Aran

That's interesting. It would still be two completely separate games that happen to affect the same score, but at least the significance of the two games would be kind of balanced.

In the spirit of xkcd, that's one sad ass-ass.

Indeed. JKR seemed to realize this in later books, and put in some attempts at making the rest of the team more than course hazards, by having the tournament decided by cumulative scores rather than game outcome. Still there was only a single game in the series that wasn't won by the seeker (at the beginning of book four).

How is that ass bad, though?

I guess you already know I do, since I used to automatically spam my progress on Facebook (nowadays it just tweets).

 

I don't run it on my laptop, because it interferes with the dynamic frequency scaling and makes the CPU fan go wild. Just on the old desktop, which I mostly use as a NAS.

 

Stats.

 

Edit: Heh, I actually registered in 2005. That was just after the classic SETI client was replaced with BOINC.

Beat me to it. The man's voice is also badass. If he ever ran for God, he'd give Morgan Freeman a run for his money.

Speaking of whom.

This didn't work the last couple times, either... we have a channel on EsperNet, one on SorceryNet and I think a third one somewhere else. Don't know which one I started.

 

Anyway, it seems the more popular medium for some unfathomable reason is AOL.

Fiction writers have little difficulty writing what they don't know; they can't afford to confine themselves to areas of expertise.
I suspect a far more significant factor is the assumption that most of the audience are male; secondly the assumption that the male audience is averse to female protagonists that aren't sexy (or male protagonists that are).

This belief is apparently particularly widespread in children's books (where boys are assumed to be averse to female characters/authors, period). For example, it's why Joanne Rowling went by J.K.Rowling.

Congratulations!

 

 

This duck, however, is unimpressed.

Voicework? Make it 3D and add full-motion video cut-scenes, instead...

The Avernites?

World of Avernum would be the result of Blizzard buying SW, though.

What I'd play the crap out of is Avernumcraft. No need to find a silly portal to the surface; just grab a pickaxe and start digging.

(Speaking of digging: Avernum Fortress. Strike the Earth.)

Solberg apparently died of old age, so by DnD rules he's permanently dead anyway.

Joke Explain Man to the rescue!

 

The joke draws on the dual interpretation of "real time suck" as either the intended "veritable time suck" or a "suck" in "real time", as opposed to suck that is turn-based.

 

Except for the party itself, all deaths do seem final in Avernum. No one else is ever revived. No one else talks about resurrection, as far as I can remember. As of the second trilogy, even your party only falls unconscious.

 

—Alorael, who thinks revival of the dead is just a remnant of Avernum's history as Exile and Exile's descent from Ultima and D&D.

 

 

Indeed, it seems that A4 retconned resurrection out of existence, so all sequels after Erika's death preclude it.

 

In-universe, if the curse on Erika was so powerful even she couldn't lift it, isn't it plausible it could have precluded resurrection as well?

... so let me simply add that it is my particularly good honor to meet you and you may call me P. (No on second thought, don't.)

Non-Spiderweb:

 

- Myst (1-4, but only 4 remains unsolved)

- Minecraft

- Ancient Domains of Mystery

- Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

- Battle for Wesnoth

- Age of Empires II

- The Settlers IV

- Escape Velocity: Nova

 

 

As for Spiderweb, my favorite non-Blades game is Avernum III. The ones I've played were awesome, though I don't like the engine in A4 much. It's probably shorter to list the SW games I haven't played: Avernum 5-6, Geneforge 4-5, Avadon. (I haven't played past the demo of A4 or any of the Geneforges.)

Arancaytar: "Behold the Jayaris."

"Oh, but it's not a real Spiderweb RP without a little derailing," Aran interjects. "In fact, this feels uncharacteristically... nice. Roleplays from this time period usually derailed into pointless god-modding and plot-hogging and flames very quickly. I have one word for you: Jayari."

 

"I like the new style, sure. But somehow it feels less... I don't know." Aran sighs melodramatically. "I guess our community has matured now." He opens his pack and looks for his nostalgia pills.

"Oh, yeah, it's probably not worth it. Still, a nicely preserved legacy tha--aaaaarghh!" a mild tremor shakes the tenuously connected structure of the Wayback snapshot, and Aran is suddenly scrambling for a foothold. But he is swaying on the very edge of Miscellaneous, and the structure offers nothing to hold onto, so he falls.

And falls.

He's falling for quite some time, really. He notices the Internet Archive rushing past all around, but it is soon past. For a moment there is just emptiness, and then...

*CRACK* "Ouch."

Groaning, Aran slowly gathers himself off the ground and tries to find out where he landed. It still looks like Spiderweb, but different. He's also not in the Internet Archive anymore. "Huh. This looks like... hey! This is my place. Piperbot must've finally finished renovating." The topic appears to be by Scorpius, about fluffy kittens. Aran notices that his landing has badly cracked the topic. "Oh bloody hell. Piperbot'll give me an earful when he sees this. I'd better leave." He prepares for an arduous climb back up to Miscellaneous and the bus, leaving behind an ominous-looking crack for Piperbot to deal with.

Arancaytar, after spending days cross-referencing obscure Arena trivia and digging in the forgotten realm of Geocities, had collapsed in his seat and fallen asleep. He awakes to find the bus has moved to another time, and looks outside to be overwhelmed.

 

"This was just before I first started lurking. It all looks so familiar. I could have sworn that the topic's title bar was brown, though, but I guess they must have changed the theme at some point."

 

"Mh... I wonder if it would be feasible to scour Wayback for Misc threads to add to the PPP..."

Oh, yes; I remember doing that with Exile 1 and 2 (Exile 3, my introduction to SW, had come on a shareware CD). And then, because my dad's PC was the only one hooked up to the phone line, I had to pack the zip file onto a bunch of 3.5" discs to copy it.

"Now please insert disc 3 of 17..."

Nah, if it were snark it wouldn't have any punctuation.

Well, it seems the software is buggy and created my account with a different password than I entered. Can't seem to reset the password either...

 

Edit: Yay, I'm in; thanks Sylae.

Oh, but the world's been ending several times a year for all of recorded history. The common theme is that all humans ever have predicted the end of the world within their lifetime. Most of them are now dead, though, so my bet is on the world.