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danieldwilliam November 25 2015, 12:02:54 UTC

I'm not sure if my Moff-hate is made lesser or greater by the admission that he's basically doing Doctor Who in his spare time so it's a rush job.

I think it explains much but excuses little.

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andrewducker November 25 2015, 12:40:31 UTC
I'm not sure I can see the bit where he said that. Can you expand?

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gonzo21 November 25 2015, 13:31:00 UTC
I think the bit where he admitted being just weeks from the start of filming, and he didn't have any sort of script or storyboards started for what they actually wound up shooting?

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andrewducker November 25 2015, 13:35:07 UTC
Yes, but that wasn't because he was working on it part time - it was because they were having massive issues getting actors signed up to things. And from what he was saying, it sounds like it wasn't him getting David/Matt signed up, and he was merely being kept in the loop about it.

He's not the producer, after all - he's got to work with what he's given.

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danieldwilliam November 25 2015, 12:09:03 UTC
Weed killing robots for the win. I'll be circultating that round the office.

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andrewducker November 25 2015, 12:39:43 UTC
It's also now on my Mum's Christmas list :-)

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Secret Hitler woodpijn November 25 2015, 12:42:33 UTC
Looks like a very interesting game.

But it looks very similar to The Resistance/Avalon, and their reference to that on the kickstarter page seems deliberately dishonest:

"Secret Hitler is a love letter to hidden identity games like Werewolf/Mafia, The Resistance, and Avalon, but it's also a new design that fixes some of our biggest problems with those games.

No moderator: Secret Hitler doesn't require a moderator - everyone can join in the game.
No early player elimination: We love the suspense of player elimination, but Secret Hitler saves that drama for the very end - assassinated players will rarely have to wait more than ten minutes before the game ends."They're committing the fallacy where they say they're fixing problems with "Werewolf, Resistance and Avalon" as a set, but actually only describing problems in Werewolf - which Resistance and Avalon did already fix ( ... )

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RE: Secret Hitler cartesiandaemon November 25 2015, 12:58:03 UTC
Right, that's what I thought but I couldn't tell if I was missing something. It's also possible it DOES work better than resistance/avalon (and ultimate werewolf, which seems to make werewolf work quite well and blessed gods, is QUICK to play), but nothing in the description made it clear either way -- it seemed maybe more intense, but if anything more complicated.

I was also hesitating over the name -- on the one hand, Hitler was incredibly visually and ideologically distinctive, so "secret" seemed odd, but on the other hand, it's an awesome concept that immediately makes the aims clear, and actually fits the politics better, in that everyone knows some people are a BIT fascist, but not who would be as bad as H.

It also seemed a shame there weren't communists -- a quintessential feature seems to be that people were driven to extremism in both directions out of genuine fear, not only random evil.

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Re: Secret Hitler woodpijn November 25 2015, 13:03:20 UTC
I would like to try it out. It's probably better than Resistance in some ways and worse in others. I was just objecting to the misleading marketing.

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RE: Re: Secret Hitler cartesiandaemon November 26 2015, 10:05:33 UTC
Yeah, likewise.

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cartesiandaemon November 25 2015, 12:59:56 UTC
The doctors article doesn't answer much, but at least describes what happens. And I generally think "doing the best you can if some key actors aren't there" is a good thing even if it's often leaves unfortunate rough edges. I would have loved to see CE, and I'm sorry he didn't do it, but I assume he had good reason; and I didn't feel the "extra incarnation" was handled as well as it could be; but I thought it was basically quite a moving idea and John Hurt was ABSOLUTELY AMAZING and in the running for one of my favourite doctors.

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nancylebov November 25 2015, 13:57:35 UTC
I'm amazed that anyone developed a full spectrum of appear-when-wet paints. What were they thinking?

Weed-punching robot sounds cool, but compressing the soil is bad. Perhaps a weed-slicing robot would be better.

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andrewducker November 25 2015, 14:01:15 UTC
LASERS!

(And they were presumably thinking "This will look amazing on Tumblr")

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resonant November 26 2015, 02:33:07 UTC
Definitely! And you don't even need to vapourize the weeds - just cook the leaves gently (maybe microwave spectrum?), and the weed will waste time and energy regrowing them. By the time it recovers, the crops will have outgrown it and the weeds will be stunted in the shade.

Lasers would also let you zap insects and fungal infections on crops, damaging only a leaf or two while sparing the rest of the plant.

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