Amentep

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?

No, it isn't wrong. Why would you keep playing if it isn't fun anymore? It'd be equivalent to getting to page 600 of a 2000 page epic and going "You know, I've not enjoyed the last 400 pages...but I'm too far in to quit now!". It's just silly.

^Life is overrated. I have PoE. Just kidding. Am playing PoE, though. Finally settled on a character/class combo and heading into the game "for reals" this time.

May be misreading your post, but Peta Wilson played Nikita in the first TV show. Watson played Madeline on LA FEMME NIKITA (and Senator Madeline Pierce on NIKITA). No less saddening news about her death (from cancer, which she'd had during the production of LA FEMME NIKITA as well; undergoing chemo at the time) though.

One thing is for sure - Romantic First Person Shooters would be pretty different. Also I'm a little worried what resources you'd be building for the RTS romance...

Liked the helium bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK5S-IuzIt8#t=16

? Why would I want christians in gimp suits??? Or force romance into video games??? He probably meant you'd force video games into gimp suits when played by romantic Christians in public. Or something.

The problem (IMO and I could be wrong - I don't propose this as a "magic bullet" cure all) can be outlined somewhat thusly: The First Amendment states "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." So everyone has religious freedom and the freedom to exercise their religion. Yay, 'Murica! But within the tax and legal codes (federal and state), they government supports marriage (giving benefits to married couples, inheritance rights, etc.). This is where things get murky; there are two types of marriage in the US - Union in the Eyes of G/god(s)/G/goddess(es) dependent on your religious affiliation and Union in the Eyes of the State. They're both called "marriage" and generally they're inexorably paired and linked. Treating them as the same concept because the language is ambiguous leads to a conceptual identifying of marriage as being a universal concept regardless of state or religious origin. In short because the state issues a marriage license for a couple who were also married in the Hindu faith and the state issues a marriage license for a couple who were also married in the Catholic faith, the state says these marriages are equal. Things that are equal are interchangeable, so the challenge with this conceptual correlation is ensuring that the religious marriage remains unequal (based on faith - the state doesn't say the Catholic church has to recognize a Hindu wedding) while the civil marriage remains equal. Part of the big push for legalization of gay marriage is due to the state sponsored benefits. A lot of the push back from religious groups is because of an increasing feeling that they'll be mandated to provide gay marriages (because, again, the state marriage makes all marriage equal in the eyes of the state, or so they fear). But if, for example, all state unions (gay, straight) were called "Civil Unions" then it'd be harder to argue against, say, selling flowers for them. And this is the crux of it, if a Southern Baptist florist had a gay couple ask for flowers for their marriage in a Unitarian church, it'd be easier to argue (and demonstrate) that requiring that purchase from an open-to-the-public business isn't having their personal faith violated because the Unitarian Marriage isn't "in" their faith and the "Civil Union" isn't in their faith, They're not supporting marriage in the Eyes of their God by providing an open service for the couple (who ultimately, remain heretics in relation to their own personal faith). What this does is remove the concept that marriage equation through the state makes it about Southern Baptist Marriage (which is the ultimate argument of these religious freedom movements) and the dialogue is clearer because marriage doesn't mean multiple things (and the hinge point being, the state no longer becomes an equivocal point between the Southern Baptist Marriage and the Unitarian Marriage in the example by having them both endorsed by the State and seen as equal to one another - which they just can't ever be as the religions themselves aren't equal). If that makes sense.

I suspect I'll be voting Pogo for President and Alfred E. Newman for Vice-President the way things are going.

I got my PoE boxed set with snazzy signatures. Haven't opened it yet, though. Also looked through some recipes on the .pdf cookbook. Might try some, particularly the easy looking ones because I need more easy food to cook.

There was a spate of cases over the last few years where a farm that allowed weddings on its site was forced to provide gay wedding despite the owner claiming to be a Christian and therefore unable to support gay marriage and a florist who referred a regular to another florist stating she couldn't make him flowers for his gay wedding due to her religious beliefs being fined for discrimination. A number of people felt that this went against religious freedoms and that, in fact, the government was discriminating against people's right to practice their religion. There's a number of problems with this argument (not the least of which is the government has always limited the freedom of religion when it infringed on others liberties, which is why polygamy, pedophilia and human sacrifice aren't allowed even on religious grounds in the US). The root of the problem, ultimately, is that the state recognizes (and indeed promotes through benefits) a religious concept (marriage) which, unfortunately, won't actually be challenged in any of this.

You seriously think a kickstarted, micro-budgetted game from a developer who was in serious monetary trouble when the kickstarter began (according to the documentary) would have enough money to pay people to praise the game? I'm not disputing that early reviews are skewed, but paid shills I find hard to believe. My guess is early reviews are a combination of people from the Beta and people who were like "I think this will be awesome! 10/10".

Sneaking isn't really a good choice if none of your characters are terribly sneaky (you'll always be spotted before you get close enough to engage in mele. Auto-Pause on Spotting an enemy is a godsend, though. Monks having to get hit in order to use their skills/powers leads to a trade off. Lightly armor a monk (more uses of special abilities, more liklihood that the monk goes down in a fight) Or heavily armor a monk (slower hit time, but hope strength and HTH stat increases make up for loss or spamming powers). That said my monk test got dropped a lot as did my rogue. I suspect that both were based on either poor build choices or trying to tackle things before I was ready to tackle them (in particular, I think I should have traded a higher interrupt weapon (perhaps weapon and shield) for my rogue. Or arrows.