Tigranes

Since I don't believe in an absolute and universal value of Good and Evil, that throws me into "Alignments are bad cookies" party, but I suppose it's the most efficient way to do it in RPGs, pnp or not. Unless reputaiton/faction system comes in.

Not sure if he's talking about this one: In TOB, one of the things you have to do is... go kill some kobolds or something. Seeing as you are level 30something demigods and this is certainly below you, the questgiver suggests you 'outsource', by casting Stone to Flesh on some poor souls trapped in the dungeon, and making them do the dirty work. Out comes the intrepid Bondari, together with a brainless barbarian and Tim the wizard, of One Magic Missile Before Rest fame. They return with your required item, and a scripted sequence shows them trying to take you on for loot & glory. You turn into the slayer and lay the smackdown forthwith. Bondari proceeds to reload, then give you the item peacefully. edit: rofl.

I don't know. Wouldn't that mean that the new, younger generation (or simply new gamers) should have a similarly hard time playing, say, KOTOR, as the older did with their games? Personally, I started PC gaming with PS:T and Baldur's Gate II. Leaving PST aside (because its combat is crap any way you look at it), BGII was *not* hard. And I was what, 12. I had no previous experience with D&D, all I knew about RPGs or Fantasy was LOTR and Final Fantasy VII. (Hey, I was 12.) I had no idea about those dice rolls and whatnot, still could get by without much trouble, apart from a few frustrating areas. Granted, I seem to be faster at getting the hang of games than most people around me, but I don't think it's quite true that new games are just as difficult.

I call non-US resident.

I thought they said they were using KOTOR deaths.

In BG series, the main character could not be resurrected: spawns of Bhaal who have a very high concentration of Bhaal's essence have their corporeal form disintegrate upon death, a la Sarevok. Therefore if YOU die once, it's over. Also, I think they still intend you to play the game from the POV of the protagonist: so that you as a player could be watching your party members die then resurrect them, but when the arrow hits you then the screen should go black. I am fine with anything except KOTOR-style dumbdowns, there's really no excitement to already-easy battles because there's no risk. You never lose anything unless you have to reload. IE games were good because there was always a chance that you could do something stupid (or get a bad roll) and have a character clean chopped off.

Author is credited as 'robot chicken', apparently it's in his style but not by him. What the crap is he saying when he answers the phone, btw?

Has your mom ever had a character die?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO9zwhersfk...al%2Dc%2Ecom%2F

Yes he is.

No. Refresh rate bug can be fixed by going to Baldur.ini and editing the line, i believe it's called frequency something.

One person thinks Arsenal played better. Other person does not. Since neither of you are foolish enough to believe that with football there can be a definitive judgement of quality, we can leave it at that.

It's a known issue, especially with ATI cards. I believe in bio's BG2 technical forum they still have a sticky up, it's from a gaming magazine editor who advises you on how to fix it. Pretty much, you must install Catalyst driver without the display driver, then do some more stuff. If you're not ATI, no idea. Every reinstall in a while it happens for me, too - just play at a lower resolution. Some people have never been able to solve it.

While I'm walking around in fractured bones, yeah. So Eldar can't keep it going until/if we find another DM? He seems to strongly veer towards "I lurve you all but I really have to quit", although we wouldn't mind not having a set-in-stone session time.

It's okay, we all knew that. Except possibly blank.

Alright. I'll actually stick around online for a few hours anyway, I'm sure some of you will too.

So I go back to sleep?

Right, well, I'm going to sleep now. I will endeavour to awaken by the time (7am for me), and check here. If I am a bit late just start, I may arrive late but I wouldn't actually miss the session. I just really suck with alarms.

So do we have a session same time, or what?

But its true, American News gets information faster than anybody else! Then they don't report it.

Eto'o definitely has good ball control, and when he did do something it was spectacular, but he was anonymous for most of the match. Iniesta, Giuly and Larsson were the most dangerous, Ronaldinho often had no end product (except for a few through balls). Domenech is going to regret leaving Giuly out, and US is going to regret leaving Adu out.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/europe/4993994.stm "I would have liked to have taken a few more seconds before I made a decision," Hauge told a Norwegian newspaper. "If I'd done that, I could have given a goal and given a yellow card as well." Case in point. That's what usually happens. If you watched the replays, Lehmann barely clips Eto'o's foot. In an amateur game, the striker would just keep running. In a professional game, you fall. It's common sense now, and there is no blame / bad sportsmanship at all in Eto'o; equally, Lehmann did the best he could in a bad situation. The ref simply blew too early, and he didn't have the benefit of video replays.

meta's going to go into depression now. we're getting a goth DM.

We weren't robbed of the title, no. Eboue did dive for the Free kick, and we might have lost with 11 men on the field anyway. Arsenal fans (and me) aren't really angry about losing, or feeling any injustice on that front. It's the ref that we don't like, not because he 'cost us the game' or anything, but just because 1/ he was crap and 2/ he made the game that much less entertaining. On the red card: You can't have the card AND the goal. Why? Lehmann got a red card for a foul when he was the last man. This only applies when his foul stops the other team scoring, when without the foul they would have scored. Since they scored anyway, the ref should have played advantage, given the goal to Barca. And as with all advantage rules, Lehmann would not have been penalised, certainly not a red. And quite independent of the red card incident, he was just a horrible ref. Yes, sometimes to us as well. You might say "well it's okay then", but it makes the game much more cagey and much less open, flowing, entertaining. Henry got a yellow card for a tackle where he actually didn't even touch the other player, for example. I don't see how that is even possible. Pretty much, Arsenal and its fans aren't "making a case", or saying we deserved to win but didn't. (I guess Wenger says that, but it's like the manager's job to say that every time any team loses now. ) At least, I don't think that. I just find it a pity that the refs many bad decisions made the game less entertaining for everybody, no matter which team they supported / played for.

Bleurgh. It was painful watching that game. Of course, without Lehmann send off it would have been a Barca goal, and we might not have won anyway: Barca were a quality side and they did play well. What I'm really disappointed about is that up to that point both teams were playing very entertaining, attacking football, after that Barca just kept walking around the field making square passes, while Arsenal sat there and defended. The ref robbed us of a very classic final. That, and Lehmann and Pires (who had to go off to let the 2nd keeper come on). Lehmann has been a legend for our CL run and Pires has been a dedicated player in what may be his last appearance... it's really a shame they couldn't be allowed to play it out.