Omlette

If you want to discourage the inventory management aspect, just decrease the number of items in the mod shop, or increase the markup, or even both. You could even eliminate the mod shop altogether, but that would be a massive change to the way the game works - possibly a change for the better, but I'm just not sure. -E-

I have another idea: Suppose you were understood to have your coins hidden in some kind of stash, so that your killer wouldn't get your coins. However, once per game (or some acceptable frequency), you could identify a player to tell the location of your stash to (done via *i), thereby giving them your coins in the event of your death. My reason for thinking that's a good rule is that it avoids coins disappearing from the game too quickly, but doesn't let them build up too much either (most roles would never use the ability - in fact, the main reason to use it would be to deter other people from killing you, since someone they don't like would get all your coins) That might be too complicated - do people think they'd use that, if it was available? -E-

Also, we all knew who you were as soon as you said 'Panic Cake'...which is the real problem with the keyword; no-one's ever been able to pull it off without giving themselves away (I know this was my first game, but I've looked through previous games and the keyword post is always really obvious). -E-

What immediately occurs to me is that the adventurer is one of the few people who has the least trouble getting coins, compared to some roles - and if coins are getting harder to get, surely making the Adventurer able to steal them makes it even less likely that anyone else will ever be able to buy anything. Incidentally, would it make sense to have people get their coins back when they are resurrected? My idea is that the characters have hidden their coins in a stash, which would explain why they aren't taken by their killer, but then they could relocate it if they were resurrected. In the previous game, one of the biggest problems for the Anama was that when Andraste died, she was holding 60+ coins, and then came back with nothing - and by the time they'd scraped together a decent amount of money the game had ended. I'm not sure that this would have too much of an impact on the game, but it seems like a reasonable rule. -E-

And there's still a possibility that he guessed right, but that the target had managed to arrange physical immunity somehow, or had a box of traps, or one of any number of possibilities... -E-

On that note, one thing I noticed this game (I don't know if it's a general pattern) is that the players who are on AIM generally had a greater influence on me than those who I had to communicate with via PM. I'm sure that's not the only factor (it didn't save Sleeping Dragon, for example), but, well, it might be in the interests of some of you to get an AIM account (and if you don't like AIM, Trillian is free and lets you chat to AIM users...) -E-

The trouble with having a second moderator just for items and factions is that they'll have to report everything to *i anyway, which wouldn't reduce his workload any, and would have a large risk of having actions happen out of order. The big advantage of having two moderators work shifts would be that there would be more immediate feedback between actions. Would it be acceptable to run a test of that as a system? I can't see that it would mean an increase in workload, even if it wouldn't necessarily be much of a decrease. -E-

Despite the comments about Machrone being easy to play, I found the game incredibly tense, with at least 2 people who had me as a target being aware of my identity at any given point, and me having to barter information (some of it true!) desperately to stay alive. There were a couple of points where it would certainly have been sensible for people to kill me and I somehow persuaded them otherwise; sadly I wasn't online when Andraste was resurrected. However, that may partly be because I was selected as a target for the Darksiders, and because Ronaldo was present; those two together probably made my life much more difficult than it could have been. On that note, I have the germ of an idea: this may be horribly unbalanced, but let's see what you guys think. Suppose you change Machrone's ability and victory condition to this: Once per day, you may investigate another player, who will be informed that they have been investigated by Machrone (but not who you are). This player is now your enemy. 24 hours after you investigate someone, (or at the end of the game, if the game ends first), if you are still alive, their role and current alliegance will be published in the main thread. You must investigate someone every day; each failure to do so will result in one random person being told your identity. Victory condition: investigate at least one member of the Gladwell alliance, Anama member, and Darkside Loyalist. Each time you achieve one of these conditions, you will receive 15 coins. How about it? I know it's quite a bit different, but it would make it a very interesting role to play, and you'd have to be a lot more careful about who found out about you. -E-

In terms of moderation, here are my thoughts: You have either two, or three (if you can recruit them) moderators. They then work 12- (or 8-) hour 'shifts': note that they aren't necessarily expected to be online for all of their shift, simply that they're the only one allowed to process actions during their shift (thus avoiding redundancy). All of the moderators are involved in the PM thread that goes out to each player, obviously. In addition, the moderators have a PM thread between them with the entire state of play written out; obviously *i still dictates things like the questions for Machrone and the tasks for Craftmaster Strine. (How are those generated, by the way?) At the end of each moderator's shift, they post the new state of play in the moderation PM, and put everything that was changed by them in bold for ease of communication. The biggest problem here is finding a way to list everything significant about the game in a way that only takes up a couple of pages or so, but I think it could be done. What information actually needs to be kept track of? Lastly, there would have to be a quarter- or half- hour downtime between shifts, to be certain that no action is processed by both moderators. -E-

I found out I was a target because RCCCL told me I was, thinking I didn't know who he was. Also, I'd like to take this opportunity to publicly whinge about my death. I would have won, dammit! OK, I'm done. Anyway, as a first time player, I'd like to say a massive thanks to *i: that was an incredibly engaging and enjoyable game, and I would definitely play again. Every time I thought the game was in the bag, something unexpected happened and it all blew wide open again. Particular kudos to Marlenny for killing Sarachim and then surgically removing all the Darksiders at once, that was quite a moment, even if it wasn't quite enough to ensure total victory. -E-

Since the game is still ongoing and could well continue into its fifth day, it might be best to have the discussion about how the game is moderated in a seperate thread - that way dead people can contribute with clear consciences. (Apologies to *i for not checking with you - ironically, you weren't online to ask...) On that note, it occurs to me that the easiest thing would simply be to have two moderators, in different time zones. We could set up a new account for the purpose and give two people the password, or (possibly simpler) all of the initial PMs *i sends out could also be sent to the second moderator, who would then process any actions as and when they are online. It would make the moderator's job slightly more complicated, but since it would mean a halving in the number of actions to process (give or take) there would probably be a reduction in the overall workload. In the long term, some kind of application is certainly the best answer, but I suspect that that would be no simple task. -E-

Plus, you'd have to be a moron - or trying to make the game harder for yourself - to start without a mage at level 3. That said, lockpicks were fairly common and were useful for conserving spell points on those long dungeon crawls. -E-

It's fairly well established by now that there isn't a Ronaldo in the game, I think. -E-

Um, which Avernum are you playing? -E-

But you couldn't cast while standing within an antimagic field, whereas enemies were still intelligent enough to target area of effect spells right next to it. I found it much more useful for neutralising enemy casters...and casting Avatar, running straight through the enemy forces, and then casting Protective Circle right next to the enemy caster is great fun. Especially when the Exile AI meant that the caster would just walk back and forth between the field of blades and the antimagic field. And IIRC Shockwave did more damage the further away something was from you...is that right? I do remember casting it in a really big area and getting a whole load of kills. -E-

Ooh...I had that exact same CD, and that's how I discovered Spidweb too! There were a couple of hundred games on there, of which Exile 3 was probably the very best, but between them I don't think I needed to buy a new game for another two years! -E-

It's a close call...the surface in E3 looks very pretty and all, but the story in E2 is that bit more engaging and that tips the balance for me, I think... -E-

Have you definitely talked to all of the council members individually, rather than just delivering the evidence? Maybe there's a conversation path you haven't explored, or something. -E-

Remember also that the Shapers are trying to preserve a civilisation that's stood for hundreds of years, whereas the rebels will simply destroy it. Surely it's reasonable to preserve something even if some of the people in charge of it are themselves highly objectionable? -E-

I think the issue here is that going ambidextrous is overpowered, rather than that wielding two weapons in intrinsically overpowered. Giving ambidextrous characters an inbuilt disadvatage (like a lowered chance of assassinating) might well work, and would make a certain amount of sense: I think in real life most ambidextrous people are slightly less able with either hand than a strongly one-sided person is with their strong hand. -E-

Agent, probably, and rely heavily on wands and javelins. -E-

Everyone falls into this trap. The truth is that there's nothing in the room except a guardian and a lot of webs, but you can get into it much earlier on through a secret passage. You kill the guardian, rush out the back, and discover your way blocked by the sign, which makes much more sense if you run into it at that stage. There's nothing particularly special in the top corners, either. -E-

I certainly remember there being stairs. Have you cast Magic Map? The thing that slowed me up when navigating the conveyor belts was that I didn't think of pressing pause while standing on one, which is necessary to get to the stairs. Also, it's slightly easier to cross them in combat mode, but then the golems can track you better too, so don't stay in it the whole time. According to this here walkthrough I've found, the stairs you want should be at (2,3). That's the third tile along from the left, and the fourth one down from the top (very top-left is (0,0).) Good luck! -E-

As mentioned previously, they are only killable by the party because the converse would be uninteresting in game terms. IIRC it took a whole army to kill Motrax, and I'm fairly sure that if you tried that out in the Arena the Empire soldiers would find it somewhat easier. Clearly the dragons are deliberately underrepresented to make them fit in with the game. -E-

Unfortunately, they're all called Spider anyway, so the scanner wouldn't be a great deal of help. -E-