Lilith

12 minutes ago, WolfSpider said:

Thank you.  Also I was reading builds for Shamans and although I like to play for the first time with out too many spoilers, I also do not like to have a poorly built character.  I was surprised to find a Shaman, which uses a lot if magic, needed to level up in Dex and End (5-1 ir 4-1) while Int basically took a back seat altogether.  Can anyone comfirm or deny?

Dex-based shamans are a gimmick build that sorta works in Avadon 1 and 2 but not so much in Avadon 3. We're getting into kinda deep obscure mechanics discussion here, but the short version is that in the first two games, anything that did physical damage counted as a physical attack and anything that did elemental damage counted as magic (with the exception of scarabs, which worked differently). Shamans in the first two games had several spells that did physical damage; they technically counted as ranged physical attacks and therefore did damage based on Dexterity. Healing is completely independent of all stats and based only on level/skills/equipment, so you could make a Dex-based shaman who was a competent healer with a few strong attack options. In Avadon 3, there have been some changes to the code that determines what stat each attack is based off, so this doesn't work so well any more (and like I said, it was a bit of a gimmick to begin with).

Also I read some where you could just reroll your stats, but how does that work?  I leveled and then tried to go back to my character sheet screen, but I did not see anything to do that, such as plus and minuses?  Can you reroll once per gaining a new level or you have to talk to someone to do it or a totally different screen?  Thank you.

There's an NPC trainer available in each game, usually about halfway through, who lets you respec your stats and skills from scratch. There's also a cheat code that lets you do it at any time: hit the key combination shift-D and in the box that appears, enter the word retrain.

To clarify that answer: yes, the basic attacks from rod and staff-type weapons count as spells and are affected by Intelligence.

Are you in Avadon while you're doing these edits? Your savefile saves its own copy of the script for the current area, so script edits won't register until you leave the area and return.

1 hour ago, Art Ist Escape said:

There is a version of original BoE that "automatically" runs through Dosbox?

 

That was the line that had me, at least, assuming that George was using an updated version of some sort.

I assume that somebody somewhere has uploaded a copy of it in a preconfigured DOSBox wrapper; it's not an enormously difficult or involved thing to do if you know how, and it wouldn't ordinarily involve any modifications to the base game.

15 hours ago, Kelandon said:

Edit: But, more generally, my point is to use original BoE, not one of these other things, and just emulate the environment that you need.

 

And, to be clear, the reason that it would work is that you'd be using a (relatively) bug-free version of BoE rather than a bugged pre-release version of some kind of reworked BoE.

Sounds like he tried original BoE and it didn't work:

15 hours ago, George LeS said:

All this started with problems I had with the original version under Dosbox.

Having said that, BoE was originally developed for Mac, and even the original version of the PC port is a bit buggier and clunkier than the Mac version in general. So if you can get the Mac version running in emulation, that might indeed be worth a shot.

4 minutes ago, msazad said:

When filling forms in which you're simply asked about about your nationality, you're not supposed to provide the country your folks came from as an answer.

Yeah, this is definitely a linguistic issue. Here in Australia, a form that wants your citizenship will specifically ask for citizenship; a form that asks for nationality will usually provide space for you to enter multiple answers and doesn't expect you to answer only with the nations you're a citizen of.

Quote

 

So far as I can tell, the people who actually talk about nationality in terms of identity rather tend to be right-wing bigots than immigrants.
 

 

It's not just a question of bigots or immigrants. Members of indigenous nations such as Australian Aboriginal or Native American communities often also consider themselves to belong to a nation separate from that of the state in which they hold citizenship.

6 minutes ago, msazad said:

Observation isn't assignment. And the actual gender assignment happens long after the birth.

Frequently it begins even before birth. What's picking out pink or blue decor for a nursery, or a baby shower with a giant "It's a Boy" poster on the wall, if not a form of gender assignment by the parents?

2 hours ago, msazad said:

Nobody defines nationality in terms of identity so why do you do so when it comes to gender and stuff? Identity issues are subjective, not demographic data.

I don't understand what's going on with identity in your culture but it sure seems toxic.

Maybe this is just a language issue (maybe a lot of things people are arguing about in this thread are language issues), but people absolutely do talk about nationality in terms of identity. There are many people who identify as members of nations to which they don't necessarily hold citizenship (the descendants of emigrants, for example), and there are nations that have no single uncontested legal entity capable of defining who does and doesn't belong to them in the first place. The 19th-century European model of the nation-state is far from the only form of nationality that exists.

You seem to be trying to draw a line between subjectivity and demographic data, but in reality they overlap all the time: demographic data is seldom 100% objective. To give another example, numerous religions have active internal debates about who counts as a member, but census forms still rely on self-reporting to find demographic data on religion within a population.

3 hours ago, Chessrook44 said:

Geneforge had the setting, theme-wise.  I still say that it is a sci-fi game in a fantasy skin, the overarching story and themes talking about a classing Robot Uprising story with Transhumanism themes.  Add in the rarely-seen-before create-your-own-army idea, and the fact that there are almost NO standard fantasy creatures (Aside from drakes, dragons, and eyebeasts), and it's a gem to me.

fun fact: in the planning stages, geneforge was in fact originally going to be a pure sci-fi game, but Jeff felt that adding fantasy elements would make it more marketable

9 hours ago, Choins Poice said:

MAJOR ADDENDUM: GAME RATER GROUPINGS

How do these results correlate to the "favourite video game era" question?

I'm glad that you enjoyed your experience with Avernum, and I'm sorry to hear about your husband. I know that my dad's a bit of a retro RPG fan himself, and I suppose that one day in the future I'll probably be cleaning out his computer and find his collection of save files and notes too.

7 hours ago, Triumph said:

Oh, the driving question! LOL. I really wanted an option for "Cautious and still unsafe" but it wasn't available.

i'm glad it wasn't just me

12 minutes ago, Kelandon said:

The "than anyone else" part is a bit overbroad; judges and various other officials generally can officiate marriages as well. So there is a parallel, totally secular system.

i mean, i'd say having to become a judge counts as having a significantly less easy time of it

17 minutes ago, Kelandon said:

Other than adding a modifier to the term "marriage," is there any other separation that you would want? Because I don't really understand what you mean other than that we don't use separate words for the two concepts (except when we do).

my understanding was that in most US states, ordained ministers of religion have a significantly easier time gaining legal authority to officiate marriages than anyone else, which i suppose is a relatively minor issue in the scheme of things but does seem a bit like giving special treatment to religion

54 minutes ago, Edgwyn said:

I agree that it is important, and I think that a review would have found it important and would have better articulated why the right of marriage should be extended. It hopefully would also have resulted in a national standard (in the US, there are differences at the state level) as to what age one has to be in order to be married.  The other part of the question though is why is two the magic number for a secular legal contract?  The question of what is the maximum number of people who could be married to each other would need to be part of any realistic study of the secular benefits of marriage.

well, in fairness, the idea of poly marriage does raise legal questions that monogamous marriage (same-sex or otherwise) doesn't; having one spouse means there's one go-to person for any issue where the spouse gets the first bite at the apple, while with multiple spouses you need some kind of decision-making process to work out how they're prioritized. there's also the question of transitivity: if A marries B and B then marries C, what kind of legal relationship does that create between A and C, and how much input should A have in whether B and C's marriage can happen given that it may have financial and legal consequences for A

on the otoh hand there are existing legal procedures that already handle similar questions. for example, many countries that accommodate spousal immigration already impose a lifetime limit on how many spouses you can bring over. and when it comes to inheritance or medical decision-making authority, the situation of someone with multiple spouses is arguably comparable to a person with no living spouse but multiple children, which we already manage to handle well enough most of the time. so it's certainly not impossible in principle to establish an equitable legal framework for it

GOG sometimes modifies their versions of games to run better on modern computers, so you might end up having to contact GOG's own support for this one.

16 minutes ago, Edgwyn said:

I agree and I did not oppose federal recognition of same sex marriages, but lots of people from every side of the spectrum like, and believe, in slippery slope arguments.  My position during the debate on recognition of same sex marriages was "why does the government recognize marriage at all?  I would have loved for their to have been an answer to that question first, but since that was not going to happen, marriage equality was the right thing to do.

answer: it's actually pretty important for a government to have some formal definition of who counts as a member of your family for purposes like inheritance, immigration, and medical decision-making, and marriage is socially recognized as a way for two people to become part of the same family. the consequences of being legally recognized as family members add up to a big enough deal in everyday life that before same-sex marriage, there were a number of same-sex relationships where one partner resorted to adopting the other as their child because that was the only way for them to have a legally recognized family relationship. in some countries where same-sex marriage still isn't recognized, this still happens

imo the "why does the government recognize marriage" position is one of those things that sounds good until you dig deeper into the practical implications of it

7 minutes ago, alhoon said:

 

I didn't mean that there are people with pitchforks coming after me. I wondered why after I made a clear post on the survey being American-based, there were two posts in a row reminding me that it's American based, with one post making the erroneous claim that I make demands and complains even after It's  clearly stated in my post that these are suggestions for possible improvement. "Uproar" is an exaggeration. "You are making complaints and you demand everyone else tailors their comments" is not an exaggeration, it's an erroneous accusation based on a poster's personal (and wrong) opinions about my posting habits.

Speaking as a neutral third party, I would say that the tone of your posts does in fact frequently come across as demanding. Consider this post, for example:

On 18/07/2017 at 3:16 PM, alhoon said:

OK, I would like to ask since I am not a native English speaker, I am fairly older than average and I am not from USA that some of the questions should be clearer for demographics different than the average American. I would also add my voice to those that said the answers were not perfect fit for my beliefs.

Maybe it's different where you're from, but to me saying that something "should" be changed comes across as a demand. If that wasn't your intent, please keep this in mind in future.

20 minutes ago, alhoon said:

I don't understand the uproar here.

I don't see any uproar. I see people disagreeing with you. Since you've made it known that you're unhappy when other people characterize your own statements in ways you don't like, please try to remember how that feels when you're about to hastily accuse others of making an uproar.

4 minutes ago, Triumph said:

Actually, Alhoon's definition is a passable summary of what is sometimes called classical liberalism. Now, at least in America, mostly the only people who would talk about "classical liberalism" these days are history / politics nerds, but he's not crazy for associating "liberal" with such views.

to give a specific example, the Liberal Party of Australia, one of our two largest political parties, is (at least historically) a liberal conservative party, which is a bit less of a contradiction in its cultural and historical context. the more you tmyk

11 minutes ago, Wrath said:

I seriously don't know how to answer this question because there have been times where Steam has said 120 hours last two weeks and I woke up one day and all I did was Warframe. But I'm not really as much into escapism the last few months, and all of my free time has been spent talking to my friends [and not being miserable for once]. Steam says 6 hours last two weeks, so maybe this is the new normal?

yeah i also found that one hard to answer, because i play a few online games that require intermittent partial attention over the course of the day. that time adds up but i don't have a clear idea of how much it adds up to

actually i found almost all the questions hard to answer but i think i have already given slarty enough trouble over that in person

You'll naturally recover health gradually just by walking around outdoors, and you'll fully recover whenever you enter a friendly town.

I think "chronologically" might not have been actionable information in itself, because it takes more than a bit of digging to find release dates for everything (and that's assuming he interpreted "chronologically" as "in order of release", as opposed to "in the order in which the events of the scenarios happen in-universe", in which case it'd be even less useful information).

3 hours ago, Edgwyn said:

Dintiridan, I think that different aspects of the 80s geek culture were a little more open to women than others.  Dumping some unrelated groups in together, the SCA/Renaissance Fair/Berkeley neo-pagans seemed to have a relatively healthy number of females.  The SF community was not as healthy, although the Star Trek community (despite ST:TOS's lack of good female roles) seemed to attract a fair number of women and a very good number of women authors.  D&D and the computer culture seemed to be at the very bottom of inclusivity which of course makes the Spidweb numbers and the number of women active members of the forums more interesting.

Interestingly, I've heard from a number of people who were into D&D in the very early days, back in the 70s, that there were quite a lot of women playing D&D back then and their numbers gradually declined throughout the 80s and 90s. There are some specific events you can point to as contributing factors, like the rise of V:tM (which tended to attract a higher proportion of women), but I think it's also an example of a more general cultural pattern where a new hobby or industry can resolve into a boys' club. (You can see similar statistics in the number of women studying computer science in universities, for example: initial numbers on par with the number of men, followed a sharp decline that's only now beginning to reverse.)

15 minutes ago, Twee Pinks said:

That's an interesting point.  I note that all the people I can think of came to SW long before they came out (and I would guess long before most identified as trans, though I don't want to make any assumptions there).

Well, part of that may be that we're more likely to know someone is trans in the first place if they come out while they're a member of the community. It's entirely possible there have been trans people we don't know about who just never felt the need to mention it.