Gorth

I'm all for equal rights, equal opportunity, equal pay for equal work, equal custody right for children etc. (which by the way works both ways), but to make a sweeping statement declaring all differences gone is as absurd as declaring the number Pi as having the value 4 as a matter of convenience. It may streamline math, but it sure makes for some funny building projects in the future. There *are* physiological and psychological differences.

Minsc really was a bright guy... once Boo's dominate mind spell wore off

Magnets work exactly as they should. They are a bit like boobs... with a mysterious attracting property. Comes in all sizes and shapes too. Very large magnet:

The video clip actually looks pretty good. Like something out of a 50'es horror movie.

Heh, "11 hours rest in any given 24 hour period"... which part of the world was that again? (not in the world of Software making for sure)

Are you by any chance a Husky?

The HH books really are a mixed bag. Before The Outcast Dead, my least favourite was probably Prospero Burns (mostly ruined by then last quarter of the story). On the other hand, chatting with store staff, I know my favourites aren't exactly universally popular either (Legion and Flight of the Eisenstein)

Stay clear of "The Outcast Dead". The story isn't bad as such, but it fits into the rest of the established setting like a foot in a glove. Enough contradictions and inconsistencies to grate on the readers nerves.

I still have nightmares about those pesky dwarf guardians in the tower.

"Sons of Dorn"? My favourite oldie would be William King. I still enjoy some of the older books.

It was part of your resource management. What do I do today?... ammo or body armour? Maybe a shiny new cannon for my latest troop transport. X-Com 3 did the multiple base thing quite nicely, as different construction sites had different "layouts", so you could rarely build 2 identical bases.

I know it predates her, but no idea who actually coined the term. Never underestimate the power of urban legends and the strange phenomena of repeating a lie enough times. It ends up becoming the new truth.

Rarely a game of JA2 or one of the X-Com's without outrageous incidents. In the latter, you can literally bring down the house, leaving your carefully nurtured squad as a red paste under the rubble. People who thought Ian was bad in Fallout needs to play more JA2 to really appreciate his sharpshooter skill and flair for avoiding friendly fire accidents.

Only truly negative thing so far. Might have to check the link to see if there is any info on LOS and Fog of War effects, whether it will have all the awesome autonomous factions of X-Com 3 etc.

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.