...Yeah Sertaria could probably use some polishing up along the same lines that Valjan has been getting

Which reminds me, we should finish that one of these days >_> now that TCTWTH is voted in and the weird slipperyness of Valjan's lands is established

As M:EMperor, I green light this project.

In part to clear some space at the samurai table because I intend to use them coming up.

Honestly, Sertaria has more cohesion than Alara. It just has more diversity as well, so it isn't very noticeable.

If I went back in time to participate in the worldbuilding, I might suggest using normal snake-people for both Sertaria and Ameran. The original snake people of Magic were actually, honest-to-gods snakes, that looked like snakes. But they only got 2 cards in Portal & Stronghold and nobody seems to remember them except me.

Other than having 4 arms, Orochi are kinda a dumb race. Reptiles with hair and boobs, because we can't have fantasy art without giant boobs, and we'd never dream of depicting gendered characters without ostentatious tertiary sexual characteristics. Actually the more I think about it, the stupider I think they are. They should have looked like THIS.

What is that $humanoid call used for, currently? It would be a useful list but right now it confuses me. If it's intended to include only races that appear on many worlds, why Cyclopes but no Aven or Giants? If it's only intended to be the truly humanoid (human-looking) races why does it have Leonin?

Well, that's to be expected. Keep in mind that Alara's whole schtick was to have the divergent cultures.
Okay, first off, let us know all the good lotto numbers.
Then you might as well suggest going ahead and using the Naga since it's tech that we have available to us now. That decision is actually a bit surprising all told.

I have to assume you mean among your meatspace friends, because taking your post literally, as you seem to wish me to, would be insulting. Have you even seen Jakkard?

I'm also a HUGE fan of the Naga in Tarkir. Like... A seriously HUGE fan. Especially since, if I'm not mistaken in my speculation, they seem to be normal humans irreversibly transformed by Raksasha magic, and that's just... That's just awesome.

I mean - they all have that crazy human-reptile vibe that I got from the Lizard in the Amazing Spider-Man. I may be the dissenting voice in my opinions on this, but I always thought that design was really cool looking. It really struck me as what a person would look like if they were suddenly turned into a reptile but kept a comparable bone structure..

I'm additionally impressed by the Naga because of the diversity in appearance they have! Plus, they appear to be HUGE! Man. So pumped.

So pumped that I capitalized "huge" three times this post. That pumped.

Anyway, snake people are cool and Wizards learned from the Orochi. Good on them!

Kimberley, you might want to talk to Jinsen about your little problem here.


You're in enough trouble, young lady, do you really want to pick on Kahr, too?


Maral: "No. You can't have it. It's mine!"


Aloise: "Well, that could have gone better! But hey, this thing's neat!"


Denner: "Seriously, I just told her how pretty she was! I mean, I told her exactly how pretty she was! Compared to everyone else! Why does this always happen?"


Kobold Volvers indeed!

Sorry, Ruwin, I had nothing to do with it! I mean, I created Raiker and wrote this prompt, but you know, not my fault...

Maybe we need to institute Apple's smart shuffle into the mix, so it creates random patterns that feel random.

I have been listening to the Radiolab and Hypercritical podcasts lately, so I heard about that just in the last few days even though that's something that happened years ago.

Human perceptions and misperceptions of randomness used to be one of my research interests in grad school, so I have to just share a couple little anecdotes on this subject.

Anecdote #1 - The RAND Corporation publishes a book called A Million Random Digits. It is exactly what it sounds like: one million random digits, generated using a very thorough physical randomization process. I have a friend from grad school who now works for RAND, and he loves to joke that this is one of the more exciting books that RAND has ever produced.

Anecdote #2 - There is a common experimental procedure which researchers will use to test strategic thinking about random events. Imagine that there are two doors in front of you, Door A and Door B, and you are told that there is a reward behind one of the doors. You must choose one door to open -- if you pick the door with the reward behind it, you get to keep the prize. You are going to play this "game" 100 times.

Now, what you don't know is that the experimenter has rigged the game so that the prize appears behind Door A about 70 percent of the time, and Door B about 30 percent of the time. After enough iterations of the game, though, most players figure out that Door A is more likely to have the prize than Door B, and can even identify the ratio fairly closely.

Now, the strategic, "maximizing" behavior in this case is to always choose Door A, since that will maximize your chance of getting the prize. But people hate to do that, because it makes them feel like they are "giving up" on all the times when the prize is behind Door B. So people tend to settle into a pattern whereby they pick Door A about 70 percent of the time, and Door B about 30 percent of the time. They match their choices to the observed frequency of the prize drops, even though this is suboptimal behavior.

Now, here's the funny part. People have done this sort of experiment with a variety of different animals. Some animals behave very much like humans, whereas other kinds of animals appear to maximize.

I found a chart one time which had data points for various different animal species. You had your usual suspects -- mice, chimps, dogs, etc. The one that blew my mind was that there was a data point for crocodiles. Somewhere, some time, some poor grad student got tasked with running an experimental trial on *crocodiles.*

I always tried to keep that in mind when I felt like my professors were being unreasonable -- at least they weren't handing me a bucket of steaks and telling me to go run the crocodiles.

(In case the suspense is killing you, it turns out that crocodiles maximize. Good for them.)

@Orcish: That's pretty interesting. I've always had an appreciation for randomness. I have bookmarked a random number generator that I use surprisingly often that, according to them, uses "atmospheric noise" as the basis of its randomness. I used to carry around two quarters in my billfold that I would often flip for decisions I considered inconsequential. The reason I did that, though, had less to do with randomness and more something I picked up in high school. "If you don't know what you want, flip a coin," the advice went. "And if you're disappointed in the result, it will show you which one you really wanted."

And, of course, many of my poems from Raven's Rhymes were based off cards randomly selected by gatherer.

I do the exact same thing for the exact same reason.
Well... not the exact same thing. I use something a little swankier than a quarter.

I couldn't help it. I read that, and I heard it in Grandpa Simpson's voice.

But, to the actual substance of your comment (I know, right? -- will wonders never cease?), it's very similar to what a professor once told me. He was an expert on medical decision-making -- he used to work at hospitals, where he was available to help patients with trying to make treatment decisions. Things like: "How do I choose whether to have my infected leg amputated below the knee now, or try an experimental treatment which might cure the condition, but which runs the risk of allowing the infection to progress, in which case I'll need a more debilitating above-the-knee amputation later?"

God, am I glad I do not have that job.

Anyway, this guy knew more about decision aids and decision-making than anyone else I've ever met. But, what he always said was: The aids are a good tool for those cases where the gut and the head are not in alignment. They can help you to understand why. But, if the gut and the head are already in alignment, then trust what they tell you.

Which sounds pretty similar to what you're describing. The coin flips help reveal when the gut and the head are or aren't in alignment.

The highest irony about this is that I most often use the coin specifically to decide what to eat.

I have a half-dollar now, which is swankier than a quarter, but admittedly still not all that swanky.

[PREDIT]@Orcish: (from memory) "One trick is to tell them stories that don't go anyway. Like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so I headed over to Moigenville, which is what they called Shelbyville at the time. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumble bees on them. 'Give me five bees for a quarter,' you'd say. Anyway, the important thing is that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, you couldn't get white onions in those days, because of the war. All you could get was one of those big yellow ones..."

I love that they specifically had an episode about lampshading the fact that Abe's stories never went anywhere. Except for this one episode, in which they asked why the only story that ever amounted to anything was also the SADDEST THING HE HAD EVER SAID.

I typically resolve that problem by just eating both things.

Sure, but there are surprisingly few calories in most books, so I think you're fine.

The paperbacks digest a lot easier than the hardcovers, though.

yeah, but magazines are just empty calories.