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I got a guy at work that purchased one of high tracks of AL at Gencon last year. Him and all his buddies as a full party. But, he never played AL, so he just forged logs/certs and kitted him and all his buddies out with munchkin'ed poo poo. And he will never EVER stop talking about how he had some sort of Super Smite Lockadin that swung for hundreds of damage. And he whined to me about how disappointed he was in his friends for not knowing how to play the minmaxed characters he made. AND I HEAR ABOUT THIS WEEKLY EVEN STILL. And he never seems to get why I don't want to listen to his verbal masturbation about his YUGE SMITE CRITS. --- Meanwhile, I've got a group from another forum of about a dozen or so people, and we're all rolling up a bunch of level 1s and doing old content (SKT/LMoP) and enjoying every minute of it. I have a gnome wizard that I just traded for a wand for on reddit, and I'm keeping shelved at level 3 so I can play with my buddy and his level 1 cleric at Gencon. My mom's learning to paint figures so we can have rad little metal dudes (and even my owl familiar). SIDE STORY: My mom's never painted figs before and I really don't know anything either, so we went down to the game store this weekend and there was some like 12yo kid there painting mechs and my mom asked him WAT DO and he was soooooooo excited that an adult wanted his opinions on painting little wizard dudes. It was p great. I have a bugbear assassin that Goons think is hella dumb but I'm just gonna be this bigass wookie tossing out shanks from nowhere, devil may care. And then, for funsies, and to fill some groups, I rolled a Turtle Barb who is VERY ANGRY ABOUT A LOT OF THINGS, and he's probs gonna be junk because I'm going Sword And Board with Path of the Ancestral Guardian so I can be a bigass meatwall for my party. I'm super idiotically meticulous about my AL logs and how I'm putting my characters together, not because I'm minmaxing, but because it means something to me personally to be playing on the same field as everyone else and the only way I can make certain of that from my end, is to make sure all my I's are dotted and T's are crossed. --- So, basically, my coworker cheated the gently caress out of AL and then paid a bunch of money to godzilla-stomp the content and nobody gives a poo poo, and he's miserable. OTOH, I've allowed myself to be a slave to the rules, and that lets me focus on having stupid, fun dungeon jaunts with my friends, and everyone is happy. So, yeah, I wish that AL and DNDB were merged and that DNDB was actually a complete product and that AL meant a little more, but I'm still able to find the fun in it for what it is and don't take it to seriously. You do you.
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Jun 21, 2018 21:52
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AL rules are super dumb so just fake it up. Honestly, what even is the draw of playing in an endless series of one with randos of various quality vs grabbing the best of the randos you've played with and making an actual regular group?
Piell fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Jun 21, 2018 |
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Jun 21, 2018 21:52
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mastershakeman posted:He's not at your table? How are you justifying this in role playing, or just assuming you paid a peasant a copper a day to shout WTS magic items make offer in a major city? It's in the AL rules that during 'downtime' between sessions, you all exist in the same world, so you could just as easily have met regardless of your physical location. Although there are specific rules about Barovia since it's technically a demi-plane. Piell posted:AL rules are super dumb so just fake it up. Honestly, what even is the draw of playing in an endless series of one with randos of various quality vs grabbing the best of the randos you've played with and making an actual regular group? For a lot of people AL gives them a place to form a regular group as a start. Secondly people sometimes want to just get some D&D games in and dungeon delve online, and doing AL on roll20 yields a bit better structure than just trying to play some rando game without any context.
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Jun 21, 2018 21:57
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Drowning Rabbit posted:It's in the AL rules that during 'downtime' between sessions, you all exist in the same world, so you could just as easily have met regardless of your physical location. Although there are specific rules about Barovia since it's technically a demi-plane. If they have rules for downtime existing like that they should have contemplated item sales.
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Jun 21, 2018 21:59
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mastershakeman posted:He's not at your table? How are you justifying this in role playing, or just assuming you paid a peasant a copper a day to shout WTS magic items make offer in a major city? According to the AL rules: quote:Downtime: Trading Magic Items. Magic items can't be given away to another character, but characters can trade permanent magic items received in play with one another on a one-for-one basis. Each party to the trade must spend 15 downtime days to trade the item. If you’re trading with another character playing in the same adventure as you, the downtime cost is waived. Consumable magic items (scrolls, potions, and magical ammunition) can’t be traded. Upon completing the trade, you must create an entry on your log sheet indicating who they traded with (and their DCI number if they have one), the item traded away, and the item received in exchange. Information regarding where the item was located: adventure name, encounter, table number, roll, etc., should be recorded as well. Permanent magic items are traded for other items of like rarity (i.e. uncommon for uncommon, rare for rare, etc.) on a one-for-one basis. The DMG or other official, published D&D products, are considered to be the definitive resource in determining the item’s rarity. Items without a specified rarity are unique, and can’t be traded. Items without any uses remaining also can’t be traded unless the item retains some permanent magical ability. While a certificate isn’t required to facilitate this trade, if the item bears a certificate, it must accompany the trade or destroyed. But, yeah, the 15 days of downtime represents the time to meetup with the other party and perform the trade and you have to pay your lifestyle expenses for the downtime spent.
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Jun 21, 2018 22:00
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That's why it costs downtime to make a trade not at the same table, it represents the time you spent asking around looking to deal with someone
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Jun 21, 2018 22:01
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Raar_Im_A_Dinosaur posted:That's why it costs downtime to make a trade not at the same table, it represents the time you spent asking around looking to deal with someone I'm just saying they shouldve had a better method than some code you write down by hand that's essentially unverifiable to anyone sane
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Jun 21, 2018 22:04
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mastershakeman posted:I'm just saying they shouldve had a better method than some code you write down by hand that's essentially unverifiable to anyone sane The whole of AL is based on that, so they’re just being consistent.
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Jun 21, 2018 22:06
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mastershakeman posted:I'm just saying they shouldve had a better method than some code you write down by hand that's essentially unverifiable to anyone sane They were talking about Adventurer's League, not Mearls' design process.
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Jun 21, 2018 22:50
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Drowning Rabbit posted:For a lot of people AL gives them a place to form a regular group as a start. This is exactly what I did. Moved to a new city (  ) and found a weekly AL group to play with. Most of us have now played 3 or 4 hardcovers together along with some cool modules and con created content.
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Jun 22, 2018 01:01
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Drowning Rabbit posted:For a lot of people AL gives them a place to form a regular group as a start. Secondly people sometimes want to just get some D&D games in and dungeon delve online, and doing AL on roll20 yields a bit better structure than just trying to play some rando game without any context. If the game I'm at is horrible beyond belief, I ask my wife to text me that the dog fell down and can't get up. Instant alibi.
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Jun 22, 2018 03:18
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peace guys, gotta go pick up my dog, he's always fallin' over
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Jun 22, 2018 03:21
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:peace guys, gotta go pick up my dog, he's always fallin' over A dog tried to bite me once irl so this has been errataed to not work.
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Jun 22, 2018 04:17
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I've been playing through Tomb of Horrors with my group, and I've been roleplaying a halfing paladin detective that is a week away from retirement. Another player is my partner, a hot shot young gun detective. I've been casting find steed to summon another important member of the planar police, Roger, a pony that is our COO, or Chief Oats Officer. He is in charge of investigating all oat related crimes and securing the evidence. Unfortunately for Roger, every time I think I've found a cache of illegal oats, it turns out it was actually a horrible death trap. But he keeps coming back, ready to go, because that's what an upstanding officer of the law does. Also he loves oats.
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Jun 22, 2018 14:17
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Is ToH fun? Or is it just a random collection of instakills?
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Jun 22, 2018 14:37
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I am about to run a Hex Crawl 5e game on Sunday that focuses on exploring the unknown and I am trying to think of spells that can make the need for rations/general survival useless. The only two off the top of my head are Goodberry and Create Food and Water. Are there any others I may be missing?
Dr. Doji Suave fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Jun 22, 2018 |
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Jun 22, 2018 14:41
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Dr. Doji Suave posted:I am about to run a Hex Crawl 5e game here on Sunday that focuses on exploring the unknown and I am trying to think of spells that can make the need for rations/general survival useless. The only two off the top of my head are Goodberry and Create Food and Water. Are there any others I may be missing? Heroes' Feast Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion Conjure Animals e: Lots of other stuff under Druid: Control Weather, Create Bonfire, Create/Destroy Water, etc. Finster Dexter fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Jun 22, 2018 |
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Jun 22, 2018 14:45
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Finster Dexter posted:Heroes' Feast Look at me, thinking too narrow in scope in terms of levels! Completely forgot about those spells, been running DCC for too long. edit: Thankfully the entire game world is inside of an o'neill cylinder so the only thing Control Weather can do is possibly change direction of flow of a river (the rivers change their flow direction once a week naturally).
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Jun 22, 2018 14:48
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Dr. Doji Suave posted:Look at me, thinking too narrow in scope in terms of levels! Completely forgot about those spells, been running DCC for too long. There's lots of other options. Even fireball becomes a survival spell under the right circumstances (i.e. a flock of geese or ducks).
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Jun 22, 2018 14:56
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What I learned from running the first half of ToA is that the survival element of hexcrawling becomes a non-issue almost immediately. Even in Chult, where the water isn't potable, it rains all the goddamn time so rain catching solves that. Basically the only thing threatening the party are the actual monsters they'll run into or unfortunate events like their poo poo getting stolen. Luckily ToA had those in spades so it was still fun.
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Jun 22, 2018 14:57
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Finster Dexter posted:There's lots of other options. Even fireball becomes a survival spell under the right circumstances (i.e. a flock of geese or ducks). That's fine for me, if they get that creative my hat is off to them. I understand there will come a point where the aspect of rations and being 'tethered' to society will fade away, and if they hit that point and figure it out that just makes my job easier as a DM. It's two newbies and three others who are known for wearing blinders so if they stumble upon such a feat of ingenuity i'll be surprised. As for ToA one of the earliest available items you can find basically halts the need to look for water and other substances which my group found hilarious when it was the first item we found.
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Jun 22, 2018 15:03
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Dr. Doji Suave posted:As for ToA one of the earliest available items you can find basically halts the need to look for water and other substances which my group found hilarious when it was the first item we found. It's not even out of the way! It's literally right in the way of the most convenient way into the jungle (the river) so you'd have to deliberately avoid it or lead the party around it. You might have a party like mine though with half a dozen npcs where that item doesn't produce enough to support everyone.
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Jun 22, 2018 15:12
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kidkissinger posted:Is ToH fun? Or is it just a random collection of instakills? Kinda both in a way. I dunno if the 5e version changed it much, but it's really dumb and old and was designed to punish more normal straightforward dungeon crawling, and it shows in a way. Especially with the post-hoc additions to negate strategies that worked. There's weird, funny traps all over the place and I will say that it includes the best trick in any module I've ever seen ever it has a fake ending complete with a fake final boss and if you see it through it (which you probably won't)the real version of the final boss just floats in his chamber shouting at you to stop looting his poo poo, because he can't attack you at all... unless you hit him first. Mostly, it's just boring, slow old garbage that is meant to annoy and inconvenience rather than be a genuine threat. Because of the sheer number of hidden doors required to progress, I imagine that it's more that people didn't finish it because they ran out of time originally (it was designed as a tournament play module originally) rather than actually wiping for the most part.
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Jun 22, 2018 15:37
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SettingSun posted:It's not even out of the way! It's literally right in the way of the most convenient way into the jungle (the river) so you'd have to deliberately avoid it or lead the party around it. You might have a party like mine though with half a dozen npcs where that item doesn't produce enough to support everyone. I believe we had a quest going there, but outside of some idiocy on behalf of the party it was a very easy item to obtain and the DM’s playing up of module difficulty in regards of the surviving aspect quickly melted away. Of course first thing we did was make mayo once we figured out what it was.
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Jun 22, 2018 15:41
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Dr. Doji Suave posted:Look at me, thinking too narrow in scope in terms of levels! Completely forgot about those spells, been running DCC for too long.
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Jun 22, 2018 17:55
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kidkissinger posted:Is ToH fun? Or is it just a random collection of instakills? Imagine it's an old rear end PC game about a puzzle dungeon. It's basically like if you and five friends were trying to collaboratively play Myst but sometimes your character dies and gets replaced when you do a puzzle wrong.
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Jun 22, 2018 19:28
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Splicer posted:O'Neill Cylinders have weather. Well, would have, if we built one. The “weather” happens once a week, when it rains for one 12 hour period. It used to be a more natural climate with clouds and general weather patterns, but (spoiler because one player reads the forums and gets testy about spoilers) the cylinder is stuck in ‘seeding’ mode due to a lich finding the hidden control area, meaning that it stays about 70 F and sunny 12 hours a day with one “night” every eight days ejecting thick storm clouds to rain on all three plates. Essentially the colony is preparing for people to move in, forever. The breaks in rain are so civilization can build unhindered.
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Jun 23, 2018 05:17
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So one of my friends has had a terrible (like his father dying kind of terrible) few weeks and wants me to join in his 5e game. He's running Hoard of the Dragon Queen and is a bit of the way in (this is all day session 2 coming up; I declined to join in the first because I feel about 4e the way diehard SSBM players feel about later Smash games) and so I'm agreeing to play. We're level 3. There's a monk, a sorcerer, a bard, a ranger, and a fighter. Any advice on what to play that would mesh well there and also be enjoyable for someone who thinks 4e is cool?
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Jun 23, 2018 16:10
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Cleric or paladin.
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Jun 23, 2018 16:16
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Trasson posted:So one of my friends has had a terrible (like his father dying kind of terrible) few weeks and wants me to join in his 5e game. He's running Hoard of the Dragon Queen and is a bit of the way in (this is all day session 2 coming up; I declined to join in the first because I feel about 4e the way diehard SSBM players feel about later Smash games)
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Jun 23, 2018 17:46
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Are any goons running online D&D games and have a free space or two? I'm completely new to D&D and would love to give it a try.
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Jun 23, 2018 19:40
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How do people handle stealthing around? I've been asked by DMs how we are travelling, giving the option of steathily or normally and it always struck me as silly because there was no reason not to say stealthily. The real life downside of it being a pain in the rear end trying to sneak about all the time isn't a downside that players feel. Everyone rolling stealth checks all the time drags the game's pace down as well. Is there a reason not to try to sneak everywhere?
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Jun 23, 2018 23:03
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CJ posted:How do people handle stealthing around? I've been asked by DMs how we are travelling, giving the option of steathily or normally and it always struck me as silly because there was no reason not to say stealthily. The real life downside of it being a pain in the rear end trying to sneak about all the time isn't a downside that players feel. Everyone rolling stealth checks all the time drags the game's pace down as well. Is there a reason not to try to sneak everywhere? I'm not sure why you can travel 7.5h quickly, 8h normallu, or 9h slowly, given that "the Travel Pace table assumes that characters travel for 8 hours in day." Elysiume fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Jun 24, 2018 |
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Jun 23, 2018 23:17
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 Been getting a lot of real rear end in a top hat Giants thrown at my group, and I'm getting close to getting a spell I've been wanting to use to try and whittle them down, so I figured I'd make myself some tokens. Also happened to meet a rad new familiar that I'm happy to switch to using since so many people (Not necessarily in this group, but just in general) hate the use of Owl's, although I end up using it for helping other party members attacks more than my own. Anyway, this new Flap Cat is  (Tressym)
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Jun 24, 2018 05:32
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DKWildz posted:so many people (Not necessarily in this group, but just in general) hate the use of Owl's Whats wrong with Owls??
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Jun 24, 2018 11:56
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hangedman1984 posted:Whats wrong with Owls?? They’re by far the most used familiar in my experience due to the use of the help action and the flyby feature. Using that constantly is kind of cheesy in many people’s opinions.
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Jun 24, 2018 12:31
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hangedman1984 posted:Whats wrong with Owls?? Kaysette posted:They’re by far the most used familiar in my experience due to the use of the help action and the flyby feature. Using that constantly is kind of cheesy in many people’s opinions. I have a GM who actually ENCOURAGES "Flyby aid other" spam via familiar. Which I don't do myself mostly out of laziness and not wanting to scrape up my familiar with a spatula later. I think the bigger deal it's directly listed on the familiar spell description itself. So more GM's are afraid to say no to it than say, asking for a Winged Snake even if you remind them it can't bite anything since you're not a chain pact familiar. (Which above GM did let me have because we were both amused at the idea of snakes that Hiss and Squawk at the same time). Section Z fucked around with this message at 12:42 on Jun 24, 2018 |
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Jun 24, 2018 12:37
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Saki posted:Are any goons running online D&D games and have a free space or two? I'm completely new to D&D and would love to give it a try. What day you looking for?
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Jun 24, 2018 13:18
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Trasson posted:So one of my friends has had a terrible (like his father dying kind of terrible) few weeks and wants me to join in his 5e game. He's running Hoard of the Dragon Queen and is a bit of the way in (this is all day session 2 coming up; I declined to join in the first because I feel about 4e the way diehard SSBM players feel about later Smash games) Warlock is literally the "we like 4e class" in that you get at-wills, encounters (short rest thanks to grogs, but still) and your mystic arcanum dailies. Also the fluff is unchanged from 4e.
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Jun 24, 2018 15:40
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However, Paladin is the best designed class while Warlock just kind of sucks.
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Jun 24, 2018 15:54
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