Raithe

Ah, but he's an English Conspiracy Nut.. You never know how an American jury will react. Too many hollywood movies with Brits as the bad guys.. I have to admit, I've known a few folks from the States who are quite schizophrenic in how they view England... One moment they're treating it all as "charming, traditional, that lovely queen" and the next its all "Rahr! Independance! Freedom! Evil England!" It can be quite bizarre

Heh, what would have been amusing is to have the webcam up and running this morning to catch folks staggering in...

Oh and for those who wanted to peruse it, Twitch will have the whole thing up for watching for a little bit longer. http://www.twitch.tv...ian/b/335806140 Edit: I have to admit, I'm half tempted to send a bottle of vodka to the Obsidian offices when I get some free budget with a "Compliments on the repeated Wooooo-ing that broke headphones" in a few weeks..

Roberts did some statement about he wants even "less of a barrier" between the fans and him which is why he didn't go with kickstarter and set up their own pledge area.

One of the points they make is that unless you tick a specific option, you won't get your money back even if they fail to make the goal. If you tick the option, you'll get the money back, minus handling fees.. so I'm guessing they take the money straight away or some such?

The simple things of small programs to reverse strings or more complicated type of learning projects?

There was a fair few people in just the Twitch stream, and then there was the Ustream and kickstarter comments.. so at the rapid pace they were flying by I imagine it was fairly hard to focus on many. Which unfortunately left the mass repeats of "greenshirtgirl" swamp over. There was a certain degree of comedy to some of them, but when you just had hammering of "its not a party unless there are boobs!" it did make you want to slap people. Especially when serious or interesting questions got dissapeared in the morass. Although with Twitch having put it up on the main page apparently, there seemed to be a number of folk who had no idea what Project Eternity was turning up in the stream and asking random comments about what it was, and what was going on and why were we watching people get drunk. It's kind of a shame there weren't any moderation to filter it all, even if the majority was taken with a grain of salt and in the name of general good humour. Edit: The amusing thing would be if they turned the cameras on this morning and recorded just what state everyone is in when they stagger through the offices when they turn up....

Well it hit 2am here. Of course, I decided to say sod it to buying groceries this weekend and up my pledge in the last minute. Then with 10 seconds to go realised I hadn't included the "postage" fee on top so had to suddenly rush back in to do that....

And I'm going with the headphones.. As they start up... The Final Countdown...

..Do you get the feeling "greenshirtgirl" just might become the new office nickname? And good gawd, Avellone is seriously on the way to a happy drunk.

heh, and then the drunken kareoke kills the mic for about 5 minutes..

It's both amusing and kind of creepy the amount of love that green shirt girl (nicole) is getting from the crowd....

I have to say "Freeside Open" and "The Strip Open" are damn nice to put in for a fresh game...

I think part of the fuss was how the UK viewed it purely as a "Computer Crime" while the US was lobbying to stress the "Terrorist" nature of it since it was the Pentagon.

And you've been missing the experience of watching the Obsidian team drink copious bottles of vodka live...

Yeah, I'm on Twitch as Ehtiar. And Chris' sudden shock at 3.8 and the words out of his mouth.. right before realising Feargus' daughter was on the other side of the room..

Yeah, I'm lurking in the background watching the stream as well...

You have to admit, it was always one of the classic elements of D&D. When you hit certain levels, it was pretty much expected that you'd start some form of stronghold and attract followers. It's that shift in gears from being a common sellsword to being a figure of power and influence... It would be less about wandering into the nearest cave system to thwack some kobolds around the head, and more about stepping into a wider arena of actions and effects. You need to do something with all the golds, loot and zappy items you've picked up, and investing it in organizations, trading networks, network of "friends" and improving a base of operations is a relatively coherent approach and isn't quite as arbitrary as some methods of dealing with it all can be.

What we basically have is a fairly magic team, being hindered only by their own desires, debates, brain storming and some whining from the fans.... I think we can safely say there's a lot to look forward to in seeing how it all develops, and there's nothing that screams "Epic Fail" at the moment. We can't really say "Trust in the Force" , but I think we can pretty much just trust in their desire to do a serious roleplaying game without obscure pressure from external management types. It's time to celebrate for today, and then watch how it starts to shake loose over the next year...

Another aspect that probably has been overshadowed now, was that back when he was first charged and the US wanted to extradite him, there had been a spate of UK based hackers hitting various US servers. In each of those other cases, the UK tried them and gave minimal sentences. So the US were going all out to make a severe example out of McKinnon and really didn't want another "soft trial and sentence" simply because it was some computer crime rather then violent behaviour. Of course, its now a decade on and most of thats forgotten, now its all about the "principle" of the matter..

Part of it was political as well. The US pushed through a treaty after 9/11 that let them demand extradition from the UK, but gave them the easy right to refuse extradition of people the UK wanted to charge from the US. One point I always found dubious about McKinnons defense was that his mother didn't want him stuck in an american jail because she thought he had Aspergers and wouldn't be able to visit him if he was jailed in the US. He was only diagnosed with it after the arrest and potential extradition cropped up. On the flip side, in the UK he'd be charged with the computer crimes, but not in the potential terrorist/national security issues. Mostly because when you get down to it, he's a bit of a weird guy who really wanted to find evidence of UFO's on the pentagon servers... While if he does end up in a US court, he gets slapped with the whole national security aspect and a jury of americans who will see some annoying Brit... (can we say fair trial here..). So depending on exactly where he gets tried and the language used , he could go from facing a few years jail time and a big slap on the wrist, to potentially a couple of decades if the US pulls out all the stops.

My first thought is that we should be careful of the word "Stronghold". To a lot of folks it automatically creates the idea of some Castle type base.. and while that can be fun and suitable in a lot of situations, it would be interesting if there's more of a variety in just what type of Stronghold you do acquire / construct. If you're playing a Rogue type, or a Cipher, or a Wizard does it make as much sense that they get hold of some honking great military fortification? So the stronghold should represent the character in some manner. Sure, some Wizards might go for a big castle, but otheres might prefer that fortified tower / wizard academy type of thing.. The rogue might prefer establishing some Mansion with a hidden Batcave.. Either way, it needs to establish different aesthetics. Potential for the players to choose (or outright customise) a variety of styles for it, and to expand and refine what is there. Pulling in some form of minions to provide care, comfort and not have it feel as if you're sole occupant in some rather large establishment. Strongholds and the related areas make a great money sink as well. Adventurers of all sorts can end up with ridiculous amounts of cash and loot - and it bugs the crap out of me when game worlds don't recognise that. Think about it, you kill a dragon and get its hoard, you are going to destabilise the local economy if you start dropping that cash around willy-nilly. The stronghold should let you put that money to work in a good way, also, it should let you effect the world around and provide faction influence (positive or negative) depending on just how you go about things. Is having a stronghold going to provide extra resources you can use in the game or is it more just an ego-stroke-monument to your personal glory? Having to go out and try to recruit various npc's to staff your stronghold, and different choices you make having an assortment of consequences later. Or just in different options you can follow through on in expanding the stronghold. Will you have to make a choice between establishing an alchemy lab or a blacksmith? Will you have access to both? Will hiring that mage from x culture clash with the priest from y culture? Will your seneschal of choice deal well with the local villagers or be better with the city merchants? There needs to be some reaction to you establishing that sort of base of operations, and if you do have military might and tenant farmers you are becoming a power in that corner of the world. So political shennannigans should ensue. So quests of setting up the stronghold, quests to refine the stronghold, quests to deal with people working for you / living there, quests to deal with surrounding factions and just how they react to how you're going about your business... Of course, the flip side of this is just how it can potentially influence the main storyline as well. I'm assuming that since this was a stretch goal, it would be considered a needed part of the main storyline to deal with. But just how will it effect the storyline? Will it make sense if it has absolutely no relation to whatever happens? Will it be totally stand alone and have no effect on the people you meet and deal with post strong-hold creation? Will various quests relating to the stronghold only become available at different points of progression? If you have some massive fortress and a personal army will the various factions treat you differently? Regardless, it really cannot be some static thing that only looks shiny. Well, unless it, really quite seriously uber-shiny.

Depending on just how big the world map is going to be (that we can actually explore/travel around), I think it makes sense to have two cities that will cover different countries / culture / race.. I'm guessing the standard city will be the pseudo middle-ages, humanocentric one (ala Baldur's Gate / Neverwinter etc), and the other one will potentially be something with a different visual theme. Heh, although having been reading some Arabian Nights recently, I'm pondering just what a "mystical Bagdhad" would look like with the soul-magic and related aspects in this world...

Just add even more choices/relationships/consequences between the various factions, npcs, and related quests then already planned.. Really ramp up the basis for how different things fall out as the player acts in different ways.... Of course, that just adds silly levels of difficulty to how expansion packs and potentially follow-on games react to choices made. Thus, serious stretch goal for that.