Dantius

Have you ventured back into the far NW corner? If you do, then the bandit leader will exit a heavily locked door, and you have to kill her to complete the quest. Alternately, you could unlock the door, but that's a waste of Living Tools.

It's the 5th best in the entire game, actually (Puresteel Soulblade, Oozing Sword, Viper's Touch, and Puresteel Blade are all better, but you can't get any of those for a long time). I would recommend that you buy the game, it's great!

The repository is a challenge area later in the game. You can't open any of the doors until you essentially hit the Storm Plains (ie until you buy the game). Grab the Icy Blade and get out, you probably can't deal with the creatures here.

You can't just do that. You basically have to PM everyone who has an interest (IIRC, Hypnotic, Spddin, and ET), and then discuss with them the outcomes of th various battles. It's not Risk. Diplomacy, maybe.

Like, say, 21st century republicans. And democrats. The Minnesota senate election had some of the most egregious vote-stealing this side of Soviet Russia.

There are books filled with the stuff people do to keep other people from voting. Literacy tests for blacks, anyone?

Just picked up On the Origins of the Species. Surprisingly interesting read.

Yeah, you can post my background on your site. A few people at CalRef posted them in a thread there, so you could probably presume they consent, too.

I will be taking bets on days elapsed until a 1984 reference comes up, just for the record.

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba Originally Posted By: Master1 Explain yourself, please. I don't see how Avatar can be put on the same level as Harry Potter. Must we all be required to worship Avatar? Really? Dikiyoba. No. We are required to worship Harold Bloom's assessment that Harry Potter novels = Satan incarnate. Avatar wasn't that bad. Better than HP, to be sure.

I have Ralph Sawyer's translations. It's actually very good, a cut above some of the others I have read.

Yeah, that might be it. I installed 1-3 in PF, but all my Avernum games and G4 and 5 are in "Spiderweb Software". Thanks!

Quote: I've never really been very good with anything except well executed humor. Quote: Thuryl in before the apocalypse Registered: Mar 30, 2002 12:00 PM Posts: 13157 Loc: on a big blue ball Quote: well executed humor Quote: Thuryl No further comment

Ooh, Tully's come out with a new illustration! Us versus the Fox Timeninja! Cool!

I've only ever gotten to 53. However, the level cap is 61, so I'm not sure what you mean when the level gets stuck at 45 or 54. Actually, if you use iwanttobestronger, it can only bump you up to level 45, but if you do, then you have a long ways to go until you can kill anything powerful enough to give you XP.

Originally Posted By: Thuryl Originally Posted By: A Figment Of Your Imagination I've also been wanting to read Sun Tzu's The Art of War for quite some time now, but haven't quite gotten around to it. pro tip: it's overrated unless you are actually an ancient chinese general the only non-obvious parts that are still relevant are the bits about how to use secret agents, so, uh, if you're in a position where you have to decide how to use secret agents you might want to read it Protip: It is not overrated, because it contains the word "awesomeness" about 5 times per page. However, instead invest more effort and read all the Seven Military Classics. A compiliation should be right next to Art of War on the bookshelf of whatever bookstore you go to.

I have Windows Vista, a relatively new computer (only like 3 years), it's an HP Slimline. Don't know if that helps.

I noticed this problem a while ago, but never guessed at the full extent until now. Every time I boot up a Geneforge game from 1-3, it clears everything- it unregisters, clears all my saves, and erases the preferences. Whenever I try to fix this, whether by moving it to a new file location or uninstalling and reinstalling, nothing happens. Am I just doomed to have to play Geneforge on my laptop from now on?

Originally Posted By: Euconfusion "The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text." Umberto Eco. Did Umberto Eco die after saying that?

Call me a pessimist (or maybe a grouchy old man), but I did not like any movie that came out in theaters this year. My list of "greatest movies ever" still doesn't include anything from the 2000's. Of course, I may be biased since I saw maybe, maybe a half-dozen movies this year. EDIT: I lied. LOTR is up there.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Originally Posted By: Dantius or that requires you to perform the same quest over and over again in different towns to increase your reputation to actually advance the plot. Have you played the recent games? Yes. That particular comment was in reference to A1-A3. I have completed at least one playthrough for every spiderweb game except A2 and A3, and I have nearly finished A2 and am halfway through A3. And the thing about sidequests in the later games is that they are not actually necessary- in A5, for example, if you decide that you don't want to expel Muck, you can just wade through rivers of Vahnovi blood and escape through the secret tunnel under Kherebass (sp). In A2, if you just complete the main quests, sooner or later, you will find that you need to go back and gather an old lady's flowers to increase your reputation and get higher clearance.

Originally Posted By: jlsgaladriel That's not mediocre It was a hypothetical choice. Of course Jeff's games are not mediocre. They are very good, some of the best games I have ever played- otherwise I wouldn't be here. Originally Posted By: jlsgaladriel Wow, that's... strong. Remaking Exile over and over is not a viable business plan. I'd rather see new Jeff stuff than the same things again (even Geneforge!) Originally Posted By: jlsgaladriel Have you read Jeff's blog? Have you heard his media interviews? Yes, Jeff's running a business, and he most certainly pays attention to whether or not his games make money. But he also most certainly has put a lot of thought into game design, has good ideas about what makes playing games fun, and has designed his new games to match his evolving theories. Yes and yes to your first questions. However, while Jeff most certainly enjoys making games (it shows), he also does it to, well, make money. His games not only reflect his design theories, but also what will sell. Keep in mind, that is a good thing. I felt like shuffling the order of quoteboxes, just because.

*cough* Something tells me that turning this into a "comment about banned members thread" has caused this thread's health to take a turn for the worse. Back to the RP, people?

Originally Posted By: Slarty Yeah, the bottom line judgement I like to use is: have you actually made a game? That is a absolutely ridiculous position. Since I have never made a movie, I can't blast Avatar? Since I have never cooked a cordon bleu meal, I can't say I was gypped out of $200 dollars? If anything, the people who actually consume the gods, since it's not James Cameron or a chef or Jeff Vogel who actually consumes the product that they make. They rely on the public to do so, and thus the criticism of the public is more important, since they essentially decide the success of whatever it is we are dealing with, a movie or a meal or a game. This is why Jeff has essentially released Geneforge games for the second half of the Avernum series- 4,5, and 6. The public doesn't want to play rehashes of A2 or A3 anymore- there is no longer a market for a game that has twice as many towns as dungeons, or that requires you to perform the same quest over and over again in different towns to increase your reputation to actually advance the plot. So, Jeff has made the decision to stop making those games anymore, and move onto games that are merely obscenly immense, instead of criminally immense. He has tailored his games not to cater to the forumgoers, who represent a disproportionate segment of Jeff's actual customers, but the customers themselves, which leaves quite a few of you feeling shorted, to say the least. Ah well, Jeff does what he has to do to keep producing games, and if I had to chose between an infinite supply of new and mediocre Jeff games or his current repertoire and that's it, then I would pick the former, and so has Jeff.

Originally Posted By: A Figment Of Your Imagination A little bit of irony: Originally Posted By: Sleeping Dragon I'm going to hit my 1000th post soon. It feels strange. Like someone should try to stop me, you know? Isn't anyone going to stop me before it's too late? And then he got banned. That is actually quite a large bit of irony. I noticed that before. It's quite funny. But SD was a sock of ET, so pardon me if I use the names interchangeably.