Amentep

My hour meeting that I suspected would last two hours lasted three hours and a half. The meeting with the french speaking delegation went well other than the fact that the headphones for interpreting didn't work, so we just all strained to hear what our poor interpreters were saying.

I think the male equivilent to the "overnight case" women have. Lol, seriously its a bag that you can throw a few things into for a short trip. Its a device for opening corked bottles easily Its a combination tool. The one pictured - the Skeletool - has a stainless steel combo blade, pliers, bit driver, removable pocket clip and carabiner/bottle opener A fancy coffee pot. I'm never going to be a man, apparently, because I find coffee a vile drink.

I really hated BG's "Get too evil donate to a church, get too good whack a villager" method of things.

Since I always shot Vulpes at Nipton(?), I always had the Legion as a hated faction. Never played a game to side with the Legion, so I never saw that quest. Kinda glad I didn't.

Well I suppose there's something to the simulationist aspects; I know I appreciated being able to kill Vulpes after he explained why he killed everyone in the town with the lottery in FONV and pretty much said "if you don't like it, kill me". One of the rare instances I ever intentionally started a fight with a non-hostile NPC in a game, but very fitting, though I can't say the game would have not worked for me if I didn't have that choice (particularly if he didn't have the line paraphrased above). Yeah, sadly, it is. Fortunately no one has sunk quite that low on these forums. ... ... Yet. Yeah, I've seen all those comments made on message boards - enough times and with enough conviction to believe the people saying it were serious.

I prefer to be early for everything as well. I'm not crazy on lateness.

I enjoyed the film a lot - I thought William Fichtner was all kinds of awesome. Dare I ask what point she waked out during...?

Some sort of...parody of Kekko Kamen, I'm taking it?

Watched Sleepy Hollow episode 3. Definitely stronger in the "monster of the week" elements of the show, but with more backstory for Abby and her sister. Next week looks like it'll be playing up the "National Treasure" type Americana conspiracy.

I've never had to have a suit since I was a little kid. I've never not gotten a job if I got an interview (so far, knock on wood) going in with khakis, shirt and tie. Getting the interview was a struggle sometimes (in fact I went about 7 years working PT jobs because I couldn't get a FT job interview).

I'm not saying it isn't a concern, what I am saying is that there has to be an acceptance of some arbitrariness at the end of the day and that we shouldn't assume that one arbitrary element is inherently better/worse than others without considering the context of the greater game design. Based on the discussion I've had with a lot of people (obviously not everyone so perhaps my perspective is skewed). From my perspective, the argument seems to come from roughly two groups, those who feel that the inability to not have friendly fire is unrealistic and believe that any hostile/non-hostile/friendly target should be considered, for tactical purposes, when throwing around area effect attacks or line of sight attacks. And then there are the other group, who seem to show up and say, more or less, "OMG, I got to chunkify the brats! This game is 1337! Its sooooo realistic that I can hack and maim all the kids!". This group is, IMO, not that dissimilar to the group that thinks "romance" in games means you should be able to have sex with your sister (like some on the Bio boards when Bethany was announced in DA2) or that slave ownership should be in the game so their PC can own slaves, rape them and kill their inevitable offspring. Its the latter group that I feel see these elements as "edgy" thus desirable in all games.

Ah, you're using damages different from how I initially took it. Yes they are liable for restitution of what you paid (if you can track the entity down and it has assets). I imagine you'd be hard pressed to prove them liable for anything beyond that though (which is why I think Kickstarter added the refund caveat to their contracts).

The problem - IMO - with this argument is that it comes back to the arbitraryness of ANY kind of "well this can't happen" in the game. Take BG2, for example, you can stretch an argument that your main villain didn't kill you initially because he wanted to study you. There's no reason why he shouldn't have killed you (there were other Bhaalspawn and you were a problem) when you get captured in Spellhold. Other than that would suck as a game ending. A REAL sadistic monster would put your hand in a vice crushing it, rape your friends, etc. etc. But I don't really want to play a vice crushing minigame and can't imagine playing my PC being raped and left for dead because I sided with doffy old King Niceguy whose army got obliterated by the REAL sadistic monster would ever be "fun". YMMV, of course.

Yes, I believe it was to address some "take the money and run" scenarios still being played out.

AFAIK, that one is creator owned, not DC owned.

They're not AFAIK liable for damages. As I understand it by contract, they either have to give you what is promised in your tier or refund your money. (That doesn't mean one couldn't sue, but damages aren't inherent in the Kickstarter contract). What isn't promised is that the product will be made (they could just refund all the money), the product will be made in a timely fashion (I think some early kickstarter "successes" still aren't finished) or that it'll be good.

I only ask because my eye issues were acting up over the weekend and I couldn't figure out why I felt so sleepy (right after falling asleep) only to realize that my eye drying out made me think I was sleepy (I was wide awake after getting my eye drops in). But it could be anything - not a doctor.

Are your eyes dry? Do you look at a computer a lot? Could it be Computer vision syndrome?

With it being the point of the game, I have no problem with it. Done with a certain sense of humor, it might even be fun in a blood bowl kind of way. But again, the scope of the game puts that element front and center.

Immersion to me is the ability of a consumer of a work to forget that they're a consumer of a work and engage directly with the work without any attention being paid to the medium of the work or the disconnect between the environment of the consumer and the environment presented by the work; in short the total of the consumers imagination and the imagination presented by the work itself via its creative design equal. Because the immersion threshold will be different for each player and triggered differently, I don't think its possible to create a game where you maximize immersion for all players, rather you must focus on creating a game where you minimize immersion-breaking.

My day so far = On the plus side I might actually get my reports done... On the negative side I had two different employees miss a deadline despite them receiving multiple reminders. One of them from me the day before the deadline. Me, when talking with them at our group meeting Wednesday =

Yeah, that's it.

I watched DAY OF THE ANIMALS (1977) - Christopher George and Michael Ansara lead a group of hikers (including Susan Day George, Leslie Nielson, Richard Jaekel, Ruth Roman, and Paul Mantee) into the mountains. Unfortunately, a hole in the ozone layer triggers a viral outbreak driving animals and some people insane. Animals attack in hordes and people begin to lose it. Goofy fun Animal/Environmental 70s horror film with a great highlight where a crazed Nielson attacks a crazed bear during a thunderstorm. DRAGON HUNTERS (aka Chasseurs de dragons) (2008), French movie based on a cartoon I've never seen, apparently. Strange but fun in a fantasy all-ages cartoon kind of way. Nice visual sense to the world that makes it unlike a lot of other cartoon fantasy films. MURDER ON THE BLACKBOARD (1934), second in the Hildegarde Withers schoolteacher-detective series. Amusing, like the first (Edna May Oliver and James Gleason had great comic timing with one another) but I thought the mystery to be rather thin in terms of hiding who did it.

You may not realize it, but you're arguing for more arbitrarity in the game, which seems very odd at best. Anyways, this argument is pretty weak, as the inclusion of killable children is one aspect of verisimilitude that is very easy to achieve. Other things, like a believable economy and its related aspects like architecture are much harder to simulate realistically. I'm not arguing more or less arbitrary elements, just pointing out they'll always be there regardless. And frankly a better economy would be a higher priority to me than being able to mow down children or punt babies like footballs or whatever passes for dark/edgy/adult/buzzword these days.

Yeah high larva mortality rate was what I was thinking, not low birthrate.