*i

Hard to say. Jeff's audience also contains a lot of old school gamers too, remnants of simpler era long gone. These people, I suspect, would not necessarily buy into the whole World of Warcraft thing. Good point, however.

Quote: *i: You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you choose the Empires point of view, Stalker is a villain, but not a very good one, little more than a common rogue, in fact. If you choose a rebel point of view, you have sympathy for him, and thus you diminish his villain status and make him more of a hero. Your trying to put these two together, which is possible, but if you do that, your going to weaken both points of view, making him neither a good villain or hero. I don't think they both weaken each other, they add to each other. Looking at it from both perspectives enhances Stalker. Taking a sum of the two views like they were numbers on the same axis makes little sense. The fact that some people can view him as a hero makes him a better villain/antagonist in my mind. The reason, he's more human and believeable. Quote: The Bomb: As an American, the bomb is a black mark on my record. I am harmed by being looked at by the rest of the world as a member of the nation that used it, and thus that is why I harbor enmity. Not that this is any of your business... You were the one to bring the matter up. How can one debate if he/she does not understand your views?

Quote: Ah, but then you no longer sympathize with him! The fact that you sympathize with him is the only reason people have given for why he is a good villain. What? I don't understand what you mean here. If I choose, as a player, to take the mindset of someone who dislikes the tyranny of the Empire, I would definitely have sympathy for Stalker. You see, as part of a Role Playing Game, we can take the mindset of someone in the game and divorce ourselves from our personal convictions. Quote: Uh... yes! Who ever said the United States was the angel of world politics? I personally have not forgiven them for using the bomb, and I am surprised Japan has. And exactly how were you personally harmed by this such that you have something to forgive?

Although I can neither confirm nor deny speculation as to the matter of the nature of characters, I will say that significant efforts have been made to develop interactivity between characters and the events in the plot.

If you look at the DVD box and read the back, it is not too hard to infer. But either way, I'll make it more ambiguous. Quote: My argument is that I don't think you can be sympathized with a be a good villain at the same time. The point where your evil actions outweigh your good intentions is when the line is crossed into villainhood, and I think that Stalker failed to cross that line sufficiently. That is a matter of opinion. I still consider Stalker a villain if you agree with the Empire side. If you agree with the rebels, Volpe and his enforcer Jaen are the villains. From either perspective, one can view the other's acts as evil and wrong. The villain of a game need not be a static thing.

Whether villain or antagonist, it's a fine and ultimately superficial point. I personally interpret villain more as you consider antagonist, but we are each free to have our own interpretation. As for a villain that I consider a good villain, after a few minutes of thinking, The villain from the movie Unbreakable comes to mind. ************************** SPOILERS BELOW *************************** He was definitely evil and insane, but had a well developed character: a lonely comic book store owner with a debilitating bone disease. In an effort to give his life purpose and prove his bizarre theories about the world, he committed terrorist-like acts against innocents. It was through these that he found the hero/protagonist, his "opposite". This proved his idea that superheros in comic books are manifestations of real humans in the past that exist today. ************************** END SPOILERS ************************** Now we cannot excuse his actions. However, we can sympathize with his plight. He has an outside life, interests, hobbies in addition to the twisted acts of villainery that he did. In no way is he the best villain out there, but he is one that I feel was fleshed out quite well. You can't like him, but you can at least understand, in part, what drove his actions.

I disagree completely. There are many different kinds of villains out there. Some are greedy, evil, insane, etc. There are others who have an agenda who believe they are doing right even though they are causing harm to the protagonist. Being evil is in no way a requirement to be a villain in a story. When a villain can be sympathized with, it makes him/her more human and it can make the player think, "yeah in his/her situation, I might do the same thing". Not that this is essential, but it helps this type of villain. Other types of villains such as those mentioned above are helped by other things depending on their situation and motivation. Perhaps antagonist for Jaen or Stalker is a better word, but either way we are splitting hairs.

That is a problem that will need to be worked out. My guess is with some sort of rubric based on originality, usefulness, robustness, etc. The general sentiment is to hold off until a later date, perhaps after the contest. I think that is what we should do.

For clarity, to be eligible, you cannot have entered any previous Spiderweb of Olympia contest. Every scenario deserves one shot at glory, in my mind. As for judging, I'll put something up sometime in November soliciting volunteers. I don't want to put it out too early. If you volunteer, you can judge any categories that you do not partake in. Having too many volunteers is rarely, if ever, a problem.

Quote: Originally written by Tyranicus.: 6PM GMT would be 1PM EDT which is not fine for me next Saturday, but not this one. Whoa, too many negatives here! I'm hearing more in favor of this weekend and I'm leaning to set it back to the original proposed Salmon time. Comments?

Seriously, does this weekend work better for people? We could do that if it does.

I suppose we could do it this weekend as well, as per the other post. However, this saturday does not work as well for me.

In my tendency to miss the obvious, I forgot about having a contest for scripts. We could add this to the contest as another category to encourage good script designs, albeit this is a bit late and we may hold off on this until after the main contest. Please discuss.

I decided to post this in a new topic. These rules are to be considered to be near final phase and are the results of much discussion. Please read them over and if you have any minor additions, changes, or corrections, please indicate below. You may puruse previous discussions here . * * * Eligibility Both Blades of Avernum and Blades of Exile scenarios are eligible for entry into the 8th Scenario Design Contest with the following guidelines: 1) The scenario cannot have been an entrant in any previous Spiderweb of Olympia scenario design contest. 2) All entered scenarios (utilities are exempt) must have been submitted to Spiderweb Software.* 3) The deadline for entry is November 30, 2006. * If you already submitted to Spiderweb and either have not been posted or have been removed, you may host it independently. However, you must have actually attempted to submit it to Spiderweb software. Categories Small Scenario Large Scenario Newcomer Best Utility Small Scenario: < 25 zones Large Scenario: >= 25 zones Zones is the total number of towns plus outdoor sections. Near identical towns (such as use of VTE) count as 0.5 of a zone. To be eligible for the Newcomer category, you must not have been a participant in any previous Spiderweb or Olympia scenario design contest. If this applies to you and you have more than one entry in this contest, you may select only one to be in the Newcomer category. Judging Initial Rounds Scenarios in each category will be given a score from 1-10 based on quality, 1 being lowest and 10 being highest. The decision criteria is generally up to the individual judge so long as he/she is consistent where possible. The exception is that a judge cannot favor either BoE scenarios over BoA scenarios or vice versa, each must be judged on it's merits. All judges scores are averaged to make a cumulative score. The highest ranked scenario in each category (except Best Utility) and any scenario with a score of 80% the highest score in the category will advance to the Best Scenario round. For example, suppose a category has four scenarios ranked 8.8, 8.5, 7.6, and 6.3. The cutoff for admission to the final round is 7.04 (0.8*8.8), so the top three scenarios advance and the lowest one does not. Final Round The scenarios that advanced are judged in a final best scenario round. All participating judges then discuss and debate to rank the scenarios from best to worst. Each judge is given three votes that he/she may distribute as he/she sees fit with a maximum of two for one scenario. How the judge actually allocates votes are secret. Once voting has completed the lower 50% rounded down (if there are 7, only the lowest 3 are dropped) are eliminated. If there are ties within the cutoff, all tied scenarios remain. Any votes for eliminated scenarios may be redistributed at the judge's discretion; votes for scenarios still in play may not be reallocated. The process continues until one scenario has the most points. Tie Breaking In the event of a tie that cannot be broken because no votes remain to be reallocated, with the exception of the final decision round, the cumulative score of the initial round is used to make the decision. Should those scores be tied, the high scores are compared and on down to second highest, third highest, and so on. In the event of an actual tie between all scores, both (or all those tied) scenarios are eliminted. If a tie occurs in the final decision round (i.e. two scenarios remain), all votes are cleared and the judges vote for their preferred scenario. If this vote ends in a tie, the above criteria are used. If all criteria are tied, the competition is a tie and both are co-winners. In the event more than two scenarios remain and all remaining scenarios are tied, the original decision criteria is used until two remain (at which a vote is done as above) or the tie is broken. Should the tie be impossible to break, a vote will be done to attempt to break a tie. If doing so is impossible, then all scenarios that are tied are declared co-winners.

I thought I had double posted this morning. From now on, let me worry about BoA chats. Discuss here .

How does Saturday, Oct. 21st sound? 6 PM GMT, AIM chatroom blades.

Yeah, I thought so too, but it has been so long I thought I'd ask.

It helps if you tell us which game. Try leaving the town, hitting ">", and returning. If that does not work, visit four other towns and return and things may reset. If it is a major character, he/she may not return, but I somehow doubt it.

Why not repost this in a new topic considering this one is over three months since the last post?

It could be they are broken. Looks like you will have to get cash the old fashioned way.

For clarity, you cannot make Battle Gammas.

We'll hold another one near the end of October.

Aside from trying the 1 PC party and stuff like that, the game is quite linear without much variation.

*bump*

Seems like a pretty restrictive definition of superiority and inferiority. Would an autistic midget be inferior to a regular human and only be fit to serve?