jlsgaladriel

iirc they're downstairs, underneath the dining area where you first meat Shima.

Yes, the message pops up after reading the sign, so even if you've killed the monsters, you get no credit until you buckle down to your reading.

Quote: I tried smoking salmon once, but it didn't work out. It rolled in the cigarette paper easily enough, but for the life of me I couldn't get it lit. Did you mix it with tobacco? It's easier that way. Either that or tabasco, for that extra kick.

Originally Posted By: lilith i'll probably find someone else. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy rocks, and strep hurts your throat, so, yeah. Sounds like a good plan!

Quote: Dude... Well, speaking of gender identity issues, I must admit noone's ever called me dude. Quote: posted on a public forum, as part of a discussion: don't make this about people other than me. Personally, I think salmon tastes better baked, with just a little lemon and fresh-ground pepper.

Frozen, I think you've got the answer to your first question: yes, a lot of us feel like that, some more often than others. I also think you've got part of the answer to pulling yourself out of it. Do things you love, even if you don't feel like doing them at first. Get out and do physical things like karate or hiking. Join a chorale if you enjoy singing. Volunteer with a tutoring program if you can teach. That's not to minimize the real stuff going on in one's brain if one is feeling depressed, but it's to assert that things like exercise and singing and engaging with people in themselves actually change our brain chemistry. If getting up and going to the place where you do your hobbies feels like a chore, well, that's not abnormal. If half an hour into doing those hobbies still feels unpleasant, that might be a signal to drop those hobbies for a while. But I'd suggest you not allow yourself to drop too many hobbies until/unless you think about what you enjoy and what feeds you, and add regular activities to your life which fulfill those needs.

Quote: Personally I find it to be more respectful to have discussions on Thuryl's dilemma over AIM. ...So, those of us who rarely IM, who don't know Lilith's AIM name, should have ignored a clearly important statement (s)he chose to make in the forums? My heavens, don't make troubles where there aren't any.

Quote: i like how there are now three discussions going on in this thread and they're all somehow coexisting peacefully Yeah, I'm not normally one of the tl;dr folks, but the synergy/sporefrog discussion is just too long for me to be interested in reading on a computer screen, so I'm skipping over it. I'm betting I'm not the only one... I think the "online identity" thread spun off from the gender identity one, though, so that coexistence sort of makes sense.

Thuryl/Lilith, have you yet connected with any folks who have struggled with the same issues? I think transgender is a really difficult topic for most non-trans folks to wrap our heads around, largely because of the nature of the thing -- most folks who are finally living as they feel they should just want to get on with their lives and not deal with the trauma that came before; they're not as vocal about their experiences as, say, the gay community. Which means that a lot of folks you interact with don't *know* they have trans friends or co-workers, so they don't have a context to even begin understanding. It also means you probably don't have a ready-made community of support around gender identity in the way that someone struggling with sexual orientation would. My pastoral/counseling connections are mostly in Massachusetts, but I'm happy to help you figure out how to make that sort of connection where you are, or at least to get you in virtual communication with folks elsewhere, if you think that might be helpful. I hope our general support is helpful, but talking to folks with actual experience like yours might be even better!

Quote: half my family is really into the whole religion thing so i don't hold out very much hope that they'll be supportive. There's a transgendered woman in our church who came to us after her former church rejected her. (They were cool with *him*, but not with her.) Before joining she came to our pastor and asked him if the church would accept her; she couldn't stand any more rejection. He wrote a letter to the regular members, and met with some of them face-to-face, and asked them. Mind you this is not an overly liberal church -- we've got the full gammut of political and theological views. This is a Baptist church, albeit American Baptist (not Southern Baptist.) One of our older members, a WWII vet, not someone I'd normally think of as progressive, pointed to the part of our church covenant which states that all are welcome, and said, "well, either we mean this, or we should change the covenant." Everyone decided they meant it, and this woman is now an active member of our women's group and of our church. All that to say: rejection is heartbreaking, but there's acceptance to be found, too, even among more conservative folks. I wish you strength and joy and acceptance and meaning.

Quote: The iPad doesn't multi-task; doesn't this mean it only runs one process at a time? I'm assuming that it multitasks in the same way the iPhone does: apple apps multitask with each other and with third-party apps; third party apps don't provide full multitasking capabilities with each other.

Quote: If you can watch a featherless, beak-less, wretch of a bird struggle helplessly for its life as someone squeezes its brains through its eye-sockets, and still feel comfortable eating it, then go ahead, but please don't pretend like it isn't common practice. There *is* a middle ground between animal cruelty and veganism. Most supermarkets sell organic, humanely raised chicken, beef, pork, turkey, and lamb: look for the certified humane seal.

Actually, I'm not sure I agree with Jeff on Apple's decision not to include flash. There's an excellent article at daringFireball which does a pretty good job of weighing the pros and cons.

Quote: Why the hell are they pushing so hard to get money to donate to the dogs and cats when to be quite honest, that money should be going to the people. It seems curious to me that this would be the expenditure you worry about. Now, PETA isn't my idea of a good organization, but each of us feels drawn to different causes. Saving animals from pain or neglect is a worthy cause, and some folks might care more about this than other causes. Why shouldn't folks spend their time and money where they feel called to do so, according to their own heart? Every single one of us on these forums has chosen to spend a good chunk of money purchasing computer games. Where are our priorities? How do we get off spending money on frivolous things, while people in Haiti are dying? The point is that we don't get to criticize other people's efforts to do a good thing, when our own priorities don't stand up well to the same sort of ethical analysis we're attempting to impose on others. Why worry about a speck in your friend's eye when you have a log in your own?

Quote: I think Avernum and Geneforge would make excellent multitouch games... I think the only way this would come about were if someone licensed the rights from Jeff to build it themselves. Jeff's got a model of indie game development which works for him, so he'd be crazy to break it. From what I've read of his blog, though, he's happy to have intellectual property on which to build in the future. The problem is still the average price point of paid iphone/ipad apps... Assuming half of his regular users would buy Avernum Touch -- do half of us own iDevices, or will we in a year? -- at, say, the high-for-the-appstore price of $5.99, would it be worth Jeff's risk to hire someone to do the conversion, or would it be worth it to an outside developer to license the game?

Quote: Is the "iPad" anything more than an iPod touch on steroids with a terrible name? Well, they seem to have addressed battery life issues, which is huge. I'd been ignoring the hype, because I'm broke, but at $500 a new platform -- for which I already own a suite of working software -- could very well replace my old powerbook. What a brilliant price point for Apple; mac folks are conditioned to much higher prices, but all of a sudden they've created something truly competitive. The key question for me would be how it feels to use that virtual keyboard. If I can't comfortably write a sermon or a paper or a report on it, I can't use it for work or school. I'd buy one to *replace* a laptop, but I can't see many folks carrying around an iphone, a laptop, *and* a new device.

Originally Posted By: slarty The money shot of this horribly unintentional camp is at about 1:52. *koff* Ah, you meant that literally.

Quote: We each started a game of Nethack at 10:54 and both randomed characters. We both were assigned Orcish Female chaotic Barbarians, and had identical maps on the first floor, with identical loot... Four is the standard IEEE-vetted random number.

Quote: If your party has one character you create yourself and several that join you (all things Bioware, for example), those accompanying party members can reappear without any problems. Deekin! Quote: The former heroes would presumably also have their old kit from the previous game Yeah, there are games that deal with importing pcs by having them immediately be robbed, and not allowing recovery of their stolen goods until most of the old stuff has already been replaced with better gear. Although importing old pc savefiles for appearance as npcs might allow for interesting things: the goods are all available in the old adventurers' new shop, at "utterly ridiculous" prices...

Hmmm, I've played lots of games -- like HOMM V and Neverwinter Nights -- in which the player characters carried over from one episode to the next. But that's not really what we're talking about here -- it's not about importing a character we've leveled previously and leveling that same character further. "Meeting your characters" would be a totally different thing -- it would involve importing old character save files and somehow presenting them as NPCs. I can't think of an rpg that does that. Vague references to former heroes are one thing, but importing old characters just to add flavour to the NPCs of the world seems like a fair amount of work for not very much payback.

Marlenny, there's a bug on my screen, ack! You totally got me there.

Quote: FYT Okay, the urban dictionary isn't helping with this one, especially since I'm pretty sure a mod wouldn't use "F" to stand for a nasty word. So, FYT??

Quote: Oh, and for the record I'm all for not having to remember to go back for things, because I'm bad at it. But having a way to simply record in your save file the places you need to go back to and, ideally, where they are would be nice. Oh, I totally agree with this: that's why I'm arguing for a "separate challenge dungeons" approach, rather than what I'll call the ohmygoshwhattheheckbarbeque (omgwt*bbq) approach. I also want map flags encoded in each savefile. Heck, they don't even have to have a text option, although labeling would be nice. Even the ability to place a dozen pushpin-like map flags would be great.

I was just reading Jeff's most recent blog post in my rss feed, and was thinking about how much gaming has changed in the last few decades. This dovetails with a SlideToPlay podcast -- #30 -- in which defenders of an old-style roguelike were in discussion with the kid who had given it a bad review, because, well, the character *died* in the game, just *died*, and that was frustrating! (I've played Moria (now Angband) in its multiple iterations on and off for decades, and I've never once won. Somewhere around level 35 or 40, my character dies, and she's just dead. And I think, "heck. Well, okay, maybe my next character will be a ranger," and I'm not put off the game.) I think there's been a paradigm shift in gaming, in which expectations have undergone a sea change. Folks like many of us here have a stake in wanting Jeff to challenge us: we're part of the old gaming world, in which failing and then getting better and then figuring out how to beat a challenge is the best part. Jeff has an even bigger stake in understanding the new paradigm, in which the next generation gets to enjoy their "Adolescent Power Fantasy." In an ideal world, everyone's needs get met: we still get our challenge, and Jeff's kids still get heat and shelter and cool toys. I think maybe the Geneforge series did this well, with its clearly optional separate challenge dungeons. One could ignore them completely and still "win." One actually had to work pretty hard just to open them up for playing. I guess I'm looking to encourage Jeff not to abandon us challenge-seeking folks completely, but rather to consider a geneforge-style geographical system to feed our need for fun.

Quote: They were only able to damage him a small percentage of the time, but they eventually wore him down. This sounds un-fun to me, but chacun à son gout -- each to his/her own! I don't think most players would want to proceed the slow way, however.