alanschu

My roommate, while still acknowledging that Hasek IS a good goalie, felt a bit of his accoldaes and achievements came from playing an an excellent defensive team.

Yeah, because you know sooo much more than everyone else.. Stop the BS, it's embarrassing. Either that or explain whatever it is that you know that's so much more enlightened than the rest of us. Google agreed to this censorship in the last few months. Whatever nonsense you refer to, it's old news. Get with the times. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Given the context of taks' full post, I find his comment re: Hades to be rather appropriate.

I think people don't give those Montreal teams or Buffalo teams enough credit.

THere was something exceptionally annoying about it. But honestly, once he was done talking we always clicked again.

I liked WIzardry 8...and Eye of the Beholder (except the eating...I always ended up starving).

Well, just occasionally, really. Haha, guess who's having a 4-player civ4 session without you right now <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Noooo, I'm still at work!!

Well, do you remember any type of full auto mode? This full auto can be total overkill, emptying out an entire clip in a single point if you spend enough action points.

If Jaden is evil, then that's a given

It's perfectly possible and reasonable to run games where all mechanics are done by the GM, it's just an awful lot of work for the GM. There have even been games, where the players had no stats at all - they didn't know their AC, hit points, to-hit values, saves, or anything else. They were just told, "you wear heavy armor" and "you have taken some damage but still feel healthy". In such a game the GM rolls all the dice and handles all mechanics and the players only say what they want to do. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Some would probably argue that you're not playing AD&D then. I doubt that this is anything but an insignificant portion of AD&D players.

I think this is beyond the scope of what our discussion was (and more to do with what Sawyer is talking about with respect to PnP games not being overall very intuitive). If you explain to someone what AC represents, I'd bet all of my money that a vast majority of them would initially assume that they would want a higher AC value. I'd suspect you could accidentally forget to explain that a higher value is better with 3rd edition and have little to no confusion more consistently then you could by omitting that detail with AD&D.

Hmmm....do you know what...probably. I had very briefly played FF2 (4) on a friend's Super Nintendo, but not too in depth. I doubt I knew what "RPG" meant at the time. I remember immediately falling in love with the world of U6, even though I didn't really know how to play the game. When Ultima VII came out, I asked my Dad for a PC to play it on (until then, my "PC" gaming was all Apple...Apple II and the Mac). 386/SX 16 MHz for the win! (though it was slow for U7). I have undying respect for the Ultimas. But even the Ultimas had ACs that got better the higher they were. So, Is it that surprising after getting used to Ultima and then later playing the Gold Box games, that you would find AD&D AC progression to be unintuitive? I see what you're saying. But when I played U6, I was not a number cruncher. I likely put on plate mail simply because it made sense to me that plate mail would protect me better. I honestly couldn't remember a score for Armor value (or any value), or where I could find it. I don't think Ultima VII has a value for Armor explicitly available either. I did play Eye of the Beholder 1 around the same time as well (I do know this, because I played both of them in a spare room in my Dad's office, which he only had for a single summer. I could have played Eye of the Beholder first. Though I doubt I number crunched that game either.....the first time I really remember an "AC" value was when I was playing around with FRUA. And I remember tweaking the crap out of it to increase it. The big thing about it, and this was probably compounded since I was alone playing with the editor, was my surprise and confusion when I put on a piece of platemail and my AC dropped drastically. I figured it meant my character was probably easier to hit because he'd be slower, but that there was some sort of damage absorption or something (ironically I thought that this was pretty cool at the time, even though it was a complete misunderstanding of how AC worked in AD&D). The same way you would explain that and AC -2 is better than an AC of 4 for 2ndEd. Once you let them know that the smaller the AC is, the better their armor class, they get that too. But, you have to explain that a smaller AC is a better AC. And in my own experience, I've had more "What?" statements after saying that, compared to when saying higher AC = better. In both cases, which result would you expect if you forgot to say which is better, and just mentioned you can have things with AC 8 and AC 4. That is all that really matters. As long as its easy to use. Whether or not people will think 3e AC is more intuitive at first glance than 2ndEd AC is really not relevant in the long run.. You still have to learn all the game mechanics and no matter what, that will take a lot of effort regardless of system.l I think it is relevant long term. If people have less confusion over something when they first encounter it, they'll find it less frustrating. Well, there's absolute and relative comparisons. I've tried to make sure I was always talking relatively.

Volourn, you of all people know that I don't talk in absolutes. It's always possible to find exceptions. Naturally, if you don't even have any combat, you can play without THAC0. But if you have combat, you have to deal with it somehow. I could just as easily state that AoO is not relevant either, since someone could play and never fight. Poor example.

So by that analogy, 5th edition Call of Cthulhu also has a "counter-intuitive" system when you have to roll 1d100 equal to or BELOW your percentile score in the relevant skill? Sorry, but I don't agree - whether a bonus should make the value go up or down is completely dependent on the game mechanics. I don't think you can generalize that broadly. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> When talking about "intuitiveness" you have to generalize broadly. Because what is, or is not, intuitive depends a lot on the affordances that you get from your society. Your percentiles scores is also not a good one. For example, standardized testing places people in percentiles. Some in the 99th percentile is on average in a room of 100 people, superior to 99 of them. Furthermore, you are talking about a specific mechanic, which isn't as analogous to THAC0 or AC. Sure, you have to roll a 1d100 below that skill. Without any experience from Call of Cthulhu, your description has already matched what my expectations of skill values would mean....a higher value is superior. With THAC0, it's not about the mechanic of rolling the die and figuring out what to do from there. It's about what the value represents. In AD&D, a lower value represents an increased ability. In Call of Cthulhu, imagine skill X and two people, A and B. Person A has a value of 60 for skill X, person B has a value of 40. Given that I have never played the game, my natural instinct would be to assume that the person with skill 60 is better at that skill than person B and their value of 40. All the rolling the die does is provide a mechanic for applying that skill. Given the percentile analogy, and how examples of percentiles exist outside of the game environment, it's actually pretty inuitive.

Hmmm....do you know what...probably. I had very briefly played FF2 (4) on a friend's Super Nintendo, but not too in depth. I doubt I knew what "RPG" meant at the time. I remember immediately falling in love with the world of U6, even though I didn't really know how to play the game. When Ultima VII came out, I asked my Dad for a PC to play it on (until then, my "PC" gaming was all Apple...Apple II and the Mac). 386/SX 16 MHz for the win! (though it was slow for U7). Of course there's explaining the rules of combat and all of that jazz that would take time. I'd be surprised if you had to explain more than once that an item with AC 8 is superior to an item of AC 4. That's what I did....though also some friends (unfamiliar with D&D). Mine may have been too biased, or maybe not explicit enough. I didn't go into armor class, but it was just "Person A has an 'Attack rating' of 10, and person B has an 'Attack Rating' of 8. Who is the more powerful attacker?" I never once had someone say person B :\ (I only asked 6 people). Maybe it would be better to combine it with other aspects, and try to remove any element I may have. Even then, you have people that, when asked a bizarre question, often expect the question to be a trick one. Removing experimenter bias is a pain in the butt though. Just to be clear, I'm not saying AD&D is complicated. Just not as intuitive (which is pretty much the ability to make a decision without any rationality). Once you recognize the way the THAC0 works, it's pretty easy to use.

Was the "full auto" mode always in. It's been a while since I played and I don't remember it...just the burst fire.

According to Moby Games, Brian was lead designer, but Sid was still a designer.

I have noticed that a lot of her soldiers drop night goggles and even UV goggles.

I used to just go in pairs on hide on the roof with spotters. Much less viable now.

Sid is managing the entire studio of Firaxis I believe. Though I think he had "final say" on anything to make sure it kept an appropriate Civ style of gameplay. He really liked the innovations IIRC. I thought Alpha Centauri was a Brian Reynolds/Sid Meier co-op project?

That's what happened to Barry. He was up on a rooftop and a guy climbed up behind him and shot him in the back with a Spaz-15. Fortunately my sniper rifle headshotted him (and he teetered off the roof and feel down for an extra 100 damage....it was cool!). MD then performed emergency procedures as Scope and I maintained cover. I now am using Grizzly (and his Benelli Super 90 shotgun with Duckbill) on close range flanking coverage, as well as Ira. No more sneaking up behind me.

Heh, do you lurk on their forums as well?

Yeah, I was thinking about that. Though with Scope and myself with UV goggles, it's less of a problem now. Plus I'm level 4, so I can get more interrupts myself as well.

Sid didn't make the game, though most "civfanatics" prefer Civ 4. The only ones I've seen that do not like Civ 4 try to play Civ 4 as if it is Civ 3.

I've only played the demo, but I thought it had some disturbing scenes. And I didn't really find Bloodlines all that blood and gory either, outside of the stealth kills.

Hehehe.