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Field	Value
Displayed name	Slarty
Member number	261
Title	Raven v. Writing Desk
Postcount	3560
Homepage	http://www.stripcreator.com/comics/slartyvsdesk/
Registered	Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00

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Author	Recent posts
Legends of Divinity OOC in General
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Thursday, May 24 2007 05:58 Profile Homepage #464 If I may humbly interject: It should be blisteringly obvious to everyone in this RP that there are two groups players here who don't see eye to eye on the issue of what this RP should look like. Arguing isn't going to change anyone's mind. Now, if you guys want to go on arguing for the entire RP, hey, go ahead. But if you are as frustated as many of you sound, I'd suggest you split the RP right down the middle into two different stories. Because this arguing shows no sign of stopping, and it will drag the RP into the land of the dead. This is perhaps less salvable than ordinary spidweb RPs because the players have so much more power to change the atmosphere of the game world. Maybe regular, Mountain of Shadows type RPs can work reasonably well just by talking things out, but this one isn't going to. I mean, it's clearly not. For an RP like this to succeed, you desperately need one of two things: 1) an RP moderator whose word is final (read: a dungeon master!), or 2) a closed group of participants, i.e., don't make the RP open to the public. Anyway, just my unsolicited $.02. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Nethergate Resurrection - Roman Singleton (some spoilers) in Nethergate
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Thursday, May 24 2007 04:00 Profile Homepage #2 Strength provides triple the effect of the weapon skills (including Roman Training). (I think. I'm not 100% sure about this since I can only test with averages, but all my testing suggests it.) High strength also allows you to completely ignore Tool Use (and Pass Portal) which is great for a singleton. And it also increases your carrying capacity. I actually found that, after the very beginning of the game, I ran out of item slots far more often than I ran out of weight capacity. Unlike in older games, Fast on Feet provides the exact same effect as AP boosting items -- they all give a chance (25%? not sure) of an extra AP. But they all stack. That makes FOF useful even in conjunction with speed items, and it's still super useful without them. The Widow Queen drops an Obsidian Spear. Kill her early (after giving her the amber for the Boots of Apollo, and getting her advice for the GIFTS). Hero of Old costs too much MP for a light magic user to plan on using, so don't. With just 1 PC, you can choose to use combat mode and walkabout mode strategically. In Normal, most enemies should die in 1 to 2 hits if you're properly equipped and trained, so against non-ranged enemies, often walkabout mode makes battles simple. High resistance to an element can block nearly all damage from that element. These are also hard to get. Putting points into Luck and Roman Training can be useful simply to boost resistances. Items will eventually be outdone by your natural capabilities, but not for a long time. Wands of Ice are useful early on, and Wands of Fire and Void Crystals are great through most of the game, as are Call Hunt and Call Spirit scrolls. Potions are obviously all useful. Save Ambrosia and Heroic Brew for when you really need it. Basilisks SUCK, A LOT, and crystal gear doesn't seem to make much difference. If you can't sneak up on them and there are multiple basilisks, be prepared for gross amounts of reloading. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Regulation - Complexity sidebar in Geneforge 4: Rebellion
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Wednesday, May 23 2007 06:57 Profile Homepage #95 -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Good and Evil Powergaming (spoiler) in Nethergate
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Wednesday, May 23 2007 06:28 Profile Homepage #6 Whoops. I missed an adjustment, too! There's a huge one though that both sides can get. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Good and Evil Powergaming (spoiler) in Nethergate
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Wednesday, May 23 2007 05:35 Profile Homepage #4 I think you got all of the ones in outdoor scripts... -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Experience points in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Wednesday, May 23 2007 05:28 Profile Homepage #4 How exactly is using a skill 5000 times supposed to be less tedious than killing an enemy 500 times? I don't like the combat experience system either, to be honest, but a skill-use experience system is a giant step in the wrong direction. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Released in Nethergate
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Tuesday, May 22 2007 19:35 Profile Homepage #8 Definitely better than I expected. The interface largely works extremely well for the Nethergate scenario, and is cleaner and somewhat easier to use than the original. The new skill system, the thing I expected to dislike the most, seems to work fairly well also. NR gets my vote for an excellent refurbishment. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Pied Piper Project IV: A New Bot in General
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Tuesday, May 22 2007 19:13 Profile Homepage #13 Really.... PPP2, The Wrath of Imban. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Crafting? in General
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Tuesday, May 22 2007 19:11 Profile Homepage #20 Where's the harm? Putting time into those features means there's less time to go into other features. Or plot. And people care about other features (as evidenced by A4's and G4's sales figures) and also about plot (as evidenced by the whining over A4). -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Good and Evil Powergaming (spoiler) in Nethergate
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Tuesday, May 22 2007 19:07 Profile Homepage #2 Actually, not so lucky. You missed one adjustment Randomizer, and it's a big one, enough to tip the scales and allow powergaming of both rewards. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Jeff Interview at IMG in General
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Tuesday, May 22 2007 19:02 Profile Homepage #45 Personally, I adored the Exile II music. It fit the game so well, and it never seemed to get annoying. There aren't many game BGMs I can say that for. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Regulations in General
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Tuesday, May 22 2007 18:52 Profile Homepage #18 One of the things that I find particularly neat about the previous pope, JP2, is that he was really big on trying to reconcile faith and reason. He wrote a bunch of encyclicals about it in his later years. Pretty unusual for a major religious figure. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
LANgband in General
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Tuesday, May 22 2007 07:37 Profile Homepage #6 And at that point, although it could still be a roguelike -- there are roguelikes that operate that way -- it's clearly not Angband. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Add free-roam features in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Tuesday, May 22 2007 07:36 Profile Homepage #13 facepalm Read the post. I'm not talking about all of Lufia II, I'm just talking about the Ancient Cave. The rest of Lufia II clearly has nothing to do with roguelikes by any stretch of the imagination. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Pied Piper Project IV: A New Bot in General
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Tuesday, May 22 2007 07:35 Profile Homepage #6 Clearly, the Star Trek franchise. :P ...although PPP IV: The Voyage Home would lead to some great ads involving Aran and whales. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Pied Piper Project IV: A New Bot in General
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Tuesday, May 22 2007 05:21 Profile Homepage #1 Can we all please stop titling stuff in reference to the Star Wars franchise? :P -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Add free-roam features in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Tuesday, May 22 2007 05:02 Profile Homepage #11 quote: Originally written by Surprised by Joy: I'm pretty sure that party and roguelike don't go together. —Alorael, who considers ASCII fairly important but not essential to roguelikes. You could make a very strong case for Diablo as a direct descendent of Rogue. Roguelikes tend to offer far more choices, though. When was the last time you carefully created and destroyed walls to arrange the perfect chamber for killing an enemy slightly slower than you in a non-ASCII game? Agreed about Diablo. There are some intermediaries that cleave closely to roguelikes in almost every way aside from the graphics. Dragon Crystal was an early, console-based graphical roguelike. Dungeon Hack was a first-person dungeon-crawl roguelike that used (I think) a variant of the Eye of the Beholder engine, and AD&D ruleset, but with all the rogue trappings we expect. There are, however, party-based roguelikes. One of the earliest (and most unusual) is the Ancient Cave, actually a subgame of the SNES RPG Lufia II. It uses the characters, items, spells, etc. of Lufia II, but everything about it screams rogue. More recently, there is the Mysterious Dungeon series of games, many of which haven't been released in America. It began with Torneko's Mysterious Dungeon, a Dragon Quest spinoff that was basically just graphical rogue, but more recent offerings like Pokemon Rescue Team have incorporated multiple PCs. Sure, these aren't traditional roguelikes, but they have far more in common with the roguelike than with any other genre of RPG (or any other video game type). -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
LANgband in General
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Tuesday, May 22 2007 04:55 Profile Homepage #4 One huge problem with this is that the amount of time you take between turns varies HUGELY in Angband. When you're running through a long dungeon corridor, you might pass 30 or 40 turns in a second. You might pass even faster when you're resting up to cast your 80% failure rate Identify spell another 10 times. But when you're in melee combat, a single turn will take more than a second even if you decide what to do instantaneously, just because of the quantity of messages you need to read and the one line display. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Regulations in General
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Tuesday, May 22 2007 04:42 Profile Homepage #11 The problem is not being rigorous enough with what sophistication you have. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Moderators in General
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Tuesday, May 22 2007 04:41 Profile Homepage #80 My favourite translation of that passage (Walter Kaufmann's) actually goes "alas, philosophy" but not "alas, theology": quote: I have, alas! Philosophy, Medicine, Jurisprudence too, And to my cost Theology, With ardent labour, studied through. And here I stand, with all my lore, Poor fool, no wiser than before. Magister, doctor styled, indeed, Already these ten years I lead, Up, down, across, and to and fro, My pupils by the nose,--and learn, That we in truth can nothing know! That in my heart like fire doth burn. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Crafting? in General
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Tuesday, May 22 2007 04:31 Profile Homepage #3 I think "everyone" is jamesmcm requesting it in about four different threads. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Add free-roam features in Avernum 4
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Monday, May 21 2007 07:40 Profile Homepage #7 The most characteristic feature of a roguelike is that it generates random dungeons on-the-fly. For most other elements, you can find examples of roguelikes that treat them quite differently. That said, the Avernum engine is really not an obvious choice for a roguelike. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
GF5 Creation Wishlist in Geneforge 4: Rebellion
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Sunday, May 20 2007 19:20 Profile Homepage #25 FWIW, the term "ego items" in Angband comes from the AD&D term, whose meaning is more specific. Ego items were magical items imbued with an ego, that is, an intelligent personality. So a sword +1, +4 vs. undead would be a talking sword, presumably good aligned, obsessed with slaying undead. Angband borrowed the term because Ego items were allowed to have extra and multiple powers, and Ego items in Angband were a step above regular magic items but below artifacts. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Jeff Interview at IMG in General
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Sunday, May 20 2007 04:36 Profile Homepage #27 Did someone just say "Ultima 4" and "lacks good music" in the same post? For shame. (Better Shame than Hythloth, I suppose...) -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00
Melee Combat Question in Geneforge 4: Rebellion
Slarty Raven v. Writing Desk Member # 261	written Sunday, May 20 2007 03:56 Profile Homepage #4 One extremely annoying feature -- this is a carryover from the G1-3 AP systems -- is that you only get the chance to move again if you have at least 5 AP remaining after the attack. Note that item-based attacks are exceptions. Thus with 9 AP, you can use two crystals and then shoot something, but if you shoot something first, you can't use even a single crystal, despite still having the AP to use both! -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 \| Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00

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