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Displayed name	Student of Trinity
Member number	3431
Title	Electric Sheep One
Postcount	3335
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Registered	Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00

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Geneforge 4: "Not a Shaper" in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Sunday, May 28 2006 05:50 Profile #74 Welcome to the boards. It's a funny thing about board etiquette: people will flame you for not reading old threads, but then they'll also flame you for posting in them. As a newbie you're supposed to read carefully through all the previous years' worth of brilliant commentary, and then start a new thread that refers to the old one (preferably with a link) if you want to comment on one. The reason seems to be that people don't like seeing a topic with dozens of replies suddenly appear out of the blue, only to realize that instead of an incredibly hot new topic it is just an old one revived, and the only new bit is a tiny added remark from a new member. [ Sunday, May 28, 2006 05:51: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
New Biuld(No Flaming -_-) in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Sunday, May 28 2006 05:43 Profile #10 Welcome to the boards. People are reacting a bit strangely because they've been reading and writing threads about this kind of thing for years now, so they may be vexed that you haven't somehow found all those old threads and studied them diligently. It wouldn't actually be so easy to do that, for instance because even the keyword 'build' has only started getting used around here relatively recently. Some of the most important old threads on the topic didn't use it. Anyway, the first thing people will say (so I'll say it nicely) is that practically any build will work fine on Normal difficulty settings, so the only issue that interests them is new builds that will work on Torment. I rather doubt this one will, in G3. High Parry and QA worked so well in G2 that I tried it on my first Guardian game in G3, and on Torment it was a really hard struggle. For Normal, it's probably fun to crank Parry and watch everything miss you; good for you for trying it out. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Guardians need help in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Sunday, May 28 2006 05:33 Profile #39 I refer to the long edit I added to my previous post, which is basically a concession with some proposals for nerfing Shapers. I should have just waited and posted that here, but I didn't realize you'd reply so fast. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Guardians need help in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Sunday, May 28 2006 04:53 Profile #37 Hmm, we may be comparing apples to oranges, since for the battles I reported I was less than a third of the way through G2. Still, my vlish were also made as soon as possible, but with Magic Shaping only 2 instead of 10. With a Shaper I would probably have had that. With that many high level creations along they might have gained levels a bit more slowly, but probably I'd have been seeing hit rates around 40% with them, and that would indeed have been a lot better. You're starting to convince me, but let me argue a bit more. A Terror Wand was crucial to my Bound One victory. Normal Vlish don't apply Terror, and I don't think I could have gotten Terror Vlish at this point in the game. A Shaper who had pushed so much into Magic Shaping would have needed a lot more luck to terrify the BO. Vlish do stun, but the BO is pretty resistant, as well as very fast, and lives in a small space where it's hard to keep a distance. So I don't have time to try the experiment for comparison, but I suspect that the Vlish army wouldn't really have it so easy with the BO: I bet they'd lose a few, and if they lost them too soon the battle could turn. So it remains true that your single hard hitter is good for delivering special effects to hard targets. Or? But I'm pretty much willing to concede that even if that's true, it's not really enough. I guess what I'm left with is that a Guardian with a small team of well-aged creations should be a sound third option to the lone Agent and the Shaper army. It does work, and it makes for a significantly different game, having one hard hitter who hits not quite so hard as an Agent, and a few moderate back-ups instead of the Shaper's horde. It shouldn't be definitively outclassed by other approaches. And in my mind the ideal balance among the classes is not necessarily exact parity, but just for all of them having some hard zones and some easy zones, with the hard and easy zones being different for each. I don't want to struggle through every zone as a Guardian, remembering how much easier it was with another class; for some zones I want to breeze through and remember how much harder it was with the others. Perhaps the Guardian could use some help, in the form of increased ability to enhance a small group of creations, or uniquely high chances to control a few powerful 'found' creations. I do think the right approach is to play up Guardian creations, and not only to try to raise combat skills until they compete with Agents' magic. We don't need another hero. Creations are the key feature of Geneforge, and there's room for a different creation game from the Shaper one. But perhaps the problem is not so much with the Guardian here as with the Shaper: maybe the Shaper is too good at enhancing a large group of creations. Perhaps increase in level with Shaping skill is too great an effect, and it really benefits Shapers much more than anyone else, so toning it down would rein them in without killing Guardians. And perhaps there are too many items that boost creation stats too much, and thus boost Shapers over Guardians again. Shapers have the essence to make many creations or to make very advanced ones, and the high shaping skill to master the advanced creation techniques. Those advantages are great as well as cool; Shapers don't need to be able to turn Vlish into endgame killers as well. We've worried about Agents for a long time. Precise balance isn't necessarily the goal, and I don't mind if Agents breeze through a lot of things, but there should be more zones that are hard for Agents, that force them to use up hoarded items or enlist allies or wait and come back at much higher level. I have never liked the Dazes because they are just too strong; the basic concept is fine, but at their current strength they make tough fights ridiculously easy. Daze feels wrong even when used as directed. [ Sunday, May 28, 2006 05:23: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Ghosts of Stalin in General
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Sunday, May 28 2006 03:06 Profile #26 A rosy ultimate goal might get Karl Marx credit for being a nice guy at heart, but Marxism has to stand or fall on its theories about how to get there. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Character Names in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Sunday, May 28 2006 02:47 Profile #29 You could upgrade your own graphics as you gain levels, finishing as a Drakon. It would be sort of fun to hack the game so that you played as a Gazer, with edited dialog so that the game still worked, but everyone was duly unnerved. Shopkeepers could say things like, "AAAAAAAAHHHH A HORRIBLE THING HAS FLOATED INTO MY SHOP!!!! But a customer is a customer ...". Or alternatively you could play some sort of gnawing worm thing, and everyone would remark on how weird it was that a worm could talk, but then just despise you; it would make it very satisfying to kill them. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Suggestion for increased replay value: Add the three remaining classes in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Sunday, May 28 2006 02:37 Profile #2 I'm tempted by the aesthetics of completeness, but I don't think this will really work in Geneforge, because the lines between the classes aren't really all that sharp. Between a solo Guardian who invests in good buffing magic, and an Agent who boosts combat skills, there isn't much room for the Champion to be any different. Likewise a Shaper who pushes magic and an Agent who trains up a couple of creations squeeze out the Infiltrator, and Shaper who raises combat and Guardian who pumps shaping squeeze out the Constructor. Yeah, I know, the idea is to make these new classes optimal versions of what would currently be sub-optimal builds. But these builds aren't so sub-optimal they can't work, even on Torment. If we're talking replay value, I'd actually rather have them as sub-optimal challenge builds, instead of base classes. As it is, I can play each game three times and feel I've basically done it, and that's nice; I don't want to have the nagging feeling of incompletion until dragging myself through six times. Having said this, I once designed a pen-and-paper FRPG system with six classes based on permutation of strengths in three basic areas of strength, skill, and magic. What was perhaps different there was that a class had very strong preponderance in their first trait, and no ability at all in their third, so the distinctions were sharper. I liked the system because it seemed to organize the archetypes that I liked: Strength+Skill made a knight while Skill+Strength made a ninja, Magic+Strength made a battle mage while Magic+Skill made a sorceror. To complete the set I somehow decided that Strength+Magic made a shaman, and Skill+Magic made a sort of techno-mage. I never got either of these last two classes all that fleshed out, but I was intrigued to think of them joining the more familiar four on an equal footing. It would have been a neat system, if I had ever had time to develop it properly. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Guardians need help in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Sunday, May 28 2006 02:01 Profile #35 Hit chance depends on the target as well as the attacker, and a 50% difference in base chance to hit can be adjusted into a difference between 100% and 150%, which is nothing, or between 0% and 50%, which is infinite. I believe this wrecks the universal analysis that leads to only two optimal strategies. For bosses you need at least one guy with very high hit chances, while for swarms you want more guys shooting. Trying to have both may lose you some efficiency in the intermediate range of battles between swarm and boss, but it gains you flexibility to handle both extremes, and this makes it a good contender overall. At least, in theory. As to practice, my current G2 squad leader missile Guardian is doing fine on Torment. He took out the Bound One by emptying a Terror Wand, a Reaper Baton, and a fat clip of Acid Thorns into him, while one of his Vlish landed one lucky hit that moved the Bound One's health bar less than a pixel. But right after that his Vlish and Fyoras saved his butt in Clawbug Canyon. The combination seems to have some practical synergy. I am dismayed that the Missile Shaper works so well; that steals the Guardian's thunder, all right. But I disagree that the Guardian squad leader is doomed in principle; the concept seems sound, and a bit of tweaking should make it a solid third option for the game. Nerf the Shaper's missile skills, I suppose. Perhaps the key to guarding the three classes' separate patches of turf would be to change how steeply their skill point costs rise with level, instead of just (or even, just instead of) their initial costs. That would keep Guardians ahead in combat for damn sure, no? [ Sunday, May 28, 2006 02:05: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Ancient Mystery: Solved! in General
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Sunday, May 28 2006 01:05 Profile #11 Thanks; these examples all ring bells now that I read them again, but it has been a while since I was all keen on evolutionary biology, and the stuff has reached its half-life. In speaking of fuzzy concepts and random lines, I was alluding to fuzzy set theory. The plausibility weight used for fuzzy sets behaves just like probability, so you can always interpret a fuzzy definition as a biased random generator of arbitrary definitions, and this is often a good way of expressing subtle issues. But identifying plausibility and probability is controversial. I have a feeling that if I understood that controversy better I might understand quantum mechanics better, too. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Ghosts of Stalin in General
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Sunday, May 28 2006 00:45 Profile #24 quote: Originally written by Keto-san: In other words, the failures of vanguard theory. But this makes it sound like a minor problem for Communism. My rather cursory familiarity with Leninism is open to correction, but isn't the role of the Party as vanguard of the revolution pretty much the essential foundation? So wouldn't the failure of vanguard theory itself (as opposed to a few historical failures to implement it) be tantamount to the failure of Leninism? -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Ancient Mystery: Solved! in General
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Saturday, May 27 2006 23:57 Profile #9 Speciation is probably a fuzzy logic sort of thing. It's supposed to be about the possibility of interbreeding, isn't it? But that probably doesn't happen overnight. The rate of spontaneous abortion resulting from breeding between two populations would just gradually increase, until eventually there were never any offspring; then, much later, with the two gene pools now totally separate, the two species might begin to diverge dramatically in visible ways. So the line between chicken and proto-chicken would be a fuzzy one. Could we interpret the fuzziness as a sharp line that gets drawn randomly, and say that wherever it got drawn it would always be between proto-hen and chicken egg? I'm not so sure, because I'm not so sure that genetics doesn't change after conception. What if a living proto-chicken has a mutation in its reproductive organs, whether from natural radiation damage to its DNA, or from a virus, or from replication error during cell division? -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Guardians need help in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Saturday, May 27 2006 15:54 Profile #27 I sympathize with the desire to simplify a complex problem into two extreme cases, of lone tank versus ratpack. But I don't quite buy it. There are a lot of factors in the game. Against boss monsters, you need at least one strong offense to be in the game at all, and this means an Agent or Guardian, or some third or fourth tier creations. Against swarms it really helps to have several creations, and even weak attacks can combine to take things down. Solo Agents and Guardians can generally avoid getting swarmed by tactics cunning to the point of engine abuse. Shapers can wait to fight the Bound One until they've gotten some high-level creations. Everybody can make it work. But the intermediate route, of having one hard-hitter plus three or four decent back-up creations, is a flexible strategy that mixes offensive and defensive modes, and lets you cope with everything the game throws at you without having to resort to dubious tricks. And this is exactly what Guardians are supposed to be doing. They're the middle class. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Ghosts of Stalin in General
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Saturday, May 27 2006 12:28 Profile #21 It's not easy to discredit a big ideology with a few historical examples. But Communism — at least if we mean Marxist-Leninism — used to boast that it ruled a third of the world, and that weight of history is now a heavy burden of evidence. It may not be enough to prove Communism is intrinsically bad, but it makes it reasonable to suppose that it might well be. A Communist can still argue otherwise, but a Communist who doesn't recognize that they have to make their case against apparently strong evidence is a fool. Having read a bit of Marx and Lenin in college, I have recently been impressed by Malia's argument in The Soviet Tragedy. He makes a detailed analysis of claims that, at any of several possible points, the Soviet system went off its good Leninist rails. He concludes that it was really those rails themselves that were the problem: ruthless coercion of many by few was there from the start, and it poisoned the good fruit for which it was supposed to have been committed. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Character Names in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Saturday, May 27 2006 10:53 Profile #26 quote: Originally written by Delicious Vlish: It was late, I had drank entirely to much coffee, and I realised that the island was full of ghosts and spirits. So I named my Guardian Shaggy, and my only creation was a Roamer named Scooby. I did think about a Thahd named Fred though. Is it somehow possible to rename Alwan and Greta? Alwan is a better Shaggy. And he deserves to be named Shaggy. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Guardians need help in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Saturday, May 27 2006 10:47 Profile #24 I forget, was the Agent also going to be able to match the Guardian in Strength (for damage and for carrying armor and weapons) and Endurance? Those are very significant factors if you want to be a slugger. Having said that, I concede that Augmentation and high spell strength makes Endurance pretty much irrelevant, and I did buy the original argument that by pushing combat skills while keeping enough magic to enjoy the buffs, an Agent could slug it out as well as a Guardian. That's probably a problem, but I wonder. Ideally, if the Agent is using her magic strength to boost her minor suit of combat, then the Guardian should be able to compensate with some decent creations. But that's a lot harder to quantify, since there's no easy way to weigh a pair of Vlish against 3 points of Melee Weapons. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Guardians need help in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Saturday, May 27 2006 07:27 Profile #13 I've been replaying G2 as a squad leader missile Guardian. I haven't put anything into melee, and I don't even carry a sword (though once or twice I've finished off an adjacent wounded rogue with a Fiesty Slap of Pain). I have kept two Fyoras alive from the very early game, and two Vlish made after reaching the Magus Complex. I'm now at level 20, having cleared out the demo and most of the Awakened lands. This team works fine, I think. The creations aren't exactly a legion of doom, but they pretty much pull their weight. Actually the Fyoras don't do nearly as much as the Vlish, but I'm keeping them out of sentiment, and because sometimes the Vlish run out of energy. My Guardian does actually use the fact that he's a Guardian, not a Shaper: with good armor and Parry, he stands in front of his creations and takes most enemy attacks. But he uses War Blessing and Protection constantly, and they make a huge difference. Overall, gameplay is somewhere in between the Shaper's 'micro-manage the army' and the Agent's 'shoot and run'. I named my Guardian 'Aubrey' with prescience, because combat feels like Nelson's navy: firing broadsides as we gradually close, then finishing with a short-range brawl. I think the reason this group is working better than what I've tried in the past is that everybody in the party is fighting, and fighting together. I still think it's very hard to keep battle creations alive on Torment, unless perhaps you're a Shaper with enough essence to make a mob of them. And a melee Guardian with a few artillery creations can also easily lose them, because if anything targets them he's often too far away to help them. But with my Guardian standing off and sniping along with his guys, everyone seems to be able to support each other. Perhaps part of my greater satisfaction with Guardian creations in this game, though, may be because my Guardian's missile attacks don't do as much damage as a melee Guardian's sword. So more enemies are getting pulled down with help from creations. With a melee Guardian, I find nothing dies until I hit it myself, and when I get around to doing that, it will die without help from creations. Anyway, though, the missile Guardian with a small squad of creations works, and is a different playing experience from an Agent or a Shaper. So my conclusion at this point is that the problem isn't with Guardians; it's with melee. Melee is just too dangerous on Torment. With armor and Parry you can pump up a single melee Guardian enough to handle it, but your creations can't get those, so they die. Is this problem really a problem? Maybe not. Maybe it's fine for Torment to force ranged tactics, with solo melee Guardian as an 'iron man' option for greater challenge. Or maybe there could be a skill, cheap for Guardians, that gives your creations extra armor, maybe also other combat buffs. It could represent your training and skilled command, or something. Or maybe just let Parry extend to creations in some degree. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Why I did not like Geneforge 3 in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Saturday, May 27 2006 06:51 Profile #63 Jeff seems to have said the the 'third path' of G4 will not be the Awakened. I hope that doesn't leave them out of G4 entirely. I don't necessarily mean that they have to be a joinable faction in G4, just that we should see something of their effect on subsequent history. They were a big part of G1 and G2, and in G2 they had a major power base and made major advances in magic. I don't mind if we learn that they fell apart and no longer exist as an independent faction. It would be natural for them to break up, as the war heated up, into a pacifist faction that just hid and an aggressive faction that got absorbed into the Rebels. I could also see Tuldaric winding up as a mad recluse like Phariton. But whatever happens to the Awakened, I'd like to meet some aged servile or something in G4, who can tell me whatever became of them all. And I'd like to see some legacy of Tuldaric. In G2 he opened up the entire fourth tier of spells, by developing the augmentation platforms that enable people to cast them. The Barzites and Takers are said to have learned the method from him, I believe. Somebody ought to at least tell his story in G4, and it ought to be a good one. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Why I did not like Geneforge 3 in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Friday, May 26 2006 00:50 Profile #52 About words versus actions: surely as far as the game's innards are concerned, they are all just flags. So there should be no problem in principle with any combination, and what I understand Jeff to be saying is just that the whole system shouldn't be too complicated. But it doesn't seem to me that it has to be insanely complicated in order to achieve the sort of thing JS has in mind. For instance, instead of just one score representing Shaper versus Rebel alignment, there could be three, one for the first, middle, and third parts of the game. The player would have to keep on doing well with one side, or they would start asking what you had done for them lately. And a switch in alignment would be recorded, and people could react to it. Or instead of keeping one score for alignment by expressed opinion, with pro-Shaper statements raising the score and pro-Rebel statements lowering it, there could be two separate scores, one for pro-Rebel and one for pro-Shaper. This is hardly rocket science, but it would allow NPCs to distinguish between a PC who speaks out of both sides of their mouth, and one who doesn't say much either way. Not necessarily an important distinction, but it would be fun to see it noticed, and it would cost practically nothing to implement. While we're at this, it has always bothered me how your every word is apparently broadcast instantaneously to everyone in the game, even though in many cases there seems to be limited contact between different regions. Since there is now a clock in the game, from G3, there could be some sort of delay imposed -- and this could make for some interesting options. Or it could make a difference whether you let survivors escape an attack to carry the news. The game engine can apparently already set NPCs to run to an exit zone, and register when they leave, because the Rescue Mine Serviles quest in G2 does all these things. Script a few characters whose action when hostile or sufficiently wounded is to escape, and have this make news of your deed travel to certain quarters much faster. I can well imagine that making everything super-realistic would get too complicated, but perhaps a few key events could be handled more carefully, and it would make things interesting. It may just be that I've played these games too many times, but the current crude system is seeming a bit too crude to me. I find I can take the sect leaders seriously as personalities when they are talking about themselves, but their judgements of me are too obviously based on simple scripts, which are too easy to manipulate. None of this matters much if you just plan to play a straightforward soldier for one side; but deception is such a natural option in these games, where everybody is in principle willing to let you into their inner councils. It would be nice for the trust game to be a little more serious, so that one side could order you to infiltrate the other, and you'd have to think carefully about how to do this, and whether to doublecross. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Why I did not like Geneforge 3 in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Thursday, May 25 2006 12:45 Profile #40 I agree that in real life there is always a moral choice, in the sense of there being at least one morally best option; but I think it may still be one that includes bad things happening. I haven't had to make any nightmare choices so far in my life, either, thank God. But I am sure they exist. What I know of the history of real revolutions, for instance, makes me think that a rebellion against a tyranny tends to bring them. In real life, decling to 'play' is itself a choice which can just as easily be catastrophic as any other. Someone who lets something far worse happen that what could have happened, just from unwillingness to face hard choices, would be guilty in my book. If their conscience is quiet, so much the worse for them. But of course there is nothing wrong with declining to play a game that involves anything unpleasant, including unpleasant choices. As to Zeviz's comments about fighting rogues as a Rebel: if you can't countenance war against the Shapers at all, then don't play a Rebel; you should be fine as a Loyalist. But the Rebel goal in G3 is to build an invincible but intelligent army of Ur-Drakons, not to continue spawning mindless rogues to attack peasants. An honorable Rebel can presume, I think, that once the Geneforge is built the Rebels will be able to end the war quickly and efficiently, with minimal damage to innocent bystanders. This turns out not to be true, but it could have been, and so the choice to support the Rebels with that hope in mind would seem moral to me, as long as violent resistance to the Shapers can be accounted moral under any circumstances. [ Thursday, May 25, 2006 12:57: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
I'm back. Finally. in General
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Thursday, May 25 2006 04:07 Profile #2 It worked on me at least. I was truly relieved to see your signature. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Dan Brown Book... in General
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Thursday, May 25 2006 03:24 Profile #1 Never read The Da Vinci Code. Before it got big I read his earlier book Angels & Demons which was intensely silly: set in the present day, but it turns out that the Europeans are about a hundred years ahead of the US scientifically. This is only a surprise because the notoriously parochial American media has not bothered to report spaceplanes and antimatter. Yet when a terrible plot with deep roots in European history emerges, those brilliant European scientists call in a Harvard professor. It's a good thing they do, though, because the secrets of the Illuminati turn out to be typographical tricks with English words. Did I forget to mention it all happens in a papal election? -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Why I did not like Geneforge 3 in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Thursday, May 25 2006 03:07 Profile #29 It's true that real moral choices are not always so extreme as, as Zeviz aptly put it, joining the SS or joining the KGB. But sometimes they are very hard, with grief in every choice; and declining to choose is itself a choice, rarely the best. The Geneforge games are based on a sharp moral dilemma of power: you need power to do good, but the power is very apt to bring evil. I think that the game mechanics may give an illusion that the dilemma can be avoided. The PC eventually becomes so powerful that he or she can completely wipe everything in the game, so it is easy to suppose that with the PC's help the good guys could win, if only some good guys could be found. But with good role-playing I think one should imagine that, beyond Sucia Island or the Drypeak Range or the Ashen Isles, there is a world of immensely powerful Shapers (and now immensely powerful Rebels as well), who could not possibly be defeated by a single PC, even one of 65th level. In fact the games' endings generally imply that even Sucia Island or Drypeak or the Isles remain full of rogues hidden away between zones in some way, even after all zones have been cleared by the player, so that fully clearing the game locations alone requires armies. So even with the player on their side, any good guys that might be found would actually require a lot more power to survive: as much power, in fact, as will be gathered by their opponents who are unhampered by goodness. That is why the Awakened really needed the Geneforge in G1 and Tuldaric in G2. And that is why I do not feel, myself, that more moral choices really are available in the Geneforge world than are offered by the games. On the other hand, the games are by no means blind to the desirability of better options. You have to join a side in order to finish G3, but staying true enough to your side in order to win just means completing a few key actions. It is perfectly possible, for instance, to eliminate most of the rogues in the game while playing as a Rebel; and you can help the most sympathetic rebels while playing as a Loyalist. The game works fine, for me, if my character is a reluctant Loyalist or wavering Rebel. If you also want to get the most possible side-benefits from each side, you may have to power-game your dialogue responses. If you are less than whole-hearted as a Loyalist and yet want them to teach you all their secrets, then it is not a flaw that the game makes you say things you don't believe; it is just forcing you to role-play dishonesty. If you don't want to lie, you can admit your true views to the Shapers. They won't expel you, just refuse to teach you higher level spells. And especially in G3 there are a few hints that perhaps a better way might someday emerge. There is a Drayk (I think) who hints that perhaps there could be a way to prevent or resist the dehumanizing effect of the canisters. There is the reasonably enlightened attitude of Khyrryk; perhaps in the stress of the war he or others like him could gain enough leverage in Shaper society to make deep reforms. And there is a Battle Gamma (I think) who knows he is going dangerously mad from a creation flaw, but is permitted by the Rebels to live out his life as much as possible. That indicates that there is some sincerity among the Rebels as well. I think it's the great thing about the Geneforge series that when we are anticipating the next installment, we're not dreaming of great new graphical effects, but hoping for some new thread to be added to a moral dilemma. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Xylgham udwlnit skretcko!1!! in General
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Tuesday, May 23 2006 15:50 Profile #201 The most powerful? It is to laugh. Why, an Adminastor is not even an Archon. And as I know all too well, even an Imponderable Archon is merely the ignorant puppet of the real powers. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Ghosts of Stalin in General
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Tuesday, May 23 2006 15:44 Profile #10 The key thing about the Cold War was that everybody on Earth thought of it as a contest between approximate equals. That was what kept it Cold. Today there is plenty of antagonism towards the US, but no equal contest, so we can have lots of hot little wars instead of one big Cold War. Whatever improvement this represents is presumably lost on the people who get killed, and their families and friends. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Why I did not like Geneforge 3 in Geneforge Series
Student of Trinity Electric Sheep One Member # 3431	written Tuesday, May 23 2006 14:44 Profile #4 Maybe I'm forgetting some of the plot; what I recall is that there are lots of opportunities for evil things, but the only people you really have to kill are leaders committed to one cause or the other, and that would seem to fall under the RPG version of 'just war' theory. It's true that both sides have their objectionable points, but both sides can also be interpreted as pursuing just goals by necessary means. And G1 and G2 were both like that, too. Is it that you feel there are morally superior choices available within the G3 circumstances, which the game arbitrarily denies to you as options? Or is it that you want the game to be a fantasy of morality as well as of magic, where circumstances never force you to choose among evils, but always include a purely good alternative? -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 \| Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00

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