Mea Tulpa

Jeff had said the next update would have the Magical Efficiency fix. That's the first thing to check, I think.

The real question is when the increase kicks in after 29. This is the first game where stats have gone above 30, so it wasn't an issue before. After 29, do the capped increases happen at 33 and 37 and that's it? At 34 and 38 and that's it? 33, 37, 40? Who knows...

*facepalm*

What links? Surely the SW page links all link to the same game download.

Wow, you're right. Fascinating, especially because Hardiness and Resistance do -not- have said 10-cap (I just checked). Thanks for the correction!

Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba So how can sexualized vampires (Dracula, 1897) and contagious zombies (Night of the Living Dead, 1968) be "too pop cultural" while necromantic zombies (Dungeons and Dragons, mid-1970's) are a-okay? I think it's because vampires have a larger myth presence, whereas zombies, despite the idea coming from voodoo, are really more of a pop-cultural concept. (After all, the voodoo type aren't decaying corpses, right?) This is an interesting question. First, did the necromantic style zombies appear before D&D, say in fantasy literature? I have to guess that they did, given that D&D appears to have taken all of its monsters from other sources with the exception of the beholder and some outer planes races. I don't know, though. Either way they obviously derive from colonial era voodoo zombies (via early 20th century popular lit), which is not terribly different from sexualized vampires deriving from colonial era Eastern European-ish myths (via late 19th century popular lit). The contagious zombies definitely have fewer mythological roots -- indeed, as seen in the original book form of _I Am Legend_, they seem to be a hybrid of traditional zombies and vampires, albeit retaining more zombie characteristics. The parallel distinction for vampires that hasn't been specifically mentioned, and which I think leads some here to lump vampires in with the less mythological contagious zombies, is the teenagification of vampires, or as somebody said "sparkly vampires." Dracula was humanoid, romantic, dramatic, etc., but he was not a whiny emo boy and he did not attend high school. Modern vampires on film have slowly slid in this direction -- this is visible if you look at the drift from the Buffy TV show (mid 90's, heavy on the mythological side but with pop culture injected for humor) to Twilight (late 00's, heavy on the teen angst/romance side but with mythology injected for teenage rebellion cred). Really, though, I would just call this mythological development. The difference between a necrozombie and a contagious zombie is at least as great as the difference between -- say -- ghasts, ghosts, ghouls, wights, and wraiths, etc., which are all just different flavours of the same basic creature with mildly differing abilities.

♥♥♥ You rock.

And there's the fantasy gaming paragenre, where zombies still tend to be related to necromancers and/or evil deities. Zombies and skeletons (aka lesser undead) have to be one of the most common fantasy game enemy type tropes -- second in line, I'd guess, after goblin-types.

Spirits, Devas, and Spectres would also belong on the list.

Wow, I didn't realize how much the _IAL_ movie deviates from the original novel.

I applaud the use of Exile/Avernum as a basis for this poll. However, where are the Quickghasts? Quickghast FTW!

MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Correct, or almost! Nice catch. Brent Heustess was a G1 betatester. He's worked in Texas for years, it seems, so not a work buddy. But he was also active on Usenet throughout the 90's, which might be his original connection to Jeff. Among other things, he appears to be an expert on Cthulhu as well as the person who suggested putting Sylak items into Avernum... which makes him the godfather of Xian Skull.

Two interesting reads: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire

Although numerous distinctions have been made between the Human, Nephil, and Slith races as described by Jeff, there are exactly three differences in game, one of which is totally irrelevant: - starting Str, Dex, Int - bonuses to hit with certain weapon types - alternate, but equally crappy, starting equipment The simple set of corresponding bonuses for Vahnatai, presumably, would be +2 to starting Intelligence, +1 to starting Dexterity, and +10% to hit when using Wave Blades or Razordisks.

Because ASCII art never becomes spam. There's one other way to satisfy both the "post only in pictures" and "post no spam" requirement, which is to post little to nothing at all.

Monroe, But Taloon quickly covers its mouth!

Actually, I was expressing my general appreciation for Upon Mars's posts, which I find poetically amusing. I also have a general appreciation for parodies. So my entreaty to stun was in earnest. I did not think anyone was making a threat.

I have to agree with Monroe that pictures are more absolute than words. Words are abstract in nature, signifiers pointing to semantic clouds. Pictures can be interpreted the same way -- as signifiers -- but they can also be taken at face value, as a direct visual depiction of something. Words have no face value, and no value at all without the signification behind them. So perhaps the correct nuance of phrase is not "more absolute" but "have a greater chance to be partially absolute." Edit: I do not however agree with the screed on pictograms, phonetic ties and names, which does not make much sense to me.

Originally Posted By: Monroe Though it certainly speaks to the power of collective consciousness and the power of archetypes that you made those connections. Presumably you mean the collective unconscious, since you are mentioning it together with the concept of archetypes.

I am pretty sure the scene where Boromir defends Merry and Pippin -was- described in the books. Am I hallucinating?

It's pretty obvious that Lysstak is intended to be Limoncelli's descendant.

Yes, but that applies double to joke reviews without ratings as well. They can't distort the ratings. And since it has already been decided to dispose of those, the fact that you can do a little dance to prevent joke reviews with joke ratings from distorting the ratings is not much of a defense for them...

Why is it okay to have joke reviews with joke ratings, that distort the function and purpose of the ratings, but not okay to have joke reviews? If the joke reviews aren't okay, shouldn't the first category be very much not okay?

That wasn't really why it moved. There was discussion of ways to improve it, and then *i acted on the discussion. Nobody else was actually acting, and SV was starting to lose traffic anyway, so the move had a sort of passive consensus behind it. I understand the reasoning behind keeping the review threads to just serious reviews, but maybe this was not the best way to handle things. It seems a bit odd that joke reviews with joke ratings were allowed to stay, but joke reviews not designed to contaminate the ratings system were not.