Profile for Boots
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Displayed name | Boots |
| Member number | 455 |
| Title | Shock Trooper |
| Postcount | 265 |
| Homepage | |
| Registered | Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
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| Author | Recent posts |
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| Article - Good Bad Guys in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Tuesday, April 13 2004 20:34
Profile
Amazonian Saga has something along the lines of a villain whose heart you change. Sort of. Not going to try to remember all the twists and turns in that plot. [ Tuesday, April 13, 2004 22:43: Message edited by: Boots ] -------------------- Forgive them, for they are young and rich and white. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| Article - Good Bad Guys in Blades of Avernum | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Tuesday, April 13 2004 20:34
Profile
Amazonian Saga has something along the lines of a villain whose heart you change. Sort of. Not going to try to remember all the twists and turns in that plot. [ Tuesday, April 13, 2004 22:43: Message edited by: Boots ] -------------------- Forgive them, for they are young and rich and white. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| 1 Character Party with 4 People In in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Monday, April 12 2004 23:37
Profile
Got busy spewing another of my endless nothings, but there's no point saying anything besides: Thuryl is, as usual, very very right. Well, that, and also: I'd play a learning-disordered marmot with serious Mommy issues if that's what *i had required for me to witness Emulations change-up everything he did previously as a designer. That's far more interesting than any attachment I might have formed with Tongue or whoever the fighter is who's in the party I use for high level scenarios. It wouldn't be shabby, however, to let designers do more with PC names than dump them into the text area -- or am I missing the calls for dialog boxes, etc.? Not a big deal, I guess. [ Monday, April 12, 2004 23:41: Message edited by: Boots ] -------------------- Forgive them, for they are young and rich and white. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| 1 Character Party with 4 People In in Blades of Avernum | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
|
written Monday, April 12 2004 23:37
Profile
Got busy spewing another of my endless nothings, but there's no point saying anything besides: Thuryl is, as usual, very very right. Well, that, and also: I'd play a learning-disordered marmot with serious Mommy issues if that's what *i had required for me to witness Emulations change-up everything he did previously as a designer. That's far more interesting than any attachment I might have formed with Tongue or whoever the fighter is who's in the party I use for high level scenarios. It wouldn't be shabby, however, to let designers do more with PC names than dump them into the text area -- or am I missing the calls for dialog boxes, etc.? Not a big deal, I guess. [ Monday, April 12, 2004 23:41: Message edited by: Boots ] -------------------- Forgive them, for they are young and rich and white. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| Roses of Reckoning (BoA) is Released! in Blades of Avernum | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Monday, April 12 2004 20:20
Profile
Tim O'Brien says (or said in the beta) that the exit is "through the room to the east," or something of that sort, yet the exit in that room leads north. I did whine about this during testing, but I fear TM's otherwise wise policy of ignoring anything I say on the grounds that I'm a barbiturated gibbon may have let him down in this instance. -------------------- Forgive them, for they are young and rich and white. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| Happy Easter in General | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Monday, April 12 2004 18:16
Profile
Cross = tool of Roman state violence. Invented (as far as I know) by the Romans. Used exclusively by the Romans. Intended to maintain the imperial order through exemplary punishments. Roman commentators tend to be precise on that point: they've got no shortage of ways of killing inconvenient people; if they kill by crucifixion, they do so in order to demonstrate something to a larger population. It should be clear what it means for Gibson to present the central institution not of Roman power but of Jewish religious and cultural life as a cross factory. Though remind me: I can't recall whether this scene survived the final cut -- my patience for the movie wavered; it was definitely cause for objections from Jewish and Catholic theologians who saw the script. The point isn't that anything is or is not historically impossible. The point is that one thing at least is historically inescapable (until the so-called "postmodern" thread leaks into this discussion): from among a wealth of intertextual material, Gibson has chosen exactly that selection and arrangment of possibilities which -- as recently as Hitler's glowing words about Oberammergau, if we're going to drag him into the conversation -- were the stuff of the Christian passion plays that again and again fueled pogroms throughout Europe (in the late-1500s, to take one of several examples, the Pope banned stagings of the passion in Rome because too many Jews were being murdered after the show). For that reason, Vatican II instructs Catholics to understand the Gospels in historical and polemical context: working with, rather than papering over, the differences among them and acknowledging that they are themselves written after the fact in very different social and theological circumstances than those in which the events they describe took place (the representation of the Pharisees is the usual example of such retroactive, anachronistic projection on the part of the Gospel writers). By this logic, "faithful" interpretation of scripture is precisely interpretation that doesn't wish away fractures in the text. If you want to read a nuanced and thoughtful approach to intertextual and historicizing interpretation of the Gospels, read those links in my first post. I don't propose that they "succeed" -- though they strike me as more forthright about Jesus' place among the diversity of Jewish resistance movements, as well as the normalizing agendas of the Apostles, than Alec earlier suggested. Not much more, but a bit. In any event, I offered them to illustrate what Gibson rejects. He can claim that there exist earlier Church denunciations of anti-Semitism. Such denunciations do exist, though they're not nearly as demanding as Vatican II, which is itself still coy on the subject. But what he -- or at least "traditional" Catholics -- do not accept is the requirement to treat the Gospels in all their apparently conflicted historical instability. In the face of that scandal, easier to tell the same old "you're with us or you're agin us" story (which, it has to be added, he can only do with liberal helpings of neither the Gospels nor "history," but a 19th century German mystic, who is the source of a good deal of the film's imagery). EDIT: When quoting from the KJV, it's probably also worth accounting for its agenda, esp. with respect to the relationship between political authority and church officials, but I'm in the same boat having no other version ready-to-hand. [ Monday, April 12, 2004 21:27: Message edited by: Boots ] -------------------- Winter comes: game over -- he's in the driveway removing snow with a flame-thrower. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| Moving Parties in Creature Scripts in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Monday, April 12 2004 17:04
Profile
Does the dialogue action INN (p. 93 of the Editor Docs) not work for your purposes? -------------------- Forgive them, for they are young and rich and white. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| Moving Parties in Creature Scripts in Blades of Avernum | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
|
written Monday, April 12 2004 17:04
Profile
Does the dialogue action INN (p. 93 of the Editor Docs) not work for your purposes? -------------------- Forgive them, for they are young and rich and white. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| Happy Easter in General | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Monday, April 12 2004 14:15
Profile
The historical Caiaphas served at the pleasure of the historical Pilate. He was appointed by Pilate, and when Pilate's term as Prefect ended, he lost his job. The Romans allowed the Jews -- alone among their subject peoples -- to observe their religion independent of the Roman cult of the Emperor, provided the Jews ceded the naming of "Jewish leaders" to the Romans. Caiaphas was thus no more or less a "Jewish leader" than Ahmed Chalabi is an Iraqi leader. It is one of history's more impressively skulking lies that has succeeded in flipping this patronage on its head, giving us instead the prototype for future scheming and protocol-ing Elders of Zion in Caiaphas and a weak-willed, conscience-stricken (eventual saint, in some quarters) Pilate. For a movie to show us "Jewish leaders" manipulating pliable gentile leaders from the shadows is, to put it politely, for it to show us something difficult to distinguish from a particularly popular, long-lived and virulent anti-semitic slander. Both before and after Jesus' crucifixion, Pilate proved willing enough to crucify suspected Jewish insurrectionists by the hundreds. Moreover, the mocking inscription on Jesus' cross wouldn't do much good as a scheme for consolidating the authority of the Temple priests, but it's a fine device for humiliating Jewish aspirations to self-rule. And even the biblical accounts are subtler on this score than Gibson. See the discussion between Caiaphas and the priests in John 11:47-52. Far from Caiaphas threatening Pilate, as he does in the movie, with a Jewish uprising unless Jesus is executed, Caiaphas and the priests here worry that, unless they turn Jesus over to the Romans, the Romans will annihilate their nation and religious insitutions. Of course, that they are motivated by fears about national self-preservation does not make their subsequent reasoning any less cynical. But if we wanted to list cynical policies motivated by sincere fear or perceived threats to national survival, we'd have far closer examples to discuss, at which point, we'd be required to identify with "Jewish leaders" in a rather more concrete and complicated sense than some abstractly-shared sinful humanity. And is it clear what a craven little joke it is for a movie to represent Jews bullying a Roman administrator with threatened revolt when, within a generation of Jesus' crucifixion, the Romans would smash every institution of Jewish cultural and political life and slaughter and scatter the Jewish people for attempting to rebel? And does anything need to be said about the scene in which all that is needed to assemble a Jewish crowd is a little money? Or the script's decision to have the cross built IN THE TEMPLE??? Alec is absolutely right: Gibson is pushing a good old dualistic deicide of a passion play in the name of a salvation theology that, whatever might be said against it, at least claimed to consign scapegoat narratives of deicide to the pagan past. And you can't pull off dualistic videogame battles of good and evil without employing some temporal Power to provide amoral backup for the side of good, which means, ultimately, offering apologies for empire and vaseline-lensed sentiment on behalf of poor, conflicted Pilate. EDIT: Should've waited minute, and just said Alec is still right. [ Monday, April 12, 2004 15:09: Message edited by: Boots ] -------------------- Winter comes: game over -- he's in the driveway removing snow with a flame-thrower. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| stuck on ... in Blades of Avernum | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Monday, April 12 2004 09:40
Profile
Go through the doors you can open. They'll ultimately channel you around "behind" the doors you cannot open (not the best way to force players into a combat gauntlet, but there you go). If I remember right, nothing in that level of the castle that is crucial to the plot lies behind magical doors. -------------------- Forgive them, for they are young and rich and white. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| stuck on ... in Blades of Avernum | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Sunday, April 11 2004 19:52
Profile
Stupid error of mine in previous post now corrected. One of the people whom you name is in the castle. One is elsewhere. At least one thread somewhere on this board gives details. -------------------- Forgive them, for they are young and rich and white. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| stuck on ... in Blades of Avernum | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Sunday, April 11 2004 19:24
Profile
The second time you meet V in his castle (keep searching further in), he should be more inclined to chew the fat. The upshot of that conversation should in turn make Maynard talkative. There may be other ways to do this -- the scenario has a limited amount of elasticity, and I haven't played it more than once (somebody in the restricted access portions of the lower castle wil also aid to this end, though it's not clear whether you've been there or not). You can find a way into that section of the castle without needing permission. Chat with the scruffier inhabitants of Seleucia. One of them will give you a tip. If you mean the gates in the NE section of the Spawning Pits, there's nothing worth having beyond them. EDIT: Note crucial error -- I said NW but meant NE. There is decent stuff in the western half of the SP. [ Sunday, April 11, 2004 19:43: Message edited by: Boots ] -------------------- Forgive them, for they are young and rich and white. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| Happy Easter in General | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Sunday, April 11 2004 17:27
Profile
In 1985, the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews issued a statement which begins by citing the following guidance, offered by the sitting Pope (hardly known for his Vatican-II-friendly, liberal leanings), for representing the historical relationship between Christianity and Judaism: "We should aim, in this field, that Catholic teaching at its different levels . . . presents Jews and Judaism, not only in an honest and objective manner, free from prejudices and without any offenses, but also with full awareness of the heritage common [to Jews and Christians]." Gibson may make a show of his flimsy lip-service to the first, strictly negative, requirement to be "free from prejudices" ("I'm not an anti-semite!", "I'm not saying the Jews as a people killed Jesus," "why Jesus himself was a Jew, so how could I harbor ill-feelings toward them?"). But he and his movie run scared from the second, more demanding risk of faith and imagination: honoring the inextricability of the "positive" historical, social and spiritual heritage common to Judaism and Christianity. To that end, he would have had to follow the criteria laid down by the U.S. Bishops' Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs in 1988. At your next youth group meeting, count the ways he violates them! Darn good he hasn't gotten his way and turned back the clock of Vatican II, because spitting in the face of the hierarchy's teachings wasn't much appreciated back then. For the fiftieth time in this thread: neither "the" Jews nor "some Jews" killed Jesus. He was killed by Romans, under the rule of Roman law, as prescribed by functionaries of the Roman state, using a quintessentially Roman technique for the application of exemplary violence to racalcitrant bodies. Indeed, Gibson's movie is surely the Roman Empire's propaganda machine's greatest accomplishment -- sixteen hundred years or so too late for their imperium, but just in time for the American one. EDIT: Well, make that the fifty-first time in this thread. Sorry, Alorael. [ Sunday, April 11, 2004 17:29: Message edited by: Boots ] -------------------- Winter comes: game over -- he's in the driveway removing snow with a flame-thrower. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| scenario criticism in Blades of Avernum | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Saturday, April 10 2004 15:11
Profile
What's preventing you from adding reviews of your own to the Lyceum or Alexandria? They don't have to be long, and mine alone set the bar pretty low for intelligibility and relevance. Blind, unaccountable "user voting" is what made the Spidweb tables the mess they are. [ Saturday, April 10, 2004 15:15: Message edited by: Boots ] -------------------- Forgive them, for they are young and rich and white. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| soecial in Blades of Avernum | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Friday, April 9 2004 19:07
Profile
Scroll down this topic a ways: Kelandon provides the other answers. -------------------- Forgive them, for they are young and rich and white. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| Stuck in A Small Rebellion in Blades of Avernum | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Friday, April 9 2004 17:23
Profile
Provided I understand when and where you are, go to the guard room next to the entrance and use the levers/wheels (I forget which) to open the front gate. Then leave. -------------------- Forgive them, for they are young and rich and white. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| Roses of Reckoning (BoA) is Released! in Blades of Avernum | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Friday, April 9 2004 07:10
Profile
There are two plots of graves, one to the east of the entrance and the other to the north. The grave you're looking for is to the north. A dialog box will pop up to tell you you're in the right place. And that won't be the last one you'll see! -------------------- Forgive them, for they are young and rich and white. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| Really Major Bug in Blades of Avernum | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Thursday, April 8 2004 01:11
Profile
Yup, and I pulled a "Thuryl" on Lord Maynard in DwD, using a save file from before my first meeting with him -- so no plots underway yet. His own guards attacked him in my defense after he hit back at one of my PCs -- which, I guess, is exactly what their script tells them to do. -------------------- Forgive them, for they are young and rich and white. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| Article - Choices and Linearity in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Wednesday, April 7 2004 18:13
Profile
From well outside the "designing" community, and well inside the "too stupid to figure out how to download from Alex." community: It might be interesting to recast this question. What "open-ended" and "linear" scenarios have tended to share is a similar motivation for their action. Built after the model of romance quests, their stories are pulled along by some goal. And it is tough to keep the contract of an open-ended, richly-detailed world in a story that otherwise progresses by being pulled. On the other hand, "push" plots -- to take the simplest example, the story of a pursuit -- are somewhat rarer in Blades. Yet set the law after me, and I'll be happy to have a world with as many obscure nooks and crannies as I can find. I don't know that "push" versus "pull" is more useful than "open-ended" versus "linear." It probably isn't. But it does seem to me that we're familiar enough with the terms of the second debate that it's worth mapping the ground shared by its combatants. That might provide a reference from which designers can depart into new territory. [ Wednesday, April 07, 2004 18:16: Message edited by: Boots ] -------------------- Forgive them, for they are young and rich and white. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| Article - Choices and Linearity in Blades of Avernum | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Wednesday, April 7 2004 18:13
Profile
From well outside the "designing" community, and well inside the "too stupid to figure out how to download from Alex." community: It might be interesting to recast this question. What "open-ended" and "linear" scenarios have tended to share is a similar motivation for their action. Built after the model of romance quests, their stories are pulled along by some goal. And it is tough to keep the contract of an open-ended, richly-detailed world in a story that otherwise progresses by being pulled. On the other hand, "push" plots -- to take the simplest example, the story of a pursuit -- are somewhat rarer in Blades. Yet set the law after me, and I'll be happy to have a world with as many obscure nooks and crannies as I can find. I don't know that "push" versus "pull" is more useful than "open-ended" versus "linear." It probably isn't. But it does seem to me that we're familiar enough with the terms of the second debate that it's worth mapping the ground shared by its combatants. That might provide a reference from which designers can depart into new territory. [ Wednesday, April 07, 2004 18:16: Message edited by: Boots ] -------------------- Forgive them, for they are young and rich and white. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| Roses of Reckoning (BoA) is Released! in Blades of Avernum | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Wednesday, April 7 2004 14:14
Profile
There's no parodying a man who's already doing a cameo in RoR as . . . well, you'll have to play it! Let's just say that certain BoA design features cater a little too well to TM's inclinations. [The Creator better be seeing something from those engrish dudes' T-Shirt sales, by the way.] -------------------- Forgive them, for they are young and rich and white. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| Cave south vodt in Blades of Avernum | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Wednesday, April 7 2004 13:18
Profile
Are we still talking about the crypt in the Fungal Cavern? If so, the secret door that admits you to the crypt proper is at the north end of the wall behind the obelisk. And what trees do you mean? I cannot remember any entrance in the cavern blocked by trees. So perhaps we are dicussing a different cave. -------------------- Forgive them, for they are young and rich and white. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| Calls that we wish existed in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Wednesday, April 7 2004 12:19
Profile
Crazy. VoDT is probably the more reliable test, but I've made a sample scenario with two towns, and I can't combine wands between them. I can however combine a wand with another that I pick up after leaving and re-entering the same town in which I acquired the first. Meanwhile, the inability to combine across scenarios seems pretty hard and fast. That all seems eccentric enough to need repairing in one direction or another. [ Wednesday, April 07, 2004 12:21: Message edited by: Boots ] -------------------- Forgive them, for they are young and rich and white. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| Calls that we wish existed in Blades of Avernum | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Wednesday, April 7 2004 12:19
Profile
Crazy. VoDT is probably the more reliable test, but I've made a sample scenario with two towns, and I can't combine wands between them. I can however combine a wand with another that I pick up after leaving and re-entering the same town in which I acquired the first. Meanwhile, the inability to combine across scenarios seems pretty hard and fast. That all seems eccentric enough to need repairing in one direction or another. [ Wednesday, April 07, 2004 12:21: Message edited by: Boots ] -------------------- Forgive them, for they are young and rich and white. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |
| Calls that we wish existed in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 455
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written Wednesday, April 7 2004 10:29
Profile
I've been trying to reproduce this, and I can't. Do you remember where precisely you got those wands? Presumably, you need wands with the same ability_str. Let's hope! Otherwise it's not a harmless bug. EDIT: I take that back. From further tinkering, there seems to be at least one condition in which wands combine. Identical wands picked up in the same town will combine with each other, but not with identical wands from different towns/scenarios (which includes different play-throughs of a single scenario). Once combined, they cannot be split. [ Wednesday, April 07, 2004 11:28: Message edited by: Boots ] -------------------- Forgive them, for they are young and rich and white. Posts: 265 | Registered: Saturday, December 29 2001 08:00 |