Dantius

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan Anyway, back on topic... I just noticed that all but one of the classic D&D magic schools are present in the current iteration of AIMHack. We've seen illusionists on Mote before; are illusions only available to NPCs in AIMHack? I believe that Illusion magic was made a subschool of Enchantment on Mote- both get little enough use as is, and they're so similar it would simplify things greatly if they just got merged.

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan What's so bad about Gary? All I know about it is that it's the subject of an entirely forgettable song in The Music Man. It's a postindustrial hellhole with decrepit infrastructure and declining population, it's riddled with crime, has a sagging economy, it's polluted, dirty, and has just about no redeeming features. There are disturbing numbers of cities like that in the Indiana/Ohio/Illinois/Michigan/Pennsylvania "rust belt"- Detroit probably being the best example. They were dependent on heavy industry and manufacturing and nothing else, and unlike Chicago never diversified out into finance, service, light industry, retail, etc. So when deindustrialization hit in the 70's and 80's, they basically collapsed under their own weight. Terrible story.

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S Originally Posted By: Randomizer Indiana and Arizona don't observe Daylight Savings Time. Except for Northwest Indiana, which does. NW Indiana is basically Chicago's unsightly industrial underbelly that doesn't pay taxes to Springfield like the rest of us. It really shouldn't be part of Indiana at all. Then again, I don't exactly think Illinois would like it very much, either. Gary's pretty much a wasteland, however you slice it.

Originally Posted By: Small Cryoa Found it. It was in kayar's spire, I think you mixed that up with the lost dera vault Aah, my bad. The NW segment of the Lost Dera Vault is the bit that can only be accessed by Taygen's faction, not where the crystal is stored.

It's in the NW segment of the Lost Dera Vault. Unfortunately, you have to either join Taygen's faction to get it, or attack the people guarding it, which will anger them and make it impossible to join Taygen.

Originally Posted By: The Mystic Originally Posted By: Randomizer It gets worse when they are older and get to use power tools. What do you mean, older? Thanks to my dad's woodworking hobby, I could safely operate a drill press at the ripe old age of six. *applause*

Originally Posted By: Bondy034 [snip] Isn't it possible to just move the shortcut to Avadon to within the Steam folder so Steam registers it and displays it in steam? It would seem that that would be easier than pestering Jeff for a registration from Steam...

Originally Posted By: Lilith (Note that for Americans, it'll be some time in the evening of the 23rd.) If anyone here is too lazy to follow the link, it'd be 8:00 Chicago time. Just FYI.

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S Jeff has stated explicitly that he will never make another scenario-creator game. In fairness, he also explicitly stated he'd go insane if he redesigned the Tower of Magi again, and he's redesigned it five, going on six times since then.

Originally Posted By: Micawber Once upon a time, a rattlesnake googled at a complicated hobgoblin. Some day, when you least expect it, Mr. Q will suddenly pummel your sinus with a rabbit. You will not survive. Mr. Q is watching you. Always watching. You are on way to destruction. You will have no chance to survive make your time. Ha ha ha ha.

Originally Posted By: Aeden Fix your computer and try again. Somehow, I don't think telling someone who has a problem with their computer to fix their computer in order to remedy it will go down in the annals of useful tech advice...

Filled out the calendar. I have a character prepped and standing by, but I don' know if we PM one to you now or wait for the session.

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S Nikki would make almost as good an oracle as Dantius would a comedian Well, I'm not funny, and neither are most stand-up comedians, so by that reasoning, I would make a fantastic stand-up comedian.

Originally Posted By: Like Tom Petty Said. Originally Posted By: Dantius Originally Posted By: Like Tom Petty Said. (and the reason i used an alias isn't the reason you're thinking) I'm impressed you can read my mind. What was the reason you though I thought was the reason you released it under an assumed name? An incorrect one. Have you considered oracleing? You might be good at it- I hear Delphi has a slot open now...

I dunno, I've always had a partiality for Hobbes, especially since he basically went and independently discovered and stated Newton's First Law of Motion before Newton himself was ten. Of course, what's more impressive was the way he sort of just hand waves away this incredible discovery. It's like he's going "By the way, every major European philosopher before me was wrong about how objects move, but that's OK, because they were also wrong about religion, society, morality, good and evil, and human nature, which is more important" and he then goes on to explain why they were stupid and wrong about everything in exacting detail and flawless argumentation.

Originally Posted By: Like Tom Petty Said. (and the reason i used an alias isn't the reason you're thinking) I'm impressed you can read my mind. What was the reason you though I thought was the reason you released it under an assumed name?

So now that you have nothing to hide anymore, Nikki, was this you?

Originally Posted By: Triumph I know in G1 there are basically no repercussions for canister use, nor are there any meaningful consequences in G5. It was the middle games that saw the heyday of canisters that bring power and madness. There are no major repercussions for using canisters other than looking prettier and IIRC one encounter with a renegade Sholai who steals your Taker amulet. There are, however, MAJOR repercussions for using the Geneforge, so be sure you finish up all your business in towns before doing so.

Originally Posted By: @Delphi In a barter economy, you can use food as currency. Carrying around lots of food is cumbersome, so people started carrying around other things with value, like gold. Why gold? Because it's worth a lot. Why? Because people would exchange a lot of food for it. It's just a simple substitute for barter based on the fact that where gold was used, gold was valued. In other places, gold wasn't valued as highly, and it wasn't used as such a powerful bargaining tool. [snip] —Alorael, who thinks you're missing some very basic economics here. Economics models are controversial and often wrong. Economic understanding of currency is not controversial. Market value is so basic it's hard to believe you're not deliberately rejecting the consensus just to see what responses you get. I'm not saying that gold is worthless or that market value is wrong or anything like that. I'm simply saying that it's ridiculous that gold be afforded some kind of special position in financial markets, despite it not really being needed anymore (there's now way more money than gold to back it), and why it's treated with such special reverence when it's simply another commodity that should be determined by market value instead of being treated as a currency. To quote the Economist: Quote: Gold is not like other commodities. The demand for iron ore depends on down-to-earth things, such as how many steel girders Chinese builders are using. The demand for gold depends on airier considerations, such as whether you think Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ. [snip] If the world goes to hell, gold bugs will say: “I told you so.” But if investors ever wake up and notice that the yellow metal is little more useful than tulips, the gold bugs will be burned.

Originally Posted By: Sarachim Even if I grant the metaphysical distinction you're drawing between intrinsic and "traditional" value (which I don't), that doesn't change the fact the value of gold is not the product of government fiat, but of market forces. The "fiat" in fiat money is the government's assignment of a face value to an object that is greater than the value of its components. The value of a gold coin, by contrast, is equal to the value of the weight of gold it contains But it's circular reasoning! You just said that the value of a coin is equal to the value of the metal it contains, which I agree with, but there's no reason why the metal should be valued so highly at all! That's like me saying that the twenty I have in my pocket is worth the faith in the US government that it's worth 20 dollars, but in both cases it's just faith that gold is valuable, or that the US government is creditworthy. There's no essential difference between the two at all- they're just objects that people have decided are worth believing they have value; hence, there's no reason to classify them differently, they're both just "fiat" in their own sense.

Originally Posted By: Sarachim Originally Posted By: Dantius Originally Posted By: Sarachim Okay, fine, I'll clarify, you absurd pedant. Because most people think gold is pretty, it was and is frequently used for things other than money- jewelry, sculpture, etc. This gives it value. This value is no less "intrinsic" than that of any other commodity. Please stop treating economics as though it were engineering. But it lacks practical, industrial applications! Am I expected to just respect useless things because tradition dictates it? The market value of things with industrial applications is just as dependent on arbitrary consumer preferences. Steel, say, may have fixed physical properties, but the price of steel depends on the prices of all the things you can make with steel, which in turn depends on how much I'm willing to spend on a sports car. All economic value is "tradition," as you call it. Yes, but a sports car has value in that it can do things in and of itself that a lump of shiny metal or sheaf of paper cannot- move you from Point A to Point B ten times faster than without, for instance. Likewise, manufactured goods almost universally have a positive impact on our standard of living, and thus have actual use where currency would not. It's disingenuous to compare the price of gold to a sports car simply because we're both only willing to pay the market price for them.

Originally Posted By: Sarachim Okay, fine, I'll clarify, you absurd pedant. Because most people think gold is pretty, it was and is frequently used for things other than money- jewelry, sculpture, etc. This gives it value. This value is no less "intrinsic" than that of any other commodity. Please stop treating economics as though it were engineering. But it lacks practical, industrial applications! Am I expected to just respect useless things because tradition dictates it? I'll treat economics any way I please, since so many economic theories are demonstrably insane. Austrian economics literally defines itself as a pseudoscience, and yet Austrian policies somehow still are applied. What is this?

Originally Posted By: Sarachim Originally Posted By: Dantius Gah. This is one of my biggest pet peeves IRL. Gold is a fiat currency. Full stop. It has no more intrinsic value than that which is assigned to it by society, which makes it by definition, a fiat currency. Fiat currency has its value assigned to it by a government (or, in theory, some other institution such as a bank.) In a setting where gold is accepted as a medium of exchange even when not minted into coins, it is commodity money. Furthermore, you have kind of an odd idea of "intrinsic value." Gold is pretty. That's value. I think paper money is pretty- it certainly has an intricate and precise design. It has as much industrial application as gold. That doesn't mean it has more or less intrinsic value than gold- it's only useful as a medium of exchange and for jewelry, which hardly counts. As for intrinsic rarity, plenty of noble metals are rare, as rare, more rare, or less rare than gold, and would be just as functional as currency. Ye they don't get the same kind of worship as gold does- there's no such thing as a rhodiumbug, for instance. There's just this whole irrational institution built around gold being the be-all and end-all of financial stability that's frankly stupid. EDIT: Randomizer, silver is actually a better electrical conductor than gold, and it can be plated in gold to make it even better, since gold doesn't tarnish. But so little gold is used in plating that it has practically no effect on the price- a few ounces of gold can make several hundred square meters of covering, and a few ounces of gold here and there hardly justify a price at over &$1750 an ounce.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Buried in the 1st edition Dungeonmaster's Guide (DMG) were the spell component costs to cast spells and craft items. The DMG advised making players quest to get components to limit the casting of high powered spells and restrict high powered items. One mage I played with was using limited wish spells to each night give a player a different colored permanent fairy fire so he would glow. This caused a hunt for pixies that normally would cast a temporary version. After a few game days when we found out the real cause, a player reminded the gamemaster about the aging cost for casting wishes which caused that prank to stop. All you need is some rule enforcement to limit magic and restore the economy. Exactly! Couldn't you just use a Wish spell to make, say, a ton of gold? If it alters reality without limits, then even jut a few wizards out spending that much gold could create inflation.

Originally Posted By: @Delphi —Alorael, who also thinks that you're using fiat currency wrong. Gold wasn't a fiat currency in the real world and it isn't one in D&D, especially since gold is not only valuable per se but also now as a magical component. Gah. This is one of my biggest pet peeves IRL. Gold is a fiat currency. Full stop. It has no more intrinsic value than that which is assigned to it by society, which makes it by definition, a fiat currency. Whether I'm walking around with a lump of gold in my pocket and walking around with a sheaf of banknotes bearing the words "Backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government", I'm still only getting stuff in exchange for them because other people agree to the value I and others assign to them. Gold has no more "intrinsic value" than said leaves of paper.