Monte Carlo

Sry, double post.

Lord Flash-heart and Flashman are very different, one is a TV character on Blackadder, one is George Macdonald Fraser's re-imaginings of the bully from 'Tom Brown's Schooldays' The Flashman books, however, are as you astutely identify the perfect template for an enjoyably 'evil' protagonist. Flash-heart, OTOH is all kinds of awesome for totally different reasons...

I'm glad someone else understands. There are two of us now.

You've met my wife, then.

Romance threads need vitriol. It is the chilli of righteousness on the hotdog of sappy, girly lameness.

Any professional online community manager would clearly see the advantage of me having my own sub-forum. It is literally a no-brainer.

Hmmm Blizzard being sued for a change... http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/11/10/blizzard-sued-over-security-concerns-authenticators/ The legal argument over authenticators is interesting. What do the rest of you think? Is it really like buying a car, then someone saying "Oh, by the way, it's a doddle to break into, you need to buy our new alarm system to protect it!" Or, conversely, is it like providing a computer then not unreasonably charging money for extra anti-virus?

I hated the way items scaled too. You see a level 10 piece of armour then you come back and it's level 20.

^ Hey, welcome to 4th Edition D&D.

Unfortunately I am the master of bad hangovers, I have worked out 2 things on how to mitigate them Shooters generally increase the likelihood of them (but Tequila is so festive I can't resist) If you drink about 1 liter of water before you go to sleep you can avoid most hangovers ( the problem is I sometimes forget to drink the water before sleeping ) You see, by taking electrolytes you don't need a litre of water. Now I am an old fart a litre would have me up pissing every hour.

^ Try this. It works.

^ Epic fail. You are taking all the good stuff after the fact. You need to rehydrate before you sleep. Srsyl, booze makes your bloody brain shrink from dehydration. Stop it. For the love of God. Since I discovered Dioralyte I have been able to enjoy even more alcohol in a consequence-free way (well, in the short term, but, Dogs, do you want to live forever?).

We need a hangover cure thread. I am the twisted Meister of Hangover Curage. Try this... This is the hangover remedy that medical professionals will never tell you about (although they all use it, hell I got this tip from a nurse). A pint of water with a sachet of this before you go to bed seriously reduces hangover symptoms.

Trust me, my friend, it depends on what's in the fridge and who's opening it. You have to remember that Gorth lives in Australia, a country where almost everything is designed to kill the unwitting.

Let's give credit where credit's due, the end of Dragon Age was interesting and different, giving you a wrap-up of all the different quests you did (big and small) and allowing you to die in a blaze of glory and be remembered yadda yadda. That was good. Something like that, structurally, without Bio histrionics and fan-fic level writing would be fine by me.

The bad side of this is that when you don't do the romance (even though you don't like them). You have the feeling you are missing a lot of content. For example without doing the romance of Lelliana in DA:O. you were missing the encounter with her mentor , the fight and the good item she had. So, you do feel kind of forced to do them in a way. But... but... romances aren't minigames with extra rewards right? Right??? Btw what was the screw-Leliana-and-get-a-gift item anyhoo? Was it any good?

I want my own sub-forum where all the Real Gaemers could hang out.

I think I gave Dragon Age Origins 7/10 as a campy, fun combat RPG. At the time. I stand by that, but the paucity of decent games made me too generous. I'd revise it to a 6/10. I liked the combat but the ren fayre vibe, fan-service NPCs and repetitive foes killed it for me. Having said that, as a H&S romp with a party made up of Dog, Golem and the grumpy dude with a greatsword it can be quite good fun.

God I hate the term 'save-scumming' it's meaningless. Saving before something tough happens is, like, common sense.

This is why I prefer less classes with more granular roles. Then, within those classes, you can tinker with skills and create different archetypes. What P:E has at the moment is six too many classes. Fighters should be (duh) the masters of weapons (be it ranged or melee) and tactics (be they brute force berserking or finesse). They should perform best wearing armour. They should be the most difficult to kill in terms of sustaining physical damage. Within that you could make a nimble, dextrous fighter or an iron-clad brute. Or a fighter who in fact gives up significant combat prowess, bar one or two weapons, to choose a symbiotic skill from another class pool (i.e. to create a Sword Saint, Paladin-type fighter or scout). You can apply this across classes to make divinely-inspired mages, sneaky clerics or greatsword-toting rogues. But the one thing these classes have in common is focussed access to a specific skillset that performs a defined role in combat. Classes don't automatically mean shoe-horning. But they should focus on their core skills but allow the player to twist them. Combat mage is still a mage, he's just chosen to give up some arcane specialisation to allow him to duke it out in melee using his spells. Sneaky fighter is still a fighter, she just prefers to use dodges and flashy parries in combat, and prefers to scout a melee before jumping into it. So on and so forth.

I want to kill everything using a dazzling array of martial techniques and arcane instruments of slaughter. I want to cleanse the remains with fire. I want to stalk the earth like a fell apocalypse made flesh. I want to, literally, feast on souls. So frankly this topic isn't working for me but I will happily slay you pacifist types and teach you a lesson.

Am recovering from a late night. I went to the last gig of the Evanescence tour at Wembley, dammit Amy Lee was good.

^ Your point is entirely fair and I withdraw my slur on the good name of Pokemon.

This was a really interesting update from a layman's perspective. But. I want to know the important stuff. I want a bug place under the coffee machine. I want to know the Machiavellian office politics, to see if Ferg is basically Tony Soprano. I need to see Avellone literally crying into his beer as he tries to think up a romance to keep forum weenies happy. I want to see Sawyer threatening interns with a chainsaw. I want to see Adam's real pie charts, the one costing the spend on beer, pizza and replacement polyhedral dice. This is the stuff we know happens but we would like the warts and all evidence.

No more strange than the dogmatic mumbo-jumbo espoused by most organised religions in the real world, as far as I'm concerned.