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MonsterEnvy posted:This seems unlikely after they recently put in anti AI art rules in, and got a bigger art budget. Heck the one book AI modified art from one artist had snuck in, it was all removed once it was pointed out.
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Dec 14, 2023 21:18
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MonsterEnvy posted:This seems unlikely after they recently put in anti AI art rules in, and got a bigger art budget. Heck the one book AI modified art from one artist had snuck in, it was all removed once it was pointed out. You'd also still need an art manager for AI generated slop. It's artists you'd need way less of. Eliminating that position just means they're going to push more of that work onto other art managers (if they have them) or onto their lesser-paid subordinates.
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Dec 14, 2023 21:19
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Goa Tse-tung posted:https://twitter.com/CHofferCBus/status/1734947730491932929 My favorite thing about that tweet thread is it goes on for multiple tweets listing people laid off and what they did. Only one person's contributions are unlisted.
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Dec 14, 2023 21:22
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Lurks With Wolves posted:Like everyone else said, it did but it was a daily. Other forms of non-surge healing from powers were similarly rare and usually in smaller chunks. Healing potions being surgeless circumvents the whole system and means you can convert gold into health and it just takes an elegant system and makes it much more janky. dwarf74 posted:In the first books, only Daily powers could heal without surges. Cure Wounds was Daily. gradenko_2000 posted:You are correct that Cure Light Wounds would heal an amount equivalent to the character's surge value without burning a surge, but CLW in 4e was a Daily power. Thanks for the clarification, y'all. Were there other exceptions that weren't divine powered? Like I said, I though the whole idea was to make the divine power source distinct.
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Dec 14, 2023 21:44
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I might have missed it, but what did Mearls do? Was it just managing the 4e/5e transition poorly?
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Dec 14, 2023 21:55
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Invited unpleasant grognards to consult on 5e Removed a bunch of promised features from Next Compared Warlord inspirational heading to shouting someone’s arm back on Said a fighter couldn’t catch a weapon tied to their armour with a cord because he tried it with his computer mouse
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Dec 14, 2023 22:00
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hyphz posted:Said a fighter couldn’t catch a weapon tied to their armour with a cord because he tried it with his computer mouse Pretty sure this one was a pathfinder developer.
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Dec 14, 2023 22:01
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PeterWeller posted:Thanks for the clarification, y'all. Were there other exceptions that weren't divine powered? Like I said, I though the whole idea was to make the divine power source distinct. Some, but mostly constrained to leaders or divine classes (who tended to have more secondary leader characteristics as a flavor thing). I want to say surgeless healing peaked with the core book Cleric, just because healing in general is their big thing. Carillon posted:I might have missed it, but what did Mearls do? Was it just managing the 4e/5e transition poorly? I (and goons more broadly) dislike Mearls as a designer because of that. I (and goons more broadly) dislike Mearls as a person because he brought Zak S in to give 5e more Old School Cred. A notable goon who had a history of getting harassed by Zak's minions made fun of the 5e playtest and it's many many rats, Zak took this as an opportunity to double down on the harassment campaign, when people complained Mearls just asked Zak if these claims were valid and took him at his word, and that goon left the internet entirely due to said harassment. In short, this subforum has a grudge.
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Dec 14, 2023 22:03
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hyphz posted:Invited unpleasant grognards to consult on 5e called pundit and Zak Smith "unpleasant grognards" is like calling Jimmy Saville "a dubious character" basically he deliberately involve a white supremacist and a rapist + serial harasser, respectively, to "consult" on 5E and then when people contacted him privately to voice concerns in confidence he leaked the messages to Zak ... and also he's a really lovely game designer
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Dec 14, 2023 22:05
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Kurieg posted:Pretty sure this one was a pathfinder developer. Jason Bulmahn, I think
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Dec 14, 2023 22:35
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The thing that really upsets me about these firings is that it's exacerbating a problem that has been rampant in a lot of new games I've been trying out recently, and that's a lack of institutional knowledge when it comes to game design. I'm not going to name any names here, but I've been dipping my toes into a few other tabletop systems and have been broadly disappointed at the quality of the writing, organization/layout of the books, and ease of understanding of how to run the games. I've basically been chalking it up to lots of these being tiny little companies that lack the kind of experience that comes with having a consistent crew of designers/writers/editors that can refine the stuff being put out. I can't tell you how many times I've started reading a game book, checked out the company's website and found that they don't even have an office and everything was put together by email and "virtual" work by mostly freelancers. Jump down my throat all you want, but both WotC & Paizo were at least keeping some of that institutional knowledge in house, and now it appears WotC is going to dump a lot of that and just hire newer, cheaper people to pick up the slack. I fully expect to see a huge drop in the quality of the output from WotC because of this.
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Dec 14, 2023 23:19
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Anonymous Zebra posted:The thing that really upsets me about these firings is that it's exacerbating a problem that has been rampant in a lot of new games I've been trying out recently, and that's a lack of institutional knowledge when it comes to game design. I'm not going to name any names here, but I've been dipping my toes into a few other tabletop systems and have been broadly disappointed at the quality of the writing, organization/layout of the books, and ease of understanding of how to run the games. I've basically been chalking it up to lots of these being tiny little companies that lack the kind of experience that comes with having a consistent crew of designers/writers/editors that can refine the stuff being put out. I can't tell you how many times I've started reading a game book, checked out the company's website and found that they don't even have an office and everything was put together by email and "virtual" work by mostly freelancers. Jump down my throat all you want, but both WotC & Paizo were at least keeping some of that institutional knowledge in house, and now it appears WotC is going to dump a lot of that and just hire newer, cheaper people to pick up the slack. I fully expect to see a huge drop in the quality of the output from WotC because of this. Yeah but you have to think of it this way: institutional knowledge, or an extra $1000 on the dividends checks? Seems obvious when you think of it that way.
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Dec 14, 2023 23:29
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WotC hasn’t cared about design for a while. They left the key numbers off the dungeon map on a recent module.
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Dec 14, 2023 23:37
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hyphz posted:WotC hasn’t cared about design for a while. They left the key numbers off the dungeon map on a recent module. The current D&D team for sure cares about design. And the Dungeon Map complaint from that one review was a pretty terrible one, all the dungeon maps but one have numbers, the reason the last one does not have numbers is because it's a boss fight chamber that does not need them. 
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Dec 14, 2023 23:59
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Lurks With Wolves posted:when people complained Mearls just asked Zak if these claims were valid
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Dec 15, 2023 00:07
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Lurks With Wolves posted:
that’s a really weird way to sum it up given everything you typed before it
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Dec 15, 2023 00:25
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Anonymous Zebra posted:The thing that really upsets me about these firings is that it's exacerbating a problem that has been rampant in a lot of new games I've been trying out recently, and that's a lack of institutional knowledge when it comes to game design. State-run shipyards used to keep building ships in excess of what the navy might need or want solely to make sure people like welders and naval engineers would stay on rather than lose their accumulated knowledge once they left and went back to farming or some other line of work. We should uhhhhh have nationalized gaming development.
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Dec 15, 2023 00:26
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Bottom Liner posted:that’s a really weird way to sum it up given everything you typed before it It was the short version. Give me some credit here, alright?
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Dec 15, 2023 00:38
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"I, and the forums at large, actively hated Mike Mearls and 5e as a whole when it launched, but time and distance inevitably makes anger too hard to hold onto and the general opinion has become that 5e isn't actively harmful in that way and I'd spit on Mearls if he passed by but I'm not going to actively think about him at any point." Is that a better closing statement? Because it's basically what I meant, I was just a bit quick and glib because I don't want to actively write all of that every time.
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Dec 15, 2023 00:42
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It's cool. I, for one, totally have a grudge. It's okay to hate stupid assholes, and not caring is overrated.
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Dec 15, 2023 00:59
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Halloween Jack posted:It's cool. I, for one, totally have a grudge. It's okay to hate stupid assholes, and not caring is overrated. QFT. Forgiveness has no inherent value, and time doesn’t diminish someone’s misdeeds.
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Dec 15, 2023 01:06
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Splicer posted:You're underselling this significantly. Specifically, if I remember this all correctly, Zak subsequently directly emailed one of the people who had emailed Mearls to explain why Zak was terrible to quibble with their criticisms of him, which leads to pretty much the only reasonable conclusion that Mearls directly shared those emails with Zak, doxxing the people who emailed him, which is grossly negligent at absolute best.
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Dec 15, 2023 01:07
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Lurks With Wolves posted:Is that a better closing statement? No? That might be your personal view of him now, but you are trying to tie the edition wars stuff to the real harm that platforming and defending the worst people did and speaking as if everyone has the same take as you. Distilling it to "this forum holds a grudge" makes it sound undeserved and petty, which is why I said it was weird in the first place. He 100% deserves the ire of this and the broader community and it has nothing to do with 5e.
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Dec 15, 2023 01:10
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Well, that settles it. We all agree that we want to give Mike Mearls a big hug and kiss him on the lips.
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Dec 15, 2023 01:19
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Bottom Liner posted:No? That might be your personal view of him now, but you are trying to tie the edition wars stuff to the real harm that platforming and defending the worst people did and speaking as if everyone has the same take as you. Distilling it to "this forum holds a grudge" makes it sound undeserved and petty, which is why I said it was weird in the first place. Part of the miscommunication here may be that you're interpreting the phrase 'holds a grudge' negatively. We do hold a grudge, for good reasons.
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Dec 15, 2023 01:21
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Kestral posted:Part of the miscommunication here may be that you're interpreting the phrase 'holds a grudge' negatively. We do hold a grudge, for good reasons. Yeah, Trad Games holds a grudge because Mearls trying to get into Zak's good graces directly led to a poster here abandoning the entire internet because it was safer for her.
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Dec 15, 2023 01:27
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Yusin posted:The current D&D team for sure cares about design. And the Dungeon Map complaint from that one review was a pretty terrible one, all the dungeon maps but one have numbers, the reason the last one does not have numbers is because it's a boss fight chamber that does not need them. Yeah, the guy who spread the thing about "it has a whole dungeon level that is unkeyed" is obsessed with the idea of everything having letter and number keys. Obviously letter and number keys are a pretty efficient way of addressing rooms and points of interest in a product that has many maps each with many important things in them. But in the end the important part is that you know what each thing is, and on a map with only a couple of things (or just one single thing in this case - the single boss room) I don't think you really lose anything by keying or describing the map in some other way. And seriously, it is one single room. It is technically a "whole dungeon level" because you take stairs to get into it. But saying it like this makes people think there's a map with dozens of rooms that has no key. Which isn't the case, they aren't that incompetent. BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Dec 15, 2023 |
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Dec 15, 2023 02:28
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Lurks With Wolves posted:"I, and the forums at large, actively hated Mike Mearls and 5e as a whole when it launched, but time and distance inevitably makes anger too hard to hold onto and the general opinion has become that 5e isn't actively harmful in that way and I'd spit on Mearls if he passed by but I'm not going to actively think about him at any point." Is that a better closing statement? Because it's basically what I meant, I was just a bit quick and glib because I don't want to actively write all of that every time. For me, the time between his bad behavior and his being laid off recently, combined with him being shuffled around a few times (including when Zak got called out for being a rapist), mostly just indicates to me that WotC (and probably Hasbro) itself is toxic. It's much worse than there just being one bad actor there. Though yes I don't really hate him so much as I wanted him to finally get kicked to the curb.
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Dec 15, 2023 03:04
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King of Solomon posted:For me, the time between his bad behavior and his being laid off recently, combined with him being shuffled around a few times (including when Zak got called out for being a rapist), mostly just indicates to me that WotC (and probably Hasbro) itself is toxic. It's much worse than there just being one bad actor there. Though yes I don't really hate him so much as I wanted him to finally get kicked to the curb. I was not loving disagreeing with anyone. I was being loving glib about it, because this is loving Something Awful. I was in the PBP community at the time. I had three degrees of separation from Mikan at most when she was harassed off the internet. Can we collectively stop acting like I'm jacking off Mike Mearls and Zak S with both hands because I loving misspoke? Should I hit post on this? No, not really. But come on, give me some loving benefit of the doubt here. I dug a hole, then dug a deeper one trying to talk through that one, and now here we are. This also probably wasn't the post to make this response to, but... whatever. Just quote me less.
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Dec 15, 2023 03:57
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This subforum does have a grudge. I think grudges can be valid sometimes. Mike Mearls decided to give Zak and Pundit and a number of other niche "influencers" consultant credit to buy their endorsement of 5e because for some reason he felt like he really needed to pacify them. It was stupid and gently caress him. He said he'd collect emails of anyone concerned about it and then somehow people who emailed him suddenly found themselves getting nasty anonymous messages from people clearly on Zak's side. Hmm funny that. That said, Mearls being laid off is kind of a "I don't feel bad for him but whatever" moment more than anything. He was already in some background figurehead position anyway with no influence or interaction on D&D. He was getting paid to be some kind of empty brand advisor, and I'm not really shocked he was deemed redundant. There's no justice or vindication. He was just fed into the corporate pulper along with a lot of other people. It is kind of surprising how much of the senior D&D staff were swept out though. I'm guessing someone decided it was easier to hire newbies and contract workers and then have the DMs Guild patch the potholes.
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Dec 15, 2023 04:14
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Nuns with Guns posted:This subforum does have a grudge. I think grudges can be valid sometimes. Mike Mearls decided to give Zak and Pundit and a number of other niche "influencers" consultant credit to buy their endorsement of 5e because for some reason he felt like he really needed to pacify them. It was stupid and gently caress him. He said he'd collect emails of anyone concerned about it and then somehow people who emailed him suddenly found themselves getting nasty anonymous messages from people clearly on Zak's side. Hmm funny that. He actually was not part of the D&D Studio anymore for the past several years. He was on the Magic side of the company in an unclear role. He has not had a credit in one of their books since 2019 MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Dec 15, 2023 |
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Dec 15, 2023 04:54
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MonsterEnvy posted:He actually was not part of the D&D Studio anymore for the past several years. He was on the Magic side of the company in an unclear role. I know that and said as much.
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Dec 15, 2023 04:55
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Nuns with Guns posted:I know that and said as much. Oh ok. You didn't mention the Magic move so I didn't know.
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Dec 15, 2023 04:59
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I really wish companies would stop using dungeons & dragons 5th edition to adapt settings in genres that dungeons & dragons is terrible with. I saw an adaptation of Doctor Who that use the D&D 5th edition rules. Seriously. Doctor who is not appropriate for D&D. The doctor very conspicuously avoids combat and resolve situations by doing something completely silly and convoluted. There's also been talk in dungeons & dragons circles about a DM shortage. I run games myself. My experience has been that there is no DM shortage, what happens instead is that you go looking for players and they turn their nose up at everything that isn't DnD 5e, and even then turn their nose up at it when it's not on their terms. Sometimes it's a pre-existing group of five or six friends looking for a dungeon master and they want you to run a module they already picked out and have already made characters for. I would feel like I was free entertainment instead of someone who is actually part of the group. Moreover I would not have creative freedom in that situation. They want the dungeon master to be the dungeon submissive. Zoeb fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Dec 15, 2023 |
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Dec 15, 2023 05:53
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Zoeb posted:I really wish companies would stop using dungeons & dragons 5th edition to adapt settings in genres that dungeons & dragons is terrible with. HidaO-Win posted:Hasbro has made the calculation that RPG players have no discernable taste Kestral posted:I mean, yeah, they're completely right.
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Dec 15, 2023 05:59
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gradenko_2000 posted:State-run shipyards used to keep building ships in excess of what the navy might need or want solely to make sure people like welders and naval engineers would stay on rather than lose their accumulated knowledge once they left and went back to farming or some other line of work. The US has been keeping the workforce at Electric Boat Company in CT employed on this principle since the end of the Cold War. I've also seen an analysis that strongly suggests that the last few LCS built were to keep those shipyards open and active until the new FFG contracts were placed. That's not waste. That's not a jobs program. That's pure national security in practice.
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Dec 15, 2023 06:04
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I am more of an OSR person. I also run vampire, Deadlands, and a few other games. I have nothing but contempt for WotC. I hate that they are the gateway to the hobby and are doing things like building walled gardens and trying to turn D&D into a microtransaction game. Hearing that they do layoffs before Christmas is just icing on the cake.
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Dec 15, 2023 06:37
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Turning it into a microtransaction game is comically overstated and false. At least more than it already sorta is one anyway. It's like complaining about Magic being a lootbox game. Not every sensationalist bad thing you read is true. In sure they would love to create a walled garden but when they somewhat tried to force it it blew up in their faces(see early this year). Their only chance is if they actually make a good VTT, and have high adoption of it. They have a leg up with that adoption of course, but if it sucks people will just go back to R20/Foundry Feel free to hate Hasbro/WotC tho. But like not every scary thing someone dreams up as the worst possible Outcome is true.
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Dec 15, 2023 07:12
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Zoeb posted:I really wish companies would stop using dungeons & dragons 5th edition to adapt settings in genres that dungeons & dragons is terrible with. Yes, the same company does their own in-house system to have Doctor Who adventures in. It reflects the original series' treatment of combat by using a priority action system that only resolves combat actions after all attempts to flee or dissuade combat have failed. You've never heard of this because only 5e merits public discussion; other games can be discussed but only in their insular circles.
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Dec 15, 2023 07:49
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Dexo posted:It's like complaining about Magic being a lootbox game.
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Dec 15, 2023 08:02
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