Amentep

IMO, that could describe BG and BG2. Sarevok and Irenicus both are essentially "the dark lord who must be defeated". Being a Child of Bhaal is a special destiny (as a potential successor diety) that needs to be fulfilled/rejected. The whole thing is about the potential evil that could be unleashed by the Children of Bhaal needing to be eradicated (or embraced by the PC).

I haven't minded the backer NPCs. They're not terribly interactive, but neither are the people who speak in only floating text. Generally, if the first lines grab me I've enjoyed reading the rest. If the first lines didn't grab me I'll just not read it. I've read a few memorials now and I don't really have a problem with them. The ones that don't make any in game sense I'm pretending are in-game memorial vandalism that has led to obscure in-jokes and commentaries I don't get. Killroy was here. In respect to the limerick memorial, I (like many) don't get why the limerick which doesn't refer to trans anything is considered anti-trans. I've tried to see the argument, but there's so little there I just can't make that connection. That said I've actually experienced situations where something that was done with no malice took on a different context for others. In the end I actually think, upon reflection, that ultimately if the backer and Obsidian agree for alternative text I have no personal issue with it being replaced by alternate content from the backer. You can claim censorship all you like - and it'd be true, of course - but in the end it'd be self-censorship by the author making the change. There are sometimes you create something and your personal context misses the context that someone else might bring to it, and I've experienced - in essence - that very thing in real life. Its rather embarrassing and in the end, in my experience, I lost my own ability to enjoy what had been done previously (and with no malice intended) without changing it. And so I changed it.

I've taken to believing its an anti-jinx exclamation. "If I say it works great, it'll fail spectacularly. I shall fool fate by announcing 'ITS NOT WORKING' very loudly so that it shall always work."

I know you said you didn't have time for this, but I'd be curious to know your thoughts on whether, conceptually, it would be different (and how) if scenario 1 read "If a Hindi couple go to a bakery and order an Hindu themed wedding cake and the owner of the bakery refuses to make them one on religious grounds" And whether that is still fine our not. The Hindu wedding is just as heretical to Christian belief as the gay one is, given that neither would be marriage in the "Eyes of God" from the Christian perspective.

I'll try to do mine as a vocal impersonation of Pat Buttram.

The point is a high interrupt should mean the enemy isn't hitting you (as much), you're interrupting its attack. Probably wise to throw some points to constitution at any PC who wades into melee too. You could also switch weapons, shoot with arrow, engage with fighter, then go melee with rogue. Unless I'm totally wrong, which I could be.

I think the goal with a dual wield rogue might be to bump up speed and use single handed weapons with good interrupts to help keep the opponent from hitting you as much while allowing you to deal as much damage as quickly as you can. Could be wrong though, I'm terrible at builds.

I actually am totally, 100% okay with having a game that is not completely Voice Acted. EDIT: Misplaced "not"

Its one of those words that are a victim of their ability be used as a bludgeon in discourse. It has too much emotive weight/baggage even though in and of itself is really a neutral concept (the problem is always how it's used and censorship is used every day in a wide variety of forms).

Well there was also the bit about whether it could only be hate speech if it was against an historically oppressed group or not, which led to me pulling the thread further off-topic by using hate crime definitions of the US (since they tie into US hate speech definition) to try and illustrate that the US government (at least) doesn't feel hate speech has an historically oppressed requirement. My bad. He's posted in character 99% of the time for 15 years. Others have come and gone, but he's still got it. I think only Sargy has a similarly long lived posting patter, but he's MIA.

AFAIK that's what he's said here that he is. Well... no, it's not. It's certainly a crime, but there's no institution of prejudice behind it. That's like saying when Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK because he was a communist (or whatever the real reason was), that was a hate crime. The reason why hate crimes are punished more severely is in order to single out and challenge the widespread beliefs and attitudes in society that contribute to the act of violence. It doesn't seem to work, honestly, but there it is. That's not really true based on the legal definition of it (as I understand it - not a lawyer) which don't require an institution of prejudice (in the US at least). I'd agree that it'd be very difficult to get a jury to go for it (over just treating it as a normal crime) because of the (lack of) historical oppression though. In fact the FBI indicates there could be anti-White bias, in the statistics on Hate Crimes in 2013 (http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2013/topic-pages/victims/victims_final) The tables give statistics on offenders and victims as well (Table 4 breaks down victims by crime). It appears that the US federal legal system considers it possible to have a hate crime against a non-historically oppressed groups. Your local laws may differ significantly (but Obsidian being a US company, perhaps the information is of use). Void where prohibited, do not operate heavy machinery after ingesting.

^They could just make it turnbased for consoles

And yet, it is also human nature to joke about those things. Or even sing songs about them.1 Personally I'm treating everything in the game AS part of the game regardless of source. For example, some people complain about the names of the backer NPCs as "world breaking". My attitude is that they're in there, so they can't be world breaking. Sure it may have been a weird personal name by an eccentric family, or a name translated so many times between varying languages that it no longer fits any language, but at some level this is what the game world is. With respect to the memorials, they may not make sense, always. But again neither does walking into a bathroom and reading the graphitti make any sense.2 1Strange Fruit anyone? 2Well how much sense can be made from "Yur gey", "No u", "yer mum" followed by crudely drawn penises anyhow?

I'm sorry, but you're simply wrong; hate speech has a very particular definition. If you want to talk about speech that targets someone based on simple group identity, okay, but it's something different. AFAIK, in the US, hate speech was defined in the earliest governmental publications as: Speech that advocates or encourages violent acts or crimes of hate. Speech that creates a climate of hate or prejudice, which may in turn foster the commission of hate crimes. Hate crimes are defined (legally) as: crimes committed on the basis of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, or gender of any person. As I recall, the original provision didn't have all those categories, they've been added over the years. Anyhow, I've never seen anything that would indicate you had to be a "historically oppressed" to have a hate crime applied against you. Where you'd have an issue would be in proving it was a hate crime if you're not in a historically oppressed demographic as opposed to it being just a normal crime, but in theory it could happen. (Cue Gromnir correcting me on legal definitions; but as I always say, I'm not a lawyer, I don't play a lawyer on TV and this post does not constitute legal advice).

You can talk to the spirit in the cave and see ghosts running in the woods and the apparitions at the machine and in the woods all before guilded vale tree quest. So it didn't bother me.

While in a perfect world you're right, I have to admit that the real world isn't there yet. If it were the transgendered person wouldn't have to fear violence upon revealing that they were transgendered (indeed no one would expect or need to have that revelation in the first place). One could argue if our society didn't tie masculinity so heavily to promiscuous bedding of females this wouldn't matter, but there's a whole societal piece in the real world that just isn't there (whether it is in PoE I'm not far along enough to say). Out of curiosity, should a game (or a movie, or a book) avoid any mention of anything unpleasant? IE should there never be a racist character because it "normalizes racism"? Should a game not be able to have a misandrist like Shar-Teel because having the character exist supports the normalization of misandry? I admit I've read the memorial and I fail to see what the issue is; and I'm having a hard time rationalizing the argument from the other side. I think all topics are open for exploration in art. I'm a filmmaker. I'm anti-censorship. My last feature contains a whole bunch of difficult, challenging material. A lot of it is uncomfortable. The thing is - at no point does the film "punch down." You can totally approach ANY topic, but you have to be aware of what you are doing. When you cross lines, you need to be aware that you are crossing them, and you need to have a damn good reason for doing so. Otherwise you're being careless. No art should be careless or lazy. The issue with this particular thing is that it both crosses a line and has no purpose, save to punch down. It adds nothing to the game, and it reinforces some pretty effed up ideas. The limerick wasn't written by Obsidian - it isn't part of their vision for the game world. It is a backer add-on that should have been better vetted. I have a hard time figuring out why people are adamantly defending it. On the internet it is really easy to get caught up in an "us vs. them" mentality. It is harder to see nuance from where someone else is coming from. It is telling that you assume that I might think that all games, movies, or books should be sanitary and controversy free. Anyway, I hope you take this with the spirit it was intended. I'm not looking to fight with people, and I hope I've provided some context that is useful. I'm not defending it so much as unable to grasp why it matters. I appreciate your explanation - I really do. Even with it being backer related content (and thus being negligible from a game perspective) I'm not sure (or perhaps just worried) that making a stand against the concept of the limerick (that some people are uncomfortable when - regardless of how it happened - they cross what they perceive as gender norms) might be an issue later on in the world if they want do something other than total acceptance (which is a perfectly valid way to go - not every game has to have an -ism for grittyness, but it certainly can be a world building element; and obviously I'm not far enough into the game really to be able to say whether the game itself establishes a reality that would naturally make the limerick unlikely by having transgendering a non-issue socially)

My name was in the credits. It was glorious.

Out of curiosity, should a game (or a movie, or a book) avoid any mention of anything unpleasant? IE should there never be a racist character because it "normalizes racism"? Should a game not be able to have a misandrist like Shar-Teel because having the character exist supports the normalization of misandry? I admit I've read the memorial and I fail to see what the issue is; and I'm having a hard time rationalizing the argument from the other side. Why not? Doesn't the lore of PoE indicate that racism exists (iirc Orlans have born the brunt of it)? Again I'm assuming that a limerick or memorial would fit the lore of the setting (and I have yet to see anything that indicates that the controversial limerick somehow violates the setting).

Yes! That was it! EDIT: I have to say now I'm having visions of a strategy game where the player is presented a series of missions to break up mobs of rioters/looters/morris dancers/etc. and they all have to be solved by some combination of drones, dachshunds with pepper spray canons and trained bees. Drones are great for mobility and surveillance but yours have no armaments (other than bees or dachshunds). You can fly them into mobs and bonk people but prone to breaking. People hate drones and try to break them when they spot them. Drones deploy dachshunds and only get frustrated when you do. Dachshunds are mobile and no one wants to hurt them because they're loveable. But the pepper spray cannons while having a long, acurate range only have so much pepper spray in them. And when its gone, you basically have a dachshund on your side (unless you have trained bee access - dachshunds can also be used to deploy trained bees). Dachsunds never get frustrated, because people love to give them belly rubs, which they love. This could lead to "critical mission failure: lost to belly rub" though. Trained bees are highly mobile. They can be trained for a variety of tasks (up to three per mission). However they get frustrated easily; player looses control of them and they swarm. 10% of any mob is allergic to bees. Using them for direct dispersal is possible, but it increases the likelyhood of killing mobs of people too. You goal is to break up the mob while not gaining too much bad press (killing too many mobbers, destroying too much property, having to replace too many dachshunds because they were belly rubbed so much they defected to the enemy). If I was a trillionaire, I'd make this happen.

Nope, Im willing to give them enough rope to hang themselves, then go round them up. Preferably with a drone. I thought it was drones deploying dogs with pepper spray cannons on their backs. You sir are a genius! My idea was merely pepper spray and net guns but dogs add a whole new layer of hilarity! Really? I could have sworn there was a thread where dogs and pepper spray cannons on their back was mentioned and that was linked back to drone deployment.

I'd noticed that Brilliant Radiance didn't seem to clearly illustrate in the log (just cursory looks, not really trying to look at it in a detailed sense), but my experience is it actually is damaging any foe (at least so far). I've actually killed some creatures with it and in several cases I saw the **** marks over a group of monsters heads go to ** right after I used it, indicating they've been damaged. Could any experience where it clearly isn't working be related to the double-click problem? Ie a double click equipping of an item has removed the modification to Holy Radiance (as it does other racial and class bonuses) and left the skill at its base?

Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae by Zeneth Blue then http://store.steampowered.com/app/263620/

Nope, Im willing to give them enough rope to hang themselves, then go round them up. Preferably with a drone. I thought it was drones deploying dogs with pepper spray cannons on their backs.

The acceptance of defeat is an invitation for its repetition. With a finite amount of time, only a finite amount of things may be achieved.

In the example of the Muslim cartoonist he shouldn't be held liable for not drawing a cartoon of Muhammad, of course this is an extreme example because most of us know that Muslims don't believe that any images of the Prophet are acceptable. So no one would expect a Muslim to do this And I also dont think the other example is particularly valid because there are many Kosher and Halal restaurants that only serve a certain type of food based on religious doctrine and these restaurants are never sued So neither of these examples is relevant to a restaurant refusing to serve members of LGBT community, surly you can see the difference ? To be fair, your distinction is arbitrary, so the difference is hard to see. Customer comes in and requests A. A is against the belief of the proprietor. Is customer right to service stronger that proprietor's personal belief against A? It really doesn't matter if "A" is flowers for a wedding, a drawing of Muhammed or non-Kosher food. The problem (from the Christian perspective) is that everyone feels the Christians just need to "get over it" and do what everyone wants regardless of their belief - something that would never be said to the artist or the restaurant proprietors. Note that in the famous case of the florist shop the gay man she refused to provide flowers for his wedding was a regular customer. She never refused him flowers until he asked for flowers for the wedding, at which point she turned him down. So it isn't a clear cut case of "denying service" (as say was the case with Lunch Counters in the 50s); from her perspective she wasn't denying him a service so much as she was denying support of a religious ceremony she felt blasphemous. Its a hard distinction to make (thus, controversy). The difficulty in many ways (as I mentioned before) is the inability to divorce a heretical service from the Christian one because of the concept that all Christian marriages are equal (and really that all marriages are equal in general). I doubt the proprietor would have denied flowers to a Hindi couple despite their beliefs not being Christian; so the problem becomes really the inability to recognize that a service outside of your faith doesn't really reflect on your faith (IMO) even if both sects are "Christian". From the perspective of the specific Christian sects against gay marriage, the gay marriage is just as heretical as the Hindi one; neither would be recognized in the "Eyes of the Lord" (for them). Service to one should be no more supporting heretical messages as the other. In reality the difference (getting back to the example) is that the services provided are different; an artist can refuse to make a specific drawing while being open to doing other drawings (I know a number of artists, for example, who won't do sexually explicit drawing); the restaurant serves what is on its menu - you can't enter McDonalds and order a Whopper. Similarly a florist could refuse to make a bouquet using, say, poison oak or even one using petunas (for a variety of reasons - availability, price, etc). The issue - to be clearer - is really about denying service because of the use of the object. Could an artist who regularly does nudes refuse to draw one for a patron simply because the patron says when offering to buy it that he wants to **** on it? Could a restaurant refuse service to a person who orders a meal from them but indicates they don't want to eat it, they just want to be a bastard and order a buffet and sit in the window laughing at street urchins who are starving while letting the food go to waste?