Kelandon

SoT, there's no way that what you're describing could happen. Look at Ohio in 2012. People were sick to death of being contacted about the presidential election, but saturating the market with even more ads and more GOTV efforts worked. You may not like Lilith's phrasing, but the fact remains that people will not spontaneously adopt popularly-policed campaign finance reform. It runs directly contrary to virtually 100% of campaign experience in the past couple of centuries of American politics.

A more likely approach is something like the Warren-Brown "no Super-PACs" agreement between the candidates in a Senate race. As for how flexible the system is now, well, it's struggling. We have wide disagreement between two sides that have roughly equal political power in our system. The system of checks and balances doesn't allow for much action in those circumstances. If this continues for a long time, we may need to blow through some of those checks and balances (eliminating the Senate filibuster altogether, giving more power to the executive, etc.) — and that itself would represent a change in the system. I'm not necessarily saying that would be the best way for the government to change again, but it is at least one possible way that existing flexibility could be utilized.

The more I study law, the more I come to appreciate that we're in not the second version of American democracy (after the Articles of Confederation) but about the fourth or fifth version. The Founders screwed up a lot of stuff at the beginning. And I mean really basic stuff, like the top Electoral College vote-getter becoming president and #2 becoming vice-president (rectified by the Twelfth Amendment, or else Mitt Romney would be VP right now). We don't have the same Constitution that we did in the 1790s. We've amended it 17 times since the early years, and some of the amendments (especially the Fourteenth) have been really fundamental. Arguably, we don't even have the same system of government. In the first half of the twentieth century (well, starting in the nineteenth, but slowly at first), as the economy became more complicated and government took more responsibility for dealing with its ups and downs, the U.S. started creating agencies with specialized expertise in particular areas. These agencies are all theoretically within the executive branch, but the independent agencies (the Fed, SEC, etc.) don't really report to the president or anyone else. They're often described as a "fourth branch" of the federal government, constituted much like the third branch (the judiciary, by presidential appointment and approval by the Senate) and similarly independent. Heck, even the current system of electing the president dates to the early 1970s. After the Twelfth Amendment in 1804 changed the top-two system into a system of running mates, suffrage was expanded via Jacksonian democracy in the 1830s (not just landowners) and the Fifteenth and related Amendments in the 1860s and later (not just whites) and the Twentieth Amendment in 1920 (not just men), and a winner-take-all popular vote to decide the electors for the Electoral College didn't become popular until around the 1820s or so. But the current caucus/primary system that actually determines party nominees took shape after the Democratic National Convention of 1968, which was a disaster for the Democratic Party and led to the conventions just being celebrations that ratified what the voters had already done, instead of being the main vehicle for choosing a candidate. Throughout all of this, there has been a system of divided powers, both federal-state-local and legislative-executive-judicial(-administrative), which you might called the "American system" in a broad sense. But the nature of those powers and the means by which they are granted and exercised has changed radically over time. So if the American system has any brilliance to it, it's not because someone back in the summer of 1787 was amazingly prescient; it's because new generations have reshaped the government to their needs over and over again. (Also, as a historical matter, the Constitution wasn't ex nihilo. There were democratic town meetings dating back to the 1600s in the Americas, and the states had constitutions that predated and influenced the federal Constitution.)

Just did my fourth playthrough (all on an iPad). I think I've finally changed my mind. The Redbeard fight was actually kind of fun this time. I did it on Torment, with a party similar to my third playthrough party. All characters were high-Dex ranged physical attackers (razordisk, bow, javelin) except Nathalie, who was a high-Int staff-user. Everyone had a little bit of something else, too, mostly End, but some Str for the BM. Everyone focused on the middle column, most with the first two skills on left and right as well, except the Shaman, who was a drake summoner. Everyone had class equipment and otherwise top-level equipment with enhancements on everything that would take an enhancement. I hadn't used any scrolls and few potions or other consumables up to that point, so I had tons of them and split them across pretty much every character. I distributed scarabs really carefully, too. (Somehow I missed one, because I only had 19.) Basically, everyone attacked at range, and I made sure that everyone could get Battle Frenzy whenever, with a potion or a scarab or something else. My main damage-dealers were the lead character (a SW), the BM, and the SO; for some reason, the other SW and the SH weren't terribly effective and doing much damage, but I got some good summoning out of the Shaman (and the BM with a scarab). Three different characters (both SWs and Nathalie with a scarab) could teleport. The method that ended up working out pretty well was to hit Redbeard hard until he made his first offer (which ended up taking off a lot of his health), then teleport to the switches and trip them, leaving Redbeard to deal with my summons, and sprint everyone over to the two side passages (with my main SW and the BM on one side and the others on the other), eventually drawing Redbeard into one of the passages. The core attackers ended up doing enough damage that there rarely were three soul jars and never got to be four, and I usually had one attacker hitting Redbeard on each turn even as I took down the soul jars (though when it got up to three, I quit for a bit until I got rid of all of them — though I think right at the end I gave up on that and just hit Redbeard for all I was worth, because his health was so low by that point). One tricky thing — which screwed me up twice, until I figured it out on the third try — was that, after the second offer, Redbeard had a circle effect that could kill Nathalie in a single hit, so I had to make sure to get her over to the other side passage, where Redbeard was not. I ended up using teleportation a few times, mostly getting from one end of the passage (to hit a soul jar) to the other (to get over to the other passage). It ended up being pretty fun, because it was no longer a lengthy but boring battle with nothing happening most of the time. It was a lengthy fight, for sure, but there was a lot more going on all the time. I had to manage the summons keeping Redbeard away from me, make sure my characters were in the right places, burn consumables pretty much continuously to heal and keep Battle Frenzy, run through all kinds of abilities to do direct damage, teleport on occasion to jump past ugly scrums, and divide my damage between the soul jars and Redbeard, but it ended up being pretty eventful on every turn.

It has been claimed (though not necessarily by me) that the 20th century already vindicated the system. The U.S. didn't end up taken over by fascism or communism, unlike most of Europe and much of Asia. There have been no military dictatorships, unlike in much of Africa and South America. Now, of course, the largely unitary, unicameral U.K. didn't have any of that, either. In fact, neither did pretty much any of the English-speaking world, regardless of political system. It probably had more to do with geography, economics, culture, and luck than it did with political systems. Still, most of the rest of the world had a catastrophic government failure in the 20th century, and, whatever you may think about American history in that century, we didn't have Stalinist/Maoist purges or the Holocaust.

There are three graphs I like to keep in mind when we talk about the national debt. Here's a graph of the budget deficit for the years between WWII and 1980: Looks pretty bad, right? We have deficits in nearly every year, and the net is definitely deficit. The debt is growing larger! Right? Well, not exactly. The economy is growing faster than the debt during these years, so the debt-to-GDP ratio is actually going down. Check out that decline from 1945 to 1980. We ran a deficit basically that entire time, but it was small and manageable, and the debt became smaller in proportion to our economy. First lesson: we can run a deficit forever. As long as it's small, and as long as it grows slower than the economy, we're in fine shape. But right now it's going back up again! That's a problem, right? Well, no, not exactly. The percent of our budget actually going to service the debt is pretty low, by historical standards. It looks like this: (You can't see the details very well in this image. The real image is here.) It turns out that debt payments are only a tiny part of our budget, smaller than they've been since the 1970s. Part of the reason for that is that our budget has grown in the last decade (it jumped about a third when automatic stabilizers kicked in during 2008 and 2009, and they haven't gone away), but that's only part of the story. The other part is that we're still borrowing at near-zero interest rates (and sometimes below-zero real interest rates, taking inflation into account). In the long term, it would probably make sense to take some steps to reduce the deficit as the economy rights itself. But right now, there's no short-term debt problem. We're in no trouble at all, really. EDIT: One other fact I like to point out that illustrates how federal debt is different from pretty much any other kind of debt you may be used to is that between 30 and 40 percent of federal debt is owed by the federal government to... the federal government. Most people can't do that kind of thing, but it's the ordinary business of monetary policy for a government.

The state with the most elaborate system of direct democracy is California. It has not done us much, if any, good. I can elaborate why if necessary, but direct democracy on a mass scale (i.e. a state or a country) is full of basically unfixable problems, except in very limited circumstances. The problem that the U.S. is seeing right now is increased polarization (people with widely differing opinions and worldviews) and partisanship (Democrats and Republicans don't get along — this is not the same as polarization) together with divided government and slim majorities. The American system of divided (and competing) powers struggles a fair bit in these circumstances, because there are so many veto points in the legislative process. The other two branches can do some stuff on their own, but our system is predicated on having a functioning Congress that passes bills into law from time to time, and we don't really have that right now. California did much better when it changed the electoral incentives of its elected officials. The changes included ending gerrymandering, using a top-two election system, enacting "no budget, no pay," and a few other procedural reforms (removing some supermajority requirements, among other things). This had a fairly enormous impact fairly immediately, even though we still have the same underlying challenges as the United States as a whole does, which suggests to me that we could do the same thing everywhere and Congress would shape up pretty quickly. (It's also true that California elected a supermajority of Dems, but I don't think this mattered much for what I'm talking about.) The next thing to try to solve after that is the huge sums of money driving political outcomes, but that's another can of worms altogether. Shy of a new Supreme Court or a constitutional amendment, I'm not sure what we can do, frankly.

Ryozo's stuff isn't in his room. It's in the dragon's records hall (for which, if you're having trouble getting in, see here). For Thera, you do need the quest first, but you can go back and find the right desk and get the papers much later. You should be able to go back to the warrens now and search a desk (it's on the top floor, not particularly deep in, just to the west of the main entry gates).

I think at this point I recommend starting with Nethergate. Generally, I'd suggest proceeding roughly chronologically but sticking with a series (and an engine) for a few games: NETHERGATE/ORIGINAL AVERNUM: Avernum 1-3, Nethergate: Resurrection EARLY GENEFORGE: Geneforge 1-2 LATER AVERNUM: Avernum 4-6 LATER GENEFORGE: Geneforge 3-5 AVADON: Avadon 1-2 If the Nethergate engine is too crude for you, jump ahead to Geneforge 1, and if that's still too crude, jump ahead to Geneforge 3 (it's a little awkward to start in the middle of Avernum, but less so to start in the middle of Geneforge). If Geneforge is not really your style, start with Avadon 1-2. Then work your way back to Avernum: Escape from the Pit, then Avernum 4-6 (unless the Avernum 2 remake is out by that time, in which case put that after A:EftP). Alternatively, you could proceed strictly chronologically. I think that wherever possible the best place to start with Spiderweb is where Spiderweb started: Exile 1/Avernum 1/Avernum: Escape from the Pit (these are three versions of the same game in three different game engines; you can start with any of them).

I assumed that it was "chi-trach," exactly as it looks, both with ordinary "ch" sounds (so, like "chit" and "hatch" but with a little difference in the middle).

You could just use Croikle's Editor. The only difference among the character classes is how many/few skill points you need in order to raise certain skills, so just give yourself higher shaping stats. (Er, there may also be something to do with Essence, I guess, so you may need to boost Intelligence. I forget.)

As far as I can tell from the scripts, literally any answer with literally any reason gets you the same outcome with Councilor Tan.

Yeah, I don't understand the logic of a probabilistic +1 AP rather than a definite +1 AP. It seems incredibly lame. I think in general I prefer deterministic combat outcomes to probabilistic combat outcomes because I don't like my combats to depend on luck; I want them to depend on careful strategy. The AP items are sometimes useful for ranged-based characters to be able to run back and then attack at a distance farther than a character can run up to them (snipe, retreat, snipe, retreat), but that's only occasionally relevant.

I would say that it takes too much time, except that mine-laying constructs contradict that.

In addition to the swastika, the Nazis pretty much killed the Roman salute and made creepy any eagle resembling the Iron Eagle. There are probably others, too. I think MMXPERT's point was that it's unfortunate that these symbols — which predated the Nazis and had perfectly good non-Nazi resonances — are now forever tainted by association with Nazism. The symbol in question in the art reminded me first of octopus arms and of the coat of arms of Sicily and only second of a swastika. EDIT: I think there may have been some over-interpreting the use of the word "forget."

I get the distinction regarding beelining for the question completion task (killing a boss, fetching an item), but not the other one. It seems to me that if you kill all the monsters in front of you — regardless of whether they're quest monsters or not — then it doesn't matter where your experience is coming from. That method will get you maximal XP regardless of the source of the XP. Well, short of grinding by killing respawns, but is that relevant in any Spiderweb game?

I've never paid much attention to the XP you get for killing the monsters on the quest vs. telling the relevant Bob that you've completed the quest, because it seems as though they are completely fungible. You could get no XP for killing the monsters and then gain a bunch of levels for completing the quest. You could get tons of XP for killing the monsters and no XP for completing the quest. You could get some share of each. No matter what, though, you'll be gaining levels. And there are a lot of levels to be had. I think that every recent Spidweb game makes it likely that you will get to at least level 30 at the end. 30 is the cap in Avadon 1 and 2, but in the later Geneforges, I ended up close to or above level 40, and in Avernum 6, one of my characters was over level 40.

Presumably Dheless is the main antagonist in Avadon 3, but it'd be fun to have a Corruption-possessed Miranda-ghost/zombie as a secondary antagonist, and a secret Redbeard in hiding who you find halfway through the game. Miranda's dead, but that won't necessarily stop her.

I've worried that Jeff might retire (and then there might be no new games!), but if I remember the story correctly, he started doing Exile in 1994-ish as he finished grad school, which would put him probably still shy of 50. That means that we've got a while yet before he gets around to retiring. More likely is that he gets to be successful enough at selling these games that he no longer needs to make them at quite the same clip and can relax a little more. We've already seen some slowdown in game release schedules; that may be the new normal. You can get a little of a sense how Jeff and Mariann work on the games together by reading the Avadon 2 scripts. There are still comments from one to the other in the scripts.

Yeah, it seems highly likely that he comes back. How much of a history does Jeff have of making a villain appear prominently twice and then never reappear again? I can't think of even one. He tends more to make villains recur even when you think they're long gone (Rentar, Garzahd). I didn't actually realize that it was possible to kill Gryfyn until I found on the boards that it was. It seemed like the sort of thing where you really weren't supposed to even fight him, and the apparent "fight" was just for show (like Miranda in Avadon 1).

I remember thinking at the time that it was kind of cool that they not only mentioned (at some point in Avadon 1 or 2 or both) that there were several assassination attempts on Redbeard in the early years, but actually gave examples of what happened to at least two different would-be assassins.

I believe the question was not, "What does Redbeard say?", but, "Which ending did you choose?" Initially I chose the loyalist ending (becoming a Heart). Then I chose to become Keeper. I haven't done a full-blown traitor ending yet.

Canisters always give you their bonus. The issue was whether trainers would or not. So if you're worried about whether a canister will work or not, fear not. It will always raise your skills.

Getting the halberd apparently counts as a point against Avadon's strength in the endgame (see here for details). Bringing Jazlyn papers counts as a point for Avadon's strength in the endgame. So if you do enough other stuff, it doesn't matter. There are nine available pro-Avadon points, and I think the maximum you need to get for the best ending is 5.

Well, that game went interestingly. I felt a LOT stronger. That might have just been that I had some sense how the battles were going to go and didn't have to go through the "fight a battle once to figure out the scripting and die halfway through, then reload and fight the same thing again knowing what to do the second time and breeze through." I skipped straight to the breezing through. But surely that can't be all, because there were battles that I didn't do the first time (Khyrmhylas, Vardegras) that were doable and not all that hard this time. PARTY STRUCTURE In the early game, I had been using my Tinkermage with Khalida and Dedrick, with innumerable summons (using the TM's turrets, Khalida with a scarab, and Dedrick's Hellhound) to draw enemy attention so that I could just fire away at them. They didn't deal a lot of damage, but the summons distracted people long enough, and were able to take damage long enough, and did just enough damage on their own (when there were four of them) that I was able to beat just about anything fairly easily. And I had a lot of healing power, both for the party and for the summons, when things got tricky — which was an advantage that this group of three had over any other group that I could put together. Deep into the game, though, things switched around. The summons were getting killed pretty quickly and weren't doing very much damage. I think the reason is that I got high Beast Focus early on and never got much Turret Craft, and the scarab didn't seem to change its summons much, so the summons held constant while the enemies got harder. Meanwhile, Yoshiria and Yannick got strong enough resistances that they weren't getting killed on just about every turn, so they were viable to bring along (even before I got the second healing scarab). They also did more direct damage, and Yoshiria's automatic Battle Frenzy on nearly every blow didn't hurt. OPTIONAL COMBATS I tried to do as much as I could before the final Odil/Konstina sequence, because I wanted to have a good save to go back to in case I wanted to play things differently for the endgame. So I took out Khrymhylas right before that. I tried Vardegras, but it seemed hopeless, so I came back to him after — I think — Miranda in the Core, and it was fine. This was a little surprising, because I was at level 29 when I took out Khrymhylas, so it's not as though I gained much in the way of stats between my first and second Vardegras fights. But I guess the items I picked up were helpful, and I used a few additional item enhancements. Thus, I fought both Khrymhylas and Vardegras with Yoshiria and Yannick. Both were good at range and had high resistances, and I burned through a few consumables (and, unlike nearly every other battle, I had to prepare fully before getting into the battle — create a couple turrets, call forth the scarab summon, use a couple of items to buff everyone). Not too bad. Never figured out how to deal with Gryfyn, though. That remained impossible through the very end. My thoughts on that combat are elsewhere. REDBEARD The ending I went for was a strong Avadon, with me as Keeper, with the romance with Silke. So I challenged Redbeard, and I ended up killing him in an interesting way. It turned out that if I prepared everyone with buffs before the combat and got attack turrets (razor flinger, freezing) and summons, and if everyone attacked Redbeard as directly and as hard as they possibly could, mostly with base attacks but also with some single-target direct-damage spells, I could take out a huge percent of his health each turn. I ended up not bothering with the four things he summoned and just hitting him as hard as I possibly could, sometimes using wands to fire off two attacks before I used my final AP to blast him with a normal attack. His four summons got all the way developed and killed every member of my party but one (Dedrick, oddly), who, after being charmed and therefore not subject to attack for a few turns, as the last party member standing, used a Scarab of the Void attack to finish off Redbeard and win. This was probably not an advisable way to take the combat, and I got a little lucky, but it was fun not to use any real tactics at all and just throw damage at Redbeard until he died. PLOT/ATMOSPHERE/ETC So much for the combats and character builds. I also was able to follow the plot a lot better this time. I still think that most of the character sidequests would have been better had they been more developed, especially Khalida's and Yoshiria's. Yannick's was kind of interesting, if only for the rather dramatic character change that takes place in him (it's like he uses the Geneforge or something), and Alcander's was in keeping with him, and Dedrick's was fine, but I can't say I was all that enthralled. I also think that the quest sequencing was problematic. Too often, sidequests sent you right back to a place that you'd just left because you finished the main plot quest in that location. I think there were multiple quests going right back to the Corruption as soon as I'd finished with Monitor Base D, and there were definitely two quests going right back to Tawon right after I'd dealt with the temples the first time. The Corruption and the Tawon were just as fun as before, and I still think that the Contested Lands is missing something. Having Silke there isn't really enough to make it interesting, because Silke isn't around for most of it. Avadon itself is pretty good, too. I did the trials this time, and I expected them to be harder; I waited until a very high level and it was a piece of cake. I was surprised when the second one was the last, really. I thought there would be a (much harder) third. Chabon was fun, and the rest of it was good. Overall, then, the environments worked out, except maybe the Contested Lands. What's funny about this, I suppose, is that the Contested Lands is more like Avadon 1 than anything else in the game. The only twist to it is Silke; otherwise, it's the same ethical dilemma with basically no consequences, just as in Avadon 1. Maybe it's just that Avadon 2 seemed like a different game: you venture more outside the Pact — and places that are really outside the Pact, not like Khemeria, which you only know is outside the Pact because you're told it is, but otherwise looks the same, unlike, say, the Corruption. Anyway, a good game. I could see playing it a third time, even, which I only occasionally do with Spidweb games (Avernum 1, Avernum 2, Nethergate, Avadon 1).