are also challenges. If there's an RPG system that gets players to do something awesome (GM moves in Dungeon World, Favors/Debts and Social Status mechanics from the Undying, Weak Moves from Dream Askew) - you can use those as challenges too.
Even a single challenge can create an unlimited number of unique stories - you just change the concrete details. McGuffins, NPCs, locations, etc.
If I can in anyway contribute to fighting fake news, let it be this piece about Gen. McInerney (pls share)
Since McInerney is back in the news spreading conspiracy theories about our recent Presidential election, making up bullshit stories about US Special Operations raids, many will find this article I wrote six years ago helpful in learning who this guy is and what he is really about. While many are familiar with President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous farewell speech, fewer have read the original drafts which include dire warnings about the future of America and what Eisenhower termed a “military-industrial complex.” One of the original drafts, penned by speech writer Malcom Moos, reads: “We must never let power, implicit in this combination, endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert, knowledgeable, and wise citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that both security and liberty may prosper. In the councils of government, we must jealously guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We can ignore it only at our peril.” The tone is softened slightly in the speech that Eisenhower delivered, but his message remained intact. Since the Eisenhower presidency, the military-industrial complex has grown and gone through a metamorphosis, the rhetoric changing to match the current threats, real or perceived, to the United States. The Cold War gave way to the War on Terror. At the forefront of those who shape the rhetoric are often the same retired generals and admirals who staff the boards of directors of America’s largest and most powerful defense companies. Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney carries three-star clout following an extremely impressive career. Retiring from the Air Force, McInerney served four tours in Vietnam, including hundreds of sorties as a combat aviator. Afterwards, McInerney served in a succession of important military commands. He is a graduate of West Point and also has a master’s degree from Georgetown. Since his retirement in 1994, General McInerney has also served on the board of directors for perhaps a dozen different defense and defense-related companies. However, General McInerney says some very odd things. To the uninitiated, like MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, he sounds “nuts.” When McInerney makes outlandish claims as a paid Fox News contributor, people sometimes describe him as sounding crazy. Yes, the general’s claims, a few of which we will examine here, are bizarre, but McInerney is not crazy. In fact, he is very intelligent, highly rational, and each of his words are very calculated. The Pentagon’s Military Analyst Program When the Pentagon established the military analyst program in 2002, they did so largely to help build public support for the invasion of Iraq. Retired generals were recruited into the program by the Pentagon and given exclusive access to classified briefings, as well as tours of Guantanamo and bases in Iraq. While these analysts were presented on network news each night as being objective experts, they were actually being groomed by the Pentagon and fed talking points. Moreover, many of them had ties to major defense contractors with material interests in the war. Former Green Beret and member of the military analyst program, Robert Bevelacqua, later said of the program that the Pentagon was telling them, “we need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.” When the New York Times sued the DOD to obtain documents about the program, they found that the talking heads we saw on television were referred to as “message force multipliers” and “surrogates.” When one retired general in the military analyst program received talking points from the Pentagon, he wrote, “good work” and “we will use it.” That general’s name was Thomas McInerney. Malaysian Flight 370 While McIerney is known for his very hawkish stances on foreign-policy issues, he is perhaps better known for the straight-up outlandish claims he often makes. One of the most curious is the theory he advanced on Fox News multiple times when Malaysian Flight 370 disappeared somewhere over the Pacific. The theory: Flight 370 was hijacked by terrorists, probably the pilots, who then turned off the aircraft’s transmitters and flew the plane westward. The pilots then shadowed Singaporean Flight 68 in order to hide their aircraft’s radar signature as they flew over Indian airspace. McInerney insists that the Indian radar operators would not necessarily have picked up flight 370’s radar signature as most countries don’t have their “A-team” manning the radar late at night. If we are to accept this bizarre leap of faith, we then have to invent some way in which Flight 370 then broke away from Flight 68. McInerney insists that the Malaysian passenger plane then landed in Lahore, Pakistan, and the passengers are being held hostage. Fox News is always quick to point out on air how General McInerney has amazing sources and contacts within the Pentagon and elsewhere—an attempt to backstop his strange claims and theories. In this case, McInerney pointed out that it wasn’t simply his sources that gave him his information, but rather that logic dictated the plane was hijacked and flown to Lahore. But this isn’t the same type of logic advanced by Plato, Hobbes, or even Machiavelli. McInerney is making inferences based on inferences based on inferences and none of it adds up or can be verified by anyone. Despite McInerney’s incredible sources that Fox News pundits constantly reference, no one that SOFREP has spoken to in the intelligence community lends a bit of credence to this claim. DEFCON 1 “Something is happening out there and we are asleep at the switch.” Another interesting statement made on Fox News by McInerney is that the United States should go to DEFCON 1. Defense Condition One is America’s highest level of alert and means that nuclear war is imminent. McInerney reminds us that America has never gone to this level of alert before. Even during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the United States was on the brink of nuclear armageddon with the Soviet Union, we only made it to DEFCON 2. Why would America need to raise our alert status to DEFCON 1 in September of 2014? McInerney references a variety of nebulous threats. In various interviews he says that this threat could be nuclear, an EMP weapon, or cyber-warfare attacks against our infrastructure. Where does this threat emerge from? General McInerney said on Fox that, “unchecked, ISIS is an existential threat to the United States…” However, there is no evidence that ISIS is even remotely an existential threat to America. While ISIS can—and gone unchecked, almost certainly will—become a threat to America, the idea that a ragtag group of jihadists could destroy America has no credibility. Even the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center came nowhere close to actually destroying America. In the same interview, McInerney then repeats his suggestion that the government raise the alert level to DEFCON 1, and that he believes that multiple American cities are soon going to be attacked because ISIS has slipped through our porous borders and are already staging in American cities to strike. He then pushes for a “massive air campaign in Iraq and Syria.” Nuclear Iran “Getting the bombs or the components of bombs into the United States would be simple.” (End Game, 27) At the New Hampshire Institute for Politics, McInerney commented on one of his favorite topics: nuclear Iran. In this speech, he warns America that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon, possibly hand it off to a third party, and then it could be smuggled into the United States to be detonated in a city. McInerney would have us believe that while intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying a nuclear payload can be traced back to the country that launched them, a nuclear weapon smuggled into America would leave no fingerprints as to who the culprits are. Of course, this claim is patently false. The science of nuclear forensics would allow us to quickly identify who built a nuclear weapon set off on American soil. Iran knows this. So does General McInerney. Contrary to many alarmists, Iran is a rational state and the Iranian government does realize that, should they launch such an attack against America, the nation of Iran would cease to exist in short order. To effect a regime change in Iran, and according to McInerney, to prevent this nuclear nightmare, he advocates a 48-hour air campaign over Iran. The goal would be to set the Iranian nuclear program back at least 5 years. This would include the use of bunker busters, 70 stealth aircraft, and 400 non-stealth aircraft to bomb 2,500 targets inside Iran. America’s Nuclear Deterrent “It is very safe and it is very secure.” Considering the dire threats that McInerney insists America is facing on an almost daily basis, he made one curious appearance on television to assure the public that America’s nuclear stockpile is safe and secure. On January 14th, 2014, McInerney appeared on Fox to address reports of missile launch officers being caught up in a drug investigation and cheating on their certification exams. General McInerney responded to the question of the disposition of our nuclear stockpile by assuring us that it is, “very safe and it is very secure.” He goes on to point out that there have been some human failings in our nuclear command, but that our “nuclear-deterrent force is in very good shape.” The general pushed for modernizing our nuclear forces and said that these weapons needed to be maintained, but when it came to the personnel and overall capabilities of our nuclear deterrent, he was very positive. For someone who often warns Americans about dire threats against our nation and even insidious conspiracies from within (in a TruNews interview, he warned that Obama is carrying out a well-orchestrated conspiracy to transform America into a communist/socialist state), it is curious how he assures us that everything is fine with our nuclear forces. Nothing could be further from the truth. The problems plaguing our nuclear command are not just limited to our aging stockpile, a few drug users in the ranks, or cheating on exams. Major General Michael Casey, who was in command of three nuclear wings, was relieved of command in 2013. The reason? Casey was boozing it up in Moscow and hooked up with two local women at a hotel. He was drunk, incoherent, and belligerent during his trip, and went missing for hours at a time. This sounds very much like a “honey trap” engineered by Russian intelligence services. Vice Admiral Tim Giardina was also relieved from his position as deputy chief of U.S. Strategic Command, ostensibly because he used fake gambling chips at a casino in Iowa. With Giardina and Casey relieved within days of each other there may be a real conspiracy at play here. It seems likely that beyond a few human failings, America’s nuclear forces are heavily targeted, if not penetrated, by foreign intelligence agents. This raises the possibility that U.S. military counter-intelligence decided to clean house in October of 2013. Again, the implications of these scandals within our nuclear command would not go unnoticed by someone with the depth of experience and knowledge that McInerney has. All of this begs the question as to why he goes on television to tell us everything is fine with our nuclear forces when he is also constantly warning us about foreign threats and the destruction of American cities. END GAME “Syria is a domino waiting to fall.” (End Game, 54) In 2004, McInerney co-authored a book called End Game with Major General (ret.) Paul Vallely. The two graduated from the same West Point class and became reacquainted when they were both brought into the Pentagon’s Military Analyst Program. Their book opens with, “Today, America is at war with an enemy every bit as dangerous as Nazi 51D6TASMSFL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_Germany or the Soviet Union: We know it as radical Islam” (End Game, 9). In order to counter terrorism, they advocate regime change (“major policy shifts”) using military action in six countries. Afghanistan and Iraq were two that had already been toppled when the book was published. They suggested further military action in Iran, Syria, Libya, and North Korea. Since 2004, Libya has experienced a regime change while Syria and Iran have both been under serious duress. Interestingly, two other countries were identified for reform rather than military action: Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. But, according to the book, if Saudi Arabia can’t shape up, we may have to bomb them, too. End Game tells us that we don’t have time to take these countries out in sequence, but rather we have to attack all of them at the same time (End Game, 38). To what extent McInerney and Vallely have actually influenced the policy decisions to target these countries is unknown, but it is a safe bet that they have been hard at work behind the scenes. End Game is also filled with predictions that never came to pass. For instance, they said that, if North Korea detonates a nuclear bomb, that Japan, and maybe even South Korea, would develop their own nuclear weapons (End Game, 25). They again assert that if a nuclear bomb was detonated in America that “evidence would vaporize,” making the weapon untraceable (End Game, 29). Regarding Afghanistan, they write that, “The force level that NATO needs to maintain in Afghanistan is relatively small, the duties in the long term, relatively easy.” (End Game, 40). When it comes to Iraq, they write, “We are confident that the Iraqi people are up to the task, based on how enthusiastically they have embraced the opportunities to vote in meaningful elections.” (End Game, 44) Considering the author’s failed predictions for post-war Afghanistan and Iraq, perhaps we should scale back from attacking the rest of these “rogue” nations all at once with massive American air power as they suggest. Maddow Gets it Wrong “We report, you freak out.” -Rachel Maddow Interestingly, journalists and media commentators have never really put McInerney in the spotlight for his many irregularities. On the rare exception in which a critique is offered, it always portrays McInerney as a far-out-there right-winger. Four years ago, Rachel Maddow did a story on McInerney for her show on MSNBC. The reason for her coverage was because McInerney was supporting an Army doctor who refused to deploy on the grounds that he suspected President Obama was not born in the United States, and therefore was not a valid President. In an affidavit written by McInerney, he praises the doctor’s courage and bravery for standing by his beliefs. Yes, apparently McInerney is a birther as well. Rachel goes on to say, “what is news is that someone with General McInerney’s qualifications is saying that maybe the President is secretly foreign.” While Rachel is correct in pointing out how preposterous it is that a three-star general would endorse such a zanny conspiracy theory, she is ignorant of the calculated intent behind his carefully worded and pre-rehearsed statements. She then wraps up the segment with, “the real story, it seems to me, is that a guy this nuts gets paid to comment on foreign policy and wars. The birther general is on Fox New’s payroll…” Rachel is directionally correct in pointing out the strange disconnect between the fact that McInerney is a retired three-star general and that his statements don’t make any sense. However, she misses the fact that, while his statements are off-the-wall, they are never off-the-cuff. In short, McInerney does not actually believe the bizarre things that he says on air, but rather, these are carefully worded statements fed to the public for political purposes. The Military-Industrial Complex Thomas McIerney is constantly on television beating his war drums and warning Americans about amorphous threats to our nation. According to him, we are just days away from a horrendous terrorist attack. But McInerney is not simply a television military analyst, rather, he is an active participant in the military-industrial complex via the various boards of directors upon which he sits. What he does is not analysis, but advocacy. He is an advocate for nuclear weapons, long-range bombers, UAVs (specifically Global Hawk), and he is an advocate of going to war with a half dozen countries simultaneously. This is not conjecture or secret information from anonymous sources, but rather McInerney’s own words. In his book End Game, he claims to have plotted the liberation of Iraq in 2002 on a cocktail napkin with Paul Vallely. They then pitched this plan to Bill O’Reilly at a party hosted by the Fox News network, who agreed to have them on his show to talk about it. In End Game, the generals write, “We knew appearing on The O’Reilly Factor to discuss the plan was something of a risk. In the past, we had acted solely as military analysts. Presenting our plan came close to advocacy.” (End Game, 85) General McIerney chose not to simply be a passive analyst, but to instead become an active participant in shaping history. He believed we could take down Iraq in 30 days, and that the rest would basically be a cake walk. The U.S. military invaded in 2003 and our soldiers fought, bled, and died in the streets fighting terrorists, Baath-party loyalists, foreign fighters, and run-of-the-mill gangsters in places like Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra for an additional nine years. Mcinerney is not to blame for the failures of the war in Iraq, but his rhetoric is suspect when the companies he works with have a material interest in the United States going to war—wars in which the products endorsed by McInerney, such as air power and UAVs, would be employed. In order for those products to be used, the American public has to be kept in a constant state of fear. That fear can then be channeled and used as a vehicle to support war. The vehicle of choice for McInerney is radical Islam. He isn’t a right-wing nut as people like Rachel Maddow would have you believe. If we were to take McInerney’s word’s at face value, the politics he endorses are actually divorced from any ideology in contemporary mainstream politics. Like Lyndon LaRouche, Thomas McInerney’s politics are so far out there that it is disingenuous to describe them as right-wing, Republican, or conservative. But it is highly unlikely that McInerney actually believes silly stories about Flight 370, Iranian nuclear weapons, and birther conspiracies. Far more likely, he says these things cynically for purely political purposes. McInerney honorably served his country for many years, but contrary to the lapel pin on his collar, what he does today is far from patriotic. In fact, it is the exact opposite. Misleading Americans with alarmism and hyperbolic statements is deconstructing our political process. An informed public is an absolute necessity for a democracy to function. When retired generals leverage their credibility to mislead the public like a pied piper for political purposes, we are in serious trouble. When they lend their name to conspiracy theories, it only contributes to polarizing American politics and driving wedges between the American people. When politicians see that the talking heads on television are saying something that does not match up with what our intelligence professionals are telling them, it is then seen as an intelligence failure. Thomas McInerney is not alone. He is one member of a clique of retired generals, admirals, and CIA officers who have created an echo chamber in which they cite each other as sources and stir up the political fringe of America. They do this intentionally, knowing that their alarmist messages will be diluted by the time they make their way down to more reasonable people. But in the meantime, the damage done to American politics is impossible to calculate. This is one facet of the modern military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned us of.
The Vice Scene. There are two interesting facts about the head-in-a-vice scene. First, Scorsese did not expect the scent to make the cut. He included it in the movie so that it would distract the MPAA and allow the other scenes to seem less violent. Secondly, the vice scene was taken from a book titled Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas. This has to be in the Top Ten best gangster films of all time. Nicky is trying to get a name out of a guy who has not given in after two days of being beaten up. Last resort they put the guys head in a vice. Pesci in this film is brilliantly evil and steals every scene he is in, he does angry like no-one else. Casino 1995. The infamous head in a vice scene was based on an actual incident where mob enforcers Charles Nicoletti and Anthony Spilotro tortured Billy McCarthy for info about his accomplices. Casino: Head in a Vice. Posted on September 30, 2017 by myfreesentences. Joe Pesci pretty much steals every scene in Casino, as Nicky, even though he’s a despicable sociopath who only has maybe one redeeming scene in the whole movie, which is where he is described as always, 10 Free Spins on Starburst upon signup. Claim 100% first deposit bonus up to £100 at Royal Panda!18+, first deposit only, T&Cs apply. Casino bonus: min. £10, Casino Vice Scene max. £100. Bonus/free spins winnings wagering requirement: x35. Casino (1995) on IMDb: Movies they stick his head in a vice, crank it up, and pop his eyeball out, after this Doggs gives up his associate named "Charlie M" They then kill him by cutting his throat. This incident did indeed happen, but not for the reason as portrayed in the film. The scene above is inspired by the 1962 murders of the 3. The vice scene came from the book “Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas” and was drawn from Tony Spilotro’s interrogation of a gangster named Billy McCarthy. McCarthy committed the unauthorized murder of two brothers, the Scalvos, and Spilotro tried to get McCarthy to give up the identity of the man who assisted with the murders.
