Kelandon

Some of the dialogue in the area makes it sound as though you can't leave, and I find that combat puzzles work best — especially at the end of long dungeons — if you have all options available to you (restocking from shops, getting a different set of characters, retrieving stored items, etc.). Forcing the player to do something different is good, but forcing them to do something different when they don't have many alternatives available to them is a recipe for disaster. In my case, I really wanted to get a different set of characters, equip different scarabs, and grab some consumables that I hadn't brought with me. Now, I didn't actually try to leave because there were a number of dialogues suggesting that I couldn't. I think those dialogues appear to be wrong, though; when I finished the Golath fight, I just opened the front gate and ran out. If you do tweak things in that area, I'd suggest making much more explicit that you can exit through the front gate — probably in the talk node tagged 27, which says that if you head toward the front gate, "the worst of their forces will see you." I'd suggest changing that to something that much more plainly indicates that you can escape and come back if you need to.

Just hit a wall with this very fight and ended up using this exploit to kill off the two drakes before the combat started. Handy, if a bit cheap.

I'm not sure what we're talking about here. As far as I can tell, what we know is: 1) There are a few real Hungarian names in the Avadon series, some of which are applied to characters who have descriptions somewhat suggestive of in-jokes. 2) Avadon was inspired by a Hungarian opera (called "Bluebeard's Castle" in English) with two named characters (Judith/Judit and Bluebeard/Kékszakállú). 3) Mariann Krizsan is an immigrant with a Hungarian name. None of this proves anything, but it is suggestive. Given 3) and 2), 1) isn't "surprising," but neither does it tell us much. It could be that some of Avadon's characters are named after Hungarian friends or relatives of Mariann. It could be that Jeff grabbed a "name your baby" book and just used Hungarian names that he liked. It could be that he put together interesting-sounding syllables and accidentally made Hungarian names. With only this information, we don't really know.

I guessed that that's what it might mean, but it seemed sufficiently odd that I wasn't sure. It might be clearer to describe it in terms of the effect than in terms of Focus Mastery (i.e., "adds 5% chance of inflicting critical damage") and throw the "makes your brain more sorcerery" into the item description. I was a bit worried in part because it doesn't show up on the stat sheet, as far as I can tell, even though other things that add to your skills (e.g., Blademaster's Bulwark) do.

Hadn't logged in in too long, but it's back up.

This appears to be about Avadon, so I've moved it to the Avadon forum.

All right, my revised prediction: the 2012 map except that Iowa goes red. This is my best guess based on present circumstances and the path of the campaigns so far.

I still follow topics here and occasionally play scenarios.

You are predicting a massive landslide. Like, a 10+ point swing from current standings, large enough that the House would probably flip. Out of curiosity, why? (Given current polls, trends, etc.)

Just to be clear: 1) Does Intelligence have anything to do with turrets (per the tooltip)? 2) Does Turret Craft in fact do anything (other than add buffs)? I haven't gotten to a retrainer yet, so it's a little difficult for me to experiment with this myself, but I will be messing with it when I get there (which may not be for a while). EDIT: It appears that we have a whole thread going on the failure of turret mechanics to follow in-game descriptions. I've been avoiding reading most of the threads here because I want to avoid spoilers for a while yet.

That was true in Avadon 2 as well, right?

At the moment, my prediction is the 2008 map except Indiana going red. When is the deadline for a prediction?

This seems pretty fundamental. I'm going to email Spidweb about this, and I encourage others to do the same. It's one thing to have a vague, not-overly-helpful description; it's another to have a quite simple description that is just plain wrong.

We have been so yearning to do something with those unsellable trowels.

Separate post for a separate thought. The interaction that I found most interesting was: I agree, and I could probably articulate problems with Avernum 4, but Geneforge 3 is the more interesting case. We've talked about this from time to time: G3-why do you dislike it, what do you like about G3? (which ironically contains a number of complaints), Getting bored...help!, New GF3 twist, and probably lots of others that I'm not immediately finding. But it's interesting to think about what could be done to GF3 to make it better.

I always assumed that it led to nether regions.

I thought the idea was that they would be stronger than nonconsumable equipment but only available once or a few times (assuming they're not freely replaceable), so you had to choose your spots. It adds an element of strategy — do I use this here or save it for something later down the road that might be harder? Can I beat this with my ordinary abilities or do I need to burn a consumable? Figuring out whether to use a consumable can be part of the puzzle of a combat (or whatever). But am I missing your point?

Um, one of their examples is Bahssikava. In lecture 14, where they mention the BoA editor, the BoA example slide in the pdf is a screenshot from Bahssikava, town 4. I always wanted something that I made to be forced upon unwilling college students, and now it is!

Here are some words for you to read that respond to your words, presumably in some cheeky but loosely appropriate manner.

Wow. Avadon was already SW's least balanced game.

I get that, but it doesn't look like you've succeeded at even that goal. And the terms that you've used are not very clear to people in those regions (e.g., "Four Corners area" to someone in Arizona probably means someone in northeast Arizona, but I think you meant to cover the whole state). Having categories that make sense only when the people you expect to answer actually do answer is not great poll design.

Yeah, it might've been a better idea just to use regular geographic regions rather than these inconsistent categories. For the U.S., the BEA regions are pretty good (New England, essentially Mid-Atlantic, South, Great Lakes, Plains, Southwest, Rocky Mountain, essentially West Coast), although I might want a few more granular distinctions (Upper South and Deep South, for example). For the rest of the world, continents seem like a good starting point — although, again, a few more granular distinctions might be nice (especially for Africa and Asia, because they're so large).

Yeah, it looks as though I really need to meet Aran or Eph just to make the lines worse.

Yeah, what I was saying was that the "DC Area" region should be called the "mid-Atlantic" instead. Drew lives in northern Virginia, which people probably would recognize as the DC area. At the moment, I'm splitting time between Baltimore County and Philly, but after this month I'll be in Philly full-time — and I don't think anyone would refer to either of those as the "DC area." Tyranicus is apparently in Harrisburg, which is definitely not the "DC area." But all of those places are part of the mid-Atlantic region. You were concerned that "mid-Atlantic" would sweep in New York also, to which my response is that some people use the term that way, but some people don't, and if you have a list that includes "mid-Atlantic" and "NY area," it will be clear from context that New York is not part of the mid-Atlantic in this list. So changing "DC area" to "mid-Atlantic" is less confusing.

Maybe, but maybe not. If you have New York separately listed, I think it would be clear in context. I mean, if you're choosing between calling Philadelphia part of the "DC Area" — which no one does — and calling Philadelphia but not New York part of the "mid-Atlantic" — which some people do — the latter seems better to me.