Mea Tulpa

Wow, I really pulled this off topic. I'm going to try and do the judging sometime soon, so this is a last call for any further comments. Further comments would actually be appreciated, as I find it very hard to decide this one based on a broad glance at it.

Uh, you do realize that it's possible to side with the Darkside Loyalists, and kill the general instead of Dorikas?

Originally Posted By: Dantius I;m less impressed by the fact that she reached 1000, than the fact that she got modship before she hit it- she seems to be just about the only mod with less than 2500 posts. This is mainly because mods tend to stick around and post actively. Interestingly, most of the current mods became mods at well under 2500 posts (and usually under 1500). This applies to *i, Alorael, Kelandon, Khoth, myself, Randomizer, Toby-Linn, Niemand, and Celtic Minstrel. Ephesos and SoT were around 3000, IIRC. The major exceptions are just Aran and Dikiyoba.

Originally Posted By: Vanger Blade It doesn't accurately illustrate the unhealthiness of McDonalds at all. Before starting the documentary the guy was a vegan (girlfriend induced) for several months, at least 6. His body wasn't used to a diet with meat and dairy products in it. Anybody would look suspiciously unhealthy after a change like that, whether or not there was an actual problem with the food. Wikipedia states: "Prior to the experiment, Spurlock ate a varied diet but always had vegan evening meals to appease his then-girlfriend (now wife), Alexandra, a vegan chef." That certainly doesn't sound like he never ate meat or dairy, just that he avoided them for one meal a day. I'm not entirely disagreeing with your criticism, but let's not exaggerate things here.

Originally Posted By: Excalibur I recently bought the album Bridge Over Troubled Water. <3 Uh oh, Excalibur and I agree about something again. To be fair, I don't love the whole album, and I definitely prefer Sounds of Silence. But yeah. Today I began unpacking on the order of 800 CDs that I had stored in various basements for the last four years. A wonderful feeling to regain so much lost music, the stuff that I had never ripped. Oh The Noise Made by People and In Sides with the UK edition bonus CD and It's Oh So Quiet single, how I've missed you.

Well, depending on how strictly one defines yearning. If you exclude all the farcical, non-serious "yearnings" as well as the impersonal comments about Dolphin's (or whoever's) picture being hot, there isn't too much left, and most of what's left is not connected. To my knowledge, anyway.

Yes, congrats!

It is tempted to include phone calls (and videoconferencing) as well, but then the chart gets a lot more cluttered without including too many more people.

If phone calls counted it would be a chart of Marlenny, really.

Check the link for a substantially revised and updated version which now sports 30 members at as many as 8 links away from each other.

Re Zeviz and Wiz, I was told that they met. You may know better, so if you're fairly sure and/or want to check with either of them, I'll delink them. Alec and Djur might need to be blue, but they definitely met pre-Spidweb. The green/blue distinction is that for green, the link itself is what led (directly or indirectly) to one party joining SW, so the link is a given and not a surprise. For blue, the link is totally independent of either party joining SW, resulting in a "wait... is that ___?" moment. I'll guess your link should be green, but let me know if it should in fact be blue. Also, I believe Tyranicus has 7 as well.

Yes, I had to limit it to people connected to this web. There are a few tiny groups besides it and probably more that aren't publicized -- for example ADoS and company.

Green and blue lines indicate that the meeting predates SW. Green lines indicate the meeting continued and generally means one person on SW led to the other one being there. Blue indicates it was totally independent of SW. I may have coloured a few lines green that ought to be blue, not sure. Red indicates marriage. I've chosen not to indicate less officiated love relationships as a matter of rare good taste on my part. Oh, the colors of boxes are just some obvious groupings, Aussies, SFers, and Tyran's meetup.

As promised, here's my waste of time for the evening: Many Meetings There are now 27 members hooked in to this behemoth at as many as 7 links apart from each other.

No, it isn't. Avernum has better sales figures than Geneforge does, overall. Obviously, both series have individual games that were more and less popular.

Just in case some people here haven't heard this, Jeff has been quite clear that there will never be Blades of Geneforge, or any other scenario-creation kits, from SW.

I'm assuming you didn't mean to use it offensively, but let's end it please. This topic is close enough to setting somebody off as it is, just with the comments about Catholicism. If ethnic slurs keep popping up here, expect the topic to get locked quickly.

JP2 was pretty benevolent, I'd say.

Did anyone ever test if you can complete most of the game, get past the areas that Gladwell-alignment forces you to make hostile, and *then* join Gladwell for the stat bonuses?

That is incorrect. There is no roll for armor to "activate" -- it is always active. What you may have read is Thuryl's theory (uncontested) that applying 30% damage reduction does not actually mean multiplying by 0.7. Instead, it means that every single point of damage you take has a 30% chance -- INDIVIDUALLY -- of being blocked. Thus, if you wear only one armor item, a 30% item, and are hit for 152 damage, you'd make 152 rolls, and on average you'd block 30% of the damage. This explains the variation in actual blocked damage quite nicely. It is unclear under this theory if the reduction %s are actually multiplied together and just applied once, or if this process is repeated for each piece of armor. In other words, given two pieces are armor at 30% and 10%, it's unclear if you just roll 152 times and discard every point that rolls over .63, or if you roll 152 times discarding over .7, and then roll for undiscarded damage discarding over .9. However, I believe the distribution of results is identical either way, so it doesn't matter.

All experience you earn is scaled by your current level, often quite drastically. So gaining more levels early doesn't actually translate to being at a higher level late in the game. Having 7 creations with you all the time is unlikely to result in being more than, maybe, 2-4 levels lower when the game ends. And as we all know, levels in Spiderweb games don't mean much at all. 10-20 skill points and a few HP and Essence late in the game make almost no difference whatsoever.

The search feature is actually a very nice one, it's just that the default options suck.

Admittedly most of those suck, but there are some dual techs that do ramp up the damage: Falcon Hit reaches about 32 total base multiplier (physical) Beast Toss reaches about 69 total base multiplier (physical) of which about 31 can get the Crisis Arm bonus Max Cyclone reaches about 39 total base multiplier (mixed) and is cheap in MP use. Of note here are three that involve Lucca. Unfortunately, they all have serious drawbacks that make them less than useful in most games: Doublevbomb reaches about 93 total base multiplier (magical), but has very bad range Fire Whirl reaches about 81 total base multiplier (magical) and has great range and reasonable MP cost, but about 3/4 of that multiplier uses Ayla's magic stat Frog Flare doesn't boost damage much, but essentially allows Lucca to cast a non-elemental Flare, which is useful in a few situations. On the down side, it requires Frog. I don't actually remember if you need him at low HP to get the Flare part of the damage output, but really, either way... The only triple tech that has actual potential is Life Line, and that requires using Marle.

There's no subtraction involved. With the 50% armor and 10% helmet, you get: 1.0 * 0.5 = 0.5 0.5 * 0.9 = 0.45 = Multiplier Used to Apply Damage Reduction 1.0 * 0.9 = 0.9 0.9 * 0.5 = 0.45 = Multiplier Used to Apply Damage Reduction

All PHYSICAL MELEE attacks are d4 or d5, including the War Trall's. The War Trall's RANGED attack, which happens to be PHYSICAL as well, is d8 (in G5 only).