Tigranes

Gf is in US for the first time, cue all the touristy spots. Now at a Tim Hortons inNiagara shivering because we arrived at 4am after a 12-hour bus trip. Woo.

Sorry, I'm here. I was in Europe for a month on research and now my girlfriend is visiting for a few weeks. It'll be back... someday. Icewind Dale 2 took a year off but I finished!

Scandis: is Aalborg worth visiting? In any way? I may be there in November.

I wholeheartedly welcome the beginning of a large, overwrought and complicated public sector bureaucracy for our moderators. (Welcome)

As long as they can't 'enhance' anything else, I'm happy.

It was mentioned very early on that they'd like to do this. All good, I say.

I'm currently sitting in Dublin city council meeting-conference-thing for how many new buzzwords and logos and "ecosystems" they can come up with in addition to what they have. Complete with a "why Dublin is so awesome" enactment-play that's about as hip as a ministry of tourism ad. I do like the city. I didn't expect that. I love the 12C, 30km/h wind weather.

I like super-expensive items in stores, and I liked them in IWD2. It gives a tangible destination point for the loot collecting and becomes something else to look forward to. The only problem is that this usually means either you have less cool stuff in dungeons, or you have too much cool stuff. Stronghold/home/etc moneysinks are cool in theory, but especially for completionists, you still get so much money that in the end you just click-spam every single upgrade just for the sake of it (then you get the best outcome in the stronghold invasion or whatnot). I think SOZ was one of the better ones at controlling this until very late game, though the small scope made it easier to predict for designers. Trained as a packrat by RPGs I used to never use consumables, then one day geared an entire playthrough to use them centrally and was delighted; now I use them rather liberally and enjoy it. I would appreciate an economy where equip-and-forget items are much more scarce (+2 sword, woohoo) but players are (somehow) encouraged to make use of consumables and also limited-use items (say, crafted low-tier items for specific enemies or purposes), which, together with crafting goals, alleviate the 'not enough monty haul' disappointment. A good inventory UI is critical to this, of course, because in BG2, (1) you would rarely need more than 2 or 3 bows in a party, but there were at least 6 or 7 'cool' bows, and you rarely needed reason to switch bows; (2) changing equipped items was a hassle.

Unless we get some leakers or a frank postmortem, we won't ever really see a proper postmortem-audit of how DF's funds were managed, whether they 'overspent' on certain things or it was always an unrealistic proposition, etc., etc. I think as a backer I ultimately won't mind if (1) DF doesn't run themselves aground over this, and (2) they do produce a game of Grim Fandango's scale that is as good or almost as good. I remain fairly confident about 2, though I haven't played any of DF's recent output, but actually less confident of 1. Massive Chalice was a terrible, terrible campaign that screams of lack of ideas, and it is going to be an albatross for them as they try and finish Broken Age. (How will they do pricing? If the original was meant to be, say, $30, do they now charge 15&15? 20&20? 30&30?)

I never got into CK1 so can't compare, but it is true that CK2 is a pretty simple and easy game. I found it was a very boring game if you tried to 'win', it's fun if you play with house rules and create stories of hilarious failure around the WTF events and go on weird campaigns. It's far too easy to create an iron-rule empire where you're in control of everything and you can conquer anybody you want, but it is interesting if you decide to larp Kings who refuse to assassinate / imprison anyone, embrace the Bogomilist heresy and try to convert the entire realm, Gavelkind, and so forth.

Done, would like to hear more about your research design and goals once the survey period is over.

So when's the next meeting Ros?

Not many liberal rulers in those times for obvious reasons. You could try and create a fully multikult realm with many cultures and religions but homogenisation is in fact hard to prevent.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/incline-to-the-dark-ages-lets-play-crusader-kings-2-the-old-gods.83593/ My last CK2 run with a Norwegian count. It's a great game.

I am now in London. Britain welcomed me by having the arrival tube doors seal everyone in the plane shut for half an hour, but that's what I get for using Gatwick. Came too late for today's affairs so walked around the Hyde Park and Paddington area. Nice city, I like the vibe even if the tube has the population density of ants in a honey pot. Now for curry.

OK, so what is an appropriate response to the Prism leak? Sagely nod and say "oh, this is pretty much Echelon v2.0", on the assumption that everybody else will understand we're to wait until something really terrible (wherever the line may be) happens, and then we will all rise up?

4.5 days or so in London, no time to go outside Central London this time. I'm a big fan of history and always appreciate premodern architecture of various forms. A sucker for castles. I was very close to spending the last 3 years near Birmingham, but even for me curry alone doesn't make my life choices. Usually.

So if a program has been going on for 50 years, it doesn't matter that that it's changed over those 50 years, either you should have been outraging for the last 50 years or you should just accept it and whatever forms into which it develops in the future? Seems like that's an attitude lacking in both idealism and pragmatism, useful for laughing at others but not for constructing a useful approach to anything. Yes, Echelon has been around and it is in many ways just as invasive. Yes, not everyone may be aware of this and it's useful to bring it up. I'm generally supportive of strong governments and know fully well someone like me could not survive very well in an anarchistic environment, and that 'free speech no matter what' is a terribly silly ideology to live by. That doesn't mean I think it's a very good attitude to just say "hey this has been going on forever so meh".

Dead State promises to do most of that, you may be interested: http://www.deadstate.doublebearproductions.com/

I'll buy DA3 if they convince me it's nothing like the last 3 or 4 games they put out.

I'm not sure why you feel the need to constantly accuse your interlocutors of 'faux moral outrage'. Does it have to be 'false'? It could be 'true' and just as unhelpful. It's a pointless line of attack. If we take a cynical and ultra-pragmatic view, then sure, I think the government should monitor its citizens. I also think that in the current political state of affairs it is inevitable, and that something like prism is not likely to ever go away in the foreseeable future. The thing is, if you then conclude that people shouldn't worry about it or stop the 'faux moral outrage', that' s interesting - you just shifted effortlessly from a cynical and world-weary view to a naive one. The fellow screaming holy hell the government should protect the people is naive to be sure, but it's even more naive to suggest we should forget about our own position of interests and engage in self-destructive stockholm syndrome to say "oh well gov will do what it does". (We recognise this turn easily in some game-related arguments...) The truly pragmatic individual would take it to its conclusion and decide that he/she must continue to criticise the government and argue for his/her interests of privacy and personal rights, while fully cognizant of the fact that this has been going on for decades and is not likely to stop. That is, in this case, cynical/pragmatic/realistic, especially because it's not like supporting prism gives you any short term advantages. Criticism and moral outrage may not do a whole lot, and so on an individual level risking your neck in its name like Snowden did is not particularly prudent. But to give up on it and openly embrace the government's actions when it tramples over you isn't pragmatism, it's naive stupidity. The fact that this is a continuous and overwhelming affair doesn't change this.

Wals, this colonist will finally touch down on Blighty this weekend. I have five days in London, half of it taken up with business. My priorities are: (1) Good curry (2) Architecture & history. What can you recommend / dis-recommend? I am thinking a few obvious places + Tower of London, possibly the Bric Lane area. (Are you in London?) I'm also in Amsterdam and Dublin subsequently, if anyone has suggestions.

Well, of course. He must have known he could die/disappear/etc at any moment once he did that interview, and perhaps before that. Either he's fled somewhere (e.g. an embassy) or...

TW3 trailer has some in-game footage, which looks like TW2++. Great. DA3 trailer has almost none, so who gives a crap?

You make some good points, but the USA has the advantage in this type of monitoring as most of the primary Social Media servers are housed in the USA and the technology comes from there. So its much easier for the NSA to integrate Prism into the systems that they want to monitor. But I also think people do care, you mustn't become jaded For years the US has been as big a seller of surveillance equipment as it has been a provider of anti-surveillance tools. Of course, the problem is that the surveillance equipment is usually sold by US-based corporations who, with their reputation on the line for profit, provide stuff that works (to countries like the Netherlands as well as 'those damn Muslims'), while US-funded circumvention tools don't often work very well, or are available to the users in the target markets, or, in extreme cases, nobody can work out if the state-funded & promoted tool even exists. (See: Haystack) The fact that it's 'easier' for the US to do may be true, but the important point stands - that the US loses now even more moral authority in pursuing its Clinton secretary era agenda of 'Internet Freedom'. And the problem with that is, even if some might regard the current US commitment to Internet Freedom as a farce, it is an important farce; if IF becomes strategically not in the US's advantage, then you can expect that it will eventually shift its rhetoric on the Internet (it's a classic move: the Internet is dangerous now, so it must be regulated, blah blah), and then globally, we will see the Internet grow into a tightly watched network in a way that really is past the point of no return in a practical sense. It's easy to sit and say "it's just one tool, and the way this one tool works at this point in time doesn't seem to harm most innocent people", but that's not how history works.