Dantius

Well, being Australian you would know more of the finer points of cane toad eating than I would, so I suppose you have a point there...

Frankly, I'm amazed it took this long to happen.

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba Originally Posted By: Harehunter That is until you've seen a nutria. Now that is one hefty rodent! It's basically a cross between a muskrat and a Guinea pig. Ecologically speaking, it may be scary when introduced into the wild, but in terms of adventuring potential it's less threatening than a giant rat. Actually, ecologically speaking, nutria are probably less threatening than a giant rat would be, too. Dikiyoba. Well, ecologically speaking, most thing that pose real threats to native ecology also pose no threat to people- kudzu and cane toads can really screw with the flora and fauna, but they can't kill people.

Originally Posted By: Enraged Slith What did you mean by 'WAG'? EDIT: Also, Avadon is fantastic. I haven't played Dragon Age, but I would be surprised if it was half as engrossing. Wild Ass Guess. I'm surprised that that's not common slang, people I know use it all the time.

All Jeff's games have digital download. To break it up by series: Geneforge series games focus heavily on creating your party in a literal sense- summoning allies and recruiting NPC's and such. Avernum is probably closer to what you are looking for- you create a party of 4 and go have adventures. If you're feeling really nostalgic, Exile is a 2D game that's exactly like Avernum bu with more spells and 6 PC's. Avadon is a low-budget Dragon Age "spiritual successor", so you proibably won't like it. Nethergate is an interesting take on the Roman conquest of Britain BUT WITH MAGIC!1!1!! and a lot of people here like it. If I had to take a WAG as to what you'd like the most in spirit of old-style Bioware games, I'd say you couldn't go wrong with a hefty dose of Avernum III. Download the MASSIVE demo and try it before you buy- Jeff's demos are practically a game within a game!

Originally Posted By: Lilith i'm pretty sure i've actually used it before Yeah, now that I check you did. Pity, that would have been awesome if you came up with that on the spot.

As a question, just how long have you had that line prepared? Months? Years? Since E2 came out?

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S 15. And finally, how many members can you name who created a topic to announce their permanent departure from the forums, only to return years, months, or days later? Since nobody else has said it yet, I'll just preemptively call Nikki for this one.

Originally Posted By: Lilith tbh i only wrote that post to give all y'all the mental image of the horrific undead form of JRRT engaging in petty sophomoric vengeance against people who interpret his works in ways he didn't like Originally Posted By: Umberto Eco I think that a narrator, as well as a poet, should never provide interpretations of his own work. A text is a machine conceived for eliciting interpretations. When one has a text to question, it is irrelevant to ask the author. Source

But what would be the best class for a singleton? It would still be the SW, right?

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S If you think that Animal Farm, superb though it may be, was anywhere near the first use of allegory, you're crazy. Tolkien's main point was that one of the things that makes a difference in whether or not "created alternate worlds" are successful is their internal consistency. No, but he does come to mind as a person who used highly successful allegory before that essay was published. Furthermore, he arguably created the most successful political allegory in modern history in his works, so I just picked him as someone who did it earlier and better than Tolkien.

So is this just Tolkien being pretentious? Or does he have an actual point? Because if it's just "creating alternate worlds gives us a lens through which to view our own", that's hardly a novel idea or unique to him, since I'm fairly sure Orwell made the exact same point before 1947...

Originally Posted By: Enraged Slith Originally Posted By: Lilith Originally Posted By: Necris Omega Okay, fine, rodents can get pretty huge even in a non-magic setting, but when you say "rat" you're immediately invoking something small and tiny and unimpressive. "Colossal Rat" is at most few pounds. "Colossal Rodent" at least has some potential, but you're still citing something that's generally a job for an exterminator, not a mighty adventurer. That clip cuts off way too early. Yes, it should start at the beginning of the movie and run to the end, that's the good bit.

You need to flee, they respawn infinitely.

You have to head back to the first zone and exit the valley in the SE to actually get an ending.

Ah, I was looking for that. Forgot it was in General, my bad.

Click to reveal.. It mainly stems from text in the game scripts that doesn't appear in the game itself about how the PC was found wandering around in the ruins near Drypeak, where G2 took place. Obviously, this person was clearly powerful enough to interest Rawal enough to have him capture, subdue, and transport said person to the Whitespires. Arguments against the PC being from G3 or G4 are much stronger- both Alwan and Greta removed ANY mention of the G3 PC from their journals, strongly indicating that said person was an embarrassment to both sides- so either a Trakovite or somebody who opted for the KILL EVERYTHING EVER solution, like Monarch. Plus, G3 canonically ended in favor of the rebels, so clearly said PC was pretty hopped-up on canisters like Monarch was, and in G5 IIRC Litalia states that she was to her knowledge the only person who managed to reverse the effects of the canisters, and she would DEFINITELY know if the G3 PC was able to do so. So the only remaining option is that the G3 PC went stir-crazy and became Monarch, since it fits all available evidence. Now, Rawal is crazy and power-hungry, but he's not stupid. He knows damn well that even the combined resources of the most powerful Shaper and Rebel generals were only able to fight Monarch to a standstill, so he'd be incredibly foolish to try and recruit him, since there's no guarantee Rawal would be strong enough to contain him without relying on the control tool- and he'd have to know that Monarch was a intelligent enough researcher that's he be able to remove the tool at some point or other. In that light, he'd never put the PC in a position where he'd be far enough away long enough to remove it- aka he wouldn't leave the Whitespires. This also makes sense because Monarch's greatest strength would be creating hordes of creations to serve him- so he'd be more valuable as a last line of defense than as a far-reaching covert agent of Rawal. Similar arguments also forbid the G5 PC being the G4 PC. Canonically, the G4 PC releases, or at least allows the release, of the Unbound, kills Miranda, and grievously wounds Alwan. This is the same Alwan, I'd remind you, that you personally meet later in the game. If you were the G4 PC, he'd recognize you, and either a) kill you, or imprison you and probably torture you. Rawal would again, probably know this, and he's not about to send you into the lions den to get a book if he knows that Alwan exposing you for who you are could cost Rawal his council seat and possibly life. However, the G2 PC would be totally unknown, not hopped up on canister, and perfectly sane albeit very powerful. If you subtract their recollection of events from G2, they'd make an ideal field agent, having already proved their competence before, and by already being loyalist to the Shaper cause. Furthermore, anyone who could recognize them is either dead or in one of the two provinces that conveniently can't be accessed in the center of Shaper power. There are powerful IC reasons for Rawal to use you, no compelling counter-evidence, no legitimate alternatives, and some decently hefty circumstantial evidence to boot, making the fact that G2 PC = G5 PC pretty obvious. QED.

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S Exception: if the enemy is Kefka and he wags his finger at you How did you know the last bit was in specific to FF? Because that was exactly what I was thinking about when I wrote it...

In fairness, it's less discouraging to do 200 damage with a light drizzle of shock than to utterly nuke the enemy with a bajillion massive meteors from space and have them do no damage because the enemy is immune to fire.

Originally Posted By: Lilith keep in mind that the real explanation for X is that he is A Dude Jeff Knew and wanted to give a cameo in Exile and it just kind of snowballed from there Isn't there a whole list of Jeff's friends who got cameos? Just about everyone in the Five except Erika, for starters...

Random thoughts for a random poll: Mad Ambition always was a bit too weird for me, though I loved Canopy- it was probably my favorite. I always got the feeling I was missing just about everything important in E:R because I hadn't played any of the preceding BoE scenarios. TftTI was cool, and so was Bahss. I liked Exodus, too. Is that strange? And speaking of odd tastes, I've always really liked VoDT. I know it's unfashionable to like things Jeff does now, but it's always reminded me of searching through the endgame lab complexes in the early Geneforge games, which was always my favorite bit.

Rats have killed orders of magnitude more people than even the most epic adventuring party ever. Therefore, rats can defeat the most epic adventuring party ever. It's logic, shut up and don't argue!

Originally Posted By: Ociporus A simple "aardvarknum" might work to get it to the front of the alphabet, too... Just do what businesses sometimes do and write the name like a-AVERNUM to become first in alphabetized lists.

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan Yes. This is a key design principle, not just for computer games, but for card games and board games as well. By limiting the number of available options (the branching factor) in the early stages of a game, you make it easier to learn, as well as lead to faster gameplay in card and board games. A given Carcassonne tile will likely have one legal location in the early game, but perhaps a dozen in the end game. Magic: The Gathering only lets you play cards if you have enough lands (resources) on the table, which can only be put down once a turn. And so on. I'd like to point out that it's not necessary to have a bunch of branching options for character development for a game to be good, or even have character development be an integral part of the game at all. Hell, speaking from my chess soapbox, it's not even necessary to have any sort of level-induced character progression at all! Fun, meaningful tactical decisions don't come from agonizing over whether or not to put points into this stat or that stat- that' accounting, and it's not fun- rather, interesting battles and tactic come from confrontations with interchangeable, carefully selected allies custom-tailored to play to the strengths and weaknesses of the current enemy you're fighting. This is why the Geneforge series will always be, in terms of combat mechanics (and most other things, but let's restrict this to combat for now), my favorite SW game. No matter how well you've optimized, min/maxed, and leveled them, your party of Glaakhs is going to get its s*** wrecked if you take them up against a Gazer, which can Kill them for 100+ damage every turn and is practically immune to magic. You'd have to create a totally different party of Corrupted Thahds and switch up all your tactics if you wanted to win, and the series offered you the ability to do just that. Now contrast this sort of meaningful tactical and strategic decisions with later Avernum or Avadon games, which had as strategy "wander from one fight to the next to level up" with the incredible subtlety of Geneforge's system- you had to decide which creations to have, for how long, when to keep them, when to absorb them to get new ones, how to level them, etc. It was interesting and absorbing on a level that other recent Jeff games simply weren't.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer I marvel at how this is turning out. One star for that alone.