Is "Pulling a Pete" anything like trying to develop a thermonuclear hand grenade?

No, "Pulling a Pete" happens when you are playing the car crash game and you manage to drive your car past everything and hit nothing and cause no damage but $500 to your own bumper.

A Staten Island-esque area will not be featured in the game for the reason that Rockstar Games believes it would not be fun to play there.

HA.

Having driven through Staten Island quite recently, I concur entirely.

I forget the actual name of the game that has "Crash Things on Purpose"...it's a racing game ND has and one of the things you can do is kinda like bowling with cars. You're presented with a short course full of obstacles and at the end of the course is a busy intersection and your job is to crash your car into the intersection causing all sorts of secondary crashes and the person who causes the most damage (counted in dollars) wins.

"Pulling a Pete" is running your car down the course, avoiding the obstacles and FAILING TO CRASH YOUR CAR INTO ANYTHING WHATSOEVER. Because when Pete and Jilli were visiting we played this game and that's what Pete did. Failed. To crash.

I mean...how can you fail to crash your car?

As revenge Pete routinely kicks the living shit out of anything and anybody at Halo. And just to grind it in, he's all gracious about it.

Fucker.

Is "Pulling a Pete" anything like trying to develop a thermonuclear hand grenade?

No, "Pulling a Pete" happens when you are playing the car crash game and you manage to drive your car past everything and hit nothing and cause no damage but $500 to your own bumper.

And here I thought "Pulling a Pete" was being adorably loomy.

No, that's just Being Pete.

He's gonna come in here and be all, "Bloody hell! Adorable in the gaming thread too???"

That sounds incredibly fabulous. And like just the thing for after work on certain days.

Amy, it so totally is. It's wonderful. I want to create one similar wherein you get to "create" a work place - like Sims or something - and then you go in and FUCK IT UP. Detroy the office and burn it down. Very theraputic.

I'd call it Office Space: The Home Game. Everyone fights over who gets to be Milton.

Hey, can you tell me some more about this Fantasy Grounds deal? Is it D&D, D20, something else?

It's an online tabletop RPG facilitator. And I think you can configure it for a variety of games, so d20 or multi-dice or all six-siders...

Here. Fantasy Grounds

I gamed a lot when I was in school during the '80s. Then I moved to DC and never found a group to game with, and I kind of drifted away. So I'm more the era of Nuclear War/Nuclear Escalation. Oh, and Kingmaker -- can't forget Kingmaker.

I loved Kingmaker, but it too had serious balance issues. My usual strategy was 'get hold of an heir and go sit on an island somewhere'. On the other hand, the card-based combat and event stuff was a revelation. There's a whole slew of wargames out these days that have taken that card thing even further - Paths of Glory is a well-regarded WWI card-based game, and War of the Ring makes good use of them too. (I so wish I could find someone to play that against.)

Oh, another card-based strategy, if not war, game, is 1960: The Making of the President. Wallybee and I played that just tonight. (She was Nixon, I was Kennedy.) It was a tight game. She was dominant in the West, and cherry-picked New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Michigan our of my stronghold. (And, like Kennedy, the Dems took Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, but they threw their votes to Byrd.) End result - I won by pretty much a single state. If Mrs Nixon had grabbed Ohio or California off me, she would've pulled it off.

It's an online tabletop RPG facilitator. And I think you can configure it for a variety of games, so d20 or multi-dice or all six-siders... Here. Fantasy Grounds

Thanks for that. I've bookmarked it.