Monte Carlo

^ In which case I'm confused... I took a look at the DA website: With reference to Darkspawn Duncan --- as long as he's romance-able and you can down-load his hairstyle the Bio drones will be more than happy.

Could somebody please dig up the counter-factual history thread from 2009? Current favourite* --- counter-factuals concerning the weather. May 1944. The RAF meterological department fails to predict a horrible stormfront brewing in the Atlantic. The D-Day Armada is seriously compromised: only 50% of the fleet makes the beaches, the other half is either sunk, turns back to England or is blown towards the Pas De Calais where it is carved up by E-Boats and the Luftwaffe. On the beaches the Allies are torn to pieces and a disaster that makes Dunkirk look like a minor fender-bender ensues. At Camp 'X' in SW London, Eisenhower resigns and WW2 looks to stretch into 1946 or even 1947. The already fractious military relations between the British and US starts to break down. A feeble attempt to switch the second front to Italy meets with disaster on the Gothic Line as dozens of Panzer divisions are switched from France to the Appennines. The Russian summer offensive is blunted after Kursk. They are looking at renewing the offensive in the Spring of 1945: The well-equipped divisions that would have been wasted in the Ardennes in December 1944 are instead re-fitted, rested and sent east. The Luftwaffe manages to scrape together enough resources to blunt the Allied bombing offensives, and V2 rockets rain down on London from bases in Holland. Meanwhile, Stalin fumes. Rumours of a negotiated peace with Hitler circulate. The USA manifestly refuses to accept anything else than complete victory. There is no Tehran conference. Then, in the late summer of 1945 Winston Churchill, during a briefing on The Manhattan Project asks for Berlin to be the subject of an atomic bombing raid in tandem with Japan. He finally manages to convince the USA that Stalin is a threat and that such a move kills two birds with one stone... Enigma intercepts suggest that the Germans are working towards completing their atomic weaponry project with advanced rocket technology as are the Soviets. Three atomic weapons are dropped on Berlin. Hitler and the vast majority of the Nazi and OKW high command die in the scorching ashes of the capital. When a new government promises resistance another four are dropped on key strategic German population and industrial centres. It is a tragedy of epic proportions... Germany surrenders, the Soviet army takes Silesia and what was Prussia but is unable to advance on the post-apocalyptic wasteland to the West. That's scary, and it's not an outrageous counter-factual by any stretch of the imagination and it was all down to the weather guy! Cheers MC * Shamelessly ripped in part from What If? 2

Sorry about the lack of proactive tunnel-mastering but I have spent the holiday period reading up on matters tunnel-related, as well as updating my (awesome) Tunnel Blog as well as managing the bargain, twenty minute "Return to the Tunnels" add-on pack to FiT. Ahem. And many thanks to Gromnir, who presumably has a spy in the FiT development team office. --- THE TUNNELS of CHAOS --- You have chosen to visit the Tunnels of Chaos. As a party you must choose a reason... (a) To fight in tunnels (b) To perform a number of Fedex quests © To curry favour with Hot Traitorous Chick (HTT), a joinable NPC woh will become annoyingly compulsory later in the adventure or (d) Something else entirely. Outside the tunnels is Gronk, a dwarf who is (hilariously) drunk. He is a merchant and has a selection of interesting tunnel-realted artefacts. Please post away...

Happy New Year, Tunnel Warriors. Anybody got Return to Ostagar yet? Or has the 'We Won't Pay For Half-an-Hour of DLC' movement gathered momentum. Have been too busy playing Company of Heroes to pay as much attention as perhaps I should. Toodle pip, MC

I just pulled a massive Company of Heroes online session today... 65% of it was awesome (even when I was losing), the rest was all about how awful online gaming can be if you pick up the wrong gamers on your side.

I take Pops' point about a new iteration of D&D pumping the brand, but let it be put on the record that the first 3E D&D 'puter game (cue fanfare) was.... Pool of Radiance 2. Ooops.

^ I find your lack of faith... disturbing. Clearly, FiT is a splatbook / DLC / supplement to Bowl World. Doh. The Warrior Maidens of Laaaa! will be making an appearance shortly.

^ Yes, the only mod I've loaded is re-specc v 1.05. Nothing else is going on there until the whole modding thing is better established. The fact that the toolset behaved like Ebola as soon as it was released didn't help much.

Keith Flint is so utterly awesome that he can have what the hell he likes, for free, from Tunnel Mart. Keith comes equipped with The Haircut of Entropy, The Baggy Jumper of Awesomeness and The Twisted Fire Starter +5. I award him the prestige class --- Twisted Tunnel Bard. Yes, I like Keith and the Prodigy. A lot. Cheers MC

No, it's only worth 8 TTs. And a rucksack costs 650.

Let's take a pragmatic approach --- people posting are 'there.' The others, Dragon Age style, are sitting around in the camp eating, sleeping and wondering WTF that guy is doing with an exclamation mark hovering over his head. The Tunnels of Chaos were built by an insane mage who collected exotic, tunnel dwelling creatures. He put mind-altering substances in their food and they all went mad, eating the mage and creating a new alignment called Chaotic Crazy. You might need an extra 100 TTs (Tunnel Tokens) to go and spend in the General Store, called, imaginatively, Tunnel Mart.

It's free --- I'm just the writer I don't code. There is some fighting in tunnels, it's a mod set after the events of DA, in the aftermath of the war. So you start a new level one character and have old-skool adventures in a village with little sub-quests branching off it. It's a small-ish mod - 3 joinable NPCs and a critical path which invariably involves EnSLAviNG NatioNS wiTH NecrOManCy but still a lot of work and a lot of writing. I'm trying to make the Dalish Elf clan in the mod a bit less pathetic, luckily the guys I'm modding with are an agreeable bunch. So it's Lawful Evil elves all the way. Cheers MC

^ Pop, do you think that the vice-like grip D&D has had on CRPGs is finally on the wane? I personally think this would be a good thing, but without the brand how do developers get the suits to agree to big CRPG titles nowadays? DA is a hit, especially on the console (where D&D has only ever been marginal). I'm hoping that other companies are looking at DA and thinking that maybe they could throw their hats into the ring. Of course, we've got Blizzard and D3 but that's aimed at a different audience (is D3 going out on console too?) and some indie Euro CRPGs, but what about the niche that Bio / BIS used to occupy?

With regards to the water spells - I wish to remind you that a tunnel with water flowing through it is technically a sewer. Which is where most of your minds are OK, we now have an intrepid band of tunnel explorers. Which tunnel would you like to explore? There are the Tunnels of Chaos The Tunnels of Fury and... The Tunnels of Unnecessary Exposition. --- Your party has three small swords, a plank of wood with a nail hammered through it, a length of rope, iron rations, two suits of grubby tunnel armour, a torch and a copy of a book called Tunnels: A History.

^ Aha, but you will all download and play my mod when it comes out. Oh yes, you will.

^ Yeah, my 2H warrior has a spare bow he plinks away at the bag guys with, I have low DEX and no archery talents and I can still get off three or four arrows at 10-14 damage before drawing my sword. In fact, a crossbow / 2H warrior with one tier of archery talent is a viable little build for sniping before closing for melee. Might try it out. Hard is quite enjoyable, I have to think about battles a lot more, those bandit groups in Lothering were a bit more of a challenge and Idiot Al is carrying a boat-load of injuries. Ha!

Obz reminds me of those expert, but not-very-well-known screenwriters they parachute into ailing movies to sharpen things up, or make the sequel more awesome. Shame they won't unleash them on Dragon Age 2, they'd sort it out. Oh yes, they would.

Hmmm. The Left have taken to environmental politics with great gusto. Ergo, there must be something bogus about it --- what greater reason for ordering us about and taking our money to give to their client groups than "we're saving the planet"? The Germans always called their Greens 'watermelons', green on the outside but Red in the middle. So, for me, Greens are just commies with a wind turbine fetish. Only rugged individuals with access to powerful hunting rifles and tinned food can save the planet, after civilization has broken down Can Crash Gordon turn his party around? Er, no. Not that the other lot exactly inspire confidence.

OK, a claustrophobic tunnel fighter and a stat-obsessed tunnel munchkin. What could possibly go wrong?

I've been holding a piece of A4-sized cardboard fooscap file over a kettle for twenty minutes now and it's still empty.

^ That would be an awesome design decision, maybe a CRPG set in the empty carpark of a suburban supermarket?

It is my pleasure as Tunnel Master to answer sensible questions and address issues concerning splendidly named characters. There are no metaphysical restraints and you may use magic. Being set predominantly in tunnels, spells that involve light sources and oxygen supply are useful. Some tunnels are very small, some are very large -characters capable of metamorphosis might wish to use a range of creature sizes.

^ Please stay on topic, whelp. The expansion you describe is extremely good value for money DLC that will be released later.

Hello. Fighting In Tunnels* © is my exciting new fantasy game. in it, you play the part of intrepid adventurers fighting monsters. In tunnels. Please post your characters, the ruleset is quite flexible. Although it is a classless system you may give your characters an archetypal descriptor (i.e. Tunnel Warrior). I, of course, am the Tunnel Master. When we have four characters I will begin. Honestly, it will be awesome. --- --- --- * Fighting in Tunnels is a copyright of Monte Carlo Enterprises (UK), if you want to use this exciting IP please PM me and we can haggle. I like artesan cheese and decent claret.

I guess it's easier to get the money together using a big-name brand like D&D. Although I couldn't be less excited about a 4E D&D game, which as far as this Grognard is concerned ain't even a D&D game anymore. It's like saying that because there's beef in it that a McDonald's burger is the same as a filet mignon. Yeah, try and get something going using an original IP and ruleset already. Cheers MC