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Got the new LCD Soundsystem leak. LCD Soundsystem - North American Scum LCD Soundsystem - Watch the Tapes

I stopped at about the point where the Hell Knights (those are the giant rocket skeletons, right?) come into play. I actually didn't last as long on Prey, but at least Prey had Blue Oyster Cult and simulated card games.

That would make a great game. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Going through NWN2, .

So far as I understand it (from what little I know of Spelljammer) each realm has its own universe, a "crystal sphere" or somesuch. One can physically travel within the spheres, but not between them. But the planar cosmology connects all the realms together. The thing is that it's relatively easy to get to other planes, but it's trickier to get back to where you started from. Going from the planes to the Prime Material could have you ending up just about anywhere, in any setting, which is why planar jaunts make such good adventures. Sigil is the city of Portals, and you could theoretically get anywhere if you have the right portal and the right key, as was outlined in PS:T. Usually not that simple, though. You can also travel between worlds (even places like Dark Sun which aren't accessible by planar travel) by entering the mists at the border of Ravenloft and concentrating on your destination, but there's a 99% chance you'll fail, and probably die in the process.

Seemed a tad overlong to me. And I don't know if "scary" was what they were going for. It was dark, but it was still a full-blooded FPS. The transmissions and chaos that ensued after the (pretty ineffective) initial invasion of the moon base were pretty cool, but after 20 minutes it became the same old thing. That's what they get for taking the original absurd sci-fi + occult fantasy drivel of the original Doom and trying to make it into a "story".

I also hear he's an exceedingly nice dude, not like that... other guy.

Who knew that a discussion of robot's rights would yield a discusssion of "animal rights"? Not me. By the Kantian definition, self-aware robots could very well be given rights. If they have the ability to reason, the ability to reflect on their actions, needs & desires, and a free will (that is, being the innate cause of their actions) then they would be considered "human", for all intents and purposes, and they would be afforded the same rights any other being fitting those criteria would be. As for me, I've got no problem killing and eating a robot or an animal if it tastes good, I want to eat it and it has no moral space, meaning it cannot recognize its own rights nor recognize the rights of others (and therefore be unable to adhere to a Contract). Nor do I have a problem with differentiating between humans and animals, and saying that they are not equal, for that reason.

NINTENDO FAN

Gee, you make it sound like all killing is equal, and all people are equal. But justice is equal to the equal and unequal to the unequal. Only in the strictly utilitarian mindset are all people equal all the time. All other ethical theories, with the possible exception of perhaps thomism, do not give everyone a blanket of inalienable rights. Reasonable people can recognize that there is a fundamental difference between John Q Public and Slobodan Milosevic. One is a murderer, the other is not. We do not afford the same moral consideration to both. If I support capital punishment for guilty murderers, I'm not making some bull**** "I just know some people deserve to die" conclusion. That they deserve death has nothing to do with what I believe and everything to do with what they've done. The system of law is based on a Contract system. All people are created equal, they all have the same rights by default. They all have a legitimate right and a claim not be harmed or molested. We have to recognize that others have a right not to be killed as well as ourselves But if we take these rights seriously, then we have to enforce them. To this end, if we do not recognize someone's right to not be killed, and we kill him, we violate his right, we break the Contract. We were once protected from being killed. But in refusing another's protection from being killed, we revoke our own protection. When a man murders, he denies his own right to life. If he doesn't like it, if he would rather live, if others would rather him live, if he had a family, tough ****, should've thought of that before he threw it all away. He has removed himself from the realm of innocence. He suffers the consequences of his actions. He has violated one of the most very basic rules by which our society operates, and our society turns on him. If we value our society, we purge the murderer. There are no ifs or buts about it. We're not obligated to kill him, but we've got no obligation to keep him alive, either. Not anymore. Of course, we must take intent into account. Accidental killing or homicidal negligence might not warrant such a harsh punishment, but it certainly deserve some kind of restitution. This is, I believe, one of those cases.

Enchanting is broken in my game. It says "No base weapon or armor to be enchanted found" when I have the item there. It sucks, because I could really use some +5 holy adamantine weapons right now. Balls. *edit - I think I hear Dark_Raven soiling herself. And Darque. And... we'll throw in... um... Walsingham in there too for good measure. The thing is, and maybe this would be reserved for another thread, that the Hotel area (imo the best part of Bloodlines, which had a lot of great parts) was one big huge reference, and I thought Obsidian was trying to get away from blatant stylistic references like that. But if he's on the Alien project (Josh?) then it's a definite upside, because if there's one thing Bloodlines paid out in spades, it was a paranoid atmosphere, and that's exactly what an Alien project really needs.

Oldie but goodie.

HOW DARE YOU SULLY THE AWESOME OF MANOWAR WITH YOUR WORDS 2 METAL 4 U. Ministry - Broken Trentemoller - Take Me Into Your Skin Joanna Newsom - Emily

Exactly. 'cept I was in my sophomore year of high school back then, and had a Tolkien freak for an English teacher. So naturally we read the Two Towers and he got the class (and some people who wanted to ditch their other classes) tickets to see the movie a week before release. It was probably the greatest theater experience I've ever had. The march of the Ents and the anticipatory buildup to Helm's Deep were just insane. I'm d/ling the first season of the Wire, presently.

Any abandoned structure can effectively be a dungeon. My "salvagers" often went on simple fetch quests that were made very complicated by groups and events that interfered with their goals. When a fetch quest involves travel, you can throw almost anything in the way and get some interesting results. I usually had a handful of "random" encounters that I prepared ahead of time and launched on players as the mood/pace demanded it. It worked out pretty well. E.g. the party got a job that involved going to San Francisco to find out what happened to another salvager, a friend of their employer. The "fast route" took them along I-80, east of Sacramento. They could go on the "long route", but they had no idea what nasty stuff was out there. On I-80, they knew what to expect: the 80s. Sure enough, those dum-dums attacked the party and got smacked around pretty badly. Two of the guys were riding on a little SEC-powered motorcycle. One of the party members really wanted it, so he took it with him against the wishes of the others. When they reached Sacramento, they saw that it was a hive of scum and villainy (surprise). The new motorcycle-owning PC decided to hide the motorcycle from view and drive it around the "north side" of Sacramento. Of course, since he had not been to Sac-town before, he did not know that it had been heavily booby-trapped by scumbags. Along the way, his bike hit a mine and blew up. He flew into the dry riverbed and was taken away by scumbags for interrogation. A mini-adventure evolved in which the other PCs made a rescue attempt and wound up blowing away a bunch of dudes.* Outside of the fact that one of the 80s owned a motorcycle, none of the stuff that followed was planned for. I just made sure that I was confident enough in the setting that I could handle the PCs trying to do wacky things like that. * Actually, they got terrified because a guy with a double-barrel shotgun was inside the house and could possible kill any one of them with a good close-range shot. Solution: throw three grenades in the windows and pray. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Thanks, Josh that helps a lot. I get where you're coming from. I need to "expand my mind". Could you tell me about working under SIMPLE? How different is it from 2.0? We'll likely convert here soon. Thanks for keeping your wiki up to date! That's a lifesaver.

Right right. It's kind of nerdularly humorous that Thomas Hobbes equated morality with survival. So can I choose both?

Hold 'Em. None of that electronic ****e for me! I kick variable amounts of ass, too.

I don't think that's the case. You know how they now have "hunting tours" where they gaurantee a kill for a certain amount? You pay, and then they release the bird near you and you get to shoot it. Comparing prostitution to going out to a bar and picking up someone is akin to comparing traditional hunting, where you might just sit in a blind all day and come home with nothing, to pay-by-kill hunting. Kind of a crude analogy, but it works. As for prostitution, I'm not one usually one to advocate the prohibition of vices, but prostitution in some ways is like child pornography: It's perverse, but moreover, the people involved are exploited. We prohibit child porn in the interests of reducing abuse and exploitation of children (and we allow "simulated" child porn), and we prohibit prostitution in the interests of reducing the abuse and exploitation of women. Same general principle. I wouldn't call someone who frequents brothels a sick **** in the same way, however. The easiest solution to call for is regulation of the industry, because we can't very well get rid of it. Set up brothels and make it incumbent upon the law to protect the women, instead of a pimp or madam. However, as in so many cases, government involvement might not do a goddamn thing for anyone.

I would say that we shouldn't excercise capital punishment, but I wouldn't say that capital punishment is ethically bankrupt. Innocent people are killed by the state, but that it is unjust to kill an innocent person does not make killing a guilty person unjust by extension. So Mortis Nai would be justified in supporting killing mass murderers, or child rapists. That doesn't mean he's supporting killing innocent people. We can say that the former deserve to die and the latter doesn't. But let's take a look at your argument. (1)If Mortis Nai was convicted of a capital crime he didn't commit, he would not support the death penalty. (2)Therefore, Mortis Nai cannot reasonably support the death penalty now, when he has not been convicted of a capital crime. It's a **** argument in those terms. The conclusion does not follow from the premise. You should have just stuck with (1)Capital punishment kills innocent people (2)Killing innocent people is unjust (3)We should not do that which is unjust (4)Therefore we should not enact capital punishment. Which is a sound argument. We have to recognize that there is a dichotomy between the application of capital punishment and the ethical legitimacy of it. We can refrain from killing people and still reasonably accept that some people just need killing, if we stay away from "sanctity of life" arguments. I'm pretty sure I've gone over this before on this forum. But as someone who holds more to the Kantian / Hobbesian view of crime & punishment, I'm less inclined than most to consider the rights and well-being of those who harm others. As for whether this particular guy deserves to die, sounds like second-degree murder or manslaughter. So the death penalty's off the table. But he should be held responsible for his actions, and punished severely. If he feels remorse for what he did, that should be taken into account in regard to the punishment, but not by much.

Also because he's a paladin, and paladins usually lack those negative personality traits that spice up interesting characters. Some people didn't like Keldorn for that reason. You've got, what, zealotry, or arrogance, or pride. Anomen had all three of those, and nobody liked him. I guess Casavir had some doubt in him, but I was never able to explore that in my games. Probably because of the cut content, but it might be because I wasn't dogged enough in my pursuit. And I think Josh mentioned parts of Casavir's plotline having been cut. I wonder if some prospective Unfinished Business mod could put some of that back in, somwhere down the line.

warhammer.

Oh man, I've never won anything before. This is awesome. Since 2001, they've been slacking. The article reads like something out of the Onion, and it's not even as funny as the Onion article they already did. It's not as if this is really an award, anyway. It's an empty gesture. *edit - btw: God, that takes me back. *edit 2 - I am a Lebowski Achiever.

Cursive - Dorothy at Forty Mew - Fox Cub / Apocalypso

Ooh, and it looks like he's updating it too thanks a lot Josh, I'll strongarm my players into using the system next time we play. I've been meaning to get away from that hulking CRPG style anyway. Muy bien!

I don't know if this counts, but Josh made this Fallout PnP adaptation which I use when I can, and it's amazing. *edit - Well, I should say that it showcases Josh's skill with rule systems. These are all DM's tools.

You don't have the True Name scroll? Is it because you don't have Zhaeve / Ammon Jerro in the fight or that they don't have a scroll? All Shadow Reavers throughout the entire game require a scroll being used against them. As for the game crashing during the fight... I don't know what to tell you. You might try going over to the bioware boards.