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Needle-Exchange Programs in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, March 25 2005 13:19 Profile Homepage #4
Third World countries may not be able to carry out needle exchange programs, but that's no excuse for the United States. If people are going to use drugs, and they are, there should be no added and unnecessary risk of disease.

—Alorael, who supports drug legalization for much the same reason. Drug eradication has proven largely impossible. Legal drug control makes a much better, more feasible, and probably even cheaper option.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Pet peeve in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, March 25 2005 13:13 Profile Homepage #24
Both octopuses and octopi are correct English pluralizations. Octopodes wins style points, but it's not right. Pseudo-Latin always wins.

—Alorael, who loves meeses to pieces! English needs to take Germany's example and make itself more reasonable.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Undead Topics Need Loving Too (aka "Give Me Your First-Born") in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, March 24 2005 19:38 Profile Homepage #419
If you spam it, you will die and it will not. It is RWG's last, best hope! Someday it will find a mystical post of great puissance and rise up to liberate RWG from the tyranny of image spam forever!

—Alorael, who concedes that he cannot in good conscience lock every single thread no matter how strong his collection urge is.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
How did you first find out about Spidweb's games and what is it first games you play? in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, March 24 2005 19:32 Profile Homepage #4
I first heard of Exile from a friend, then unrelatedly found a demo of it on a CD. I played it, got hooked, and the rest is history.

—Alorael, who incidentally never registered E1. He had a mishap with an apparent change in Spiderweb's location and an inability to locate them. He spent a few years thinking they had gone out of business and he would never see what lay beyond the endless registration chasm.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Pet peeve in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, March 24 2005 19:26 Profile Homepage #18
Now I've run into my own pet peeve: nonstandard English. I'm guilty of abusing English myself, notably commas and sentence fragments, but words like "alright" bother me.

To be technical about it, the word is common but still not proper. I'm not quite sure why, but it's not proper. Because English is like that.

—Alorael, who has a love-hate relationship with English. He loves to correct people on the tiniest details and forcefully proclaims that English is a nonsensical, poorly amalgamated, worthless excuse for a language.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Karma - No not that kind in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, March 24 2005 09:24 Profile Homepage #17
I have seen precious little evidence of a higher power, intelligent or otherwise, enforcing justice. Reincarnation based on karma, maybe, but that's difficult to prove or disprove. It would account for why there are so many bad people and so many suffering innocent people, though.

—Alorael, who certainly does not believe in karma as an influence over luck. He is quite willing to believe that the universe has a healthy, or perhaps unhealthy, sense of irony, however. That is easily observed.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Pet peeve in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, March 24 2005 09:15 Profile Homepage #2
Forums in fact appears to be the preferred English plural. Maybe not linguistically, but certainly numerically. That doesn't make it any more right (it's not easy to misunderestimate the ease with which words spread irregardless of their technical existence), but I think quite a few people would have no idea what "fora" are.

—Alorael, who has in fact never heard of any online boards being called fora. It makes sense, but it doesn't happen. The internet always wins the linguistic wars, lol!!!1!
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
what is the point of The final gauntlet?? in The Avernum Trilogy
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Wednesday, March 23 2005 17:05 Profile Homepage #1
Escaping to the surface is one of the three endings. Assassinating the emperor isn't exactly escape, especially when you have to flee back into the caves.

—Alorael, who will add that the Final Gauntlet is also a very annoying dungeon and no game is complete without one (or many).
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Did YOU Cheat? in The Exile Trilogy
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Tuesday, March 22 2005 06:51 Profile Homepage #21
It's in the Tower of Zkal. Go to Gale and buy a boat trip from the nephil there, then head southwest on the island full of undead. You'll find the tower if you've already paid the nameless mage for information about it.

If you haven't, you can find him in several towns. Krizsan is one. Search all the small houses and see if you find him. If you don't, you can either look in the smaller towns to the west or wait outside for a change in the day. The mage will be there eventually.

—Alorael, who does not like the Tower of Zkal at all. It is painful and really not worth the reward.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Did YOU Cheat? in The Exile Trilogy
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, March 21 2005 18:47 Profile Homepage #19
I don't think the Justice Lance is in E3 at all, editor or game. It's in A3, and I'm pretty sure it's in the game as well as the editor.

—Alorael, who doesn't remember finding it in A3. He's basing his guess mainly on discussions and the people who claimed to have the Justice Lance.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Sexual Orientation in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, March 21 2005 18:24 Profile Homepage #2
I find homophobic slurs, explicit or implicit, offensive. Words both express and shape the way we think, and I for one do not like that way of thinking. I'm heterosexual, for the record, but that doesn't mean I don't care. I've had the slurs applicable to me thrown around enough, jokingly and seriously, to be sensitive to others'.

That said, there is such a think as over-sensitivity. The events around April '02 on Spiderweb were a perfect example of that. There is a right way to respond to slurs and a wrong way, and shock and awe usually isn't the right way.

—Alorael, who finds the edit highly amusing. He'll leave it to you to discern why.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Terri Schiavo in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, March 21 2005 18:19 Profile Homepage #10
Except this is Marbury v. Madison in reverse. By giving the Supreme Court the authority to rule on this case, the legislative and executive branches are essentially declaring themselves superior to the judiciary branch. That is not a good precedent at all.

—Alorael, who also finds it highly ironic that this is happening only a few short years after the Supreme Court basically determined who would hold the power of the executive branch.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Anama? in The Avernum Trilogy
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, March 21 2005 18:12 Profile Homepage #1
Agreed. The Anama gives a short-term bonus to your priest spells but losing out on the magery hurts in the long run. I also tend to give my casters both mage and priest ability, so joining the Anama actually weakens them.

—Alorael, who will add that joining the Anama makes sense for a singleton. It's hard to make a mage-priest-fighter, and if you have to sacrifice one of those, mage is the easiest to give up. That makes the Anama a good choice.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Question about Karma in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, March 21 2005 18:10 Profile Homepage #2
Click on the karma button under someone's name (other than your own) and you can vote from 1 to 5 to express your overall evaluation of that individual's worthiness. Based on some arcane scale that weights earlier votes more heavily, a karma value is calculated and anywhere from one to five stars are shown.

The karma system is basically meaningless. If you've been around long enough, you know what people are like despite their karma. If you haven't been around for a long time, you shouldn't accept the votes of people you don't know, especially when many of those votes are cast when people are angry. So no, karma doesn't mean much.

Asking about karma is almost guaranteed to get you a low rating. Some people seek a low rating to be perverse. Some people turn off the karma in their profiles because it is so entirely meaningless. Many people never bother to vote at all. So there you go: a quick summary of the irrational and meaningless system of karma

—Alorael, who has noticed that most people tend to end up stuck at four stars. It's the cosmic balance between the nice people who vote five stars and the grumpy people who vote one star.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Hintbook: how is it? in The Avernum Trilogy
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, March 21 2005 13:07 Profile Homepage #3
Rache's A3 walkthrough obviates the need for an A3 hintbook. There are online walkthroughs for all three games, but only A2's don't seem to have any maps.

—Alorael, who buys hintbooks anyway. They're often easier to find quick information in than online walkthroughs and they support Spiderweb. No, he is not averse to seeking help when stuck.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Top 5 Favorite Weapons in The Avernum Trilogy
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, March 21 2005 09:32 Profile Homepage #10
Mind Crystals permanently give a character an ability or skill boost. Spellshards are items that can be used once per day to cast a spell, but they don't teach a character the spell.

The Fungoid Spine is a moderately good weapon that adds acid damage, I believe. It's also cursed, but that's easy enough to fix. I don't remember where I got it, but I do rememeber that I had better weapons when I did. It's not a major quest to find it.

—Alorael, who dropped by Rache's walkthrough to find that the Fungoid Spine is obtained by killing the Experimental Fungus in the back of Erika's Tower. Walkthroughs are your friends.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
The Universe in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Monday, March 21 2005 09:25 Profile Homepage #46
Not exactly. It says that energy is energy is energy, except for potential energy, which may become energy at some future point. This is true, but that doesn't make it useful.

Just because thermal energy is the movement of very small particles and kinetic energy could be defined loosely as movement does not make them equivalent. in all respects. On some level they are the same, but on others (notably macroscopically) it's much easier to say that one block is moving quickly and another is very hot. Those clearly don't mean the same things.

The site can say there is one form of energy and be correct, but that doesn't make it useless to talk about many forms of energy. Using various equations (e.g. E=mv^2) would be difficult otherwise.

Ranking energies or forces in terms of strength also doesn't quite make sense. On a subatomic level, nuclear forces are extremely powerful. On a slightly larger scale, electric forces hold everything together. Zoom out even farther and magnetism takes effect, and then gravity. (This is not scientific at all, but it is true-ish if you don't dig too hard.) I have trouble seeing gravity as the weakest force when it's the one swinging planets around.

—Alorael, who has two more things to add. The first is that virtual particles may be unprovable but useful as a hypothesis. Think Occam's Razor. The second is that Newton's laws aren't exactly correct, but they tend to hold true and be easier to use at low speeds and large scales. "Everyday" physics can be Newtonian and correct to a degree past which nobody cares. Newton just happened to be very, very wrong in other circumstances.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Strange occurances in The Avernum Trilogy
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Sunday, March 20 2005 17:38 Profile Homepage #16
Egli is on the big lake in the middle of the Vahnatai Lands, and you can reach it via a ferry southeast of Avit, but there's no one there who can remove Dread Curse. You need to go to the Tower of Magi for that. The Tower isn't accessible in the demo, so you're out of luck.

You can leave your loot anywhere in any town. It won't disappeaer and nothing will take it. However, you could also just find someone who will buy it. I'm almost positive there's someone who will in Mancuso, and there are probably other buyers in Olgai and Egli.

—Alorael, who recommends exploring all of the vahnatai Lands that you can (safely) reach and visiting the towns. There are nice shops, nice quests, and interesting things.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Magery in The Avernum Trilogy
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Sunday, March 20 2005 17:28 Profile Homepage #5
Magical Efficiency does it in BoA, but the skill doesn't exist in A3 and I don't think anything reduces spell costs.

—Alorael, who didn't need cheaper spells in A3. BoA's spells took a big cost hike and efficiency became necessary.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Magery in The Avernum Trilogy
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Sunday, March 20 2005 14:20 Profile Homepage #2
Magery adds to your Willpower and Magic Resistance (under Useful Skills) and each point counts towards your bonus for both mage and priest spells cast. Intelligence does the same and some other things besides, but it doesn't add to Magic Resistance.

—Alorael, who would say that the real purpose of Magery is to make additional bonus feasible when your intelligence and appropriate casting skill are both very high.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Strange occurances in The Avernum Trilogy
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Sunday, March 20 2005 14:04 Profile Homepage #14
There is a hidden dungeon of sorts in A2 and a better but more bland one in A3.

Yes, the GIFTS are the Giant, Intelligent, Friendly, Talking Spiders. They're neat!

For the test of patience, I shall point you to Schrodinger's FAQ.

quote:
Walk along the path, ignore the wheel, then make it to the lever. Pull it, and pilot it out to the water area, and take the upper path. I'll let you figure this out, but it's not too hard. Then just keep pushing the block up the stairs. The block won't fall off the cliff either. Move back onto the rune, and uh oh! Just push it south through the secret door. Jump down after it, and move it back onto the rune. That's it.
—Alorael, who is always happy to copy someone else's work, especially for the test that he has never managed to solve.

[ Sunday, March 20, 2005 14:05: Message edited by: This is a pseudonym. ]
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Strange occurances in The Avernum Trilogy
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, March 19 2005 18:14 Profile Homepage #5
You can get a higher selling price for your items by raising your skill in Barter. You can't raise the skill by training until you buy a level of it for the character, and you can buy levels from Tor in his farm east of Fort Draco. It's more useful to buy five levels for everyone from Tor than to spend skill points on it.

—Alorael, who can't remember the exact equation for Barter and selling prices. The full 20 points from five purchased ranks to all four characters isn't useful because the max price is capped. Somewhere around 17 ranks might be the optimum.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Did YOU Cheat? in The Exile Trilogy
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, March 19 2005 11:33 Profile Homepage #7
Hey, I thought this was about the AT too. While playing Exile I used healing much more frequently, I didn't bank, and I didn't add potions. With spells like Avatar, Major Blessing, and Protection, energy is more important than potions.

—Alorael, who will also ruefully admit to supplementing his skribbane stock with the editor. There's no such thing as enough skribbane.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
The Universe in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, March 19 2005 11:18 Profile Homepage #26
Hawking is a theoretical physicist. That means he deals mostly with pure mathematics, but they just happen to be mathematics related to how the universe works.

A good working definition of space would be distance between points. When everything is in a singularity, everything is one point. Put another way, the distance between all points is zero. That's not even one-dimensional space.

—Alorael, who doesn't think energy exerts gravitational force. E=mc^2 is a conversion equation, but one cannot exert a force on an energy with no mass and thus Newton's third law would be violated. However, it's quite possible that non-Newtonian physics allow for forces acting on energy. Where are the local physicists?
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
A3 - Minor cheat/editor request in The Avernum Trilogy
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, March 19 2005 11:00 Profile Homepage #3
Yes, because you can use the abilities button everywhere. The window that has the delete, rename, and new graphic options can be reached by clicking the button that looks like a hand or by pressing U.

—Alorael, who doesn't think Kel meant the same place in terms of town/outdoors. He meant the same window.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00

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