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My documents, at least in my experience.

Ya, the com college deal is pretty sweet. I'm taking advantage of it presently, since I never did anything in high school (I had a <2 GPA) the fact that I'm financially invested in my classes turns skipping out of class or partying too hard before tests more stupid than rebellious. The only problem I have with college thus far is the text, which is groin-grabbingly expensive. Costs hundreds of dollars a semester, and I'm pursuing an associates'. Going after masters or doctorates would result in some serious financial ankle-grabbing. But then again, if you're smart about it, you can pull it all off with minimal debts incurred.

Burnout 3 is in the top 5 best games I've ever played.

Bah, you have to link music from other sites :'( if only there was an FTP to use. That limits my choices somewhat!

It seems obvious to me that the NWN2 orc cave situation was devised from a Kantian perspective. That the orcs were going to die anyway or that they were suffering was not considerable. Killing in the name of mercy would still be killing them when they posed no threat to anyone, and killing is not prima facae a good act in any case, especially when done arbitrarily, as in the example. In PnP, it falls to the DM to decide whether an act is considered right or not. But it's always assumed that altruism is good and egoism is evil. the personal philosophies of characters are pretty much laid out. Kantians are generally LG. Lockeans are good. Utilitarians are generally good but tend towards neutrality in many cases. Teleology is generally neutral, as is thomism. Egoism is almost universally evil (Ayn Rand's version pretty much defines evil), nihilism is always CE. Which is where we get to the retarded stepchild of ethics, relativism. Remember that this is D&D we're talking about. Relativism cannot reasonably exist in the D&D universe. The central claim of relativism is that there is no objective right or wrong, good or evil, that it's all dependent on context. The very existence of the alignment system makes that claim blatantly untrue. To a relativist, the only measuring tool one has for the morality of an action is the dictum of the society in which the actor lives, thus no action is always right or wrong. But we've got this handy dandy system of alignment that governs D&D, so that relativist assumption is rendered false. Furthermore, one of the arguments for relativism in the real world is that there are no tangible "good" or "evil" objects, and thus the objective existence of such concepts cannot be proven, but that is not the case in D&D, as good and evil are manifested physically in angels & demons, the upper & lower planes. It's ludicrous to suggest that demons are evil only in context. Thus, your conclusion is hollow. If anything, the D&D universe was concieved to avoid contextual right & wrong. The White Wolf games, however, are another matter entirely. What "preserving your humanity" means would be diametrically different between DMs who take egoist and altruistic views of what being human entails. A subjectivist DM could effectively remove the entire concept of humanity from the game. What fun would that be? Morality serves an even greater purpose in that universe.

God, I can't remember a single area from any Bioware game post-KOTOR that didn't play some part in a quest. Most of BG1 was completely aimless, BG2 not so much, but it still felt big. I'd bet money on Mass Effect being in the vein of KOTOR, just with bigger relevant areas. It does look more free-form, but such footage is easily contextualized. Much as I'd hate to admit it, quality non-linear RPGs are pretty much dead. I'd cite Oblivion, but it was extreme non-linearity: the parts of the game that had a point didn't really have a point either. I don't know how a big BG wilderness would go down in a game like NWN2 (assuming the engine could render it) the lack of an isometric perspective would no doubt make it seem longer than it would be.

There are a lot of active but inactive doors in NWN2. All the doors in Ember are usable, but they're all locked, and you never enter them. One wonders why they were included at all when most of the other areas don't even bother. Are sub-areas that much of a problem, or was that simply a part of the game that couldn't be implemented due to cuts or time constraints or whatever? Because if it's the former at the very least it's problematic from a custom content standpoint.

Load Z with heals and mass heals, preserve your rod of res, and keep using the statue powers and he is indeed a pushover. Totally unmemorable boss fight.

PST's combat was weaker than BG1's. It might have been the same format, but the playing area was smaller, so you had less room to move that made spell combat and ranged combat trickier... and in some cases pointless. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> There was no ranged combat in PST Nor was there armor, nor any reasonable selection of weapons (fist, knives, clubs, hammers, axes) You play PST for the RPing.

Chapelle is an ironist, and he comes from the Pryor tradition, in a way. He's not out to show that racial slurs have no power, he's out to show that racism is everywhere, in malign and benign forms, and that it's all foolish and ridiculous at its heart. The racism in Chapelle's Show is grotesque so that people can laugh at it and wonder why anyone would ever really take it seriously, and thus it helps to accentuate just how wrong racism really is. It's unfortunate that anyone would ever have to watch what they say, but that's the fact of the matter. Everyone makes mistakes (I've made a few myself) but if no intent to demean or insult was present, it should be water under the bridge. Just don't expect anyone to like you if you keep doing it. You mean Archie Bunker? Certainly racism against whites is heinous, just as racism against blacks is, but with all of the history and official support and violence behind it, racism against blacks is arguably moreso. That doesn't mean you have to take it when someone calls you trash. That's an extreme, and it shouldn't be the case that any person should be punished for a joke made in ignorance. Sexual harrassment guidelines in this regard are unreasonable. But there are plenty of rational and fair laws regarding the way diverse coworkers interact with one another that should be enforced. Nobody likes their ass to be grabbed by old, overweight supervisors. Those chat systems are lame, btw. Who says those who throw slurs at you are any more justified than Kramer? And would you really consider "cracker" to be that harsh of a barb?

*Bumpp* The imminently respectable Onion AV Club review: B- grade. The overall tone of the (kinda short) review is pretty positive, but of course the reviewer takes issue with the high-maintenance engine, although he names slow framerates as a necessary evil to be endured in the face of spectacular battle effects. No mentions of actual game mechanics. Likes the story, loves the character dynamics.

Look out for birthday racists. I've used that one before, but now it's gotten ****in' teeth, I'll tell you.

You ever get one of those Ghostbusters toaster things as a kid that they trapped ghosts in? They resemble that. Still, when you hold one, you generally feel the sort of power that one feels when holding a gun. It's mostly the fact that it resembles a gun. Telling factoid: When asked what stunt he most regretted doing (or that he would never consider doing again) Johnny Knoxville said getting tased was the most painful thing he'd ever experienced. And that guy snorted wasabi.

The difference between Micheal Richards and Chris Rock (or perhaps more appropriately, Richard Pryor) using racial slurs is self-identification. Slurs are demeaning precisely because they place whatever distinction they make (black skin for "****", homosexuality for "queer" or "****", etc.) above the recipients' personhood. A white man calling someone a **** generally implies that they are black before anything else, and being black is bad. When Pryor or Rock self-identify with that slur, they remove the negative connotation from being black, and the power that those who use the word "****" disparagingly wield over them. Thus the word becomes innuendo, only offensive to those who accept it as such. Some would say that the very condemnation of the word is racist, because addressing it would be implicitly lending it credibility, and the whole purpose of the "taking it back" approach of the black comedians was to rob "****" of its credibility and power. So when we say that black comedians can use the word "****" and white people can't, that's why. Asians can be **** and charlies, irishmen can be micks, italians can be guineas, hispanics spics, etc. etc. only if they choose to identify themselves as such. No one else has the right to refer to them as such and still be accepted.

Meh, I find the BG2 engine to be look better than the Electron engine. High-end 2D is more aesthetically pleasing than middling 3D. Some of the level design (particularly the mountain environs) are certainly better looking, but there were no aspects of the BG2 engine that obviously came up short in the way NWN2's do. For example, it's obvious from the design of the areas that the engine can't handle more than 3-5 sub-areas per location, which is a problem in, say, marketplaces, and it makes the gameworld feel way too tight. The entire city of Neverwinter is about the size of a single BG2 district. The weight of some of the BG areas would be too much for the Electron engine to handle, which makes me skeptical about the chances of the planned BG version coming out whole. I'm currently putting my recently neglected 360 to use, replaying some Hitman: Blood Money missions and starting on the new Splinter Cell game. No running and gunning for me.

When was this? I only really noticed Bond fighting hand-to-hand starting with Goldeneye. In Casino Royale most of the fights were up close and personal, in the stairwell, in the truck (a pretty overt reference to Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was kind of funny), in the embassy and in the museum. He only uses his gun towards the end, he loses it in most other scenes. He pulled his Walther much more frequently in the older films. Harry Knowles disproportionately favors those films that he gets to preview early. But you're right, I probably will see it. While Sly wrote the rightly hated Rocky V (probably the worst sequel ever put on film), he also wrote the original, and Rocky is still the quisessential underdog sports movie. It's not the best movie ever, but it has undeniable charm. The new 'un has potential, but come on, Rocky V.

I'm playing a Warlock too. They're "boring" in the same way fighters are boring, in that they more or less repeat the same actions over and over. Certainly nice once you get some of the blast shapes and some of the nicer variations on the blast. Nevertheless, I'm having a few problems with mine. For one, the AI won't play the character as a spellcaster, a problem I don't have with Ammon Jerro. Second, eldritch forms don't stack at all, meaning, if you hit an enemy with a draining blast, which slows and curses them, and then you hit with a brimstone blast, the curse and slow effects are removed and replaced by the immolation effect. I'm also at level 9 and encountering more and more enemies capable of resisting the blasts, which is frustrating, if to be expected.

There's certainly no video evidence of that and the UCLA Daily Bruin reported that student witnesses denied Tabatabainejad was inciting anyone. http://dailybruin.com/news/articles.asp?id=38960 <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Indeed, and even if that was the case, cops aren't supposed to use that kind of force on people who only verbally provoke. That's the whole point. I would hope people would have thicker skin than that. Force 101: The situation called for level 2 force, and they used level 3 force. We call that "excessive force" and it's a problem. Even if in this case the situation had escalated to level 3, tasers are to be used once, twice if the subject is resilient or tweaking, which was not the case. This is serious ****.

Unlike noses, **** are awesome. Obsidian's got my back on this one. O YA! Game over. I'm printing out Van Buren design docs. Again. Well, we could throw that back atcha and ask what's erotic about soft, supple mammaries, eh? They stop being really useful after you're about 2 (4 if you're european) It's the brain, man. Things can be entirely removed from sex and still be sexy.

According to the material I have, one day in the FR the clerics of Lolth suddenly stopped being able to cast spells, and they sent some adventurers to the Demonweb Pits to check **** out. The adventurers found Lolth "in a comatose state" on the floor of her Abyssal grotto or whatever. At that point the opposing drow god Vhaerun teleported in to kill Lolth (apparently he had just found out about the situation) and Lolth's slave-son Selvetarm came in to defend her. Big god-battle ensues, and the very substance of the Abyss is torn in so doing, and Lolth's body, Vhaerun, and Selvetarm all fall into a void. The implications of this are also unclear, as there are now 3 potentially dead drow deities. It was suggested in the material that this could constitute another FR cataclysm, with the rift in the Demonweb Pits causing the Abyss to "bleed" onto the other planes and the prime material. High-level campaign, obviously. Exactly what happened to Lolth is a mystery, I believe it was made that way so RPers would be able to make the story up themselves. When I briefly ran a campaign centered around it, I naturally tied it into BG pulling my deity/adventurer into conflict with Lolth, with my deity setting up the rift as a trap. The rift fed into the Far Realm, D&D's version of a Lovecrafian cosmos. It was meant only to trap my deity and Lolth, but when Selvetarm and Vhaerun also got pulled in the trap went haywire and the rift became permanent. The PCs were meant to start off small, fighting monsters and horrors that had appeared on Faerun through the rift, then become wise to the rift itself, go through the rift to the Far Realm, find Selvetarm and Vhaerun, kill them or get them out, deal with Lolth's minions, and then leave before the rift closed itself, and ensure that neither my deity nor Lolth could escape. Pretty epic stuff. I'm glad this is a D&D enamored board, else I would never talk about these outlandish ideas I have at all. Today's homework: compare and contrast the hierarchies of Demons and Devils. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Heh, I'll try. The blood war and the outer planes are more symbolic than anything. Everything in the outer planes is a personification and exaggeration of ideas and concepts. They're kind of like Plato's ideal forms, kind of. As was outlined in PS:T, the blood war is less of a fight between devils and demons than it is a fight between law and chaos. And unlike drow and orcs, devils and demons and angels cannot have any traits that are unbecoming of their alignment, they are their alignment. They are ideal representatives of it. A succubus who acts in a lawful or good manner is no longer a succubus. An archangel who acts in an evil manner just once becomes an archdevil. So really, all you have to do to compare devils and demons is compare LE to CE. Here's a cosmology of the Far Realm I made. It was meant to have a linear, assymetrical configuration in comparison to the conventional D&D wheel-cosmology. I remember having all of it done, but I can't find a complete copy, so it's incomplete here as is:

Open the console (~ key) Type "DebugMode 1" Type "rs kr_influence(12)" You should then get a dialogue box that allows you to check/modify any of your NPC's influence values. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That'll certainly make it easier to crack those tougher dialogues with NPCs who you don't travel with much. Much obliged.

No wai. 5/10. Epilogues 4/10 (no Adalon? No Nasher? wtf?) End VO 3/10

so there is a way to kick people out of your party? Do they come back eventually?

what.

I don't know if I'd go that far. So far as I understand the situation, the kid was using standard non-violent resistance methods (going limp, etc.) often used by protesters. It's certainly better than throwing rocks. The tasering was about as called for and appropriate as using attack dogs and clubs on civil-rights era marchers. The fact that there was only one of him and he was potentially goading them is irrelevant, they showed irresponsibility that should cost them their jobs. They made a mistake, but one that wasn't out of acceptable negligence. This wasn't negligence, this was dangerous stupidity. Hell, I wonder what they'd do to somebody who actually resisted them.