Dantius

Originally Posted By: Sarachim Originally Posted By: Lilith Originally Posted By: Rowen Lilith as a mod, again? She is going to punish us all. i hate to disappoint you guys but like 95% of my duties are going to involve banning spambots that happen to post during the freakish antipodean hours I keep I have not been this disappointed in a leader since Lyndon Johnson. But being disappointed in leaders we force to make unreasonable promises that can't possibly be kept is America's national pastime!

I, for one, welcome our newest mod overlord. Though this does screw with the symmetry on the top posters list. TM should be modded and Aran should post faster to correct this imbalance.

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES but really Wikipedia "The word classical has several meanings. In general, these meanings refer to some past time, works of that era or later works influenced by that time. Classical things are often seen as ordered and part of high culture or a golden age, and contrasted to earlier or later things which may be seen as chaotic, elaborate or emotional." But there isn't a golden age or high culture of video games because there hasn't been sufficient time to try and discern which games can actually still be popular and influential over a (theoretically) infinite period of time. Classical art and music and literature are regarded as such because they're still being appreciated and listened to centuries or even millennia later, and likely will be for centuries or millennia more. Even Tetris, probably the closest thing to a "classical" video game, has been released for what, three, four decades? That's hardly long enough to extrapolate centuries into the future.

Originally Posted By: Triumph I know there is a use very high mechanics in G3 (like up in the 20s, I think), but that's different than leadership. 20 is the highest mechanics check in G3, to shut off the spawner in the challenge zone. But there's also a combination of items that give +7 to mechanics, so 13 is the absolute limit for invest in Mech. I believe that there's a 12 leadership check somewhere, but there's also less leadership boosting items (+4 IIRC). As a general rule, shoot for 8 Leadership and 12 Mechanics in every game.

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES What RPGs are you used to playing, DK? That might help in making recommendations for how to adapt to SW's more classical style of RPG. I don't think the video game industry is old enough to have a "classical" style. Retro, certainly. But there's no Greco-Roman ideal of, say, a FPS, and I highly doubt that there are any really clearly-defined periods or artistic styles in video games- the medium is just too young.

It was probably my second-favorite of the bunch. I did prefer VoDT to them all. ASR was my least favorite. I can't really fathom why, since it's clearly the intellectual precursor to the Geneforge games, which I love, but it just seems off to me. Maybe it's like the "Uncanny Valley" of game scenarios- too close to not see the influence, but too far to be able to connect to something you liked about Geneforge.

I've finished Leviathan while on vacation, and now I'm slowly chipping away at the next book on my "obtuse political/historical tomes list"* (which is thankfully now very short), The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler. After working through the five prefaces and introductions that my edition has, all I can think is wow, WWI and post-WWI era Germany must have been a really depressing place to live.

Originally Posted By: MMXPERT avernum remakes sound quite nice too,and as for avadon-there is still hope.After all, people havent keygen-ed it yet. Jeff's revamped the anti-piracy controls on Avadon-it's totally different now. We probably Shouldn't talk about specifics, but suffice to say, people who are looking for keygens are wasting their time, because they won't find any.

Originally Posted By: The Escapist I'm the old Republic! Get off my space-lawn, you young rebels! I lol'd.

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan Not quite. A Nash equilibrium is where each agent chooses an action (or more generally, a mixed strategy) that maximizes its own utility function, and would not choose to change its strategy even when the mixed strategies of all other agents are revealed. Maximizing the net utility and hidden information have nothing to do with it. But they agents can't change their strategies after they're revealed, so the only decisions are made when the agents lack information, so everyone chooses in order to ensure they'll have some usefulness to the party. Since the "payoff" of building a good character is ostensibly being able to participate activley in the party, everyone acts to maximize their payoff by trying to build a character ot some use. For instance, you don't want to be a healer, because a party of four white mages five healers would be useless, so nobody becomes a healer. Likewise, everybody built their character with like five or six skills in order to ensure that they'd be useful in every situation, but the result is that nobody's able to deal with a situation. For instance, everybody has martial skills, but nobody has more than a few points. Hence, my point stands.

Oh look! A teachable moment! Today's topic: Game theory! Click to reveal.. (Technical stuff) A Nash equilibrium is a state in which a group of players each select choices in an attempt to maximize the total payoff function, but due to their imperfect information, they cannot unilaterally make a decision that would improve the net payoff of all players without consent and action by other players. However, since they can't get that, they take a sub-optimal choice in order to insure that their payoff will be maximized. In this almost textbook example, everyone built a generalist character, knowing that they'd at least be of use, because they were unwilling to create a redundant specialist that would only be a drain on the party. However, a party of five generalists is less equipped to deal with challenges than a party with clearly defined roles- healer, mage, warrior, archer, etc, since it can't tailor its approach as well. So by everyone trying to be useful, they actually hamstring their usefulness. Interesting stuff. You see it pop up all the time when you know to look for it.

I say the O/U for a TPK is Session 5. I expect at least one PC death by 3.

Originally Posted By: Rowen How many of you shower with sandals on? Its another habit I picked up from Chile. I shower with clothes on sometimes, usually when taking them off would get dirt all over my bathroom floor. Plus, it's a good way to cool off faster, since the water absorbed by the clothes stays closer to your skin for longer.

Originally Posted By: TomH The wait is brutal! Um, it is June. You can't be waiting more than a week or three. That's hardly a brutal wait.

Okay, I'm sure it can't be that hard to create a spambot that can write in proper English. I mean, really. You'd think it would occur to the people who write them that if they stopped butchering my language, I'd be more inclined to fall for their scam.

Originally Posted By: Brocktree Originally Posted By: Alex Has anyone else observed something like this? A brief look at the scripts shows that the rebel classes are the ones defined for player characters, whereas the only entry for a generic Shaper has 50% resistance to fire and cold. I can confirm it. All I can say is, wow. Geneforge 5 has been out for years, and no one has ever noticed that the Shaper classes receive such huge resistance values. Congratulations on discovering this. I think veterans might have to revise their statement that the Shaper classes are inferior to the Rebel classes. In all fairness, that was true until this was discovered- rebel classes get IIRC +6 essence and energy, which the Shaper classes don't. Of course, 50% resistance does trump a tiny bit of energy any day.

I think I will do a Mass Effect one, in fact, even if only to prove the vast superiority of Western games to JRPG's in every metric, including their ability to create characters that can semi-accurately describe the members of random Internet forums. Correction: I will say I am doing this, and then stall and dodge attempts to assign a deadline. Then I'll release it three years later after everyone's forgot and half the members involved in it left.

I lol'd at the *i one. Any chance of remaking one of these for today's members from a more current TV show, or would that kill the nostalgia factor?

Originally Posted By: Randomizer The only way Palin could win is if she could keep her mouth shut with something other than her foot in it. Let's not get too risqué now, especially since the whole scandal with Rep. Wiener (yes, that's his actual name. Hilarious, I know) hasn't blown over yet. One political sex scandal at a time is enough, thak you very much.

Looks like the Shaper suddenly became even more of a broken character. Wow. 50% resist to nearly everything? That's impressive.

Originally Posted By: Impudent Strumpet! I consider myself reasonably smart, and I don't understand. If that, by virtue of not knowing, makes me stupid, I still don't think you're smart. Aren't you a liberal arts major? If so, QED.

Originally Posted By: Erasmus Originally Posted By: Randomizer I think a log scale would be more useful since some people's post counts go up exponentially. Congratulations Alorael on making it 19000 posts. you mean log base 2 log base 10 or ln ? Protip: Instead of writing log base 2 of x, or formatting like log2(x), just use lb(x) or ld(x) instead. Smart people will know what you mean, and stupid people will think you're smart.

I am of the firm conviction that any numbering scale or base is wholly arbitrary and unrelated to the universe except for base 1 and base 2, and base 1 is useless as a counting system, so the only actual "logical" numbering system is base-2.

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES The alo? The salm? The aran? Or maybe the tar? Or the pol in honor of Polaris? The ed? The argh? ...or the tully? "He's posting at 53 tullies, captain!" It's only logical that the gold standard for measuring posting rates should be 1 post/ 45 seconds that's the forum limit for non-mods, and that from there, your "rating" would simply be the inverse of how many times your current postcount would have to be to be in order to have your limit.

The new Mass Effect trailers didn't really do much for me either way, though I am confused as to how a holographic interface for a wrist-mounted personal computer is suddenly able to stab through armor and kill people now...