Corvus

BUT THINE FUN HATH BEEN DOUBLED, ME MATEY! (It wasn't actually me)

Land Ahoy all me mateys and scallywags! Arrrr!

On an semi-entirely unrelated note (Pictures gathered from the same hour and a half of killing time) I am strangely compelled to run a game based on the following picture: [hide] [/hide] I imagine the story would probably set in the near future/alternate past. A more indepth manned mission to the Moon takes place and, just after they land, begin conducting tests/ect... the Earth is suddenly exploded/imploded/ceased existing. The game would develop from there. Anyone have an opinion on that? Would be an interesting concept, except what would provide further stuff to do during the game, as blowing up most of the potential NPCs will not really help come up with things other than classic Tavern Politics during games. also not entire sure why, but the idea makes me think of this movie trailer: [spoiler=Iron Sky Trailer]

Dear Diary, I am rather amazed that some users of this interesting DISCUSSION thread I read, don't understand the concept of what are things that can be discussed, and defend posting random nonsensical things that do not merit any sort of discussion under the defence that it is too short for a blog, without realising that there is a site called Twitter devoted to blogs consisting of such short statements. If you think you dont have enough to say for a blog, just go make a twitter account and post things like that on there. This is one of the reasons The Backroom got shutdown last time, do we really need to start trying to close it down again?

If people are interested I am thinking of running a test game of In Spaaace! when I am on spring break next week using IRC. For those of you unfamiliar with In Spaaace!, it runs using the Token effort system which to put it simply the GM and all the players have tokens that they wager in order to decide the outcomes of events with the loser getting one of the other's tokens, with atmost a single modifier being applied to your wager, and additionally the players may attempt to retcon things on a successful wager plus an additional token fee. If you do want to play I do very much insist that you read all the rules of the Token effort system, as being only 6 pages long and free there is no reason for you not to: Greg Stolze - In Spaaace! (the free download link is under the question "Where can I buy this game?", and you only actually need to read pages 8-13 of the PDF, ignore the first 7 pages as I dont think I will even end up using any of that information) If I do end up running this I am thinking of having the players be either a Space Parcel delivery service or Space chartered travel service, though I am open to suggestions.

Aye I have to agree, and just to put another thing out there for you Nex:

Interesting proposal, How could anyone say no to reading about Twilight Sparkle:

This, this is why I say [bleep] that. If you have too many variables, you might as well try to memorize a math book then solve it in your head for entertainment. And adding more than a single modifier to any task is not roleplaying, it's deviating from reality. And in fact when it comes to hacking, only your skill and the difficulty matters, if you use equipment, it doesn't make you perform better at hacking, it hacks for you. Or if it comes to surgery or shooting, you can take adrenaline to help keep you from shaking and keeping you alert, that's a single modifier, but you can't stack that with for example caffeine. If you were to use a better gun or better equipment here, that wouldn't be a modifier, the task as a whole would just be easier, meaning the minimum roll would lower, not your roll increase. Then there's augmentations, such as bionic lungs to keep your breath inaudible, that wouldn't act as a modifier to stealth, it would just add some levels to your skill and stop you from revealing yourself if you do something that would make you gasp. Ummm... You do realise that better equipment making tasks easier is just a fancy way of saying you are adding another modifier; For example if having a crowbar makes prying a window open easier by 10 (arbitrary number) you can just as easily say that the crowbar adds 10 to your attempt (assuming you are aiming to get atleast a minimum value) Also I really am not a fan of your 'anything that you can explain how to do that doesn't violate the laws of physics or biology is possible' rule, what with the ease at which you can make things seem to work which don't; for example using 'obviously true' physics (as you tried making the same arguement previously) I can build a device that can give a lethal shock using a small handfull of materials that can be found in any highschool physics classroom and if I had a few choice parts I could build a device that can power every electrical device on earth using a single lemon (both ideas would work according to commonly accepted formulas by overlooking the fact that they do not properly account for all the variables)

As far as I know prioritizing network communications is an extremely rare feature for consumer routers, as configuring it would be far beyond the ability of the normal consumer and would reduce the performance of the network (not to mention the fact that there isn't much of a market for routers meant for power-users when compared to the general market); Being such a rare feature I am pretty sure your router does not have support for prioritizing devices on the official firmware. (I may be wrong as I cannot find any documentation on that model of router even existing on Netgear's support site)

From what I can tell you probably have an issue on the line from your ISP, though I really cant say for sure at all as the modem status is the sort of stuff that requires a trained professional to interpret taking into account the context of your specific connection to say what the issue would be with more certainty. Also that ping result is fairly useless due to the censoring of what you were actually pinging, as there is not enough information to interpret what the ping numbers mean (a ping within the network means something very different than a ping to something on the internet.)

Yeah, we have never actually met standard handicap accessibility requirements. We are almost in compliance with the basic section 508 checklist Automated checking items, but then some of the manually verified items we also fail on, and we are a fair bit more out of compliance with the expanded WCAG checklist

Well really I would say that War of Legends isn't doing particularly well anymore going off of the server count for the game (There is a fixed limit to the number of players on a server, and once you sign up on a server you are on that server and you will not be removed from it) that in early 2011 they were adding a server month or 2, but as far as I can tell Jagex hasn't added a new server in 10 months now To summarize the status of Jagex's various games (atleast all the ones I know of): Jagex Games Studio: Runescape - Flagship Game 8realms - Too early to tell what its overall status is Transformers Universe - In development Stellar Dawn v2 - on hold Indefinately Mechscape/Stellar Dawn v1 - Canceled FunOrb - abandoned, Dev team transfered to 8realms Freestanding games - dropped and incorperated into Funorb and runescape Mobile games- abandoned with Funorb Jagex Publishing: War of Legends - Ongoing, seems to have issues attracting new users. Major bug issues and the game is 2 versions out of date presently. Herotopia - Cannot find actual information on the status of the game Planetarion - Abandoned, No Dev team assigned. So yeah, the state of most of the games they have worked on is not very good

Found a bit more direct news on the cancelation of Stellar Dawn: Develop- Jagex freezes Stellar Dawn development (I am not copy pasting the entire article, just the first bit)

Well, the reasoning behind us using different item codes than the official Jagex codes is that our Items Database like most databases uses numbered entries to store the data, with the numbers being assigned based on the order that items are added to the database. As a result Tip.it's item ID numbers are not the same as those featured in Runescape's item database. The official ID values being easily accessable for items is a fairly new thing overall (The Tip.it Items Database was released at the end of 2006, when the GE was initially released a year later with the website lookup being release even later), and the fact that they are only normally accessable for a portion of all items makes getting the official ID number impractical (there are methods to actually get the IDs for all items rather than just GE items, but there are no plans by the Website crew to do so.) Besides there are not actually any useful applications for the official ID numbers besides interfacing with the GE, and in these cases the Official ID is stored in the database for use with our various features involving data from the GE. If you are just looking for a list of the IDs, another user recently posted a thread on the subject with what I presume to be a more or less up to date set of the ID numbers you are looking for: All Tradeable Runescape Item IDs

My trick is to buy cheap name brand headphones as they tend to work sufficiently

Well, that idea would work, though I would personally say for a futuristic underworld criminal game, Shadowrun would work better as the main concept of the game is you play a shadowrunner (A deniable asset working for a large variety of corperations, criminal organizations, and governments to do things that are less than legal) and you could easily fit a more real world setting by cutting out the more magical parts of the game.

Assuming you mean the General D&D 3/3.5 that the Tavern tends to play you would want to take a look at D20 Modern, which is the 'real world' varient of D&D 3e. (you can find its SRD around the place commonly on sites that also have the 3.5 SRD) Its a decent system overall, but there are far better game systems out there for that type of gameplay but none of them have ever gotten support in the tavern when I tried getting people to play them.

I underlined the part I understood. Thanks guys, I always end up doing something stupidly simple like that. -.- Edit: It's not 16. 6+15-3+2 21-3+2 21-5 16 How is it not 16? Is this where that whole confusing jumble comes into play? The answer it accepted was 18... To put the puzzle in terms of base 10 values: 6 + (12+5) - 3 - 2 6 + 17 - 3 - 2 23 - 5 18 (15 in Base 12 is 17 in base 10)

One thing to note is that the TzHaar use a base 12 numbering system without the concept of a 0, not a base 10 numbering system with a 0 (If my memory serves me right they have 6 fingers on each hand, that or 3), so 1512 is 1710. Also zi means subtract not add Edit: To explain why the lack of a zero matters, in base 10 if there was no 0 and instead there was a character X that represented 10, you would count 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,X,11,12...

may as well explain this in parts: To make a bootable disc you just need a working computer with a DVD burner, a blank DVD (blank, not an empty data DVD), and software that can burn .iso files. Looking around on google, here is a good guide from the Ubuntu help documentation including pretty much any operating system you are likely to be using: Burning ISO How To After getting the disc you will want to make sure the new drive is properly installed in the laptop, and since you will be using the regular install disc put it in and start the computer up to begin the installation process. If it wont start the install process you need to go into the BIOS and bump the up the priority of the DVD drive for booting before trying again, and then the installer should walk you through the rest of the process. (Generally the only type of installation that requires additional steps is the first time install of an OEM copy which requires using the OPK software to do it properly)

Well, I do lots of things while home alone, but here is a sample from last weekend: Homework Code tip.it guides Study Watch MLP-FiM Read MLP-FiM Fanfics Listen to MLP-FiM inspired music Play RPGs online Kick drunken neighbors out when they come in the wrong room Lock door to keep said drunken neighbors out Threaten to call the police if the drunken neighbors don't stop trying to get in Call the RA to get the drunken neighbors to go to their own room

Well, I have no idea why you would have uninstalled your old drivers before installing the new ones to prevent rollbacks(you really have to go out of your way to prevent driver rollbacks), and since you wont actually provide any useful information on your computer there isn't much I can suggest besides reinstalling all the driver software from the original installation disks and hope it works.

Well, the only suggestion I can make with the current information would be to rollback the graphics card driver as its the most likely culprit. If I had more of an idea on the components of your desktop that someone built in the Spring or Summer of 2009 (making that assumption based on the fact that the graphics card would fall at the very end of the life of the OS [there is a 6 month overlap] , and the fact that the OEM copy of windows was installed without using the OPK) I might be able to suggest alternative solutions.

Well, The idea for making a downloadable calculator has come up once or twice before in the crew, its just generally the idea hasn't progressed very far due to the fact that it is only particularly useful in cases that Web calculators are accessable. One advantage of the use of in-page calculators is that since each page is based on a single xhtml document it is easy to distribute updates for the calculator (once we publish the page, everyone loading the page gets the up to date calculator), as opposed to a downloadable calculator which is a far more difficult beast to update (The best idea I have been able to come up with to deal with it is using RSS to distribute new definition files for the thing, as it is not reasonable to force downloading the definition files every time it starts or to require installing a new version of the calculators to get updates).

I use IE to read webcomics...It requires me to favoriate a page, click on the link my my favoriates, and update it when neccessary...It takes perhaps 2 seconds and doesn't have any lockup... Or alternatively you can use IE to subscribe to the RSS feeds for all the Webcomics(I personally use Thunderbird for it since I may as well put it in with my emails), since most webcomics have one built in to the site (Generally labeled as RSS or Subscribe). This has the benefit that it you don't need to keep all the webcomics loaded, and you only need to reload a webcomic when there is an update (since it will tell you if there has been an update since you last visited)