Dikiyoba

He's said it's from Avernus, the gateway to the underworld, associated with the actual lake in Italy. Avernus is the nominative case and Avernum is the accusative.

 

—Alorael, who is pretty sure Jeff gave just that reason. He could be wrong, though. That etymology has been brought up on the forums without Jeff so much that it could have driven out the real, secret history of the naming.

It's stated right up front in A1 that Avernum was a name for the underworld, so Jeff was obviously aware of the etymology when he chose the name.

ever wanted avernum and avadon to fuse?

Genevernum!

(Dikiyoba felt the sudden need to inflict that on the newest generation of Spiderwebbers, sorry.)

In a somewhat different way, I have been not reading the Twilight saga. I really think I should read it, because my older daughter has been reading it, and amazingly many more books that sound awfully like it. I really ought to see what she's into. But then, well, sparkly vampires. Somehow I just can't help not turning the pages.

Don't. It's awful. Put off reading something else. Anything else.

Dikiyoba.

We've got a thread about books and now a thread about games, and the game thread is pretty harsh on games.

To be fair, it's not really a game discussion thread so much as Death Knight being Death Knight.

But then sometimes my complaints about books are essentially that the books are bad games.

Yeah, the gameplay is so boring. You just flip a page every few minutes. What sort of fun is that? (And don't even get Dikiyoba started on the crappy graphics.)

Yes, but not terribly. As long as the ink isn't transparent you just need a relatively opaque piece of paper to put behind the page you're reading and it'll work out. A little more laborious, but hardly unworkable.

Overhead projectors!

Dikiyoba's work here is done.

I can haz hyberboles, plz? kthxbai

Triumph, that is the worst post ever written in the entire history of human existence. If ten million monkeys hammered away at typewriters for an eternity, they still couldn't produce a post so terribly, horrifyingly, gut-wrenchingly, vomit-inducingly awful. Reading that post made my eyes bleed so severely that I passed out and eventually died from blood loss. And then I died two more times because the sheer stupidity of that post made my brain melt and head explode. Writing that post makes you more evil than Satan, Hitler, and Cruella de Vil combined. Triumph, you should be so ashamed that you should crawl into a snake hibernaculum and never, ever come out again.

Dikiyoba could spend weeks detailing all the ways that post is a lexical, intellectual, aesthetic, personal, moral, cultural, financial, anatomical, and equilateral failure, but the awfulness of that post just broke Dikiyoba's computer into a billion fiery pieces.

Welcome to Spiderweb Software. Leave your sanity at the door!

I am not trying to sound like a jerk but if the developer adds the music to a certain game in the future, I can *guarantee* that he will have much higher profits. If he doesn't believe me then I already have proven it.

Um, how would that work, exactly? Keep in mind that Spiderweb would have to pay extra to get music to use in their games, and the lack of music isn't a dealbreaker that prevents people from buying the game. (That said, good background music would improve the game.)

Knock if off, ADoS. You know better than to disrupt an RP like this.

Dikiyoba recommends that anyone actually participating in the RP just ignore disruptive posts like the one above.

Let's see... I recognize Iffy, Sylae, Neb, you, and Dintiradan. Who are the other two people? (The person holding the golden apple could be Nikki, I guess.)

Dikiyoba is so far out of the Minecraft loop, argh.

So I have slightly edited versions of three of the four pieces in the Symphony of Spam: Verification Required by Visa, Fwd: (no subject), and Harder Quickerr and Longer. All I did was make the quiet parts a bit louder (though they could stand to be louder still) and cut out some of the noise between songs.

If anyone is interested, send Dikiyoba a PM with your e-mail, and Dikiyoba will send them to you.

Really, guys? Really?

Dikiyoba.

It works the opposite way too, actually. If you were raised in a society where murder was legal, you might not think it was so bad to kill someone. Societies like that have existed historically, and still exist today (although they wouldn't necessarily call it murder).

Given that murder is the unlawful killing of someone, it would be pretty hard to have a society with legal murder.

Dikiyoba.

—Alorael, who wonders what it says about gamers that the only way to make heroes into good guys is to severely curtail their choices.

Hey, role-playing a sociopath is valid role-playing. (But if you don't like people playing evil, then you have to give equal or better rewards for taking the good or non-violent options over the evil ones. That still won't stop some people from murdering everyone in sight just to see what happens, but at least it'll keep the powergamers in line.)

Dikiyoba also suggests making a game with an evil protagonist, and then watch in frustration and amazement as some gamers wreck the game with pacifist runs, spare enemies they were supposed to murder brutally, help every random NPC they meet, and numerous other good acts.

is it the sort of book that would be primarily read by the kind of person who still wears cargo pants in 2013. because that would explain it

Actually, a 1000-page book wouldn't fit in most cargo pants pockets either. I could manage a 825-page standard-sized paperback book, but barely. Also, what do you have against cargo pants?

Dikiyoba recently re-read Watership Down. It's not perfect, but it's a darn good book. Sadly, the sequel is pretty bad.

At least it's not just the mods who're talking to each other all the time.

Yeah, that is a problem around here.

A live dissection of the Geneforge, byte by byte, to make a BoA-like editor for creating new Geneforge scenarios doesn't seem to have sparked a lot of interest. If that isn't forum-death, then I don't know what is. Well, I could be biased, but Blades-of-Geneforge and Geneforge-MMORPG used to be hot topics around here some time ago. Maybe the players have moved on to Avadon and the Avernum remakes, but if the numbers are low even over there, then well *shrug*.

That has less to do with the forums dying and more to do with the fact that a fan-made BoG is a terrible idea: too much time and effort spent for far too little payoff.

Dikiyoba.

The great thing about this video is that the picture looks like a shaper wielding a scythe.

So... the Grim Reaper?

Dikiyoba.

Probably because SW is fairly inactive on a regular basis now.

Dikiyoba is doing Dikiyoba's best to keep Spiderweb alive and active, one (hopefully quality) post at a time.

Updated chart:

http://i.imgur.com/CIsw1QE.png

(Also, because of the way avatar URLs work, Aran is now squeeing at a cocktail instead of an antelope. Heh.)

Dikiyoba.

I saw the title and thought that there was a meet up.

There was. It's over. You weren't invited.

Dikiyoba.

Dikiyoba reads, writes, listens to music, goes on hikes, birdwatches (mostly on the hikes), gardens, reads some more, practices photography, listens to more music, and occasionally draws, goes fishing, cooks something new, and goes to museums.

You think Hawtherone is bad?

 

wait till you see Hawtertwo.

If that were at all how Emperor Hawthorne spelled his name, yes.

Dikiyoba.

Diki's chart isn't a superset of Slarty's old one, in that it does not link Sarachim to Marlenny.

Yeah, that's a mistake. I'll fix it when I can.

(It also omits Archmage Micael and my dad, but both of those are debatable.)

If Sporefrog counts (and no one has ever really debated it, to my knowledge), then your dad counts, and Archmagus Micael has 1,415 posts, so he definitely counts.

Rereading the original thread, it looks like Dragyn Bob should be connected to Drakefyre (as in Sylae's chart), but not to Alorael. I'll change that, if nobody objects.

(Also, wait, Sylae and Rowen met? When?)

Oh hey, the other night Slarty revealed that he met JLSGaladriel(?). This chart is outdated already

Noted.

Dikiyoba.

Here's an awful secret: The facepalm was A LIE. There was no facepalm. My worldview was shattered. Does that mean when people type "rofl" they are not, in fact, rolling on the floor at all?

...it took you almost twenty-four hours to notice Dikiyoba was wearing a hat. Actaeon could have been facepalming the whole time, and you wouldn't have noticed.

Alas, Bobby Henderson, our Great Prophet, doesn't care about our little community and refuses to use good forum software or update it. He thinks it's a hassle. Thus we have this system, where new members must post in a certain thread, get the post approved, then post in any other thread and get that post approved, before they can become part of the community.

Yeah, if you use old, out-of-date forum software, you will get buried in spambots. (And if the people on top don't care or are no longer around, then your forum community doesn't have much of a chance, at least on the current site. Moving to a different forum might help the community, or it might kill it faster.)

Dikiyoba.

I'm inclined to issue a "not family friendly" warning on that recording, if I remember it's contents accurately.

Yeah, no one should have to listen to that music. (But seriously, it's somewhat family-unfriendly, but overall fairly tame. Also, Actaeon, that facepalm was priceless. Dikiyoba approves!)

Since the original chart is several years old and badly out of date, I made an updated chart with the recent meetings between Spiderweb message board members I am aware of. It's not as pretty as the original, but with any luck it's still readable. The red lines indicate near misses (one person saw the other in passing, for instance). If there are any connections missing, post them and I'll add them in when I can (which may take a while). Also, if there are any groups of four or more that can't be connected to the main chart (as the CalRef crew was until a few days ago), let me know and they'll get a separate chart. As in the original, groups of two or three don't count, otherwise this would go on forever.

http://i.imgur.com/sQmMYwt.png

And now for the pointless numbers!

Number of people included: 43

Largest degree of separation: 7

Most people met: 11

Second most people met: 10

(Even more pointlessly: Dikiyoba has still met more people than Tyanicus, neener neener neener. )