Monte Carlo

With the greatest respect to CrashGirl, with whom I invariably find myself in agreement: How would JA3 made using the FO3 engine actually work? The whole point of JA3 is that it's a squad-based tactical game (note that I'm not dying in a ditch on turn-based, although I'd be tempted to). It's a bizarro suggestion IMO. JA3 would, on the other hand, absolutely rock using the Fallout: Tactics engine. FO:T borrows so many elements from JA that it's halfway there already. And it's a dead game... can you mod it I wonder?

^ Looks like a modded game of JA2. I say modded because of the purple / mauve ammo in the machine gun... don't remember that from the original.

Yeah, I'd pay for that too. It wouldn't have to be turn-based, but I did like the TOEE combat engine a lot.

^ I suppose that the expectation was that SoZ was billed as a story-lite dungeon-crawling romp. Without dungeons, as it turns out. Hmmm. IWD was a story-lite dungeon-crawling romp (and fondly remembered by those of us who enjoyed that sort of thing). Comparisons were sort of inevitable given our collective tribal memory of the IE games and how those design decisions Must Inform Everything . Personally, I'd be happy if the NWN2 modding community played to the strengths of the game and made IWD-inspired modules rather than try to tell stories (why not just write some fan fic and put it up on the web instead?). Cheers MC

Hey, maybe it should be a deliberately bad Fan Fic competition, then me and Dave Gaider could meet in the play-offs.

I'm Brian. And so is my wife.

1. Free Trade. Real free trade. I suspect the new US President, a machine Democrat, won't be very keen on that. The EU definitely won't be (q.v. the aforementioned CAP), the preferred vehicle being aid packages (spent largely on gold-plated limos and helicopter gunships for the generals). 2. The mis-directed US Neo-Con zeal directed at Iraq would have been better focussed on Africa. South Africa would need to be won around, sure, but stabilizing East Africa from Zimbabwe to Somalia would have had as much, if not more, of an emmolient effect on global instability and the "War on the Abstract Pronoun." I imagine many Zimbabweans would have been throwing flowers in front of the US armoured columns, as opposed to bombs. I hope to see Africa on it's feet in my lifetime, with decent, functioning democracies, tangible health outcomes for it's people (and the defeat of HIV) and growing economies of the type the continent could easily develop (and deserves). Unfortunately, trading blocs and patronising cant from Western politicians continues to frustrate that laudable objective. Cheers MC

"How much can you possibly know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?" Tyler Durden - Fight Club. Having said that, methinks a spiritual fight is as valid as a physical one in the right circumstances. I'm sure a lot of people would nominate a Mandela or a Ghandi.

Lee Marvin is still up there, closely followed by Ollie Reed. However, I give you Warrant Officers Josef Gabč

^ Hmmm. Lovely place, lovely people but it is about the same size as a small town. They've got about 600 part-time cops, me and my 76 year old mother could probably stage a half-decent invasion there armed with a fish. Anyhow, I hope it works out there. Cheers MC

Huh? The CAP that is criminally corrupt and has been since it's inception? The same CAP that hinders fair trade in developing countries? I don't want "trying to make progress" I want the thing scrapped. Now. Oh, and please stop citing'pessimism.' It's a classic left-wing debating tactic, of course (shut down the opposing argument by suggesting negativity). It only works in high school debating societies. Play the ball, not the man. Cheers MC

As long as I can make a chapter of Space Marines in hot pink power armour, I'll be happy.

^ Clearly, the whole idea of Turkey joining the European Union is geographically preposterous (which I why I support it). I also agree that Turkey is a capable regional power in it's own right. I'm a bit of a fan, actually. However, successive Turkish governments have sought EU membership as a core policy objective for some time now. The benefits for Turkey are obvious. Cheers MC

A-ha! You see, I don't actually think I'm being pessimistic. My optimistic vision for Europe would be a post-modern patchwork of nation states, themselves made up of semi-autonomous regions, living peacefully side-by-side. Breton and Cornishman, Basque and Celt, Londoners and Scots, Turkic peoples and Latvians... they would be free to make their own laws, create their own free trade areas, agreements and alliances. NATO, a European free trade area, strong Atlantacist ties to the USA... all of these things would exist. The 19th Century is gone, NATO would police the fractious borders and the small wars that lead to big ones would be history! What wouldn't exist would be a crushing political machine, devoid of accountability that is based on the Napoleonic Code. So, you see, I'm actually a starry-eyed Utopian optimist! Cheers MC

It's interesting to see how Europe looks from Australia. From there it looks like a brave new way of dealing with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. From here, it looks like a dangerously un-democratic, elitist and economically dubious would-be tyranny. Yes, Britons are traditionally sceptical. We are an island race, and islands often produce strangely independent people. Europe as a supra-national entity was the dream of old men who feared another world war. A noble aspiration has become a technocratic nightmare run by a self-serving elite. Period. Remember this: British voters haven't been allowed a single referendum or free vote on any European legistation since the 1970's. We didn't vote for the Europe we have now. As for the UK, yep, our economy is FUBAR. We over-relied on financial services with lassez faire regulation. Our government, run as it is by left-wing ex-university lecturers who've never run as much as a hotdog stand, thought they'd tamed the beast of Capitalism and got fat and lazy on the profits. We'll be back, though, and yes it'll be tough. No more or less tough than, say France (the Euro is crippling them because of interest rates) the Italians (who've never recovered from the introduction of the Euro at an over-inflated introduction rate), Spain (their economy could go the way of Latin American countries, just like ours) and don't even get me started on the fringe countries who will soon find out what happens when a Central Bank catering for lots of countries does when the wheel comes off (q.v. Ireland). I want the European Union to become so big, so bloated and so irrelevant that it gradually and peacefully ceases to become relevant. It'll be like Rome, but without the fancy costumes. Hey, look on the bright side, you live in Oz. Throw something on the barbie for me and I trust we have your support in the next Six Nations Cheers MC

The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins. Again. I've read it probably twenty times* because it's one of the best thrillers ever written. I love everything about it, even the bad bits. Did I mention how good The Eagle Has Landed is, by the way? CAVEAT: This certainly doesn't apply to the sequel, The Eagle Has Flown. Why Jack, WHY??? Am studying for some professional exams (ergo I'm goofing around posting here) so am not reading as much as I usually do. Cheers MC * Actually, now I think about it, you could double that.

Don't agree about Europe. It's already becoming dangerously akin to the 19th Century Ottoman Empire than 21st Century uber-bloc. The Euro is just at the sniffles stage of a serious dose of flu, Italy and Spain are going to suffer as Germany protects it's own economy (Euroland orbits the German economy as we do the Sun). As for the Eastern European new arrivals, well their economies are already feeling the pain. Furthermore, given that they've just spent fifty years under the thumb of an unrepresentative, bureaucratic foreign power I suspect that they'll be much warier of diktat from Brussels. I give you the already turbulent Czech Republic's presidency of the EU (I'm on their side, by the way). Personally I can't wait for Turkish membership of the EU. Why? 1. I like Turkey, there are all sorts of important geo-strategic reasons why it's a Good Thing... ...But 2. It's not in Europe. Well, not all of it. 3. So it will render the EU virtually meaningless. Hoo-rah! Back to the economy. I remember the 70's and 80's so am knuckling down for a rough five years. Has Globalisation failed? Probably not, but it will be the clarion call of the Left for the next few years. What new capitalist phoenix will rise from the ashes? There will be one, there always is. It's the people in their twenties I feel sorriest for, it's going to be tough out there with a concomitant effect on politics and society. Will we see a new late 60's-style radicalism or more Baader-Meinhof? A new Hayek-like economic resurgence or Keynesian paternalism? I don't know, sport fans, but it will be like the Chinese curse because we "live in interesting times." I'm investing in hunting rifle manufacturers and tinned food companies. Cheers MC

By the way, given that my real name is Orlando Tarquinius Von Biscuit-Barrel IV, I hope that my victory will not spoil the setting nor immersion in any way.

Yay! Boo! I will win. Oh yes, I will.

To be honest, I was thinking about RuneQuest, my favourite ever pen & paper RPG (which was classless). Anybody could use 'Battle Magic' which were like hexes or curses that gave modest benefits or penalties (it was a pretty low-magic game). Characters could buy Battle Magic if they could find someone to teach it to them (it was mana-styled, based on a stat called Power. Ability scores were in the 3-18 range like D&D so an average stat was 11-12... you could cast two or three half-decent spells from your own stats. You could use power crystals and so on to boost this). Then there was Rune Magic, analagous to divine magic in D&D that higher-powered characters could access via joining religions (or 'cults', which I suppose in 1978 wasn't such a perjorative term). I'm seeing Battle Magic as Feats and access to Rune Magic as Prestige Class abilities. For D&D a la NWN2? My base classes would be rogue, barbarian and fighter. Period. And I'd give them all access to all skills, just with a weighted point-buy based on class. Becoming a cleric or wizard then becomes a real test of character development that you could meaningfully blend with other skills and abilities. OK, your rogue is going to concentrate on perhaps more dialogue / negotiation and your warrior on bashing things but inbetween those poles you could do anything else where magic was concerned. A favourite RQ character was a dim but quite wise and very charismatic tribal warrior / thief. He used tribal battle magic only to enhance his stealth and combat skills, rather than rain down fireballs and summon demons. It fitted the setting, I guess D&D is the high magic opposite :: shrug :: Cheers MC

Clearly you never played old school PnP D&D or you'd realize they captured the feel of such fun, high adventure modules like war rafts of kron or quest for the heart stone to the T! If thats not your cup of tea or before your time then I can see where one simply does not 'get it' with this XP. Even if it's not your thing the additions to the game engine are going to open a new era for community mods I think. Looking forward to see what folks like Adam Miller do with it. ^ What he said, to the power of ten.

There should be no organic spell-using classes, they should all be purchased as feats by any class that meets the prerequisite statistics (i.e. INT-based magic, WIS-based magic and CHA-based magic). Discuss. Cheers MC

Question, from someone who has never played (nor intends to play) an MMORPG: As a genre, will they at some point simply crash? Or evolve? Or, I'm wondering if they will in some strange way segue into social networking sites (etc) and turn into something none of is can quite predict or understand at the moment. Cheers MC

FWIW, I owned both Full Spectrum Warrior and Mercenaries on the Xbox. FSW: Extremely ambitious, polished, good-looking squad-based shooter that was perhaps too war-gamish for a console title. I loved it. Mercenaries: Sand-box action shooter set in North Korea (where Morgoth, it will be remembered, got his MBA), open world, great action, nice to look at, played it for hours. The co-op was fun too, IIRC. So, whatever Pandemic's sins, not making good games wasn't one of them. Cheers MC

Ha, just noticed that you're from NZ. There's a really funny bit about the perception of Kiwis by the Greek partisans, given that their only experience of them is meeting their commandos behind-the-lines. A quick line, beautifully written and I'll let you find it and enjoy it yourself. Cheers MC