metadigital

I know Tasmania has (or had) 70% of the world's legal production of the poppy (for medicinal Pethidine and Morphine use in medicine). I believe Pethidine is up there with Heroin in the abuse stakes, too (large percentage of which are doctors self-medicating).

That's the nature of all improvements in a complex software project.

Not a mushroom?

I wonder what he was eating for those seven years?

Well, Im sorry to see that you are "narked" but if you expect me to take your "facts" at your word without you providing any sources then most likely any serious discussion you and I have will end in you becoming narked. If you come in and throw random numbers around (that sound absurd to me), I will question you on it. It doesnt mean I dont "get you". Ive read and understood your point, I simply disagree. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> What are you calculating as part of the costs? Because the poppy is tantamount to a weed that grows prolifically: the most expensive part of the process is cultivating the crop (which is currently done mostly by hand). The cost-to-market would be comparable to any grain. And that's not supposing the West just purchase the existing crops from Afghanistan, to remove the Taliban from the process. (Helping prevent the use of more funds and young soldiers' lives to keep the Armed Forces over there.) While that may be true, its beyond the scope of our discussion. You say free drugs is the cure to: 80% of prison overpopulation, organized crime, prostitution, bad breath, etc... Fine. I say free drugs are already readily available and yet these conditionas still exist. What gives? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It does make a difference but, because of the limited scope of drug rehabilitation schemes, lots more is needed. So you can provide more expensive and equally toxic methadone, or cheap heroine. Recall that article I posted above(<{POST_SNAPBACK}>):

Medieval: Total War II has lots of bugs, then? Because Rome: Total War didn't.

I'd add an observation to this: one very obvious metagaming tip with all the conflict areas (internal "dungeons", like Fihelis' house) is that all the pieces of the "level puzzle" will be in that small area. I guess this is a design decision: smaller puzzles are fed by the local region, otherwise it would be far too easy to lose a vital piece because one didn't explore that outhouse around the back of the castle that only appears according to a map that must be discovered when the PC is travelling through the deepest part of the forest at the conjunctional new moons ... but then again, Ultima did this without too much negative press and some significant appreciation.

I can see the whiteboard, at the beginning of the design cycle, with a big "allow puppet mode for party members" after KotOR:TSL.

I think having a minimum score is a good idea. A Paladin, for example, usually has a negative "To Hide" score, so it is quite reasonable to not check if a Paladin is hiding. If you are worried about low level characters failing a difficult roll, then another option is to have more opportunities to succeed.

Yeah, I was going to suggest something similar: instead of a "Quest" plot, to go and get rare item Q from some far-off and hard to get to place, or have the other D&D staple "Overcoming the Monster" plot with a big end-boss using it for a back-scratcher, you could just use a lot more politics. Multiple mutually-hostile groups who need to be dealt with, maybe get some to work together against a third, or bribe one group, or sneak in, rather than just kill 'em all.

It's a bit drafty in there, I hear ... )

That's not your fault; fed-ex tends to be kinda difficult to win favour with the players ...

Yeah, they win games of sport there. ^_^

Just finished disc four of Firefly and then watched Good Night and Good Luck. It's not that remarkable, except in that someone (Clooney) felt it was necessary in the current environment to make it. If the defenders of a free society throw out the rules that make the society free, then the society isn't free and therefore not worth defending. I think Bruce Willis (well, the writer, Lawrence Wright) tried to say this in The Siege back in 1998. Possibly the plot was a little too close to the bone for people to think fondly about it, though: Governments of free countries don't like to advertise their last option of martial law ...

SoU has its own PrC, like the Harper, which you can't get if you don't buy that expansion; ditto for HotU and its PrC, like the Red Dragon Disciple. I found most of SoU pretty fun, but the end (almost the last chapter) has been roundly criticized (I think fairly). HotU is definitely a great expansion, though; I played that a few times as it has a lot of plot-end variations, as well as some neat fun playing an epic character. IIRC you can import your PC from SoU into HotU, but not from the OC to SoU. You might as well play all of them, and in order, as if you ever go off playing the CEP modules they will invariably want both expansions (though not always).

I'm in Act III just up a mountain.

Alan Wake

Just as a further ramble to my previous post, using the data for cannabis sativa:

So did you win me a free 8800GTX, or what?

Yeah! What's wrong with us Obisidianiteses'?

Even in the Netherlands, though: and the results (sorry, no citations):

Perhaps you should look at the definition of persecution that metadigital provided again. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Exposure to prolonged hostility and ill-treatment. And, not or. If anything the government was antipathetic, not overtly hostile. The word "persecution" implies intent. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The Irish famine was only one example. I tend to think dispossessing the indigenous peoples and supplanting them English landlords qualifies. Basically England annexed her neighbours, going to war with them should they dare to revolt, and taking what she wanted from them, when she wanted. I'd call that "prolonged hostility and ill-treatment".

Same thing that happens when a drunk hits a busload of schoolchildren: he gets the electric chair.

I had problems there because I wasn't stealthy: the rig was blown. Maybe there's a super-secret "you're so unstealthy we're going to crash to desktop!" function?