PrimeJunta

Nope. How it's made is still something of a mystery, although there have been somewhat successful efforts to reproduce the technique. It has to do with the crystalline structure of the steel, which requires specific impurities in the iron and very particular forging techniques. It's a mix of hard and soft crystals in a tight, "organic," swirly pattern. The hard crystals make the blade keep an edge, the softer ones give it tensile strength. The iron used to make Damascus steel originated in India, and when the mines ran out the techniques of the smiths in Damascus stopped working and were lost. Modern metallurgists have attempted to reproduce it with variable success. (We can make better steels nowadays though, but for the day and age it was something exceptional.)

I'm starting like the sound of pollaxes. Sounding more and more like the ultimate melee weapon. For you weapon geeks, what's the tradeoff? Why didn't it displace other melee weapons altogether? Or, put another way, when would I rather be holding, say, a sword, mace, or hammer instead? Edit: Also, @Kubilayhan,cool tower of skulls in the background. Makes a bit of a statement, that.

I never managed to get past the start on that one, so I don't really have an opinion on it. I'll probably give it another try one of these days. Keep an eye out for "deal weekends" on GoG -- I bought mine from there a while back when they had one of those "five for the price of one" type deals going.

So I've been putzing around with NWN2 again. Back around when they came out, I played through the OC about two or three times, and then the same for MotB. I never managed to finish Storm of Zehir, and never got past the start of Mysteries of Westgate. Revisiting them, I can see things I really liked about all of them, and things that I really didn't like. I'm not really trying to complete any of them; just playing in and with them. The OC has aged the worst IMO. It's too deeply rooted in NWN, like Obsidian was trying really hard to make a BioWare game but their heart wasn't really in it. It has most of the weaknesses of the IE games and not so many of the strengths; the quests are mostly linear do-this do-that, kill-that-meanie, find-this-trinket, rescue-these-hostages kind of stuff and of course the main campain story driver is about as unimaginative as it gets. The best part is IMO Crossroad Keep. I like the introduction of strategy and resource management elements into a straight-off fantasy cRPG. Storm of Zehir... whoo. I think this is the one I like best of the trio... in principle. The trade empire back story permits a lot of emergent gameplay and nicely lets you set your own objectives in the context of the bigger story. This is true-blue spreadsheet-RPG game in the IWD tradition: screw larping, just make the most efficient team of adventurer/merchants you can, and make the world your mollusc. I love discovering hidden stuff on the map and in fact one of the challenges I set for myself was to make the ultimate world-map party guide (and I think I did OK with that). But. It stumbles badly in the execution. The constant transitions between the world map and locations take way too much time. It's poorly balanced, as in soporifically easy, with a reasonably well-constructed (far from perfect) party. And at least for me, once I had my trade empire all nicely set up and grinding in obscene amounts of wealth, the main impetus for continuing the story was kind of lost for me. If I make, like, a couple of hundred grand by taking a few power naps, why would I even want to keep adventuring? And MotB... oh, MotB. I love the writing, and in my opinion no cRPG integrates game systems and ethical choices and consequences quite as well. If only there was a that rescaled it to levels 4-15 or so, like SoZ. Epic-level D&D is just so utterly silly. "Please, Safiya, dear, would you be so kind as to NOT lob meteor storms on me while I'm busy fighting these epically dangerous spirit beasts? Or at least slap an Energy Immunity (Fire) and Greater Stoneskin on first? [casts Heal on self in mid-combat]" What would I like to see in P:E? From the OC, Crossroad Keep only a notch further. From SoZ, emergent gameplay objectives that are driven by a system of mechanics similar in style – but not necessarily at all in content – as the trade system. From MotB, the personal story, fantastically written companions, and off-the-beaten-track locations. If "all" P:E does is that, without any major innovations of its own, it will be one hell of a good game.

Actually I think it might be kinda cool to have showy, impractical armor in the game... which is commensurately poor as armor, but might have other benefits. Paladins for example have those leadership feats -- sticking a big honking pair of ... horns on your ... helmet might certainly enhance those. Speaking of codpieces, I wonder what kinds of armor enhancements the paladin of a fertility god would have...

I'd like to see it taken a bit further than that, even. I'd like to get rid of unambiguous "success/fail" conditions. Instead, have a range of possible outcomes. Some of them will be more desirable than others. Some may be more desirable than others depending on your motives, your needs, or your character builds. And sometimes there should be interesting consequences for apparent failure. This would add a lot of depth to the game, and as a side effect not reward savegame abuse.

I think Obsidian has said something along the lines that they don't have a 'morality meter,' but they do have reactive people. I.e., people react to you based on what they think of your actions from their ethical POV. So presumably if someone thinks witches should be burned and someone else thinks they should be put in charge, they will react accordingly when you deal with a witch however you see fit. I would like that.

Bingo. I've run my PnP campaigns as fairly sandbox-y, in that I barely ever force the players to go anywhere or do anything. However I figured out maybe 20 years ago that to keep things interesting I have to keep them hungry; give them some burning issue to address. The nice thing is that with PnP it's a continuing back and forth with the players, which means that if things go well, they'll start to develop their own ideas about what matters and what doesn't, and then that can become the impetus for the story. But there has to be some at least somewhat hairy situation they're in. "You all meet at a tavern and decide to go adventuring" doesn't really work IMO.

It does... but I think the interesting question is, what is the relationship between freedom and roleplay? There is one obviously, since without any freedom there's no agency, and with no agency you're reduced to a more or less passive observer of the story. However I'm not at all convinced that more freedom always leads to more roleplay. I'd sum up the essence of roleplay as "tough choices." Choices become tough if they're limited: if any choice you make has trade-offs, sometimes tragic ones. These kinds of choices emerge naturally out of crisis situations, and crisis situations emerge out of story arcs. A sandbox with maximal freedom kind of takes the edge off those choices, since by definition you'll have the choice of walking away from the situation. So I see the relationship between freedom and roleplay as something of an inverted U curve -- no freedom, no roleplay, 100% freedom, no roleplay, with the sweet spot somewhere in between where you have agency but your choices are fairly strongly constrained by your circumstances. This can be done in an open-world game too, but to pull it off it needs to constrain your choices in other ways than writing it into the script. Otherwise it just becomes a hiking simulator. Oblivion didn't appeal to me at all, and I didn't even play Skyrim for this reason. I agree strongly. Screw moral dichotomy, let's have shades of gray instead. Again, I agree that the "defeat the King of Shadows" trope is hackneyed and unnecessarily limiting. However, I'm not sure that a scenario of finite limits is a bad thing per se. I like resolution. The alternative is a world that just goes stale and you stop playing because you get bored. I prefer a rousing finale to that. Another +1 on the ego-stroking, good-vs-evil, heroes, and villains. There are other stories that you can tell also. But I do find that to role-play without any story becomes thin gruel. Don't get me wrong, I like simulations as well, but in them I don't role-play. I was really hooked on Dwarf Fortress for a quite a while, but I don't think of it as a role-playing game, precisely because there's no story arc, even in adventure mode. Any role-playing you do has to be "larping." Its strengths lie elsewhere, and IMO it exemplifies both the strengths and the limitations of sandbox games rather beautifully.

It would be awesome to see other areas besides combat see some real development. I have high hopes for T:ToN in this respect, actually. Personally, I don't think 'sandboxiness' is crucial in a cRPG. It's a possibility, and can work quite well, like in Fallout and perhaps to a somewhat lesser degree in Arcanum and Morrowind. Quite often sandbox games end up as hiking simulators though, with not a whole lot of reactivity nor choice in the world. Quests are usually linear and of limited impact, so beyond "accept or reject, succeed or fail" there's not much there, there. If the sandbox really reacts to your actions, it can be a very powerful experience. On the other hand, a branching narrative has much the same effect for me. The turns you take give a feeling of agency and make your choices meaningful. The difference is that in a sandbox game the agency emerges from the systems, whereas in branching narratives it's been written in. I think branching narratives are better for telling strong stories and exploring them from multiple perspectives; emergent agency is a bit of a different experience. On balance, I don't think I've played a sandbox game that's quite as compelling on an emotional level as the best branching-narrative games. I'm quite intrigued about CD Project Red's attempts at fusing the two in The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk.

I don't think a cohesive narrative and roleplay are necessarily opposed. You can have branching storylines with shades of gray morality and delayed consequences (e.g. The Witchers). You can have a loose main story arc with lots of smaller stories with a variety of resolutions, which affect the way the world works (e.g. Fallout). Or you can even have a more or less linear story but with reactive companions and NPC's, and your ethical choices reflected in your character mechanics (e.g. Mask of the Betrayer). You're always constrained by something in the game, of course, but then so are we in real life. But yeah, player-driven is the key phrase here I think. The game has to give you at least a believable illusion of agency, with meaningful choices and their consequences. Half-Life is not a role-playing game, because you have no agency; you're just progressing through the areas in a predetermined fashion. Deus Ex has some role-playing elements, since the ending is determined by your choices and there are characters in it that attempt to influence you, and react to your choices, but it's by no means a core area of the design: you don't get to do much, but you get to make up your mind about what it means. The Witchers already have a quite a lot of this type of reactivity. And from there on out, it's all up.

You could always add papier maché boobs on top of the plate!

Good questions. I do roleplay, in the sense that I have a character concept in mind, including traits and some facets of personality, and try to stick with that. However, if this has no support in the mechanics, I tend to drop it pretty quickly; that turns into "larping" which I don't find appealing. For me the defining characteristic of a RPG is a system of mechanics that do support roleplay. Specifically, choices with consequences. Action/adventures are usually very limited in this respect. Most IE games and their spiritual successors are a bit thin in the role-playing sense actually. The BG's have the basics down with the companion interactions and the mid-game fork in BG2, but IWD has virtually nothing beyond picking an original alignment. PS:T has its own take on the whole thing, and is in fact the only one where I manage to really immerse myself into the character, even if, curiously, the mechanics don't give role-play much more support than in BG2. IMO Mask of the Betrayer did it best -- I've played it through both as a generally well-intentioned type and as a ruthless, cold, power-hungry sociopath, and the experiences were really different, both from a storytelling and a mechanical POV. I would like to see this kind of reactivity further developed in P:E.

Wel-l-l, since men drive tanks with that big phallus pointing up and out... (Inb4 anyone brings up Tank Girl...)

There are plenty of examples of functional armor that's extremely pleasing aesthetically in this and the Armor Designs thread.

About 10,000. Most of them in my city though. Plus we get a healthy fresh supply from Bulgaria and Romania every summer these days. There's a pretty vocal political movement who wants to send them right back where they came from, by the way. I don't think that would solve anything. Really? The various historical "gypsy laws" systematically discriminating against them have nothing to do with it? You know, I have no easy, pat solutions either. How I'd approach it, though, is that I'd try to make the barriers to integration for anyone who wants to integrate as low as possible. Currently they're pretty high. Some of those barriers are, no doubt, from social mores among the Roma communities. There's not a whole lot I can do about them -- stamping my foot and going "Integrate, you fools! Integrate!" is unlikely to help -- so I'd try to figure out what I could do about the barriers on my side. I'd also attempt to identify where there is obvious discrimination against them, and crack down on that. For example, Roma are subject to pretty crazy police brutality in most European countries (certainly including both the Czech Republic and Finland). I would crack down hard on that. Hey, here's a gypsy joke for ya, since you're so into that sort of thing. "How many cops does it take to beat up a gypsy?" "None. He fell down the stairs." I would provide better educational opportunities. I would recognize Roma culture and language at school; for example, I would offer classes in Roma for those who want them. I would also attempt to work with the Roma communities themselves, to find out what it is these communities actually lack, and then see what could be done about it. That sort of thing. And I would recognize that this would be a slow, long, uphill slog, with lots of setbacks and very little progress.

Out of courtesy for you, I would probably do my best to stop using it around you. If you managed to explain to me why the word "cabbage" is offensive to your group of people, I might even attempt to stop using the word altogether. Actually, I can and I do. If someone states that something I said offended them, I take them at their word (assuming they're not saying it as a simple rhetorical trick, that is). If several people independently state similar things for similar reasons, then I'll attempt to change my behavior. When I was growing up, for example, the word "neekeri" (Finnish for "Negro") was not considered offensive, and it was a regular part of my vocabulary. Over time, it took on negative connotations of words in other languages and people started using it with offensive intent. So I dropped it. Given that I'm blonde too I'd say that don't care at all. You're a woman? I wasn't aware of that. Good on ya. Do you think that gives you license to offend others who may be more sensitive about these topics? I'll quote the Buddha at you: "If something is untrue and pleasing to hear, the Tathagata does not say it. "If something is untrue and displeasing to hear, the Tathagata does not say it. "If something is true and pleasing to hear, the Tathagata knows the right time to say it. "If something is true and displeasing to hear, the Tathagata knows the right time to say it." Not bad advice IMO. I'm actually really bad at knowing the right time to say it, but I'm practicing. Denounce away. That doesn't make them less real. Good, there's a goal we can share, then. A social climate or reason would be very welcome! That's the paradox of tolerance -- the only thing it can't tolerate is intolerance. This tends not to go down well among champions of intolerance.

Helsinki, Finland. If that's true... (1) How do you think it got that way? (2) What kind of structures do you think might maintain those attitudes? (3) What, if anything, do you think could or should be done about it?

Yup, the Roma issue in Europe is a textbook example of structural, institutionalized racism. It goes deep and has roots that are centuries old. It will take a long time and a lot of determined effort to change that. It's not that long ago that Roma were hanged if caught inside city limits in many European cities. I've no doubt many Roma are themselves pretty cynical about any such attempts, and act accordingly. That won't change quickly either. In the meantime, yeah, it is going to be a problem. But in my opinion it's unreasonable to ask the Roma to behave like good little law-abiding citizens as long as these structures are in place. Dismantling them will take effort from all sides, but the ones with more power -- i.e., the majority -- bear commensurately more responsibility.

Then you're a highly unusual person. Most humans don't have that kind of control over their emotions. Have you considered asking a few blondes how they feel around a group of guys telling each other blonde jokes? I disagree. If you know something is likely to offend and you do it regardless, then that's still a **** move -- even if your primary purpose wasn't to cause offense. Unless, of course, your reasons for making that move are more important than the offense being caused. In my opinion, getting a laugh isn't good enough reason to cause offense. That is quite true. If you get too afraid of hurting someone's feelings, then you get afraid of expressing yourself, and that's not good too. You have to strike a balance somewhere. I disagree. The effect of microaggressions -- such as offensive jokes told "in good fun" has been studied a quite a bit. They actually do more psychological damage over time than overt aggressions. The reason is that it's socially costly to react to them. Just swallowing those little insults day after day wears down your self-esteem. Then you build defenses, such as taking it out on some other group. That's depressing and totally unnecessary. Wel-l-l... you're not so much attempting to shift the social climate as maintain it. There's been a huge shift already. A few years ago, this kind of discussion we're having would've been inconceivable in gamer/geek/atheist/F/OSS circles; all of these groups are now grappling big-time with these issues. I don't see any sign of this shift slowing down or reversing. Heh, well, I wasn't exactly expecting you to go "Wow, PJ -- you know, I think you're right. I see the evil of my ways now and will start doing my best to feel everyone welcome in the social space I inhabit, instead of maintaining hostile environments like I've been doing until now." So you do your thing, and I'll continue to do my thing, i.e., to be the occasional party-pooper when someone acts all offensively. If you want to call me names because of that, go right on ahead -- being straight, white, male, rich, first-world etc. I have very little of that sort of thing to deal with and might as well use that capacity for something constructive. (Also, as a PS -- I hope this discussion won't stop us from talking games in a friendly manner, despite our disagreement on this topic.)

Doing something offensive because you didn't know better happens all the time. If someone points it out to you, you feel bad for a little, you aplogize, you try not to do it again, and you move on. At least that's the way most decent people function. Doing something offensive when you know it's offensive is, IMO, just a **** move, unless there is just cause. (Yeah, sometimes there is.) Telling racist or sexist jokes about minorities is such a **** move. I'm sure there would be some circumstance where this rule doens't hold, but as a general guideline it's pretty solid. This isn't that complicated, really. All I'm saying is that it's a **** move to knowingly do stuff that makes people uncomfortable (without due cause). Acting in ways that tells members of minority groups that they're lower-status makes them uncomfortable. Ergo, it's a **** move and you shouldn't do it. That's really it. Personally I don't bring up a minority member's minority status at all unless they do it first, and then I do my best to listen to what they have to say rather than trying to talk about it. Being a member of an oppressed minority doesn't give you license to be a **** to other minorities. Regrettably it's a very human thing to do. If you're picked on, you find someone weaker than you to pick on in your turn, which makes you feel better. This happens all the time and is behind a lot of the nastiness that goes on in human society. Being, say, black doesn't give you license to pick on, say, gays. I think it's a better approach all in all to flip that right around. Instead of going "I have to put up with this **** so they should too," go "I don't enjoy putting up with this ****, so I shouldn't pour the same **** on them." Exposure is exactly what I'm attempting here. I'm simply expresing my disapproval of what I consider dickish attitudes, in the hopes that it will shift the social climate so that such dickish attitudes become less socially acceptable. It would be groovy if you saw the error of your ways but, as you say, that's unlikely to happen overnight. However, I think it's conceivable that this little discussion has left a little mark somewhere, with you or with someone else, so at just mmmaybe they'll feel a teeny bit less comfortable the next time they want to crack a real funny nignog joke. Also, prejudices. You can't ever get rid of them. That's just how our minds function. You can, however, watch those prejudices -- make room for the possibility that they don't reflect reality, and make an effort not to act reflexively on them.

You're right, it doesn't. Being black, brown, or yellow does though. That's the problem. I agree. You shouldn't. What you should be doing, though, is taking into account the point of view of whoever is speaking. We're rather self-interested creatures, you know. If a member of a given group is saying something that strongly favors members of that group, it's reasonable to consider that the two things may be related. I am now, since you said so. Please explain: what part of what I'm saying constitutes a microaggression? Yes, I am aware of that possibility. I'm also aware of the possibility that it might help. Look, you guys were whining about your "white knights" for a quite a while here before anyone spoke up. You clearly don't enjoy that being challenged much. That's a form of privilege too. Whose ass am I kissing, exactly, by the way? I'm not saying people don't have the right NOT to be insulted or angry. Hell, if people didn't have the right to be angry, I'd never get out of jail. Does my stating my disagreement with you somehow infringe on your rights to be insulted or angry? Uh... I dunno. Most people don't actually enjoy going out of their way to hurt people's feelings, as a general rule. Personally, I consider people who derive enjoyment out of doing that bullies, and I don't care much for them. How about you?

Says the white, stra Says someone belonging to a gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation least likely to ever experience the negatives of such an arrangement.

Oh, lots of ways. Cut a woman off in conversation. Change the subject in a discussion from racism to "reverse racism." Tell a joke that paints Roma as thieving gypsies and assume that everyone laughs. Act all offended if someone tells you it was in poor taste. Move a job application from the "invite to interview" pile to "reject" pile because you just have an 'off' feeling about it and it has nothing to do with the fact that the name on it said Jamilah Brown. And so on and so forth. Whoo, this canard does come up a lot. No, there is no point in feeling bad about being a straight white male. Feeling guilty about being called out for abusing your straight white male privilege is another matter. Very, very, very, VERY slowly, and at highly inequal rates in different parts of the world. I'm also not sure how much good many of those laws are doing; there are a few that are obviously necessary (e.g. laws that forbid business owners from discriminating in hiring or regarding their customers based on race, sexual orientation, or religion), whereas others I find a lot more dubious; laws about 'hate speech' only seem to lead to circumlocutions and endless pointless debate about what 'counts' as hate speech.