Edgwyn

Now that I think about it, I salt very few foods, but those that I do (french fries, tortilla chips, pretzels) I tend to salt to excess.

I like both, but will almost always pick sweet over salty.

I believe that the answer is going to be different for each person. I want a relatively simple town with few inhabitants that provides memories by advancing the plot. One way to make a town memorable would be an emotional reward for the player that has completed multiple quests (What if in Avadon 1 when you really wanted to be a hand, you were rewarded partway through the game with your promotion to hand instead of it happening for showing up). Another way would be to build an emotional bond between the player and a NPC in the town through repeated visits and then have the NPC have a significant emotional event (positive or negative) (I am hoping for such in Avadon 3 with Polus).

Towns are necessary to the stories, which are the strengths of Spiderweb's games. Part of the way that I choose to enjoy the Spiderweb games are with the Randomizer/Synegizer lists and hint guides. It is pretty easy to figure out who I need to talk to that way and especially, who I need to return to. I find the first visit to any town enjoyable from an exploration aspect (mostly finding out what stores there are plus any secret rooms), but I do not want to have to click on every NPC in the town to figure out which ones are worth talking to. Color coding would work well I suppose. I realize that having a bunch of inhabitants with nothing useful to the PC adds to the realism, but I find it more fun if I don't have to talk to them all. The early wizardry games were great because the only town dialogue was purchasing supplies. That said, the rest of the plot was really simplistic. I enjoy the story building and quests from the Spiderweb games more than "kill werdna he is bad" or "find super cool suit of armor" being the entire detailed plot of the game.

The worm that is swallowing it's tail will choke and die and the universe will end. But there will be a restaurant there at the end.

Jenell's attack with the Sage Rod is not the same as Nathalie's attack with the sage rod. Jenell's is spirit claw which I believe is energy versus Nathalie's fire bolt and so different resistances pertain to them. A useful way to think of the staffs and rods that are equipped as weapons is that they are not the wands of this game, or the Rod/Staffs/Wands of D&D, they are a focus for the caster's innate powers and can improve the effectiveness of those powers, but they do not have any inherent power (like fire) of their own. The Avadon series is far more class specific than the Exile/Avernum series, but you are correct in that scrolls and such are not class specific and anyone can heal. Jenell's ability to heal without burning up consumables can be useful, but many find her summoning ability most useful.

I would never advise dishonesty period. But Alorael's point about triage is spot on. The odds are good that some point in your work life, you will find yourself with more tasks then what you can accomplish. The first choice is always to become more efficient and do more with less. This can be accomplished by coming up with better ways to do something, or applying only the appropriate amount of effort to get the necessary result and not one bit of effort more. The reality is that is not always possible and sometimes you just have to decide what you are not going to do (usually based on someone else's criteria) and be prepared to accept the consequences of that decision.

The blood should come out easier then repairing all of the damage to the clothes from fire and acid. The great thing about a junk bag that does not count towards encumbrance is that you can put on a new outfit after every fight.

While I do not necessarily disagree that the USSR government was the best that Russia every had, a government that killed off so many of its own people and oppressed so many more still does not seem like a prize. While the US government did a lot to discredit/destabilize/destory the Castro government in Cuba during the early part of his reign, other than maintaining a very week trade embargo, Cuba has been ignored by the US for the last 20-30 years. That has not stopped many people from choosing to escape the workers paradise and move to the US. As to Venezuela, that only "immense and concerted efforts by the USA to destroy and discredit them" in "the present day" seem to have been purely an invention of Chavez to keep himself in power, justify his ruining of their economy and purchasing of arms and improving his street cred. Venezuela has really been ignored by the US, and saying that it is doing well is a huge stretch. I think that I agree with what I believe to be Alorael's point that countries that have drifted gradually into socialism through their internal legal processes have done better than most of the countries that have had a "worker's" revolution.

The socialist revolutions that most quickly pop into my mind have all resulted in a ruling class that controls the majority of the country's capital and less social mobility than most capitalist societies. That said, I am not sure how to reduce campaign spending, with the evil not being the actual spending, but the quid pro quo that it buys.

While the legions themselves fall out of use in Western Europe (where arguably there was not anything large enough and organized enough to field a professional army like the legions), heavy infantry did dominate Western European battlefields until around 1000 AD and then did again around 1400 AD.

Alorael's 2nd and 3rd paragraphs made me post this: It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried. Sir Winston Churchill

Modeling education is even more complicated, because while there is indeed a wage differential, there is also a point of diminishing returns. When the market gets saturated with a particular skill set, the value for that skill set (just like for any other commodity) goes down. However, it is often years after the investment before anyone can make a case for the supply exceeding the demand and noticing that the wages are dropping compared to historical norms. I read a quote once (I can't attribute it though) that the most expensive military is the second most powerful. There is of course no non-destructive way to measure. There is not a liter or meter of national defense. Too much spending can put the nation's economy at risk, too little can also hurt our country's and the world's economies (that whole Pax-Americana thing). Of course for the debate on how much is too much, you have to compare apples with apples and pick your favorite yard stick to match your desired outcome: Defense outlays in constant dollars, defense outlays as a % of the discretionary Federal Budget, defense outlays as a % of the total Federal Budget or defense outlays as a % of GDP. Generally the folks that want to cut defense spending will use straight dollar figures and ignore everything else that has changed in the economy and the folks that want to sustain or increase defense spending will use the % of GDP figures ignoring everything else that has changed in the economy. Since there is not an easy way to measure output, nobody talks about capability, only money.

While it is certainly possible that Redbeard could have a family and great-grand kids and all that and uses his own portals to sneak off to see them, I doubt it. He seems way to addicted to his job and way to paranoid to form an attachment to something or someone that could be used against him.

Going back a few posts to why nobody copied the legions, since there has already been a better explanation of why the roman legions died out within the empire than I could give. The legions were professional soldiers with outstanding training and discipline. While the Roman sword drill was undoubtably easier than musket drill, mastering all of the formations required a lot of work. And then there is a lot of practice required to chance formations in the middle of the chaos and stress of battle. A single big block like the earlier phalanx requires training and discipline. The formations of the Romans were far more complicated and therefore required a lot more training and discipline. All of this training and practice is really expensive. You have to have a sophisticated economy with a sufficient surplus of resources to support a professional army as opposed to a militia. I also seem to recall that the Roman legions had some tactical issues against the Parthians. The Roman Legion was a very powerful formation, but there is a limit to how fast a legionnaire could move due to their heavy equipment and relatively tight formation. Against opponents who could be counted on to come at the Roman formation (either due to the opponents aggressiveness or good tactics by the Romans), life was good. A primarily mounted opponent, especially one with substantial numbers of archers could prove difficult for the Legions as long as they were smart enough to not let themselves get to close to the Romans. Hit and run tactics can be effective against a more powerful but less tactically mobile foe. Some of the crusaders ran into the same problems a 1000 or so years later.

Among the old time CRPGs, Wizardry had prestige classes, and that was during the time of 1st Ed AD&D, you also gained in your characteristics (Str, Int, etc), but you did not have skills and could not radically change your character. The first three games in the series essentially used the same convention. Going back to the original post, even though I believe that I was around for "Old School" paper and computer RPGs, I have no idea what "old school" actually means in this context. While AD&D was the industry leader and arguably inspired the vast majority of the 1970s and 1980s CRPGs (kind of hard to get more old school for computer games than that), there were competitors to AD&D with different rule sets, and due to copyright restrictions and personal preferences of the programmers, the 1970s and 1980s CRPGs tended to use AD&D concepts, but did not try and implement AD&D rules. Actual, successful (imo), computer implementation of the AD&D rules came after the "Old School" CRPGs. I suppose Baldur's gate uses an "old school" PAPER RPG leveling construct, though certainly by the mid 80s and probably earlier there were PAPER RPGs with skill point type systems instead of AD&D leveling type systems. I think that the sentence would have to be edited to say that they use "old school AD&D leveling" if you wanted to be accurate. I suppose an equivalent debate would be are the Spiderweb games "old school" or are they turn based with lower-res graphics than the current state of the art? Other than the fact that I enjoy them and they are turn-based, I do not consider the look of the Spiderweb games that close to the early Wizardry, Sierra-OnLine, Bard's Tale, since those did not have top-down graphics. I suppose the interface is fairly close to Ultima's. I never did play Rogue in its' early forms so I can't throw that in.

I wonder if there is any reliable literature on the proper employment of swords versus chain and plate armors. As was pointed out earlier, most of us have a pretty strong heroic fantasy lens to our perceptions of how to use a sword. I do not consider the various fencing disciplines a good start because they are all so stylized. The better sword fight scenes in Hollywood movies tend to be fencing based. Good Japanese movies tend to be Kendo based and to me, that is not any closer to what I am curious about. I know that it is too much to expect a written field manual for a society where the majority of the combatants were close to illiterate, but I can dream can't I? 7.62x39 is the traditional AK-47 round (as opposed to the newer 5.45x39 of the AK-74).

If you are concerned about knowing when it will happen, in Strategy Central there are a couple of different posts that contain the sequence of events, though of course there are spoilers.

I of course do not know how often the SAS relies on pistol ammunition. However, they were filmed on camera during the hostage rescue at the Iranian embassy in London using MP-5s which fire 9x19 rounds which are the same round as in the Berreta 92F that the US military uses. The longer barrel of the MP-5 does provide a slight increase in muzzle velocity and in combination with the stock a large increase in accuracy. The RCMP's emergency services team also uses the MP-5 as their close quarters weapon as do many other similar organizations. 5.56x45 and 7.62x39 are the most common military rifle calibers with 7.62x51in specialist application. Someday I would love to see a comparison of 5.56x45 versus 7.62x63 on things like body armor and vehicle doors. Right now, it would probably just depress me. On the other hand, I am very glad to hear that the calvary guys were smart enough not to charge infantry squares. Seeing/participating in a re-enactment of Waterloo at Waterloo would certainly be a fantastic experience, I am jealous.

SoT, plenty of people get killed by improper use of cars each year. While pistol rounds, especially in small calibers are not as effective as incapacitating a hostile target as rifle rounds, they are both equally safe or equally dangerous. Knives, guns, cars, and arguably hands can all be indiscriminately deadly if used improperly or in an unsafe manner. If you look at SAS, Delta, GSG-9, etc they tend to use relatively short weapons that fire pistol class rounds for close quarters work, saving long guns firing rifle class rounds for outdoors and sniper type work. I do not know why that is the case, I believe that it is in part because of faster aiming with a shorter weapon. They also choose to put multiple pistol class rounds in a target instead of using rifle rounds at close quarters, making up for a pistol rounds lower lethality with repetition (two to center of mass or two to center of mass followed by one to the head). About calvary using their pistols to shoot their own horses, it is as you pointed out a dumb idea, but not much dumber than calvary charging a prepared square with bayoneted fire arms or pikes which certainly happened plenty of times. Calvary carried multiple pistols (a brace) for a while because muskets/rifles were single shot weapons, impossible to reload on horseback so four to six single shot pistols provided more firepower than a single shot long gun did during a charge, plus could be used one handed more easily than a long gun could. A full body slash has a leverage advantage over a full body thrust, though my billiards analogy was not very good. Also, a slash covers more area and is harder to step aside from.

The last post was way long, and I wanted to address Goldenking's first paragraph and did not, so here goes. The NSA leaks and the budget crisis/congressional approval ratings are separate problems. The issue with the NSA is that it is an executive branch agency that has become too effective. We all want a government (which basically means executive branch) that efficiently uses our tax dollars, but we do not want it to be so efficient that it takes away our freedoms. The legislative branch and judicial branch are supposed to provide the checks and balances that prevents the executive branch from becoming too powerful. Unfortunately, the legislative branch has given up more and more authority to the executive branch since at least the 1970s and executive branch regulations do not receive the public oversight that legislative branch laws receive. The problem with congress is that it is getting less and less effective at doing its constitutional and traditional job. Much of its responsibilities under Article I Section 8 have been turned over to the executive branch. This transfer of authority was mitigated by congress controlling the purse strings and passing each year approximately a dozen budget bills and a dozen appropriation acts providing detailed direction on the spending of public monies by the executive branch agencies. While this level of oversight was not necessarily as much as intended, it worked pretty well and was probably as much oversight as was practical. The constitution forbids the spending of federal money without a congressional appropriation. There are very few details in the constitution so legislation has been passed setting the US government's fiscal year to be 1 Oct to 30 Sep. Therefore, budgets and appropriations need to be passed prior to 1 Oct of each year. For the majority of the last 20 years, this has not happened. The bills have passed late. The last few years have been worse with omnibus bills that fund the government as a whole without the detailed oversight that used to be provided. If you go with the position that the members of congress are employed by the people of the United States to govern the country in accordance with the laws and constitution, then we have a set of employees who have been late to work for 15 or so out of the last 20 years and have not performed basic elements of their jobs in an adequate manner for the last four years. Normally, that would result in firing. Instead we have well deserved dismal approval ratings and completely undeserved re-elections of the vast majority. As congress gave up control to the executive branch it kept its checks and balances role on the executive branch by controlling high level executive branch appointments and the budget. Over the last 20 years, congress has reduced its oversight of the budget and in the last year, congress has reduced the hurdle to executive branch appointments. It makes me wonder what useful function these people and their staffs who exempt themselves from laws that effect the rest of us are currently performing.

While it has been 20 years since I have been a true resident of California, I agree with Kelandon that California is the state that is the closest to a direct democracy, due to the initiative system as laid out in the state constitution that makes it very easy for voters to put items on the statewide election ballot. This has contributed to my lack of faith in direct democracy as it has turned CA into a place that is almost ungovernable. The voters of California consistently put bond measures to fund police, fire, colleges, social services, infrastructure projects, etc on the ballot, they get approved and are now must pay bills leaving the Governor and Legislature with almost zero control of state spending. While I support many of the fixes listed in Kelandon's post, you cannot govern/manage an entity if you have no control over the budget. It does not matter if it is a country, state or company, if you do not control the purse strings, you do not control the entity. The reference to "Bread and Circuses" is to the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Basic human nature is that we all want, or at least are willing to take, something for nothing. Among the issues that led to the fall of the Roman empire were an expectation that the government would provide for the basic needs of the people without the people needing to contribute to the government (Bread). There were many signs of problems (wars, public corruption, etc), but public spectacles or "Circuses" (killing slaves/beasts, chariot races, and mock naval battles in the Colosseum) successfully distracted the population from worrying about and therefore doing something about the problems. There was a huge decline in social responsibility, or a citizens duty to support the body politic. if politician X tells the voters that the government should provide you a middle class standard of living while you sit on your couch and watch the Kardashians all day long, while politician Y tells you that America is the land of opportunity and hard work is the way to get ahead, the majority of the voters will vote for politician X. They will also develop a culture of entitlement (a strong belief that they should get something for nothing) and a lack of social responsibility (the body politic owes me, I do not owe the body politic anything). There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, but politicians of both parties will continue to promise it and voters will continue to believe it. I agree with Randomizer's first paragraph completely, but have issues with the second paragraph. In my opinion, the issue goes back to the great depression. The government took on a lot of debt to spend our way out of the crisis. This was almost definitely necessary, but a lot of temporary programs that were created to deal with the economic crisis became permanent while everyone was distracted with WW II. This was not an immediate problem due to the unique post WW II economic situation that we found ourselves in, but set us up for long term problems. The next major crisis was during Vietnam where the decision was to have both "guns and butter" with an emergency increase in debt due to war combined with a non-emergency increase in debt to fund social programs. The Reagan administration took on more debt to win the Cold War, which allowed the Clinton administration to actually reduce the budget deficit via the "peace dividend". The Clinton administration's deficit reduction was achieved by both parties reducing one segment of government spending to historically low levels while allowing other areas of government spending to remain at historically high levels. Under Bush II, it was obvious that this historically low spending in that one segment of the government was a bad idea, so both parties took advantage of the crisis to fund the people paying for their re-election and other special interests and between that and poor strategic decisions a lot of money was completely wasted. Of course emergency deficit spending needs to be effective in order to ease the current economic crisis while not creating a future economic crisis, and it is debatable as to how effective the emergency deficit spending was during the Bush/Obama transition period and during the early Obama administration. One final thought on the subject of the economy. As an individual, deficit spending to live a lifestyle you cannot afford is a poor policy that leads to personal financial ruin. The same thing is true for a government. As an individual, you are advised to spend no more than X% of you income on housing, Y% on luxury goods (computers, TVs, netflix, high speed internet and smart phones are all examples of luxury goods), Z% on a car, etc. As a government, the same basic principles apply. Over the last 50 years, the % of our budget spent on entitlements (social programs) and debt service has increased while everything else has fallen. You cannot run a family budget on deficit spending forever and the only way to financial independence is to get out of debt. The only way to do that is to cut your spending so that you can pay down your debt. When you do this, the amount you are spending on servicing your debt drops and the process accelerates and you eventually become financially healthy. You cannot cut your families spending by labeling the largest segment of that spending non-discretionary. A social safety net is necessary, government entitlements as a way of life is not sustainable.

The people didn't have a direct vote or even mush of an indirect vote on the abolition of slavery, though I would love to believe that it would not have mattered (that is not necessarily the same thing as saying that I believe that it would not have mattered). The 13th amendment was approved by both houses of congress and the state legislatures. It went through so quickly (less than a year) that there was not an election cycle for voters to give their opinions of candidates who were for or against until after it was ratified.

I am using Safari 6.1.1 on my MacBook Pro without any issues.

The other advantage that slashing weapons like most swords, axes, maces and flails have over thrusting weapons like the pike and spear is that you get an extra advantage in power (compare hitting a baseball to hitting a billiard ball). This can make a big difference against an opponent who can afford metal armor. Plenty of people who carry weapons for the sole purpose of shooting carry both a rifle and pistol if they can, especially if they are engaged in mounted ops where weight is less of an issue. In addition to the fact that they are easy to carry, pistols are good close quarters weapons because they are fast to point, which is essential at close range. Rifles are for the outdoors, so-so in a city and great in the wilderness where you are looking at making shots at a much longer range than you can dream of with a pistol, but can be challenging indoors. Many of the special purpose door kicker organizations use SMGs which fire pistol rounds out of a barrel much shorter than that of a rifle, in some cases, barely longer than an open carry pistol's barrell. The US military has transitioned a lot of personnel to a Carbine which is handier than a rifle while not giving up a whole bunch of accuracy at longer ranges. But like any choice it is a debatable compromise as well.