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If you all have been following news recently, you will have noticed that the US has been trying to resume talks on a two-state solution. That means that at the same time, a lot of stuff is happening and a lot of stuff will likely not be happening at all. Israel has offered to release a bunch of prisoners, while at the same time increasing government subsidies to several illegal settlements (likely as a quid-pro-quo aimed at the extreme-right parties in government). Technically Israel promised to release these prisoners already in the Oslo accords, so however pointless the release of less than a hundred prisoners might seem to the process, it was basically a prerequisite for talks so that the Palestinian leaders can still uphold the self-deception that they have any real power at all. I'm sure the Palestinian leaders in Fatah would be keen to reach an agreement themselves, but the people in both Gaza and the West Bank have become wary and sceptical of any "peace process", and Fatah has become increasingly unpopular. It's almost certain the current West Bank leadership would be voted out of office if elections were held. The longer these discussions take place, the more support Fatah will lose among the people. Thus commences a kind of chicken race in front of the international community where neither part wants to reach an agreement, but both sides want the other to derail the negotiations in order to look good themselves. It's unthinkable that the US would ever touch the fat aid packages to Israel or in general use the "stick" instead of the "carrot" and the status quo is currently ideal for the Israeli right-wing government, so in contrast to the Palestinians the Israelis could reasonably let the negotiations go on indefinitely. So my bet is that discussions will drag on for a long time, and will end with the Palestinian leadership either voluntarily resigning or being forced down by protests (if Kerry does not give up first!). In the eventual, unlikely case of an agreement, it will have two prime characteristics: 1. Concrete changes are scheduled to take place in years from now and 2. The Palestinians make a very firm commitment not to involve the international community in any way. What do you think will happen? Let's place our bets and see who is the most professional political prognosticator on the Obsidian forum.

I'm sure "This is an idea I came up with" has become an automatic eyeroller of a phrase for many people on here, not least the developers themselves. Nevertheless, this is an idea I mentioned in a thread on the Wasteland 2 boards that almost immediately struck me as a good fit for PE, and people seemed to like it a lot over there, so I think it's worth copy-pasting. Probably worth noting that I was here assuming a hard threshold-based system of Speech checks, as in New Vegas. That may or may not be the case for PE, but I think at least some of this is still salient regardless. Oh, and Fallout obviously has a classless skill system and PE doesn't, so. I'm also going to censor some of the curse words, as I'm not yet sure of this forum's policy regarding them. Now, obviously, this isn't something I think PE should adopt wholesale, but there are some interesting ideas in there that could be adapted to PE's systems. I would never claim it's perfect, but it's a good starting point. What say you, PE forumgoers? I'm open to any reasonable criticisms.