Quiconque

Originally Posted By: Lilith "won't make christian lobby groups complain"

I understand the distinction you're drawing, but I don't see how that's an integral part of what makes a novel. For comparison, most fairy tales were the product of a collective imagination. But there are also so-called 'literary' fairy tales created by a single individual: Hans Christian Anderson is probably the most famous writer of them, but it was a popular genre for a while. Distinctions are often made between the two types of stories, but nobody objects to both being called fairy tales. Why does the novel require this distinction? Here's another problem. Is it the EXACT FORM of the work that has to have been created by one person, or the IDEAS of it (the characters, plot, etc.)? For example, suppose I decided to take the story of Beowulf and write a book-length story based on it. I might add things in a few places, and include a lot of elaboration, rumination, and description not present in the original. Clearly my book is _not_ the same thing as the original Beowulf. But is it a novel? If the answer is "yes" -- then the Standard Akkadian version of the Gilgamesh epic is too; we know that its source material was around for at least a millenia beforehand and presumably did not have a single author, but that version (the main version of Gilgamesh we have) was indeed written by a single person, one Sin-leqe-uninni. (And don't tell me that it was an oral tradition simply transcribed by one person, because there is no "simple transcription" in Akkadian -- the same sentence can be read in many ways, and written in even more in Akkadian, thanks to some fluid syntactic structures and its frequent insertion of pieces of Sumerian.) If, however, the answer is "no" -- then a whole SLEW of books typically referred to as "novels" that are based on mythological stories are not, in fact, novels. Mary Renault's _The King Must Die_, Ursula LeGuin's _Lavinia_, nearly everything by Robert Graves and Marion Zimmer Bradley... this list goes on.

Yeah, I think this fits with the question of a price point. Jeff has blogged about how everyone tells him his games cost too much, but he seems quite sure the sales increase of an iPhone-game-level price drop would not even nearly come close to making up for the loss in profits from people who buy it even for the higher price.

*nod* And that works perfectly fine. But seeing as this is pretty far removed from a forum of xian lobbyists, let's call it what it is, then.

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity Within five years Jeff will be releasing six chapter-length app-games per year, instead of one long game per year. His games have already gotten pretty strongly chapterized; he writes them chapter by chapter, and you play through them that way. If he takes the small step of releasing them that way, too, then he gets to reach a much bigger market. It might not quite make sense yet, but I bet it will within a few years. I strongly disagree with that prediction. This prediction makes sense for a chunk of the CRPG market in general, definitely including some portion of the old-school niche. But it fails to take into account both Jeff's willingness to follow through on his own ideas even when they are different from what everyone else is doing, and his formidable obstinacy and resistance to change.

Well, let's see. Wikipedia first says "A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose" and then suggests: "The fictional narrative, the novel's distinct "literary" prose, specific media requirements (the use of paper and print), a characteristic subject matter that creates both intimacy and a typical epic depth can be seen as features that developed with the Western (and modern) market of fiction." It then proceeds to list pretty much every example from this thread (most of them with accurate dates). A novel by any other name...

Originally Posted By: Biology of Broken Things What about the Iliad, which, except for being written in verse, does a passable job of having characters, plot, and even a dash of development. There's no clear first novel; there aren't even clear criteria for defining novels. If characters, plot, development, and relatively long-form are all you need, then I think Gilgamesh is a pretty clear first novel.

I still think the comparison is ill-fitting. The development of the novel was a particularly rare thing, unimpeachably broad in its implications; Angry Birds and Avadon, not so much.

Originally Posted By: Sage of Numenor The intro specifically says that the rebels captured a THIRD of Terrestia. So there's another unmapped section in between G4 and G5. Last time I checked, as of the intro of G4 the Rebels had not captured the entire G4 map -- far from it. If you're talking about the G5 intro, we know the Rebels are more or less in control of eastern Terrestia, but it's unclear if this control is total and ubiquitous, or partial and spotty.

Forget family friendliness, whatever happened to friendliness?

I believe Asp gloves increase the damage you take from poison, or maybe it's increase the levels of poison you receive each time you are poisoned.

The novel metaphor confuses me. You are distinguishing this 'new class of games' by being low-end yet having adequate "technical features" and also by having a theme. However, novels are -not- distinguished from other sorts of writing by any technical features of language, nor by theme. They are distinguished by basic structure, and perhaps to a lesser degree by format and organization. It seems to me that a more appropriate metaphor might be the development of, say, free verse: a versatile modification of an already-existing format.

Originally Posted By: Enraged Slith I also can't stand Exile 1 or 2 without the really old graphics, which probably clarifies my nostalgia bias. Hear hear. But the really old graphics were just better than the newer Exile ones: not as shiny, but a much better fit for the atmosphere.

Carunnos was the one that healed monsters. Vorb I believe damaged the user.

Okay, yeah, the religious stuff needs to stay out: calling people sinners and stating what people "should" believe is not what these forums are for. So please, folks, don't respond to that part (or reiterate it), because then the thread WILL be locked. I'm not locking it now because I think the conversation about what standards should define what is or is not family friendly is a worthwhile one. Continuing it: Originally Posted By: Txgangsta "Family-Friendly" is relative to each individual... There is a significant (though a minority) percentage of people that would consider homosexual relations unsuitable for the family. So ANYTHING that ANY significant minority consider "unsuitable for the family" qualifies as not family friendly? Where do you draw the line? There are an awful lot of different things that different minorities think are inappropriate...

Download Avernum 1, try it for a bit, and see what you think. Half the players here who started with Exile will tell you to switch to Avernum, and half of us will tell you Exile is better. Decide for yourself.

I follow you up until here: Originally Posted By: Dantius 5. Lesbianism is a sexuality, sexual preference, sexual orientation, pick whatever term you want to describe it; I don't want to get bogged down in semantics and wind up in a choice v. genes debate. I'll go with sexuality because it's short and easy to type. 6. As such, in many peoples eyes, sexuality is inseparable from sex. Okay, but heterosexuality is sexuality too. If the lesbian relationship was graphic and the straight ones were courtly, I'd see what you were saying: but in this case, it's actually the straight couples whose love and affection is more visible. Quote: 7. Therefore, if said small child is exposed to alternate sexualities, they will ask questions, like children do. So let me get this straight: you think that you can expose small child to traditional sexuality, and they won't have any questions to ask about it?!? Quote: 8. The parent then simply blanket bans any mention of sexuality from reaching th child until the parent deems the child capable of discussing and understanding it in a mature and reasonable way. Again, I see the reasoning here, but I fail to see how "any mention of sexuality" covers women making veiled references to having a relationship, but does not cover the various heterosexual couples who talk about being in love.

As tempting as it is to lock this, and as much as the Nine-Headed Cave Cow frowns upon this hetero-oxy, how bout you guys give the original poster's idea a chance? Let people post their ideas, and maybe some people will post ideas that are longer than a sentence.

Originally Posted By: Txgangsta So, I guess its less family friendly because it confuses the kid because it breaks the normality of his/her family. What if the kid in question does not belong to one of these "normal" families? Heck, does this mean that single parent households are not family friendly either? Because Avernum has a bunch of those, and they also don't fit the model. The answer -- that lesbians go in "family unfriendly" because a minority of the population consider them abnormal and something they don't want their kids to know about at a young age -- is not an adequate answer, because the same thing could easily be said about abusive sexual harassment (Garzahd and Enla), divorce (Tor and Diane, Tor and Carol), or interracial marriage (astoundingly unpopular in the U.S. until a few decades ago; many examples in the games), not to mention the use of magic (enough parents have a problem with this to get the odd fantasy classic banned from a library once in a while). So what is it about lesbians that makes them go in this "family unfriendly" category, while the other things are okay? I'm asking this, by the way, as a serious question for exploration and discussion, and not as bait for an argument.

Assuming it works the same way as for other attacks (and it should), 26% is the chance to hit. You start with a base chance to hit determined by the attack -- this is 50% for most physical attacks and 100% for most spells -- add the attacker's hit bonus (not sure what would apply for wands) and subtract the defender's evasion bonus (this seems to be across the board, so same as usual: Dex and Defense bonuses and the like). If it does list the chance to hit, this becomes very easy: have your mage and your fighter both attack the exact same enemy with the exact same wand. Reload until you see misses from both of them, and check if the percents are equal or not.

The question stands.

Yeah, turrets are often tougher for shapers, early on, since they slice through low level creations pretty quickly. Triumph is correct re creating/levelling creations.

And to be extra clear, the increases to damage or duration are TINY compared with a spell level boost from the earlier games. You spell "level" is just added to your spellcraft and your mage/priest skill to determine your bonus for that spell. That's it! So typically it will increase duration by a turn, or increase damage by one die.

How exactly is a lesbian relationship any less "family friendly" than a heterosexual relationship?

Yeah, paying for better stats on creations is rarely a good deal even in later games, but in G1 it's AWFUL: not only is it unreasonably expensive in essence, the stats you buy won't make up for the stat points you lose by having creations gain levels instead of just recreating them at higher levels.