Jediphile

Now you're just spouting propaganda... Like Ghandi was weak? If that's the company I'm in, then I'll be happy to be weak. Besides, I have not argued doing nothing, as you seem to suggest. I just hold firmly that to support democracy is to allow individuals to choose for themselves. You seem to think that it's to choose a side in the war. Well, I don't want to belong to extremists on either side, and I will not let anyone tell me that I must! I'd agree with you that it's an attack on our culture, but you don't win a war by destroying the enemy, because you can't destroy the enemy. We're not at war with just a select group of people - we're at war with an extremist ideology. We're not going to win that war by embracing an opposing extremist ideology. We're going to win by sticking with our principles and ideals and demonstrating that we do want peace and justice and that they cannot anger us into becoming the monsters they claim we already are. Already we've begun reducing our own liberties and rights for the sake of "national security". But in doing so, what message are we sending the terrorists? We're telling them that they *can* change us, that they can make us abandon our principles. We need to stop that and instead show them that they can kill as many of us as they like or not - it will not make us change our position or, as Blair put it yesterday, our resolve.

Well, I wouldn't say toothless, but certainly with less of a bite. But then the US probably needs the UN as much as the other way around. Well, I guess the obvious rebuttal to that comment would be "what weapons?", since they rushed in to prevent that, and yet didn't find any weapons. Seems the inspectors weren't so wrong after all. Yet the fact that there were no WMDs is also forgotten, since that does not serve the governments who supported the war.

I do support democracy and freedom. I'm just not quite so convinced that Mr. Bush does. To argue "with us us or with the terrorists!" is not a particularly democratic position - it's a threat to get people to submit. That's not particularly democratic. And I will not let Mr. Bush or you or anyone dictate to me that there is no middle ground - I'll find that answer myself and decide for myself, thank you very much. Oh, please. I think I have already demonstrated better grasp of reality than that, but the quote is still very obvious, and it certainly tells us what Lucas thinks. I didn't say that, but then I see that the "with us or with the terrorists" approach is working quite well, sadly

I didn't mean to imply that the Bin Laden family is suspicious no matter what, just that their dismissal of Osama does not somehow put them above suspicion. And I don't think the problem many have with the US today stems from its actions during the Cold War. It's probably more that it looks like bias against arab nations in many cases. The US argued that Iraq should not be allowed to violate UN decisions, and that action had to be taken. Well, how does that look to arabs, when Israel has been in violation of similar UN decisions and yet the US has vetoed any sort of response to that every time? Now put the US reluctance to let weapon inspectors do their job in Iraq on top of that, and the picture begins to look rather disturbing. Hans Blix spoke very harshly against the aggressive tone of the US before the Iraq war, yet that seems to be somehow forgotten today.

Who? And why?

Definitely Episode V for me. The original movie was eye candy and adventure on mass scale, but in Empire Strikes Back, the story truly turned epic and the tone became much grittier and menacing, and yet the movie was somehow far more mature in its conflicts than its predecessor. They dropped that in Jedi, however, which was too much muppet show and too much rerun of earlier ideas otherwise. Again a death star threatens the heroes, again the rebels attack it, again Luke and Vader battle, etc. The effects and the 40+ minutes finale were good though - others have tried to pull a finale like that, but I know of no one else to have succeeded as they did in ROTJ. Episode III was pretty good, though I also like Palpatine's manipulations in Episode II - they're sublte there - but neither of them can reach the original movies (except ROTJ - I consider ROTS a better movie than ROTJ). And who on Earth voted for Episode I ?!?

Well, they would have done that in any event given what the alternative was... Nor did I say so. But most terrorists that have been identified do seem to be Saudi. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were, if memory serves. There was a push for that long before Iraq war. Though the leaders of Saudi-Arabia have voiced support for the US, that does not mean that the population feels the same way. Don't forget, the leaders of Saudi-Arabia are scarcely democratically elected. That's also a thought for concern...

I feel the exact opposite way - I'd accept less planets if that means stronger plot and better characterization. Sure, more planets would be great, but someone has to do all the work, and I'd much rather have focus on plot than on graphics. Of course, then plot will be very linear and not much longer than before, or else too many fans will not play, but I want plot to have priority, and I think more planets would interfere with that. I've suggested Coruscant, Alderaan, Myrkr, Sleheyron, Khar Delba/Khar Shian, Ziost, and finally Coruscant again. That's six worlds or seven if you count Khar Shian (the moon of Khar Delba). That's about the same as in KotOR1 and a little less than KotOR2. But if it supports a deep plot, then fine by me. Besides, fewer planets also get my vote if it means they finish the game... "

First of all, I want to express my condolences to relatives and friends of the dead in London after the events of yesterday, which demonstrates atrocious acts by barbaric savages, who should be hunted down and punished without mercy - there is and can never be any excuse for willfully targeting civilians - ever!! That said, let me address a few comments here. For one, the US is scarcely on friendly terms with Saudi-Arabia. It has been and that is why there are bases there, but the relationship is strained, and many people of Saudi-Arabia want the US troops out of their country. Some have argued that this is one reason for the invasion of Iraq, since the US could then set up bases there instead. Not sure myself, but it's a possibility. Indeed, most of the extremist terrorists seem to come Saudi-Arabia. Osama bin Laden is a Saudi. Also, while I do share some of the concerns that Hildegard mentions, that does not mean it is reasonable to blame all americans or even the entire administration for the policies that may be questionable. For example, I find **** Cheney's association with Halliburton and its many contracts in Iraq to be highly questionable and indication of corruption, but that does not mean that I will hold people like Rice or Powell responsible for it. Indeed, many americans have themselves questioned the Cheney/Halliburton relationship and argued corruption and nepotism. Let us not tear this forum into a battleground for the war on terror. There are always extremists on both sides of a conflict, and they will always seek to polarize the situation and so draw people from the middle to one side or the other. I don't like it that Bush said, "with us or with the terrorists" - as Patrick Stewart once said, "That's Orwellian!" I will not Bush or anyone else to tell me which side I'm on - that's my own business, and I'll thank everyone else to respect that, thank you very much! Doing something about terrorism is, of course, necessary, but while I accept that, I'm also fairly convinced that Bush made a lot of sympathizers for Al-Qaeda with his comments, and we really don't need to bolster their ranks. I find it interesting that George Lucas has Anakin practically quoting Bush in one of his darker moments. "If you're not with me, then you're my enemy!" Well, "Only a Sith deals in absolutes..." To polarize the situation is to continue the war. No, we should not just sit down and ignore the whole thing, but we should also not allow terrorists to tell us which side we're on. They're only out to make this into a religious conflict between Islam and other religions, which is a lie - wars are never truly about religioius convinctions, though some people delude themselves and others into thinking so, since they apparently feel their atrocious acts are somehow heroic and morally defensible if it's all for a higher and nobler cause. It's still a lie, though. Wars are about politics, and this one is no different. Let us not accept the lie.

I might consider that, except nobody knows those rules, I have only one of the rulebooks, and the rest is long since out of print as well as out of date. So it's not really an option.

Why? That's actually pretty pricey. Especially if the group decides to protect themselves with it every battle. My players think long and hard before using the money on it. Besides, all it does is reduce damage to zero. Well, I never thought you suggested that. My apologies if I gave you that impression. I just meant to address that as a possibility, which IMO meant discounting it, while we were on the subject. Quite right. I don't see Steve Jackson Games doing that, however, for the reasons I have mentioned above - they would be about the last company to do it, methinks.

GURPS, but I'd actually like to hear both. Precisely. Why extraordinary? Yes, Stoneskin is completely unbalanced as written in 2e rules, and in my campaign we long since embraced costs for the diamond dusts needed (150 gp per casting that actually went down when listed as cheaper in Spells & Magic). We also accepted a maximum time limit for Stoneskin, though not for the wizard himself - his stoneskin could remain active for as long as needed. Don't see why Fire Shield was extraordinary in 2e, though. It made the attacker take the same damage that he inflicted. That's not so bad, since he can just choose to not attack or used ranged attacks until the effect goes away. As such it served as a deterrent to hostile attacks against the wizard and so had a strategic value. This was already toned down from 1e, where attackers took twice the damage they inflicted! In 3e, however, it's reduced to "okay, I'll roll the dice and take my chances..." - so much for hailing the "good old days" of 1e in 3e, I guess "

Exactly, and it fits uncomfortably nicely with my predictions and suggestions for the Exile in KotOR3, and those were just based on the odd way that the confrontation with Nihilus ends - I had actually forgot all about the dark side version of the Exile on Korriban. I mean, both the Exile and Nihilus have this power to suppress the force and were both on Malachor V, yet when the Exile takes his mask, but can't even be bothered to look at his face to see it's someone he/she knows? Odd, isn't it? I'm now more confirmed about my suspicionss of the Nihilus/Exile relationship than before...

For the setting's sake, I hope that never happens. *Ugh*.... I can't imagine playing Planescape under GURPS rules.. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Nor can I, but it's not likely to happen. For one, WotC wouldn't allow it, since Planescape is supposed to be a D&D product. If Planescape wasn't compatible with Ravenloft (a demiplane) or the D&D cosmology, then it all goes out the window quickly. Secondly, the fanbase would be screaming bloody murder - the established Planescape fans would never embrace Planescape with GURPS rules, and so why would anyone bother publish one? Finally, if Steve Jackson Games wanted to do a fantasy cosmology/multiverse campaign, then why would they waste money getting rights to use D&D's? Surely they could come up with something fairly similar (even if that means stealing Planescape ideas with arms and legs) and not have to care about WotC or the D&D/d20 system at all.

How so? Some of those cows definitely needed to go. I was so disappointed that they stuck with the cumbersome and horribly outdated magic system that has got to be one of the most hated and limiting aspects of D&D. The 2e Player Option: Spells & Magic book was even beginning to change that a little by introducing a spell point system (not good, but better than the old thing). Since many of the Player Option rules were introduced into 3e (faster rounds, AoO, etc.), I really did expect 3e to embrace a different magic system as well, or at least offer one as an alternative. But nope - magic went back 20 years to the very inception of AD&D 1e rules Armor Classes definitely need to go. They may be simple, but you have to consider at which point a rule becomes so ridiculous that it's better to replace it with something that's more convincing. D&D players might not accept GURPS armor rules, but I dare say compromise between those two that takes both ability to dodge and armor penetration into consideration is possible. Oh, I don't know... It's initial design might have been slicker and, as others have said it, more polished, but then 2e was a decade old and much better games had been released in the meantime, so 3e had better be better. Yet for a game that professes to cater to existing D&D fans, it sure did manage to alienate a large percentage of teh fanbase - it's really annoying when spells like Fire Shield or Stoneskin don't work the way you're used to anymore for no good reason - they completely lost the strategic edge they had before and just became dull protective spells with none of the deterrent that had made them strategically attactive before. What, the game designers just forgot that? And of course, 3e soon turned out to be just as flawed as it's predecessors... True enough, but then TSR were also terrible at handling and inspiring plots and characters that people might have liked. To force Salvatore away from Drizzt after he created him, claiming that they owned the character and knew better what to do with him than the author signifies stupidity and greed on a level that just scares customers away. It's the sort of thinking that earned TSR its "T$R" nickname... If they had inspired writers to do interesting campaigns and plots, then things might have been different. But instead they just recycled old AD&D 1e stuff and used it for the likes of Rod of Seven Parts and Return to the Tomb of Horror - not bad per se, but not terribly inspiring either... And it will end the same way as it did for TSR's 2e venture - once the customers realize that the market is flooded with endless cascades of superficial and boring material, they will stop buying... It's just too bad that it hasn't quite sunk in yet...

Huh? When did that happen? I was under the impression that he was imprisoned until the events of the Jedi Academy trilogy set some seven years after ROTJ, which is more than 4000 years after his imprisonment at the end of the Sith War.

The Storyteller system was never intended to be a general RPG system, but was made spefically for White Wolf's own campaigns. GURPS, however, was intended from its inception to be a generic system, and WotC has declared that they have the same intent for d20 and even to smother most of the competition, if not all.

Perhaps, but unlikely. Don't forget that White Wolf supported d20 and did Ravenloft under d20 rules. So it would depend entirely on whether Steve Jackson games would do so under the OGL/d20 structure and support d20 by doing it with d20 rules. I sincerely doubt that, since Steve Jackson games would then be supporting d20, an RPG that they don't own and which belongs to a competitor, instead of their own GURPS. They might do it, if they get to do it under GURPS, but then I it even more unlikely that WotC would allow one of their settings to support a competing RPG system, especially after stating their intention to make d20 the industry-wide standard and kill off as many competing RPG systems as possible.

While my Mystara D&D campaign is winding down, I'm considered what to throw myself at next. I have several idea, of course, including running some classic Call of Cthulhu (5th edition - never d20!) modules, but I'm also thinking about a Star Wars campaign set at an undescribed time or a Matrix game set before the first film. However, I know of no Matrix rules and I hate the d20 Star Wars stuff, so I'd want to run those with GURPS rules. To that end I wonder if anyone here has tried that or know of others who have done so, and what experiences they had with it. And, of course, I'd appreciate any links I could get for sites dealing with either subject.

Well me of course, but you knew that.

Well, though that is a bit of a cop-out, the simplest explanation would be say that the Thanatos or Ranivorus told them. That could be expanded on, though. For example, the evil immortals might pose as wise scholars prompting the Nithians to explore magic and giving them hints about powerful magic on Athas (the Dark Sun world). Though nobody can reach Athas, that could get the wizards to explore this with spells that grant them insight, such as Contact Other Plane or Legend Lore or similar. With that knowledge they can then begin exploring the basics of defiling and, with two immortals subtly pointing in the right direction, learn it in record time. That way it would be a "true" discovery by mortals, which the evil immortals did not cause directly.

Anyway, as much as I like Mystara, it's not without its own flaws. It's pretty ridiculous, for example, to have Egypt/Arabian-inspired Ylaruam with its large deserts separated from the norse/viking nations of the Northern Reaches to the north only by a few miles of mountains. Ylaruam just doesn't fit into the geographical atlas of the Known World region at all and should never have been placed where it is. They've tried to explain that away with excuses of how this was the will of the Immortals and background story. Some that is very good and interesing, since it forms the basis of Nithia, but it's still just an excuse. Fans have argued that Ylaruam is a dry desert because Alfheim, the magical forests of the elves, simply drain away all the water that would otherwise have gone to Ylaruam. Also a good but utterly convenient explanation. Since I play 2e Player Option rules, I even made my own excuse, which ties with the corruption of the Nithians (who were like the ancient egyptians). According to canon, Nithia was corrupted by the evil immortals Thanatos and Ranivorus and began embracing 'forbidden' practices. Eventually the other immortals intervened and destroyed the corrupted Nithians, though they saved a few uncorrupted ones and placed them in the HW. What the Nithians did that was so wrong has never been described in any particular detail, at least not that I have read, so I used or at least added to that. In my campaign I like using the magic systems presented in the Player Option: Spells & Magic book, but I could never decide on one and so ended up with a compromise between all of them. One system is that of preserving/defiling, which is similar to that of the Dark Sun campaign. In Dark Sun you have two types of spellusers - preservers and defilers. The idea is that magic is really just lifeforce (think the Force of Star Wars and you get the idea), and that to use magic is to drain lifeforce for your own benefits. You can either do this carefully, thereby leaving life around you unharmed, or you can drain it indiscriminately from your surroundings, thereby killing less powerful life to power your spells. The former is called preserving and the latter defiling. Preservers use magic pretty much the usual way in D&D, but defilers kill plant life and lesser beings around them. Really powerful defilers can kill truly powerful beings with their power and even direct - draining all life from a huge red dragon is possible for a defiler archmage, if he needs to power a spell quickly. The Dark Sun campaign's world, Athas, is basically one huge desert drained of most life, due to huge wars between the defiling wizards over time. The world is rules by sorceror kings, who are basically the most powerful preservers and, especially, defilers in existence. But as a consequence, there are no trees, little livestock, minerals and so forth on Athas. Most weapons and armor are made from bones, for example. Now, I didn't want to go that far, but I did like the defiling idea in my campaign, so for Nithia it was easy to introduce the idea that they had simply embraced defiling and so drained their nation of all life and turning it into the huge desert it is in the gazetteer era. The immortals wouldn't have this power run free, however, and destroyed the defiling Nithians. This works will with the campaign, since the immortals actively prevent discovery of Nithia's fate. It is generally unknown that Nithia ever existed. An uncorrupted colony elsewhere called Thothia survived, but the immortals altered the memories of all mortals to think that they were never tied to the Nithians and then made them a part of the Alphatian empire. Clues to Nithia's existence may yet be found in the sands of Ylaruam, but the immortals also created a magical item in the area that cause all who travel there to forget all about Nithia. This item is call the Bead of Oblivion or simply the Spell of Oblivion. But it does tie the nature of defiling nicely into Mystara's background, I think. It's one of those little secrets I leave for my players to discover one day if they explore the matter. They're not going to like having their memories wiped when going close to the place in question in Ylaruam, but then you can't win them all...

Of course. Who has argued otherwise? Sorry, but I think I'm missing your point there...

Oh, it's not the setting. Fate of Istus (which is Greyhawk just as Temple of Elemental Evil is) would also be much better. It's a not a question of "my favorite campaign is better" but simply that the adventures in question is better quality, because they have deep role-playing and good story and plot *as well* as the mandatory monster-slashing and dungeon-crawling.

I still feel that it would have been more interesting if they had let the events of Episode I take place on Alderaan instead of Naboo. I really wanted to see it in the trilogy, yet all we see is a short part of the ending in Episode III - what a letdown. Oh, wait that is support for Alderaan in KotOR3 since it's in Episode III - I change my position then... :D