Kelandon

I'll be damned. Clearing the cache worked. Thanks! EDIT: Note to those who think, "Why didn't Kel come up with this before?": Clearing the cache is an option available in the "Develop" menu, which is not available by default. It may be possible to do it through the "Clear History and Website Data" menu option, but that obliterates so much that I didn't want to if I could avoid it.

Did it. No luck. Still the same problem.

No and no, oddly enough. The fact that it doesn't happen under private browsing is especially odd, because I don't know what private browsing is doing that I can't simulate with other tricks I was trying (clearing cookies, setting the "do not track" feature, etc.).

Yes, it's my laptop. But why? That's the question.

That's an interesting, but incorrect, explanation. It's not related to the modem. I get this error on any Internet connection, whether at home, in an airport, in my dorm, or anywhere else.

As the title suggests, my new scenario The Magic is ready for a beta test. Download it, play it, and report any bugs you find in this topic. This scenario is intended for level 1 parties. It stands alone, but experience with some of my other scenarios may make some of it easier to follow (particularly the ending).

Here's that. And here's the one on the left, for fun. (Note that I still get the 404 if I turn off AdBlock.) I think this is that. Note that if I click on the item on the left pane just above this, the right pane is totally blank. I cleared cookies for only Spidweb, and all it did was log me out, but that didn't help. I still get the 404 even when I'm logged out. It's pretty destructive to clear all cookies, so I'm trying to avoid that if I possibly can.

Well, this is what it looks like.

Bizarrely enough, yes. It still means that all the links to the main forum page give me a 404 error, though. What exactly do you want? I can open the timeline and record, but I'm not sure what part of the output you'd like. Nothing is labeled "http session."

Is the "hosts" file where they keep the malevolent ghosts when they're not haunting my computer? Er, how do I check on the hosts file?

For unfathomable reasons, when I go to the main forum page on my computer (namely, this page), I am getting a 404 error. I am not getting the error when I go to any subsidiary page (Spiderweb General Boards, any specific board or specific topic), only the main page. I am also not getting this error on my iPhone or iPad, just my computer. I'm using Safari on Mac OS 10.10, for whatever that's worth. Anyone have any idea what's up?

Not that I was aware of at the time or am aware of now, but I don't know what his motivations were or what he had heard. I never said, "Hey, there are these games you should try!" or anything like that. Which is more or less what I did with Wizcozski.

I was as surprised to see Feo here as anyone else was. I didn't bring him here in any kind of active sense. I would make that line blue. But if that "Wiz" on the chart is Wizcozski, I did bring her here, so that line should be green.

Huzzah, etc.

Combat tactic, no. Skill allocation, yes. You sound like you're low on Dexterity and possibly middle skill columns. It's definitely true that the game ends up crazy hard if you allocate your skills poorly, and what you're describing — doing very little damage, getting hit for a lot of damage, etc. — sounds a lot like poor skill allocation.

Complaining about the difficulty of optional fights seems silly. If you don't like the optional fights, well, they're optional. You can't beat Redbeard? Yeah, it's supposed to be really hard to beat Redbeard. You don't have to beat Redbeard to win. There are many criticisms of that fight, but I eventually came around on it, when I finally had a party built in a way to execute it properly. If you're annoyed by the bumpy difficulty of the mandatory fights (i.e. the difficulty of one fight can be much greater or much less than the difficulty of the previous fight), I mostly agree with you about Avadon 1; the game wasn't balanced properly. The mandatory fights in Avadon 1 are super-bumpy. It doesn't matter if you pump the right skills, though, because, again, the game wasn't balanced properly (Dexterity is totally overpowered). I thought that Avadon 2 was balanced much better, though. (And if you're routinely playing on Hard, and your complaint is that the game is hard... well... I don't know what you expected.) Also, there's no sense in which Avadon 2 "punishes" you for using stealth to get from one mandatory battle to the next. The first Miranda fight is hard, and maybe it's a bump in difficulty, but it's by no means impossible, especially once you understand the proper tactics. So the solution is to go read Strategy Central topics. I promise you that both games will be quite easy on Normal if you have anything approaching an optimal skill selection.

If I remember correctly, Exile had a Scry Monster spell, and I've never been clear why it was eliminated and not replaced with something equivalent.

Not that I'm aware of, but almost nothing matters in Avadon 1 until the very end of the endgame. The way you handle Gryfyn and the words you say to Redbeard right at the very end are the main things affecting the ending, in addition to whether you kill the monsters that get you medals (Beloch, Zephyrine). As far as titles you can claim, you can stay a Hand regardless (and challenge him to become Keeper regardless). You can become an Eye based solely on your dialogue with Redbeard at the end. Don't insult him to his face, and you can become an Eye. Becoming a Heart requires not insulting him to his face and saying the right things earlier in the game when he asks you about things. Don't tell him you want to be Keeper. Don't say that Avadon is corrupt, and its influence is entirely for sale. Don't tell him that Avadon is doomed. (You can check this when he gives you his powerful scarab; if he says he forgives you for foolish words in the past, you've screwed it up.) You also have to learn Dheless's name (and, in order not to insult him to his face, tell him).

Here are two of the most recent topics on this subject: topic 1 and topic 2. I'd start with generally older and work toward generally newer, but right now that's a little complicated because Spiderweb is in the process of remaking the first three Avernum games. So I'd probably do Nethergate, the Geneforge Series, the Avadon Series, and then come back for the Avernum Series. But if anything doesn't strike your fancy, feel free to skip it and go to the next series. I think the games should be played in order within a series (Geneforge 1, Geneforge 2, etc.) but the series are independent of each other.

Confusing, yes. Disheartening, no. As I recall, you were the one who said that you weren't expecting so many Biblical references... in a scenario literally entitled Exodus. I thought you were a moron. I now somewhat less think you're a moron, now that you've (sort of) owned up to it.

You've saved me from having to figure out on my own whether to lock this or not. My inclination was to do so, but now I know for sure. Also, Valdain, cut it out.

Pretty sure thinking someone is immoral is not equivalent to declaring open season on that person's life. If your only point is that violent revolution in the United States or other similar countries is at least seriously dangerous (and probably not a good idea) because lots of people will die, I would like to inform you that the sky is blue. Radical politics can be devastating and destructive. Communist purges were pretty awful. But sometimes radical politics can be the only way to fix an enormous political and social and economic problem. Remember that the only people arguing for the total abolition of slavery in the United States in the middle of the 19th century were wild-eyed radicals. And heck, it even took a war to bring it about!

See this topic for discussion of this issue. Please don't clutter up this thread with it.

So, for those who don't want to deal with the formatting of the chart, I think it says that as soon as you get a Basilla quest, you should go back every time you complete a main quest to anywhere. That is, when you finish the first trip to the Tawon and get a new quest to the Corruption and get a new quest somewhere else, go back to the Tawon and deal with Basilla again. Then when you finish the quest to the Corruption, go back to Basilla again. Generally, there will be something else sending you back to the Tawon at the same time anyway, but it looks as though at least once there is not.

The Ninth Amendment does not meaningfully limit Congress's power. The Tenth sort of does, and people say that the federal government does not have "police" power — which does not mean what it sounds like. The only general point to be made here is that the presumption is that Congress can't do anything unless the Constitution allows it. (The reverse presumption applies to the states: they can do anything unless the Constitution forbids it.) But Congress has Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. All Congress has to say is that it is concerned that states (via local police) are violating due process and not providing their citizens equal protection of the law, and it wants to monitor local police for Fourteenth Amendment violations in relation to excessive use of force. That's the easy constitutional justification. (Yes, there's the "congruence and proportionality" requirement from City of Boerne v. Flores, but it seems pretty obvious that it would pass it.) You could probably do it under the Commerce Clause power, too, because that power does not have many defined limits — as far as we know, the only limit is that it can't be used to regulate inactivity, per NFIB v. Sebelius — but you don't even have to go there.