firbolg's page

I can not possibly reccommend Ars Magica any higher. It was the harbinger of troupe style play and the forerunner to the Storyteller system. It's a great way to break out of a D20 rules lawyering rut, as it throws most of the conventions of D20 play to the side.

But the best thing about it... it's magic with flavor. Not just the Hermetic magic but all forms of magic from Infernal, Faerie, to Divine Miracles are addressed in a flavor that fits the semi-historical setting.

Instead of being vagabond adventurers, you're someone with a place, with an ongoing history. And it's a setting with the right balance of heavy drama with an occasional dash of light comedy.

It's one of those great RPGs to have just for the read alone.

Did any critics praise The Sword of Truth?

Because if so, put that one down for me. Moral dissonance out the ass and pushing your politics as manna from heaven does not make for a pleasant read. Neither does just plain bad writing, for that matter.

Really dodged a bullet by finding out how repugnant that series was after SFBC landed the first one on my doorstep.

....speaking of the SFBC and quotes from critics you've never heard of gushing over a book...

Fifth Sorceress

admittedly it's hard to say with a straight face that either of these were genuinely critically-acclaimed by actual critics

bugleyman wrote:

Auxmaulous wrote:

Of course liberals wouldn't touch that with a 10ft pole, they would lose all their slaves and indentured voters.

...and there goes any pretense of objectivity (or productive discussion). That didn't take long.

Yeah, I was composing a reply on the flat tax part, then I hit that and threw it away. It just isn't worth the effort.

+1.

Aux sounds like a rabid libertarian, so it's quite pointless.

Libertarism has a lot in common with hardcore communism: both relies on false assumptions about the human nature. The later, that people would be happy to share almost everything and work toward the common good (not quite!), the former that in a regulation-free environment, people would be too respectful of each other rights to take undue advantage (you bet!). Liberty for the foxes in the henhouse!

It's not because he is black, if that's what you are implying.

Funny, I believe that, consciously or not, a good part of it is.

It's perfectly reasonable to disagree with his policies, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the white hot anger that results in images like this one or this one or this one.

Removed a post and its replies. We really, really, really are tired of the edition war nonsense. Play the games you want to play, and don't denigrate others because of their preferred game system.

I've been fortunate enough that I've only played in a couple of games I'd consider bad. The rest were just boring and disappointing after a big buildup.

Probably my worst game was in 1990 at MidSouth Con in Memphis, TN. A couple buddies of mine had gone before and they just ranted about it. This one was practically foaming at the mouth trying to tell me how great this GM who ran a Star Trek (FASA rules) was. We get to the con, and I don't even get a chance to look around because my friend is dragging us all through the place looking for this guy. We find him and it's obvious he has no interest in running a game. But after my friend badgered him about it, he gave it.

Now, picture this, if you will. We didn't go find a table to sit at, so we just stood in place. We weren't allowed to roll dice because he would tell us how well we did after we described our actions. He makes up a game where we're on a Starfleet scout ship when we're suddenly just told we were in orbit around a planet while a Romulan Bird of Prey is pouring incandescent death on our ship. I was playing the helmsman, and when the engineer was killed the GM said the warp drive is about to go critical. I had a few points in Engineering, so my character hopped up to stabilize the engines. He points his finger at me and shouts, "YOU'RE the helmsman!!! You just left your post and your ship has fallen into the planet's atmosphere and exploded." He then made it a point to explain to the other players how the abrupt ending to the game was my fault and that I should never be allowed to play an RPG again.

I walk away, mad, of course. And my buddy follows along raving, "Didn't I tell you he was awesome? Best game I've ever played in!" I never went to another MidSouth Con again.

That went on longer than I'd intended. Sorry about that.

Just as a side note, quite a few of the people arrested for looting during the riots have not been ‘the poor, downtrodden and disenfranchised’ but people firmly from the middle class, people form good families and people with jobs. Not sure what they are rebelling against ... ooh, free stuff, lulz!

Really? The messageboard's Culture Warriors are picking London as their new battlefield of choice?

Here's a view from the coalface that offers more then just simple soundbites.

Typical overprivileged Tory. "Oh boo hoo hoo, why won't those darn poors just pull themselves up by the bootstraps and get a job?" The height of hilarity is that she then accuses others of their "privilege" right after whining about how brave and hard it is to be an upperclass Tory.

Did you miss earlier when I stated that there's one job opening for every fifty four unemployed in some towns?

Oh hey, there's this.

"Go and volunteer in a primary school and sit with those who are struggling to read, go and become a school governor, go and do a bit of training to become an adult advocate so that when one of these kids goes through the judicial system and their parents can't or won't participate in the process, you can be called on to speak to and for them. "

Done that, haven't done that yet, done that.

Woops!

Snorter wrote:

You could sterilise them, so they don't breed.

I'd like to see a social service be created where the government offers $5,000 to men if they have a vasectomy and put their sperm on ice (so they can have kids later if they want). If they pay the $5,000 back, they get the sperm back.

You are advocating literally wiping out the poor and non-whites.

Congrats.

I just noticed Aubrey's link says "the solution is to be more like the US and their police."

You know, the US police force that regularly commits crimes, robberies, murders, harasses the innocent, and overwhelmingly abuses their power.

Yep. That sure sounds like a great solution.

Aubrey the Malformed wrote:

But then that is what happens when left-wing intellectuals decide for the masses what is good for them.

What happens when right-wing intellectuals decide for the masses what is good for them?

Removal of limits on "the market", corporations bribing their way to immunity from prosecution, destruction of trillions of dollars, centralization of wealth on an enormous scale, the masses treated as imbeciles or ignored, and let's not forget kept frightened, while the few, media-controlling (or owning) right-wing intellectuals, party and flaunt what the rest can't have.

Something like that?

Never mind the intellectuals, just make society as open and transparant as reasonably possible, with plenty of support for everyone who wants to work or learn.

These rioters are what you are going to get after raising generations in a relativistic, value-less, multicultural, consumerist environment in which everyone feels entitled to whatever they want just for the great feat of being born. Prevent access to the consumer goods they need to fill the holes in their souls, images of which they are bombarded with constantly, and when economic realities set in and they can't have those things they are going to simmer in rage.

Do bad economic policies need to change? Certainly. But the heart of the problem is that Western civilization is sick and rudderless.

Why should backward and/or medieval immigrants to the West change their practices or worldviews once they get here and see how empty and hollow our societies are?

Europe will be fully part of the Islamic world by the end of this century, and the US will be a strange, little Byzantine Empire.

I think I'll have a margarita!

Edited for spelling but not pessimism.

Methinks you've been reading too much of Anders Breivik's manifest...

Any more news on a shipping date for the rest of us, Vic?

Diane Duane's Young Wizards books. "So You Want to Be a Wizard" is the first. A very different take on the secret world of magic alongside our world.

For more traditional fantasy, Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books seem aimed at that target audience. They're fluff, but well-written entertaining fluff.

It's hard for me to judge. By 12 I'd read a lot of science fiction/fantasy, much of it not aimed at young adults. By 16 I was pretty much omnivorous.

If you can get them hooked, past the Harry Potter, they'll run with it on their own.