Walsingham

I find it interesting that this is a Russia thread, and we're talking about the SS. ...When the current Russian President was a lieutenant colonel in the KGB. If we're going to discuss good and bad organisations surely it should be the KGB?

You make a good point, Mor. I'm not arguing you should fight on for no ****ing reason. I'm just saying if you have something to fight for, then fight and don't be afraid. I _personally_ think it's ludicrous and cowardly on the part of society that we insist people who have decided they've had their fill can't be ushered out comfortably and with dignity. We wonly do it because we're terrified of our own confrontation. It's got nothing whatsoever to do with that individual facing death. But then I think we also provide help to a lot of people for the same cowardly reason. So I guess it balances out overall. Sorry, Trashman. I'm trampling your disclosure.

If I am being a **** about this, I'm not trying to be. This is like arguing what do you need for a fire? Wood or oxygen? You need more than one thing. All I'm trying to say is that the will to fight is the oxygen, not that you only need oxygen. Although I should point out that strictly speaking the body defeats cancer every day. Beating cancer isn't the exception to the rule. Beating cancer IS the rule.

It's been my observation over a long time that some of the nicest people in the World 'manage' or are interested in violent shooty death. Whereas a great many bloody awful people are ostensibly 'carers'.

On these shores, it takes a 'wallet' to fight. Otherwise, you're either dead or in debt, which may as well be identical conditions. You can be as rich as creosote. If you give up you'll certainly die. And in debt isn't the same as dead. For the very obvious reason that you can flee the country and escape debt. I'm pretty sure you can't just leg it from a morgue.

I rather like the idea that you actually WILL guarantee the safety of Disney World. A heroic, timeless defender, inappropriately attired and smelling of cabbage stems.

Is that a fact?

I really enjoyed that video.

I assume you don't like sauerkraut? I always have, ironically.

Quick reminder, gentlemen: cautionary checks should include 1) Shoulder to hip ratio 2) Adam's apple 3) Voice pitch 4) Not having a ****

I think guns need to catch up with the '70s sci-fi look of body armour.

Whereas posting everything in unreadable affected English isn't.

My feeling is that many problems are caused by the emphasis in US legal circles on the letter of the law without the faintest interest in what the law is for. This makes lots of work for lawyers, but the second and third order effects are bonkers.

And I think a trip to the Far East might teach you a little more salutary caution.

I'd amplify Rostere's comment: People get cancer every day. People beat cancer every day. What puts you in the latter camp? Without digging out the references I compiled when my own family got hit, I'd have to summarise in one phrase: the will to fight. Numerous studies have shown that pretending you don't have cancer is actually better than 'facing death'. Believing you are the exception and maintaining high morale is even better. On a purely personal basis I'd observe something else: fighting keeps you feeling alive longer, even if you die no later.

I've been thinking about it and suggest ownership is a triumvirate. You own something if it is: 1. Utilisable - you have the ability to use it and get benefit from it 2. Control - you have the ability to govern its behaviour 3. Secure - you have the means, via personal power or the law to prevent some other party from overmastering your quality in the first two There are examples of getting two out of three. But these aren't really ownership, IMO. Essentially, 'owning' a cat is a case of lacking one or more of these qualities at any given moment in time.

Like Cinnabar, in Rogue Trooper?

It's been touched on by some already, but I really think it comes down to your in-game quest macguffin. Your heroic personal assistant, telling you what you were supposed to be doing. Because this is the main thing which my friends with family say: they got confused about where they were in the story, AND what their motivations were. The character campaign plan goes out the window, and with no coherent concept to motivate them, they had no rhyme or reason in forming a new one. Like I say, I'm rarely more than four feet away from a notebook and pen, so that's how I keep track. But most people probably need a helper. My only concern is that you don't deliver something bone obvious, with glowing arrows over everything. Because that's the lesser component. You also need to give people a way to track WHY the hell they were doing something.

Which would be perfectly obvious to anyone actually from Russia. Or anyone who plays too many ww2 games.

I've been trying to think of a polite way to put this but I can't. Your negative attitude is symptomatic of the incredibly poor standard of discourse online. It ignores three things: 1) Important people do read things online 2) 'Not important' people write things online 3) 'Not important' people occasionally turn up in unexpectedly important places Ordinary people make a difference. What we say, and what we read shapes us. How do you think Israel Palestine got into the public awareness in the first place? The public talked about it.

While I normally appreciate your open-mindedness, I draw the line at regarding ANY career in the SS as "prestigious". But yes, only Lofoby seems to be claiming the pictures weren't propaganda. Which in any case is weird since the Soviets were hardly strangers to lunatic propaganda posters.

I did the god's blessing uber-quest in Arcanum yesterday evening. It took me two hours and thanks to this thread I did it properly. I felt the need to cheat and get rough areas for some locations, but 'bought' each by throwing away 10k gold into bins each time. Then went criss-crossing the country to find them. However, I stuck to my guns and worked out the sequence using only the in-game clues. In the end the rewards aren't worth the time. But the process of risk, and brain ache ... THAT's the win. You can talk about having other demands on your time. But ultimately that's not a reason to nerf the game complexity. That's a reason you work out how to mount the game interface on a fishing pole.

Well, firstly, welcome, and make certain you read the Flashman novels asap, for your anti-hero. Thinking about what's been written here, I'm going to crank up the waffling a bit and suggest evil comes from two sources, of which only the first is 'true' evil: 1) People who are fundamentally broken. They feel nothing towards others, and do evil quite simply because they feel icy contempt for ordinary people. Although they will often dress it up in all kinds of ideology. 2) People who are lead into evil by the three classic lines of authority (charismatic, pragmatic, traditional) by one of the first type. Many people _unaccustomed to making meaningful decisions_ get confused and add in a third type where someone in pursuit of a wholesome aim, but lacking facts or analytical tools, chooses the wrong course of action to get there. For example, a medieval 'doctor' would prescribe you nonsense, and charge you for the privilege. Yet I doubt they were evil.

PE is the first new game I'll have bought in a LONG time where I'll buy a reporter's pad a pencil just for playing it.

Jar Jar binks, and those weirdly racist looking Chinese alien things are gone, baby, gone.