Agelastos

Nicholas Roerich? Not his best work, IMO, but still a lot better than those Soviet propaganda posters. Now, the Palace of the Soviets, that was Russian art at its best. Too bad it was never built.

well... the weakness of that armor should be clear to anyone with an intelligence score above 3. everything is covered i steel but your genitels get red velvet? That's (a cheap replica of) cavalry armor. Long, skirt-like faulds would only get in the way. As long as you remain mounted, the tassets and the saddle and/or barding should protect the groin just fine. Otherwise, you could just wear a maille shirt underneath. I don't think armored codpieces became particularly common, if they existed at all, until the 16th century.

Therapy?

I find this to a bit silly. In a game like New Vegas where you can just enable the console and add all the gold you want I'm not sure I see the point in trying to stop people from cheating at gambling. Heck I don't see the point in save-scumming your gambling at all when a console command will save you a lot of time if you want to get gold outside of the spirit of the game. Agreed, but I know a lot of people who refuse to use console commands because they consider it to be cheating, while they have no problem save-scumming since it's more like "taking advantage of a legal loophole".

What about a cool down period which prohibits you from performing certain tasks (lockpicking or pickpocketing, for instance) directly after you load a save? New Vegas used a system like that to prevent people from using save-scumming to "cheat" in the casinos. Whenever you had used a slot machine and lost, you couldn't just reload and try again. You had to wait 1 minute, or something like that.

Doesn't really matter to me, as long as there's some way to tell spells apart. I think it's more important that you get some info on what the spell does when you hover the cursor over the icon in the quickbar, so that you don't have to open the spell book.

n No one was asking for "lovecraftian vampires". Mandragore and I were just discussing whether it would be possible for Obsidian to include some lovecraftian horror elements in P.E., instead of using the same old gothic horror tropes (vampires, werewolves. etc.) that we've all seen in hundreds of games already (not to mention how prevalent they are in films and tv series right now). But I think we're done derailing the thread now, so...

All Sunni Muslims receive 72 virgins (or houri) upon entering Heaven (along with 80,000 servants), not only suicide-bombers. So they're basically just promising them Heaven, not special treatment in Heaven. So, evil or not, it's no less of a sacrifice than it is for any martyr.

D&D monks do use weapons, even if the list of weapons they're proficient with is pretty short and mostly consists of repurposed farming tools. There are even special monk weapons available (kama, nunchuku, siangham, etc.) which a monk can use without losing his/her unarmed base attack bonus.

Wait, what? I always kept Heather around until... well, you know - - and I didn't get any special kind of armor from her. The best armor I ever found was the 4th tier heavy leather armor that you could buy in Chinatown. Did you have to do something special to get the 5th tier armor from her? Give her some kind of command? Or is it possible that it was part of a mod, like Camarilla Edition, or something? Or only available to certain clans? Off-topic, I know. Sorry! As you were...

Age of Conan and Secret World. Both developed by Funcom. Age of Conan had a few references to the Cthulhu Mythos. Not very surprising, considering Robert E. Howard was part of the Lovecraft Circle. Secret World, which I haven't played myself (yet), is apparently full of references to Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos. One of the first places you visit (IIRC), is a town called Kingsmouth (Innsmouth + Kingsport) which is located on an island off the coast of New England (Maine, I think), and has streets with names like Lovecraft Lane and Arkham Avenue. In fact, the entire premise of Secret World seems a little Delta Green-y.

Also, I think you're greatly underestimating the level of insight into the natural world that a lot of practitioners of magic had, and have. Especially those mystics during Antiquity - and then again during and after the Renaissance - who practiced Natural Magic, as they tended to be true polymaths A lot of them made great contributions to the natural sciences.

Those are psychological terms and are pretty much taboo in the anthropological and ethnological fields because they are considered derogatory, at least here in Scandinavia. Oh for ****'s sake! Now you're just being insulting for no reason. I already told you that I wasn't necessarily talking about functional magic. I was talking about magical beliefs and practices both in less developed parts of the world and in our own Western culture's history, and about modern occultism. I don't actually believe in magic, if that's what you're implying, (nor do I actively disbelieve in it) but I do think it's pretty damn arrogant to call it superstition.

The Finno-Ugric languages is just one of the groups in the Uralic language family. So no. Samoyedic was just an example of a Uralic language that is still spoken around the Ural mountains (the urheimat of the Uralic languages). So what? Anglophones are still considered Germanic even though the English language, the various cultures associated with it, and even the genetic makeup of most of its speakers are far removed from the Norse source (Scandinavia is the urheimat of the Germanic languages). We migrate, we trade and we fight with foreign cultures. We conquer and we get conquered. Our languages and cultures mix, evolve, and become "bastardized". But classifications such as "Latin", "Germanic", "Sinitic", or "Semitic" refer to any and all native speakers of languages belonging to those language families or subdivisons. Maybe most Latin American dialects and local cultures have Amerindian and/or West African influences. The Spanish language and culture already has Celtiberian, Basque and Arabic substrata. You're still "Latin", because your language belongs to that particular subdivision of the Indo-European language family. An African-American is still Germanic, an Arab is Semitic, and so on.

You're not related to ancient Rome, its people, or its culture. You're not Latin. Most Americans might describe you as "Latino", but we all know how ignorant they are in foreign culture/history. Some people from Spain may call themselves as Latins, because most cities from the Community of Catalonia and Valencia (Plus several others from the Kingdom of Castile and Lion), were founded by the Roman Empire. It's still a Latin language, which makes them a Latin people (genetics has nothing to do with it). It's part of the Romance family (also called the Romanic or Latin languages), is it not? It's derived from Vulgar Latin. Should we not call the Finns Uralic, just because Finland is nowhere near the Ural mountains and the Finnish culture has more in common with other (Indo-)European cultures than it does with... the Samoyedic culture, for instance? That's not how it works.

I'm pretty sure they're just kidding about censoring the nipples.

Good point. I know of a few cRPGs that do have some lovecraftian elements. Two of them are MMOs, unfortunately. Too bad Iron Tower Studio cancelled Cyclopean. There are way too few games of that kind.

Yes, please! As long as it's actual lovecraftian horror, and not just "eldritch abominations". It's not about the monsters, it's about what they represent. Cosmic nihilism, that feeling that we are all completely insignificant in the larger scheme of intergalactic existence, and that we could be wiped out at any moment just to be replaced by another species - and there is nothing we can do stop it from happening.There are no gods out there looking out for us, only the amoral and utterly indifferent aliens that created us. I have a hard time seeing how that would fit in to the P.E. universe, though, since it's a high magic setting where gods definitely exist and probably even interact with their worshipers.

If our lives spanned millenia, I'm pretty sure we would all grow increasingly introspective and eventually just resign from the world. Maybe spend our days in quiet meditation, not too worried about anything, because we've already seen it all before - war, famine, pestilence. It is what it is. That, or commit suicide. Most elves should have learned the virtue of patience, maybe even a little too well. Even the young elves, because the longevity of their race must have had an impact on their culture, their religion/s and philosophies. If something threatens them, they would most likely weigh their options very carefully before springing into action. Maybe some wouldn't act at all, having come to terms with their fate. Perhaps fighting back right away would be considered brash and immature (looking at you, Revan). I think there's something very fascinating about that kind of aloof composure. Very Zen. I do agree that they shouldn't all just roll over and die. They should fight back, but not like the Scoia'tael did. Their actions were far too short-sighted for such a long-lived race IMO. No, the elves should have a Plan. The kind that spans human generations. The kind that We can barely fathom. Revolutions, aggressive imperialism, and general warmongering is for races with much briefer lifespans; races who don't have to think of all the long-term consequences of their actions, because they won't live to see them.

I disagree about character optimization being an essential part of cRPG gaming. Maybe in MMOs and other multi-player cRPGs which feature PvP, but not in story-driven games like P.E. But everyone's entitled to their own opinion. Why I don't play D&D? Firstly, because I don't really like D&D. I think it's one of the worst PnP RPGs around. I do like certain D&D cRPGs, though, but that's only because they're well-written. Secondly, because I barely know anyone who plays PnP RPGs anymore. In fact, I don't think I know anyone who does. I didn't know that you were talking about 2nd ed. (or cRPGs based on 2nd ed., I guess). I didn't even know that there were stat requirements for normal player classes in 2nd ed. My only experience of 2nd ed. is the Infinity Engine games, and I haven't played those (with the exception of PS:T, in which you don't get to pick a class at character creation) in 10 years. I apologize for the misunderstanding.

You don't have to min-max, you know. It should be enough that a character is interesting and fun to roleplay.

That's true, but in most games you only live under those conditions for short periods of time (usually while pursuing the main quest). You get a lot of opportunities for R&R in most cRPGs. I tend to spend a lot more time just walking around aimlessly, shopping, drinking, gambling, and even helping random strangers than I do on actual quests. So being able to find the time and energy to visit the local brothel or flirting up someone in the party doesn't seem all that implausible to me.

It's the Iron Law of Oligarchy. The only difference between Egypt and the Western world, is that we have had centuries to master the charade of democracy and turn it into a golden calf, whereas they haven't fully grasped the subtleties of the game yet.

English this, english that... You're not the center of the world, you know. The word "Paladin" has been applied long before the Arthurian legend. As I mentioned previously, David of Israel was considered the Paladin of the Weak. And it somehow makes more sense than the Round Table nonsense, because he clearly establishes a direct relationship with a God, granting him the necessary powers to hold such title. If King David was indeed called the "Paladin of the Weak", that title must have been given to him during the Middle Ages or later. AFAIK, the oldest written source in which the term could be interpreted to mean "holy warrior" rather than "palace official" is Chanson de Roland.

It would be nice if humans and elves had different numbers of chromosomes, making half-elves semi-infertile. Maybe all half-elven males could be sterile, while some females could still produce offspring when mated with a purebred human or elf. Like mules. Of course, this isn't how it would be explained in-game.