Profile for Or else o'erleap.

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Field	Value
Displayed name	Or else o'erleap.
Member number	335
Title	Law Bringer
Postcount	14579
Homepage	http://www.polarisboard.net
Registered	Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00

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Author	Recent posts
SpidWeb Champions in General
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Tuesday, May 9 2006 07:13 Profile Homepage #16 RW's games aren't chronologically the oldest. The crudest, maybe, but not the oldest. —Alorael, who has finished half of the listed games. Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
What exactly are slith avatars? in The Avernum Trilogy
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Monday, May 8 2006 20:26 Profile Homepage #6 Read books by China Miéville. There may not be anything new, but he really, really tries. Anthropomorphic cacti are among his more normal creations. —Alorael, who considers slith avatars generic power slith defenders. Which they are. Which means he's right! Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Favorite song (to play) in General
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Monday, May 8 2006 20:24 Profile Homepage #8 quote: Originally written by Robinator, #034: Allegro, by Handel. Could you narrow it down a little more? Key, maybe? —Alorael, who doesn't have time to try out all of Handel's allegros movements. Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Favorite song (to play) in General
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Monday, May 8 2006 13:42 Profile Homepage #5 I don't know if I have a favorite piece to play, but Bach's partitas as always fun and Corelli's variations on La Follia are a wonderful exercise in not breathing. —Alorael, whose fingers fly everywhere while playing La Follia, and not because they know where to go. Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Avernum V in Avernum 4
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Monday, May 8 2006 13:18 Profile Homepage #293 The emperor's power in Japan has varied greatly, but during the period of so-called cloistered rule the emperor had a fair amount of real authority. Retiring freed the emperor from his ceremonial role without actually requiring him to relinquish all power, although some devolved to the new emperor. Parental respect had less to do with it than the fact that the retired emperor just didn't release the reins of power and everyone else continued to accept his (or her) authority. —Alorael, who wonders if Drakey should "retire" in order to continue to rule with a better concealed iron fist. Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Doors in The Exile Trilogy
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Monday, May 8 2006 07:43 Profile Homepage #25 In fact, I'd go so far as to say that no adventurer should leave home without them! —Alorael, who can go further. No one should ever leave home without pants! (Other items occupying the same slot are acceptable.) Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Maximizing Skill Point Investment in Avernum 4
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Monday, May 8 2006 07:41 Profile Homepage #4 I understand the fun of tinkering with mechanics, but this would be too much effort to be fun for me. If optimizing makes you happy, though, go for it! —Alorael, who feels no urge to roleplay in A4. It's a game about the combat mechanics. It should be played by playing the combat mechanics. Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Avernum V in Avernum 4
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Sunday, May 7 2006 09:22 Profile Homepage #287 Make the mage a pretender with a wholly fabricated claim but great political and diplomatic skill and the best interests of the Empire at heart, though, and you have a more interesting story. Should your party support the mage, who would be a fine emperor if he actually had any ties to the throne, or the true (distant) heir who also has the best of intentions but far less acumen for rulership? —Alorael, who adds his voice to those who do not like plagues. At all. Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Character Creation Help in Avernum 4
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Saturday, May 6 2006 22:12 Profile Homepage #13 The A4 "artifacts" are just powerful items except for Demonslayer, which has a few quests and a special area involved. A3's artifacts were all part of quests and areas, some of which were tortuous and torturous, respectively. —Alorael, who simply can't see A4 getting Remote Cave questions years after its release. Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Strange cave A1 in The Avernum Trilogy
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Saturday, May 6 2006 22:05 Profile Homepage #20 There are stupid statements. —Alorael, who believes strongly in stupid declarations! Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Church of the Nine-Headed Cave Cow in General
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Saturday, May 6 2006 16:08 Profile Homepage #14 There is only one true faith, as your implants should tell you, and it is not some cash cow of a scam to milk credulous believers of all they're worth. Richard White will have crushed your puny godling yesterday next week! —Alorael, who assures you that no bovine intelligence could conceive of the needle/ferret. Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
The Abominable Photo Thread IV: A New Hope in General
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Friday, May 5 2006 07:51 Profile Homepage #177 Find me some metal with recorders and I'll be a happy man. —Alorael, who might actually swoon if given a score for steel drums, xylophone, recorder, and theremin. Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Best Bad Guy in General
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Thursday, May 4 2006 19:36 Profile Homepage #7 Some explanation of why you think your villain is notable and what you look for in a villain would be nice too, especially if it isn't someone who is instantly recognizable to everyone likely to reach Spiderweb. (Darth Vader and who else?) I think vilain may be too restricting a term, too. There are antagonists who are perfectly nice people! —Alorael, who will plug the Amnion from the Gap Cycle here. Their antagonist status is debatable, but they have all the requisite evil alien creepiness, a clearly villanous agenda, and manage to function perfectly as a legitimate and major element of a plot without overwhelming it. The moral is that sometimes conflict with bad guys should resemble man vs. nature more than man vs. man. Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Best Bad Guy in General
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Thursday, May 4 2006 19:07 Profile Homepage #0 Which villanous characters strike you as the best villains of all time, space, and media? I don't mean the most evil or most likely to do dastardly things, I mean the most interesting, most compelling, or just most viscerally repulsive bad guys as characters in some work of fiction. Villains appear in books, movies, television, comics, games, and real life. I don't want to know about real evil people. There are plenty of them and they have no literary value. The other categories are all fair game. Real people who have been fictionalized are fine, but only if some fiction uses or portrays the character significantly differently from how the person appears in the history books. If this leads to Professor Moriarty vs. Sauron vs. God vs. Cthulhu in a cage match, so be it. My money is on Richard White. —Alorael, who feels odd starting a thread. It's just not something he does. Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
If You Were President... in General
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Thursday, May 4 2006 16:55 Profile Homepage #52 An interesting point to note is the assumption, which is generally borne out, that blacks need black role models. —Alorael, who has seen very interesting statistics (in hard copy, so he can't post a link). If wealth is broken down by more specific ethnic background than race, the story is different. Certain Asians (but not all) are far more likely to move up in class than whites, and whites aren't homogenous either. Most interesting is the fact that most immigrant groups tend to increase in class generationally at an encouraging rate. African Americans (Africans who immigrated within the past generation or two) are included among these groups. Blacks (non-recent immigrant) trail behind. Appearance and race aren't the whole story. Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Question 3: Disease in General
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Thursday, May 4 2006 16:48 Profile Homepage #9 quote: Originally written by Major: Just have bunches of vaccines ready to be made so when a epidemic happens we just have to get a sample then quickly finish the vaccines. So we could be ready when the epidemic hits us. That works only if you know what the next epidemic is before it's epidemic, which isn't how the world works. It also assumes a vaccine can be made, which isn't always possible. Besides hauling money out of choice and worthless biodefense grants and putting it back into realistic medicine, there's not much that can be done on the research front. Again, we don't know what to study until it's too late. Still, more research into obvious disaster possibilities would be nice. Quarantine simply isn't going to work in this day and age. I thought about it, and I have far more faith in human selfish ingenuity than human obstructive ingenuity. —Alorael, who doesn't think anyone with any education, including creationists, denies microevolution. It has been documented over and over and over, it can be reproduced in the lab, and the Bible says nothing about the immutability of species. Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
RPGs vs. "Computer Games" in General
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Thursday, May 4 2006 07:15 Profile Homepage #15 Strategy games very rarely involve large amounts of dialogue. Diplomacy, yes. Trying to find out whose lost cat you can rescue for new gear, no. —Alorael, who considers "RPGs" that give you a set cast of specific characters a category by themselves. They're RPGs, except you don't pick the role and you don't really play it yourself, either. Interactive movie, perhaps? No, the term is not perjorative. Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
If You Were President... in General
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Wednesday, May 3 2006 19:59 Profile Homepage #23 Reasonable affirmative action isn't based on giving jobs to less qualified people. It's based on the fact that for many jobs and spots for students in colleges there is an overabundance of well qualified applicants. All else being equal, it's not terribly unreasonable to give those who were disadvantaged by circumstance a little boost. —Alorael, who is not very comfortable with the protection of MAD anymore. It worked fine when it was the U. S. of A facing down the USSR with nukes, but now there are organizations that aren't necessarily states that would be happy to nuke. If they ever can and do, is launching retaliatory nukes in any way helpful? Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Strange cave A1 in The Avernum Trilogy
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Wednesday, May 3 2006 17:07 Profile Homepage #2 You are not supposed to go through the barrier. You are supposed to wonder what vahnatai are and buy A2. I don't think the cave reappears, but the vahnatai sure do. —Alorael, who doesn't know why some people insist on doing the not-quite-impossible to break things. Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Things that bug me about A4 in Avernum 4
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Wednesday, May 3 2006 14:54 Profile Homepage #3 3. If training could just be bought like spells, everyone would just buy all the useful skills. This way at least makes you put some effort into getting ahead of the curve. 4. Pylons serve their purpose. They're tedious but easy when unguarded, and I think maybe the tediousness could be toned down, but there are some places where immobile, powerful enemies are good. I think the "deadly" pylons scattered around the Basalt Fortress should have their range increased to be equal to the party's, though. 5. Avernum didn't repopulate either, and to be honest the recharging doesn't bother me. You could do it by dancing around by a town before, or by paying a few coins, so the only real difference is time saving. I wouldn't mind a little dungeon repopulation, but that's a different issue and I don't really feel strongly about it. —Alorael, who can see one reason for encumberance, too: helpful stuff. You can't lug all your potions, wands, various pointy implements, and so on with you everywhere anymore. Now you need to prioritize. Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
NBA Playoffs in General
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Wednesday, May 3 2006 14:48 Profile Homepage #10 I occasionally watch tennis, but I couldn't tell you who's good, who's bad, or even who's playing. That's the extent of my attention paid to sports at any level. —Alorael, who would watch Calvinball games if he could find a channel that had them. Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
RPGs vs. "Computer Games" in General
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Wednesday, May 3 2006 11:34 Profile Homepage #5 Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, Fallout, and, from my limited knowledge, The Elder Scrolls games are all CRPGs with real RP between the C and G. No, they're not the same as games you play with a pencil and paper, but you come up with a role and you play it. Geneforge is in this category too, I think, although I haven't finished any Geneforge. The Avernums fit in with the majority of CRPGs. They have a set plot from which you can't really deviate, but you have your choice of where to go when, how to develop your characters, and minor things you'd like to do. You can actually deviate far from the plot, but it usually just means the game stops responding to you besides (often) everyone attacking you, and the game is unwinnable. Diablo and Dungeon Siege are the far end of the spectrum. There's really no role at all. You are a character or group of characters and you kill stuff. That's the kind of game your friend rejected, probably, and I agree that these games aren't really roleplaying games. Fantasy action-adventures, maybe. —Alorael, who now must bring up the time-honored debate over Zelda: RPG or not? It's one of the fruitless arguments that makes the internet worth inhabiting. Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Games in General
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Wednesday, May 3 2006 08:04 Profile Homepage #16 quote: Originally written by $ v. #: EV: Novah Only if someone does a total conversion for Avernum in space. Someone talked about it, actually. Aran, maybe? Logo? —Alorael, who can't remember any EV:N monikers he's had. He does have, play, and greatly enjoy the game, though. Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
May Day Poll in General
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Wednesday, May 3 2006 08:02 Profile Homepage #19 Does equally redistributing the yokes and toil under the lash of the opressor count? —Alorael, who doesn't understand why May Day isn't tax day. It would be very appropriate. Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Fighting Rentar in BF - quick question in Avernum 4
Or else o'erleap. Law Bringer Member # 335	written Wednesday, May 3 2006 07:57 Profile Homepage #9 Call me crazy, but I hope Rentar's survival is part of the canonical plot moved forward to A5. She's done with her lead roles and that's a good thing, but she's also a good enough character that seeing her post-vengeful conquest would be nice. —Alorael, who can imagine her babysitting all the young little septuagenarian vahnatai and teaching them lessons like how to read and write and how to wield terrible destructive forces against the evil humans. She'd be so cute! Posts: 14579 \| Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00

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