Walsingham

I would easily trade a vital organ for the power to do those flips. Awesome.

Wait... how can you not like apple pie?

I agree with Meta, but then I'm a fan of the lady singers of the forties and fifties, so I would. Don't forget though, that much of modern music is processed to feth by a producer. You aren't hearing the real deal. Now live jazz singing... you have to have a woman. (totally outrageous posing here)

I was astonished to read on the Beeb website that trading online items can run into serious cash. Thousands of pounds. It just amazes me that where in the 70s young lads were shipping off to Rhodesia to get shot at for this money, they could stay in today and earn it hitting goblins.

Very true. I think we can always expect indie studios o put out CRPGs. What bugs me though is the thought of the real cream talent getting put to work on games with lesss depth and production values. Kind of like seeing your favourite classic chef flipping burgers.

Would you guys calm down about Taks? Sheesh.

Everything is proceeding as I have forseen it...

Back when I was a proper roleplaying junkie we evolved the following system for roleplaying en route to places. Say you want a number from 1-10. 1. the ref thinks of a number 1-10. He imagines this on a clock with 10 slots. 2. the ref asks for a number from the player 1-10. 3. the ref counts round clockwise on the clockface the numer of slots the player said. This is blatantly not random. But by rarely saying what the roll is for, the system is more fun. You can try to predict what the ref will say, and guess what the roll is for. It could be for you to spot a trap or for some enemy sniper. I suggest you try it, see if it works for you.

I offically despise crates and locked chests after NWN. And this was not because they were locked, but because treasure was spread all over the place. Even this I could have got over if there was never any logic governing what was in the goram things, nor whether they contained plot critical items. I spent literally hours in total smashing the fething things open. Combine that with the tedious enemies and you had amajor grind-fest. Pah. Makes me ill just thinking about it. By contrast, something I really like about Arcanum is that I just know that if I were a thief I'd be checking out all kinds of cool locked buildings and grabbing more loot. But I don't/can't. This means I can replay later. As for not being a tech, I have to ask... The other cracking thing about being a tech is collecting all the blueprints. I am absolutely loving the way I have a list of about twenty gadgets I am looking forward to making. And I can tell it is going to get a lot longer because of all the components they mention. I expect they won't be all that powerful when they are built, but that's not the point. And as for having slow points accrual, that rather depends on how many guys you whack. There are random encounters in the wilderness that allow you to level up pretty easy, and various godly favours that can be invoked. Oh, and a hint on dynamite. Do NOT return to the dynamite once lit. I just about laughed my ass off the first time I attached some to the bank vault, thought it hadn't worked and was in teh process of retrieving it when BOOOM! I was thrown across the room, my eyebrows and armour singed off! I liked this so much i kept the save rather than going back to a previous save. I was a much chastened dwarf, I can tell you. EDIT: Oh dammit I completely forgot my original point. The scots dwarf is fun for the interactions with my disciplines, but he has a serious bug up his patookie. He objects when I kill pigs and even undead! He's like some insane pacifist. I need an alternative NPC in the Tarant/Blackroot/Ashbury/dernholm area. Preferably a non-smoker.

I think I'm starting to see lancer's point regarding either being too strong or too weak. I may be forced soon to get rid of some people. The only exception to this is that Virgil can be told to stay put, and you can go back to get him later, with no repercussions. one approach that does seem to work is to leave the pooor fools round a corner, conduct your battle cleverly just out of sight, then when you start getting beat, come running back round the corner, and 'tag' your mates into the fight. But altogether pretty lame. Another missed opportunity was, in my opinion, collaborative tech projects. In my group I am a gunsmith and explosives chappie, and the other dwarf is metalwork and machines. It would be great if we could collaborate to build wild devices. Ditto for mages in some ways. I am not so very far through the game yet, so have not noticed how far it skews in favour of mages. I hate mages anyway, so i doubt I would have realised if you hadn't told me. In fact, the only serious mage I have encountered thus far was an elf mage in a bar. He got shot three times, ate a molotov ****tail, then my henchmen bludgeoned him into unconsciousness. I only worked out how powerful he should have been when I looted his corpse. :D

I think we've paid enough attention to this twit. Hey, maybe we could make him go after simCity for encouraging the nation's ruinous tax and spend policies?

Steve, you are indeed shiny. Thanks a tonne for the hints on the books. And I see what you mean about the lady healer. I assumed that since I could make those healing goodies it made no sense having her along as well. But if she gets a bonus for having healing skill that's a different matter. My only worry would be that she would use them at inappropriate moments, like when we could ust as easily go to sleep after a fight and so on. Dammit, even the NPCs in fallout had better controls than these numbskulls. I can accept and even appreciate the notion of poor control to begin with, given my experience leading teams in reality, but after a while even the most determined fool either shapes up or gets shipped out. It migt even mke a cool added dimension, like you can have a really really powerful companion, who won't ever do what you tell them, or you can go with a more modest professional soldier, who can be issued complex tactics. A complete greenhorn academic or artists might similarly fail to grasp complex tactics.

Why sell the baby when you can train them up and use them as an assassin? I also concur with Ender's security worries. I know absolutely nothing about hacking that I didn't learn from reading about Kevin Mitnick, and I managed after about an hour to 'hack' into a neighbours computer a year ago. I didn't do anything, and got the hell out, but it scared the bejeebers out of me. Now I only link by cable.

Thanks for all the pointers. :D - Am now on lookout for drunk half-ogre. - Am also on lookout for other gunslingers. - When I recruited that tech-healer she never healed me in combat. Nor could I ask her to. Maybe I need the game patching? - If any of you recall, I can't seem to get those manuals from the university to work. I dragged them into the use slot, and it turns red. What gives? ~ Krezack. I'd say get Arcanum, but expect some grit in the sandwich.

Hey kids. i'm still playing arcanum so I thought I'd try to get your views on managing the NPCs who join your party. 1) randomly picking stuff up. I quite like them doing this, as it stops me having to act like a spanish hotel maid. I kill people, they pick up any dropped stuff. If I really want rid of things then I dump it on dead people. this amuses me, when I wonder what te local coroner will make of the curious assorted telegrams and cogwheels the deceased carry. 2) Combat. How the blue whatsits do I get them to behave sensibly in combat? I can run efective firearms based sniping and so forth without them haring into battle. Do i have to travel without them or something? 3) Are there any particularly good NPCs to watch out for? no spoilers, please.

If you like beef, take a trip to South Africa. I don't know how well it compares, but it is very cheap to eat.

We can't understand them because our brains go in straight lines, while theirs are curved.

I remember my first trip to the Far East, when I discovered that there were other tropical fruits than bananas and pineapples. I loved it. The Thais eat sliced fruit dipped in a mix of sugar salt and chilli. Fantastic.

If you've ever seen long-service armed forces people together you will see that (by and large) they are very happy to help one another. Nonetheless I agree it is nice to see it happening. You will find that most Forces types are determined to do their jobs up to and including death, but will do everything in their power to avoid ructions, given polite behaviour. Unlike civilians.

I would expect that Ebay have come across the prblem before. Since they have receivers all over the world. Thus I would expect that the contract stipulates YOU are to blame. And you also owe them your first born child. Anyway, is anyone else playing Arcanum?

The problem with Ebay is paypal. Their data handling isn't safe, IMO.

Aaaah.... I bought those damn books. Well, I say bought them I discovered afterwards that the nice man gave me two for free. Having not figured out how to use objects like schematics at the time I never even thought to use them. I sold them instead. *sob* I'll have to go trekking all over to find them. Anyway, I've had a lot of fun, from the roleplay perspective, with taking low level explosives and medicine making techs. So now Iam constantly on the look out for bits of old rag, and herbs, so I can make healing salves and molotovs, which are just about incredibly useful.

I am currently playing through Arcanum. very much enjoying it, as a dwarven technologist. Gunslinger, gunmaker, I thought it would be handy to buy some technological blueprints for making my own bullets. Straightforward, until I discover I need ranks in exlosives, not gunmaking to build them. I can cope with this, but I want to know how many fething ranks are required. If it is more than one I am just going to write off the purchase of the blueprints as a bad investment and conentrate my exp elsehwhere.

Correction; I wrote my synopsis after having stayed awake nearly 24 hours straight playing SS2. The name of the ship is in fact Serenity. It's CLASS is Firefly.

Arcanum: My copy just arrived in the post, for 4 quid. Amazing variety, and so many damn stats! Wait, no, the damn stats are bugging me at the moment. I can't work out how to plan my character development. The geenral feel I have ad so far is Fallout-esque, in terms of th graphics, and the morality. Also reminiscent of Lionheart, in GUI, which annoys me, since Lionheart was so tediously hack and slash. Inventing and building things is cool though. System Shock 2: I am playing as a marine, lurching from deck to deck, smashed on malt liquor and brain implants; armed to the teeth, like an intergalactic Hunter S Thompson. I can't work out why it's so scary. i jump more playing that game than I do in real life. :D