The Reverend

I won't be able to play in the tournament - too much on my plate - but thanks for putting this together. I'll enjoy spectating.

Nicely done - Hawthorne had it coming.

Sorry, I meant what dates it was occurring, and how much I have on my plate then.

I might be interested, but it depends on when it occurs and what my work schedule is like at the time.

Recently the federal government has been "looking the other way" with regards to medical marijuana, at least here in WA. It's hard to go very far in some neighborhoods of Seattle without seeing the familiar "green cross" (indicating a medical marijuana dispensary) on a sign or storefront. If they were worried about getting raided by the feds, they probably wouldn't be so obvious about it. Whether or not the referendums in WA and CO stay law or get overturned by the courts or legislatures, and whether or not the feds try to up enforcement to counteract the lack of state and local enforcement, I think the fact that two states have now passed initiatives in favor of legalization is going to at least get the conversation started on the national level. I don't partake (well, at least not in the current century), but I voted in favor of WA's initiative because I think getting that conversation started is a good thing.

It is the sincerest form of flattery, after all. Or is it highest form? Or is that imitation? I can never keep these things straight...

They give us an addressed envelope, but it's not prepaid - you have to buy the stamp yourself! Or just use the drop box. If they didn't have the drop boxes, some might argue that requiring you to buy your own stamp constituted a poll tax ... Edit: Too slow ...

Like drinking beer? No, I must resist the temptation to turn this into another thread about beverages ...

Washington also does mail-in ballots, with the option to drop them off at a drop box to save the stamp. Since there's a convenient drop-box near my office, I dropped mine off there yesterday. I've also heard that many people like the feeling of putting their ballot in a box rather mailing it in - it reminds them of going to the polling place (which I admit I used to love to do - the old ladies who volunteered there were always so friendly, and made you feel good for voting). My drop box was fine yesterday (no line), but apparently there were long lines at some drop boxes yesterday, and difficulty finding parking - I guess everyone wanted to drop theirs off a day early to avoid lines, and it backfired.

It's what the people seem to want! "All right, brain. You don't like me and I don't like you, but let's just do this and I can get back to killing you with beer." - Homer Simpson

I'd agree with this, except I'd place FL in the toss-up category as well. Nate Silver over at fivethirtyeight has it currently at just a 55% chance of a Romney win, which I think is close enough to be a toss up.

Just wanted to chime in that I've had very good experiences with archers as well. By the mid-game they will not be dealing as much damage as dual-wielders and spell-casters, but they are great as tanks due to their high evasion to physical, fire, and energy. You just need to load them up with some items that give extra cold resistance. Also, their high dexterity leads to attacking earlier in the round, which can be a tactical advantage in some battles.

I agree that the faction choices are both awful in G3, however I still enjoyed playing through to experience the full story of Geneforge. My agent ended up siding with the Rebels, but had to hold her nose to do it - she was kind of hoping that she could reform them from the inside (doubtful, but that hope allowed her to keep going through the game and not just build a hut on one of the islands and hide out for the rest of her days). But yes, I completely understand the decision to not finish G3.

The closest I've seen is this quote from the first Avadon developer diary on his blog: So, not exactly definitive.

I believe that cutoff for too much armor to cast mage spells is determined by the total to-hit penalty of the armor. It also appears that weapons/items with a to-hit bonus (such as longbows with their +5 to-hit) can counteract this, which would explain what you're seeing. EDIT: I was too slow ...

This. Exactly. Black coffee FTW

It would be nice to have all of that in-game knowledge centralized at a single location, and wiki seems as good a format as any. I tend to forget some of that in-game knowledge between games (or even within a single playthrough). Wait, what was I just saying? Oh well, couldn't have been that important.

Grape juice and wine have different tastes. I've never tried non-alcoholic wine, but I assume it tastes more like wine than grape juice. Otherwise, wouldn't they just call it grape juice? (Unless of course they were just looking for a reason to raise the price. This grape juice is made in France! From French wine grapes! That's why you should pay $20 for this bottle instead of $5 for the larger bottle of grape juice in the juice aisle!!)

The skill retrainer is free, if I remember correctly. If your PC is one of the lockpicking classes, it makes sense to make them your primary lockpicker since there are a few places where they are exploring alone (or where certain companions are not available).

I love a good Guinness, poured just right, on a gray winter evening in front of the fire. Even better with a warm bowl of stew. But I will admit it can be an acquired taste.

I prefer Guinness in the winter, or a nice IPA in the summer ... but to each his own...

Shapers can stop creating serviles and other sentient creations, but what do you do with the ones that are already around? Serviles can breed, so they aren't going to just all die of old age and be gone.

My guess would be that the new engine games (Avadon, AEFTP) have relatively more and/or higher resolution graphics. Browsing through the Avadon game folders, it appears that most of the graphics used by the game are in PNG or JPG formats (I'm assuming this is true for the other games as well, but I didn't actually look). PNG and JPG are compressed image formats, so that portion of the data won't benefit much from the compression (in fact, compressing already compressed data can actually sometimes make it get slightly larger).

Some types of data can be compressed more efficiently than others. The relative ratios of text/binary code/graphics/sounds could easily differ significantly between the different engines/games.

I'm shooting for adrenaline rush, which is very nice for spellcasters. 2 priests each casting 3 divine fires or divine retributions is deadly.