I’ve never doubted that he’s a good person and I’m not at all surprised to hear he’s a good GM. I just questioned his game design skills.

But yes, I think you may be right that a large part of that comes down to his social media prowess…or lack thereof.

I’ve been pretty negative on Mearls for a long time. Back when I still played D&D it always felt like between him and Crawford, he was the one always speaking up with nonsense whereas Crawford was the thoughtful designer. And he was still in charge of D&D during the period that I lost interest with the game in part due to the longer-term direction of the game and in part due to retroactive changes made to existing material.

But I’ve been watching his new YouTube channel a bit lately, and it’s not bad. This one was particularly interesting.

It’s certainly not impossible that I’m wrong about the impact on the maggies. I first heard it when watching the Brisbane City Council meeting immediately after a baby was killed by one of these birds. A human baby. And that’s precisely why I don’t actually care if I am wrong. It being neutral or positive for the birds themselves certainly makes it an easier sell, but I strongly believe it would be the right thing to do regardless. Because babies being murdered and other people being violently assaulted is not something we should just have to put up with for 4 months every year.

Because of the importance of territory to us, we should NOT be moved elsewhere. Those that are captured and relocated will be killed or badly injured by magpies already living in the new area. To make matters worse, eggs and chicks will fail to survive without their parents. Relocation won’t solve your ‘problem’. A new magpie will take the place of the one you relocated and the swooping will start all over again. If the dominant male is removed from the territory then the whole flock may become vulnerable and threatened with displacement

Sorry but this is completely wrong.

the magpie itself benefits from the translocation. If they’re attacking, they’re usually stressed and need more space

when you take away the male within a very short time the bachelor birds outside of the territory will make a claim on the female and chicks and will look after the young better than the original male

As for the rest of this…

Avoid areas that are being defended

Useless fucking advice when 90% of our bikeways are along tree-lined parks and other places magpies are likely to be, and a vanishingly small number of safe routes are available as alternatives. Not to mention that you don’t know where the magpies that swoop are until after you’ve already been fucking swooped.

Look, magpies are absolutely gorgeous birds when they’re not swooping. But people should have the right to go about their regular business within the bounds of a city without the serious risk of injury or death. It’s not reasonable to expect cohabitation with violent beings prone to assault. Everything I’ve heard suggests only a small percentage of maggies swoop people. That small percentage should be relocated where they aren’t causing harm.

AoM: Retold is using the AoE3: DE engine, according to comments made back around the time it was first announced.

Which is amusing, since AoE3: DE’s engine is based on the original AoE3 engine, which in turn was based on the original engine of AoM.

The Extended Edition was like the HD Edition of Age of Empires 2 (now called “Age of Empires II (2013)” on Steam). This is more like the Definitive Edition. Significant graphics improvements (as opposed to just taking the existing graphics and upscaling them), as well as new content and probably QoL improvements.

Haha unfortunately I haven’t even heard of Lancer before your comment!

I’d love to play in a Vampire: The Masquerade campaign, or to GM an Avatar Legends campaign. But I’ve only got one gaming group, we’ve got one ongoing campaign, and even getting them to play Pathfinder rather than D&D was an unusual and new experience for them.

I need to finish my Curse of Strahd campaign first

That’s my reason too.