Dantius

Originally Posted By: Lilith Originally Posted By: Randomizer It depends upon your opinion about the ends, also some means are considered evil no matter what the good for the ends. Nazi medical testing may have resulted in some advances in medicine, but the high fatality rate among test subjects is considered illegal in most civilized countries. well, pretty much all the "advances in medicine" were along the lines of "how long can people survive being tortured to death in various ways". on one hand you can't really get this information without torturing people to death. on the other this is a pretty bad reason to torture people to death. AFAIK, the only "legitimate" thing Nazi research is used for is data on how the human body reacts to being frozen for research into hypothermia and cryogenics- which, while admittedly useful, isn't really worth freezing people to death for. Originally Posted By: Randomizer It depends upon how many deaths or torturing is acceptable for the ends. Killing people for a disease (common cold) with almost no fatalities isn't that acceptable. Most current drug trials are discontinued if there are more fatalities than expected statistically for the treatment over no treatment. In fairness, the cold and the flu kill way more people than you'd think- it's something to the order of 50,000 people per year in the US alone, but then again, most of those people were very old or very young or had compromised immune systems, so they were more at risk than the average adult. And then you get things like the Spanish flu. Hoo boy.

Originally Posted By: It's a trap back in my day if a person killed someone else we went vigilante on his or her ass People till do this today, in places like tribal Afghanistan. It's called a blood feud, and those are baaaad news. Luckily, most societies on the world have discovered the social contract, which exists precisely to stop behaviors such as that. It's a really neat invention!

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity The Marseillaise is down right gory. And it's not all easy on the ear. It begins well, but then there are several lines in the middle that just kind of rumble along awkwardly. Then comes, "Aux armes, citoyens!", though, and it's a very strong finish. It's hard not to end up standing on the table tossing your hat and waving your sword. And watering your fields with blood would be a really poor idea. I mean, blood has the same saline content as seawater, and no farmer in their right mind would try and water his crops with seawater! Plus, it's impure blood. That's got to be even worse!

Originally Posted By: Lilith By contrast, Avadon's endings are similar enough that it's possible to build a sequel while leaving it ambiguous which ending of the first game is canonical. Heck, Jeff could plausibly have let you import a save file from Avadon 1 and have the Avadon 1 PC's choices reflected in minor differences throughout Avadon 2. He won't, but he could. Look, we all know Jeff's ultimate goal is to be indie-Bioware (aka regular Bioware pre-EA), there's really no need to beat around the bush about it.

Was this the one abut the student in Italy who supposedly killed her roommate? IIRC, the case against her was basically "she was acting strangely an suspiciously the day of the murder and didn't have a solid alibi", but she lacked any sort of means or motive. I didn't follow it too closely. Court cases should be decided by jury and judge, not by media or popular opinion, so I tend not to buy into legal sensationalism.

Originally Posted By: *i Let's all try to avoid statements that could provoke nationalist hostilities, okay? Well, technically England isn't a sovereign state, so provoking English people isn't provoking nationalist hostilities*. It's more like provoking, ehh, there isn't really a US equivalent. Regional hostilities? South v. North hostilities? Something outdated and only used to create division, at any rate.

In all fairness, "wpould" does sound ridiculous enough to be a British spelling...

Is it bad that I read the thread title as "Otto von Habsburg RP? And then subsequently thought "That would be sweet!"? Because I think that's probably a bad sign.

On a note totally unrelated to Nikki's plot to recreate the British Empire, why is Britain's national anthem still God Save The [monarch gender title] and not Rule Britannia? I mean, one is a song about essentially ruling a quarter of the world, and the other is about a hereditary monarch who's a relic of an age that ended like a century ago. And it's the same with America. The Star Spangled Banner is a terrible national anthem. It should totally be America the Beautiful. The French and Russians managed to pick good national anthems, why can't we?

I'm more concerned about the music- are musical compositions public domain if the music itself is? Or is there a separate and independent copyright for every recording made? I'd hate to have to o out and buy a CD every time I wanted to listed to a specific recording of, say, Rachmaninoff- some of the more specific ones can't be found anywhere else but YouTube!

Some corrections: tl;dr is a common internet acronym (which you explicitly disallowed), so it shouldn't count. I ran an AIMhack for a little while about a year back before most of its participants either left the boards or were banned again- Twilight of the Imperium. I fail to see how "Mountain of Shadows" and "The Mountain of Shadows" can count as different RP's. Does having multiple threads make it count twice?

Well, the computer itself arrived, and I'm now typing this as my first post on a brand-new computer! Yay! I'm working on transferring my files as we speak, so after about, oh, eight hours or so, this computer should be indistinguishable from my old one, just with better stats. I'm also installing some programs to see how it runs tings, and preliminary results are looking real good. Further results as events warrant. Thanks for all the help, guys!

Ooh, now I'm curious too. What could possibly be so secretive it has to be PM'd instead of posted?

I actually had a second thought that occurred to me, so I thought I'd post that separately, to avoid confusion. Nioca made a comment in a chat at Calref about tying damage to the attributes, which would still encourage investment in all attributes, but incentivize investing in a "primary" attribute so as to not make every character have identical attributes, which would be boring and we don't want that. Every weapons could be split along the lines of which attribute affected it, like so: Code: STRENGTH | DEXTERITY | INTELLIGENCE Swords | Bows | Spells Maces | Javelins | Scrolls Axes | Slings | Wands Pikes | Daggers | Staves Then, damage would simply be the specific weapon or spell's damage, plus the attribute in question, plus Stamina spent/bonuses active. For instance, a mage with 5 INT casting a Fireball (10 damage), would always do 15 damage, and a fighter with a +1 Longsword of Smashing (base 7) and 7 STR would also do 15 damage. Then, combat techniques would be useful for providing a way to do more damage or damage in styles you wouldn't normally be able to (ranged attacks with a sword, for instance). To Hit would still be determined by the same d20+skill+stamina/bonuses. Obviously, rolling a 20 would do double damage, so you don't have to deal with the frustration of rolling min damage on a critical, but so long as you hit, you'd do consistent damage, which would mean that the DM wouldn't have to deal with frustrating weapons rolls, too. Everybody wins!

The problem with breaking down the barriers between the stats and forcing everyone to invest in all of them is that if everyone has to invest in all of them, why not just eliminate them and instead have the derived stats, like spell slots and HP, advance with level? For instance, you could get "attribute" points like we now get skill points, and then you could point buy using you attribute points on things like spell slots, combat techniques, HP, stamina, movement speed, defense, etc. For instance, let's arbitrarily say that every level you get either 10 or 2* level attribute points, like you do for skill points. Then, let's set up the following totally arbitrary exchange rate: Code: 1 A = +1 HP3 A = +1 Spell slot3 A = +1 Combat Technique5 A = +1 STA 7 A = +1 Speed9 A = +1 Defense So for instance, here's a standard L1 fighter, archer, and mage: Click to reveal.. (Fighter McWarrior) 17 HP [+7, 13 AP remaining] 12 STA [+2, 3 AP remaining] 5 speed 1 Technique [+1, 0 AP remaining] Technique (Fighterdoken): Fighter may choose to expend 5 STA to hurl himself at an enemy of his choosing. THe resulting enemy takes 10 damage and is knocked prone. All adjacent enemies are stunned. Martial (Swordchucks): 5 [+5, 5 SP remaining] Composure: 2 [+2, 2 SP remaining] Craft (Swords): 1 [+1, 1 SP remaining] Perception: 1 [+1, 0 SP remaining] Click to reveal.. (Generic Half-Elven Dual-Class Ranger) 10 HP 10 STA 7 Speed [+2, 6 AP remaining] 2 Techniques [+2, 0 AP remaining] Technique (Dual-Wield): After a one-off cost of 2 STA, the Ranger may dual-wield any weapon of his choosing (even a two-handed weapon) at a -2/-5 penalty for the duration of the combat Technique (Dual-Dual-Wield): By expending an additional 3 STA, the Ranger may dual wield two dual wields at a total penalty of -2/-2/-5/-5 for the duration of the combat Martial (Bow): 4 [+4, 10 SP remaining] Nature: 3 [+3, 4 SP remaining] Stealth: 2 [+2, 1 SP remaining] First Aid: 1 [+1, 0 SP remaining] Click to reveal.. (Black Mage Evilwizardington) 10 HP 11 STA [+1, 15 AP remaining] 5 speed 5 Spells [+5, 0 AP remaining] Spell (Hadoken): A blast of concentrated energy siphons the love out of the universe for 10d10x10+10*LVL damage for all being withing seven miles Spell (Electric Death): A lightning bolt kills the target and damages all adjacent Spell (Meteor): The target is struck for bludgeoning and fire damage and sets the surrounding area on fire Spell (Flare): All Evil targets within range take crippling damage Spell (Ice-9): The spell siphons all heat energy into an alternate dimension, causing the heat death of the universe it is cast in. Magic (Evocation): 4 [+4, 10 SP remaining] Martial (Knife): 4 [+4, 0 SP remaining] That does a decent job of separating the "survivability" stats into a separate domain as the "useful" stats, so a character shouldn't have to choose between being useful and surviving, and it also removes any possible confusion caused by stat overlap and whatnot. Given that this post is a rough estimate of what a more polished system might look like, what do you think?

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES No, because TESB was a sequel, and Avernum isn't a sequel. Well, it's a remake, and I can't think of any movies that have had two separate remakes. Maybe we can expect the new series to be the "gritty reboot" of the Avernum franchise "They thought they had banished [him/her/it] to the pit. They were wrong. Now it's time for revenge!", that kind of thing.

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan Avernum: Return of the Subtitles. Shouldn't it be Exile: Return of the Subtitles? Because Avernum would be Exile: The Subtitles Strike Back...

We can't post here. This is limerick country!

Originally Posted By: Shelagh That's it. I've just given this thread one star. I hope you're all pleased with yourselves. I have given it five stars to spite you! Now it will require six more one-star ratings before it reaches an average rating of one star again! Muwahahahaha!

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES You're a terrible not-a-limerick recognizer. It certainly looked like a poorly written one: Originally Posted By: Slarty, with some linebreaks added and ellipses removed There was a septuagenarian eskimo Who swallowed a fly in his ear I don't know why He swallowed the fly Perhaps he'll DIE. Looks kinda like one to me.

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES There was a... septuagenarian eskimo who swallowed a fly... in his ear... I don't know why he swallowed the fly... perhaps he'll DIE. You're a terrible limerick writer. I mean, good god man.

Please don't tell me there are two of them now. Please.

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES Originally Posted By: Randomizer They tried to have Get Smart taken off the air as a threat to national security for using spy devices that the CIA uses Citation please Well, I just checked the Wikipedia article, and it says: Originally Posted By: Wikipedia Devices such as a shoe phone, The Cone Of Silence (which reportedly worried the CIA, because it was too close to an actual device they used) [bold not in original] and inner apartment booby traps were a regular part of most episodes

Originally Posted By: X-treme Justice! If you're distilling it, the source isn't so important anymore. And if it's pure alcohol, the source also isn't very important. —Alorael, who does not drink... water. Or... grain alcohol. He drinks... ellipses. You obviously... haven't watched enough Kubrick to be able... to recognize Dr. Strangelove quotes... Put those ellipses in your glass and drink 'em!

Originally Posted By: X-treme Justice! —Alorael, who isn't so sure rain belongs in your advertisement. As water goes, rain's pretty safe. It helps to be far from urban centers and it can't hurt to boil it, but rain's pretty good. Duh! That's why I only drink only distilled rainwater, and pure grain alcohol!