Gorth

The mere sight of me in spandex would eradicte much world hunger at a stroke. As Marie Antoinette said, let them eat sausage.

We call it the Dark Ages simply because of the lack of information about that time period. There is just very little writing going on during the early middle ages, the records are few and far between, and historians have to make a lot of assumptions in order to fill in the gaps. Compare that to the rather meticulous record keeping of the Romans or Greeks, and you have a fairly mysterious period of history. The term "Dark Ages" (European "Dark Ages") has a history all of it's own. Different meanings for different people at different times. Whatever people think it means was probably correct at least for some people for some time. It has been used in turn to describe the turmoil after the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the lack of cultural and technological achievements from the fifth to the fifteenth century. Whether the latter was caused by people seeking refuge in religious doctrine or the other way around was more the question really. It's entirely possible that stagnation and fear of an uncertain future led to people getting all zealous.

Here we go again with the Dark Ages! You think that people would bother to check the veracity of this argument, the Dark Ages were caused by the fall of the Roman Empire and the raids of the Visigoths + the rest of the vikings. You seem to have a 600 year gap in your history, not to mention a strange relationship between Goths and Vikings Preserving without understanding does nothing to create new knowledge. On the contrary, having new ideas could often prove fatal if you weren't among the filthy rich and powerful. In which case you could have a new thought or two, as long as you kept it to yourself.

Games with considerable random elements creates hilarious situations on a regular basis, whether it be Infinity Engine games or Roguelikes (Nethack in particular). Latest "funny" death was in FO:NV, make a nice trap for a Deathclaw pack by liberally distributing explosives in a narrow spot (a killing zone), just to realise that when you run all the way down and wag your tongue at Mr. and Mrs. Deathclaw, the landmarks don't look exactly the same when backtracking and trying to determine when to use the detonator. One atomized Gorth later and nobody cared if there were any leftovers. Probably the equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot with Dynamite Generally too many weird and funny incidents over the years to remember.

It's been many years since i read an Ork Codex, but at least in the paperback books, there has been some cunning (if not outright intelligence) attributed to warlords. The "named" ones rose to prominence through both physical prowess, ruthlessness and cunning. Ghazkull is regarded as something like a master strategist because he once did a withdrawal so he could come back with more boyz

The pointy eared pansies should join the Dodo. Seriously, without the Old Ones to guide them, they became a self indulgent lot. Orks were a much better (and some would argue successful) experiment.

The "abridged" version based on 'Rogue Trader', 'Slaves to Darkness' and 'The Lost and the Damned' (and a few of the old codexes): In the beginning, the warp was calm and there was no chaos. As the War in Heaven dragged on and escalated, the amalgam of emotions created turmoil. Forewarned of what was going to happen, all the most powerful human psychers, druids, shamans and wise men merged their souls into a single, all powerful entity, with the knowledge that chaos is not the natural state of the universe. That was The Emperor. The expected disaster happened, the major chaos powers awoke as sentient entities and the universe was propelled into a self reinforcing cycle of strife, feeding chaos feeding the strife. The Emperor knows that it is not supposed to be so and works towards it's end. The only way to get rid of Chaos is to "starve" it for strong emotions, which means getting rid of wars and conflicts. Hence the unification wars on Terra and the Great Crusade, unify the galaxy under His rule, ending all conflicts (by killing everybody else that might create dissent). Belief is one of the things that creates disturbances in the Warp, so it had to go too. Hence His constant cracking down on religion and promotion of technology in its place. Psychers had to go too of course, which is why His last project was getting access to the web way from Terra and removing humanitys reliance on Navigators and Astropaths. After that, they could all be killed off for the greater good A few notes: The Chaos Gods feared the Emperor because their destruction was His ultimate goal. The War in Heaven was the eon old conflict between The Old Ones and the Necrontyr. The Web Way was/is an interdimensional transit system that doesn't travel through Warp space. That's a very short summary of 25 years of literature.

No lesbian punk bands, but I got the impression from the D&D setting, that "flaming" was sometimes used as a mild swear word. I can't remember where I got the impression from though.

How did you arrive at *that* conclusion? If anything, the Emperor is your "practical incarnation" from PS:T... anything, literally, that it takes to get the job done is considered acceptable.

Fire and Ice rules if you're familiar with Frazetta's art and accept it for what it is. Wizards is silly but fun. I've been collecting Frazetta images/wallpapers for 35 years (got a few of his artbooks too) Fire and Ice was nice, Wizards a major disappointment. Continuing my Roger Corman watching with Death Race 2000 and Galaxy of Terror.

I wonder how well it would handle destructible environments in that case? Yes, I miss games like X-Com and JA2 where you could just blow up buildings and walls if the doorways were guarded too well

Same here. Runner up would be EU III - Divine Wind. Generally fun: Dungeon Defenders, Magicka and Worms (yes, the 1995 version) Bought a truckload of games, indie, AAA and otherwise, but most of it was either forgettable or I haven't had time to play them properly yet. Biggest disappoint of the year: The Witcher 2. Runner up for disappointment: Dragon Age 2 (Demo)

Ah yes, getting stuck in the Leopold Society. Add the Leviathan bug in Kotor to the game breakers. Older games weren't bug free (pun unintended) either, as you could get stuck in X-Com 2: Terror from the Deep if you researched the wrong alien at the wrong time, never finding the sunken city. As for Skyrim, I got as far as getting it downloaded from Steam and playing a bit with character creation. No idea what race to settle for really. Still need to complete my game of FO:NV before starting "serious" play anyway, so I have a bit of time still to make my mind up.

For easy counting, subtract the Post# of the top post from the last post#. If it's 14 (IIRC), it should bring it over the top. Edit: E.g. post 60-46 = 14, so the next post should in theory go on top of next page.

So far, the biggest difficulty for me is, that you can't assign favourite spells to quick keys (at least, I haven't found such an option). I've been putting myself on fire while healing goblins and killed myself by spontaneous forcefield creation that catapulted me through the air out into the ocean. Fancy robes or not, wizards swims like rocks If either of you two are looking for co-op buddies, I might know a guy. And by "a guy," I mean "I am desperate for people to play this with." My schedule is a bit on full side this side of the Weekend, but I might take you up on that offer after Sunday, if we can figure out something with the timezone challenge

So far, the biggest difficulty for me is, that you can't assign favourite spells to quick keys (at least, I haven't found such an option). I've been putting myself on fire while healing goblins and killed myself by spontaneous forcefield creation that catapulted me through the air out into the ocean. Fancy robes or not, wizards swims like rocks

Who needs webcomics?

A normal 360 pad works, there are official PC drivers on the MS homepage. There's also a wireless version bundled with a WLAN adapter for PC, though it's a bit more expensive. Don't go with a no-name or PS controller, as these ar often not recognized by games. There are work-arounds, but these are not always optimal. Microsoft's own xbox360 controller for PC's is almost too well recognised by games. I've had quite a few where I needed to physically unplug it because the game refused to use my joystick settings, despite selecting that as input device

In case you turn out to have a suicidal, risk taking party and need the "understudy" to fill in for casualties, sign me up as a human ranger (archer). Always more fun taking people out at a distance.

Started watching my collection of Roger Corman "classics". About time to tear of the shrink wrap, as I've had them for a while. First off was Humanoids from the Deep. Sadly a dud. Bad, but not bad enough to be good.

Tried out a bunch of demos. After playing them all for at least 5 minutes each, I ended up buying 2 games. Rochard was a must (got the version including the awesome soundtrack). Just plain fun. Secondary choice was Divinity 2 The Dragon Knight Saga (2 games in one)

"Programming" is like "science". It would be a mistake to assume a scientist knows all science

Cheer up Morgoth Happy New Year guys