Enoch

Lovely. I've partaken in music (epic space-jazz concert to cover a heist) and theater (performing in a hilariously awful Greek tragedy) as problem-solving mechanisms in PnP games before, but never dance.

Ooh, now *this* is a nostalgia dump. While I had forgotten a lot of the details to PoR, for some reason I played through the first couple stages of CotAB enough times to carve a lot of those scenes into my long-term memory. And, yeah, those wilderness encounters sucked. Except the ones with Displacer Beasts, because those things are totally rad.

I'm having a good time with DA:O at present, but that's probably partly because I've only played it all the way through once before, and I'm already well past the high-water-mark of the other characters I started. Currently mucking about the Dwarven politics stuff at the front-end of the Orzammar questline. But, yeah, Sten is easily the most fun character to talk to. I like Shale and Wynne, too, but they can get a little one-note, which I imagine gets more annoying on repeat plays.

That was fun. I had actually forgotten just how much descriptive text and opportunity for non-combat interaction was in the game. (I suspect that juvenile me took the more direct approach.) I remembered the journal entries, but a lot of the description screenshots and conversations you posted felt new to me. I look forward to the re-visitation of Curse. I played a lot of that one, but I don't think I got more than 60% through it. I know I was able to get the Drow and Moander bonds off, but I remember giving up on a game while stuck in Zhentil Keep.

Nicely done. I remember giving up in my attempts to defeat those guards. (Although I was young, lousy at AD&D character-building, and probably not nearly as thorough in my loot acquisition as you have been.)

Dallas needs both STL to beat SEA and SF to beat ARI next week to get the #2 seed. Othewise, they're locked into the #3, and a home game against the loser of GB-DET. Of course, as far as I'm concerned, the faster they exit the playoffs, the better.

Well, in hindsight, "weird" probably wasn't the right word to use. It's an understandable way for folks to psychologically cope with an occurrence/opinion/fact that would otherwise risk upsetting their pre-existing views. The degree to which it has become the default response of certain ideologues-- often contrary to even rudimentary logical thought-- though, feels new to me.

You do realize that I was responding to Wals' assertion that NK would've contracted something like this out, right?

The leaks, if not the underlying hack, have reportedly been traced to the network of a fancy hotel in Bangkok. It's a weird sort of mentality all over the web these days that first suspects some kind of false-flag attack for, well, everything. I suspect it originates from the 'chan universe (where such suspicions are usually quite justified), but it is very rarely justified elsewhere.

Well, then I'll add that it bothers me that this is one of the missions where I feel like I have to bring Leliana along. She's neither my favorite character nor a particularly effective combat build, but there's just so damned much trap-disarm XP available that the powergamer in me needs to have somebody with lots of Deft Hands ranks along. It's just such an odd design choice-- apart from the initial skill ranks (e.g., mages get a point in herbalism) and roleplaying stuff, Locks/Traps are the only non-combat ability that is locked to a particular class. It feels like it should be a skill, alongside the likes of herbalism and persuasion, but it's a Talent for some reason. And, to top that off, they limit the party size to 4 and give the player only 2 Roguey NPC options, neither of whom is immortal and only one of whom starts out with any points in Deft Hands. Oh, and unlocking and disarming gives meaningful XP on use. It's as if they realized that their Rogue class design was lousy late in development (while a well-built melee Rogue isn't, an archer certainly is) and flipped a previously-universally-available skill to a class-specific talent to compensate.

I guess I'll now have to be a little more spoiler-conscious about my present DA:O game in this thread. I'm in the midst of the elfy-wolfy ruins, which is one of the points where the game starts to drag, to me. The relative lack of enemy variety in the game is starting to bug me. Maybe it's because I'm doing these ruins just after I did the Warden's Keep DLC and the first 2/3rds of the Redcliff questline, but I'm sick of smashing skeletons. (I'm sure the Deep Roads will get me similarly sick of Hurlocks, too.)

I'm going to call this one a tiny bit blown out of proportion. The provision does certainly appear to be problematic, but the effect is not immediate and my guess is that it's the result of incompetence rather scheming. The provision they're talking about-- as far as I can tell, it's section 309-- requires the heads of elements of the intelligence community (CIA, NSA, DIA, etc.) to adopt "procedures" within 2 years that have been approved by the Attorney General for dealing with "incidentally acquired information." These procedures "shall apply to any intelligence collection activity not otherwise authorized by court order (including an order or certification issued by a court established under sub-section (a) or (b) of section 103 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1803)), subpoena, or similar legal process that is reasonably anticipated to result in the acquisition of a covered communication to or from a United States person and shall permit the acquisition, retention, and dissemination of covered communications subject to the limitation in subparagraph (B)." (Subparagraph B states that retention can't go beyond 5 years unless any one of a long list of exceptions are satisfied.) That there is a very convoluted sentence. Having been involved in statutory drafting before, I'd be surprised if this was deliberate. Multiple editors make for sloppy work, particularly when there isn't much time for serious review. (This doesn't appear to have been part of the bill that was discussed in Committee-- rather, a result of a later amendment.) I think that the "that is reasonably anticipated to result in the acquisition of a covered communication to or from a United States person" part is in the wrong place, as it doesn't make sense as a qualification on "legal process". It makes much more sense read as a separate qualification on "intelligence collection activity." That is, the collection activity must be both not related to a court order and reasonably anticipated to yield information about a US person. So, under this reading, if an agency is spying on foreigners (which is almost always OK) and it turns up some "covered communications", it has to have a policy to deal with them. I suspect that this was the limit of what most legislators thought they were doing when adding this provision and voting for it. The problem is "shall permit." That's mandatory language, which would effectively prevent the folks writing these procedures from putting any restraints on what the intelligence agencies want to do with the information. Not sure how that got in there. It's kinda siily if you ask me-- why spend 2 years coming up with procedures at all if they're just going to permit everything? Something like "shall govern" would make a lot more sense. Even it its limited context here (i.e., within otherwise authorized collection activities, not authorizing new ones), it's a problem. To get to where Ansah is, though, you'd read that "shall permit the acquisition, retention, and dissemination of covered communications" in isolation. Now, a court would almost never read a statute that way, but that's not an especially reliable check with regard to a law like this, as folks who could have standing to bring the ambiguity to court probably would never know they have a case. In the hands of an especially villainous Attorney General, it could do some damage. The damage can be controlled, and I don't really know enough about the bill to say whether this merits stopping it at this point (as opposed to subsequent amendment).

Never have children then. They poop and throw up regularly. Fun Fact: the small rolled-up baggies that are sold as dog-poop bags are an essential supply for a baby's diaper bag. When junior gets changed at a non-baby-having friend's house, it is not exactly polite to toss the used disposable diaper in their standard trash. The dog-poop bag allows you to carry impolite waste home for more discreet disposal (or at least to give it an extra layer of containment for mingling with local refuse). They are also useful for containing soiled garments for later washing at home. You could use other types of plastic bags, but the dog-poop bags represent the sweet spot of perfect size, portability, reliability, and economy. Anyhow, I like dogs. I haven't lived with one since I moved out of my parents' house, but I always enjoy visiting other folks' dogs. I married into a cat. While I appreciate that she's much less work than a dog would be, she's no dog.

Played through the Warden's Keep content in my DA:O game. First time with this DLC, and I found it underwhelming. Some nice loot, I guess, and I appreciate the effort that went into the backstory, but the gameplay was pretty brief and more-of-the-same from the base game. I've done the Circle Tower and 2/3rds of the Redcliffe questline (order restored, but Eamon still sick). I've also visited Denerim and picked up/completed a few minor quests there. (And it really bothered me that I couldn't properly warn/threaten/kill the operators of the Pearl for hosting that anti-Grey-Warden honeytrap.) But I got a reminder about what a pain in the neck those inner-city random encounters are, and I have no real desire to fight another half-dozen of those anytime soon. So I'll stick to the countryside for the time being. Some of the sidequest content has reminded me how sharp the difficulty swings can be in this game. I cruise through the demons and undead on the main-quest missions, but checking up on some lost caravan in the woods takes me 2 reloads to avoid a full-party wipe. (I ended up with 0 civilians saved, and Sten and Wynne lying in the dirt.) Probably going to see the Dalish next. Not sure what order I should do the Urn and Orzammar after that. I'm going to hold off on Return to Ostagar until I have Loghain the party.

Another weird detail that I thought I remembered from this game: Didn't those kobold caves include a to-hit penalty on certain weapons due to the low ceilings?

I have been puked on 3 times today.

I have very little memory of Sokol Keep, apart from the runes looking familiar, but I vividly remember that Troll/Ogre battle in the Slums. I recall the key being holding off on coup-de-grace'ing one or both of the Ogres in front (both of which were gagging on my Cloud) so that the Trolls in back would only come at me one at a time. Am I mis-remembering, or weren't there hire-able NPCs available in the game? I imagine you're skipping them due to the XP and loot drain, but I seem to recall buying the services of a 4th-level fighter at one point or another.

"'Scuse me while I whip this out... with ineffective cross-guards"?

Oh, yes, all the abilities have a cooldown of some kind. Basic stuff like Arcane Bolt comes back quickly (roughly the time it takes to make 3 autoattacks), but higher-level stuff takes long enough to effectively limit it to once-per-encounter.

In my present DA:O game, I just completed an optional sidequest to collect 10 Deep Mushrooms.

I agree. The brillaince in Star Wars isn't in the story, characters, or performances, but in the art design. The stuff that really captures the imagination of the audience is the droids, the weird aliens, Vader's mask, all the cool spaceships/speeders/walkers, etc.

Easy: Lightsabres are "elegant" and "civilized" weapons. That other stuff isn't.

As alluded to in the Inquisition thread, I'm playing Dragon Age: Origins. Based on my Bio profile's achievement info, it's been over 4 years since I put meaningful time into the game. I recently picked up the Ultimate Edition cheap, as I've never played any of the non-day-1 DLC or the expansion. I'm going Mage again. That and melee rogue are, to me, by far the most fun combat roles to play in this system, and Mage has the advantage of making Morrigan completely dispensible. (Tank melee and archer are comparatively boring, IMO, and off-tank fighter duplicates the role of 3+ companions.) Some fresh-eyes impressions: * The Mage origin has some cleverly delivered exposition, but the plot is pretty ludicrous. * Ostagar is better designed than I remembered-- some neat little sidequests in the Wilds, and the Tower of Ishal has some nice encounter design * Lothering, on the other hand, really could have used a bit more effort, perhaps splitting the village and the fields into separate zones. The open area and AI coding also stupidly allows you to 'pull' enemies one-by-one with a longbow. * Hey, I can finally talk to the DLC salesman hanging around my camp! * The nice thing about this being a re-play is that I no longer feel much "must see all the content" metagame motivation. I can roleplay a little more freely, particularly in not bothering to kiss the rear ends of NPCs who I don't like. (Or in killing them off when they deserve it. Zevran is not long for this world.) * Alistair is not (yet) quite as annoying as I remembered, but Morrigan is even moreso. I thank her for her help with the precisely 2 battles she participated in (finding the Dog, and the bandits at the Lothering entrance), and she can now hang out way over there in her personal camp for the rest of the game. From a roleplaying perspective, I'm assuming that my Warden is too scared of Flemeth to drive her off or slit her throat while she sleeps, but he's not going to let her get any more involved in this whole thing than he absolutely has to. Anyhow, I've just finished Honnleath, to recruit Shale, who will spend the rest of the game in the party. The rest will be a rotating cast of Wynne (more often than not), Leliana (if I absolutely must see what's in all the chests), and Sten/Dog/Al/Oghren (based on character-appropriateness for the quest being undertaken and general mood). The Circle Tower is next, for Wynne and stat boosts. I'd welcome any suggestions on when to do the DLC missions.

Well, yeah, graphics have improved, but I'd argue that the combat has aged even more poorly. PoR was the first implementation of AD&D rules with a combat engine that roughly resembles a tabletop session with a tactically focused DM, and that was freakin' awesome to see at the time. But, looking back on it, the encounter design and AI were both uninteresting, and the AD&D ruleset's flaws loom large.