magdalena thiriet's page

Naked blue chick = Euroliberal

I'd say that spoiling is also related to the obscurity of the work; spoilers for Citizen Kane or Psycho have already by themselves become pop culture 8I knew both of them before seeing the actual movies too)but less known films or books are another matter.

...and Valegrim uttered the magic words "Reed Richards"...

Dear Mr. Fantastic,
what exactly was the logic behind taking your fiancee and her kid brother with you on unscheduled and potentially dangerous space mission, it's not like they had training or anything?

Dear Mr. Fantastic,
is it really smart to keep a portal to Negative Zone, home to many nasty critters, in the next room of your home and family? Do Child Services know about you?

Dear Mr. Fantastic,
considering that there is no mention of you having superstrength, how do you have the required muscle control to stretch for yards and keep the position without support?

Dear Spider-Man,

you have super-strength but are as vulnerable to physical injury as any normal human. Shouldn't you be squashed by now?

There are branches of Buddhism that believe in gods, angels and such but the view to these is somewhat different than in western monotheistic religions...mainly, they are there and are powerful and all that but they are also part of reincarnation cycle (so it is possible to be reborn as an angel, or vice versa...), and it is said that human's lot is better for humans have a better possibility of understanding that whole suffering thing and thus notice they are in a burning house (metaphor for the world).
AFAIK these types of beliefs are quite common in parts of China and Tibet where Buddhism has incorporated local animistic traditions...

But there are also branches of Buddhism which are completely atheistic and as said don't consider it worthwhile to think about divinity or what comes after death.

That said...have you read the 3.5 DMG? There's all sorts of rules for creating a random dungeon, making random encounters, random loot tables, random weather, random chance of getting lost in the wilderness, etc. You can still make the game as random as you want - it's really up to the DM and his own personal taste. Wanna run a pre-built campaign complete with dungeon maps and every monster and treasure laid out for you? Well, you can. And if going all-out random hack-n-slash with no story but everything's done by the roll of the dice is your cup of tea, you can do that too.

The game supports each play style (and even a mixture of them) perfectly well.

We played some sessions with this complete hack-n-slash roll play style where the dungeons and contents came from the charts...and it was not without amusement, for a couple of sessions.

DoveArrow wrote:

After all, there is a hell in Buddhism, and there is the concept that unless one achieves enlightenment, one is destined to forever be reborn into the world of suffering.

Wow, neither of these is part of my own Buddhist beliefs. Then again, when a religion has been around for 2500+ years, it's bound to have evolved into wildly different forms.

Likewise, and I'd say that the form of Buddhism which for me "makes most sense" is Zen Buddhism, which tends to pay quite little attention to rebirth (not denying it but considering that the concept should not affect the life we are living now).

Devil's Advocate: A game where you play a devil that has the job of corrupting human souls. You have to be devious, cheat, lie and use your (restricted) powers to earn souls for a promotion and power. See how much evil you can indirectly cause.

In Nomine, originally French but translated by Steve Jackson Games.

magdalena thiriet wrote:

There is another koan I have heard about killing a small kitten which tends to get an outcry when I tell it...

That's a famous one. You can read it here. It's not enough to accept that there is no real dualism (cutting a cat), one must also act appropriately on the knowledge -- even if only by putting shoes on your head. As magdalena points out, there are multiple interpretations; the text I linked gives a somewhat different one.

I have seen that as a description of desire: Cat is an object of desire which has brought disruption to the life in the temple (whether monks want to have the cat itself or to win a philosophical discussion about the nature of the cat does not matter, both are disruptive desires).

But as said, same koans can have plenty of interpretations, and even same people can see them differently in different times of life. As such they remind me a bit of RPGs; the point of the game is not to win or give "a correct answer", the point is to play.
I'd also say that wording can have an influence, I have before seen the story put slightly differently.
That is however a fun story to tell to people who have these fluffy bunny conceptions about Buddhism, how it's all New Age group hugs :)

I have occasionally wondered about the differences in life situations and different interpretations (I am generally fascinated by perception), like the issues about masters and disciples, and traditions and all that...living in highly individualistic culture puts me in many ways at odds with many cultures Buddhism was originally rooted in, which are considerably more communal...

I have no idea what that means. Does it mean the Buddha is in you no matter what?

I guess many koans can have multiple interpretations, I have viewed that to suggest that it does no good to just parrot your masters, Buddha can be in both a thumb and lack of thumb and one person's way might not be directly applicable to another. Bit like that "If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him".

These things should indeed not be taken literally and many use shocking imagery and practices to shock and force the hearer to review things in a new way. There is another koan I have heard about killing a small kitten which tends to get an outcry when I tell it...

Raise Dead/Resurrect are indeed highly problematic spells and I usually play in a way that the spells don't exist. Resurrection is possible but that's direct intervention of gods then.
Especially since most game worlds seem to consider it as a option available only for PCs because it has no such effect it should in the worlds...

That's a good point to bring up that gamers are not necessarily that attached to their characters as some might think, and a good death scene might actually be welcome (in a similar way it is for actors to have their characters die).
Violence quota indeed does affect the perception of death, I have also played also some other games where the violence and action was much more limited and killing and dying were thus much bigger things, on both sides.

As for other game systems, WoD indeed is worth a look. Beside Vampire with characaters as undead, Changeling has pretty interesting idea of rebirth, the fey nature goes from host body to host body, sometimes lying dormant and sometimes awakening, and when the host body dies it just progresses to another rebirth. And I have no experience of Wraith but that game was centered on ghosts and afterlife (and according to many, was much better as a concept than as an actual game...)

CourtFool wrote:

I thought the saying, ‘While on the path, if you should meet the Buddha, kill him.” meant some long time down the path. But maybe we should ‘kill’ him almost immediately. Or at least beat him up and take his money.

I admit that I don't fully understand this parable. However, the way it was explained to me is that you shouldn't mistake the man for the divine. The Buddha himself was a great philosopher yes, and his philosophy changed history. However, in the end, he was just a man delivering a message, and it's the message you should pay attention to. Therefore, if you meet someone claiming to be the Buddha, you should recognize that it is just a man, and not a divine being with all the answers. I don't know if that helps.

CourtFool wrote:

This goes back to trying it until it does not work. Maybe the Buddha was saying, “Hey, you know what? This works for me. And it seems to be working o.k. for a bunch of others. Give it a try. If it does not work, try something else.”

That's exactly it.

When people asked a Buddhist master "What is Buddha?" he lift his left hand, pointed at his thumb saying "It is there". Once he was away and people asked his disciple "What is Buddha?", and the disciple lift his left hand, pointed at his thumb saying "It is there". When the master returned and heard about disciple's words, he took a knife and cut off his disciple's thumb. The disciple was hurt, but then the master asked "What is Buddha?" and as the disciple lifted his left hand and pointed at the stub, he was enlightened.

Ah yes, that was awesome. The episode after that was great, too.

Oh yes, the last episode of season four is my favourite. Generally I didn't care much for season four big plot (Adam/Initiative) but that season had plenty of great single episodes.

And I admit that I thought season seven rather dull. There were moments but compared to what the show had been before, it was a letdown.

The movie, if it is not compared to the series, is pretty entertaining fare in itself, though I too admit I was somewhat suspicious when I heard they were making a series out of that...

(An incredibly amusing and pitifully depressing anecdote)

Oh dear, just reading that was painful. Not counting the occasional clueless sub, all the teachers I had did know their topic well enough to teach it (some could be stumped by more difficult questions, but that can be expected). They might have had problems with other issues like keeping discipline or how to express that information and bring it forth to students (and in one or two cases how to keep liquor bottle closed), but still they generally knew at least what they were supposed to teach...

And while I see some good idea behind interdisciplinary lessons and have myself wondered that there should be more of that, it would be nice if they were planned a bit so they would, dunno, be useful.

Mairkurion {tm} wrote:

MU!

(Laughs.) Does an oak tree have a Buddha-nature?

Evidently the oak-tree-faced-avatar claims one!

From what I have understood, at least some branches of Buddhism consider all living beings to have Buddha-nature, including trees and dogs.

Umm...Joss Whedon wrote both the movie and the series.

I'll go with TV Buffy because of Slayerettes.

And why do people think that there is no sense in English and the rules thereof? It's a living language. It is constantly growing and changing. It has incredible breadth, depth, range, and possibility. Do other languages behave differently? Yes; that's why they are other languages. It obviously is not impossible to learn or master; there are millions of English speakers world-wide, and many of them chose to learn it as a second language. I'm not saying they did this because English is just that enthralling (rather, they typically make that choice for economic reasons); but it goes to show that even those with another native tongue can learn English.

It does not need to be dumbed down (and I do mean dumbed down) by the imposition of an artificial mutilation of any degree.

One could argue that large part of English-speakers are actually semi-illiterate. I would never spell "rogue" as "rouge", "weird" as "wierd" or "they're" or "there" as "their" (or if I do, it's a typo) yet these errors seem to be rather common among native speakers.

So how do you propose dealing with homomyns? Even if you could get people to agree to changing the language to make it phonetic, those remain a problem. Not to mention that regional accents would completely change the way you would phonetically render certain words.

(Yes, I know a boot is an item of clothing, gosh darn it. And I didn't say a boot. I said about. I can't help it that they sound the same. As an example of an actual argument resulting from my having a regional accent that someone from a different part of the US thought sounded totally weird.)

Switching back to non-phonetic spelling (the spelling I used in previous posts was based on Finnish, which is almost phonetic except for some relatively rare exceptions).

As for dialects, again, all languages already have those, including the ones that are phonetic. It is commonly accepted what accent is represented in standardised form and regional dialects comply to that or if the regional dialect is distinct enough it should be considered a separate language.

On the subject of learning that each letter has one sound: I learned that some letters make more than one sound while I was learning the alphabet. Waaaay back in kindergarten. My son has been learning the same. At school as well as at home. I don't know of any school where they teach that each letter has only one sound, since that is and has always been patently untrue in English. G,C,Y, and pretty much all of the vowels have weird changing rules attached to them. Phonics has never made any sense to me. There's no way to make it gel with the vagaries of English spelling.

(There was a cute bumper sticker that I saw the other day: Hookt on Foniks Werkd Fer Me. Illustrates the point beautifully.) :)

Wot juu aar seiing is tät Inglis shuldnt häv fonetik spelling bikoos Inglis dasnt häv fonetik spelling. Well, whai not?

Ool living längvizes aar difaind bai their spouken forms, änd written foom shuld mirror tät spouken foom. Nau theer aar moor or less tuu standaad fooms of längviz, tö spouken änd tö written, änd thei häv onli maaginal connexon wit iits atör, it is laik häving spouken French änd written Italian änd cleiming thei aar seim längviz.

In the end, there's more to the word than it's spelling. It's got a persona and a life of it's own. You can't take that away for the sake of simplicity and/or order or you undermine it's very purpose.

Sou Inglis shuld gou for tö pictograms, in tö stail of Chainiis, wheer written änd spouken fooms häv nou ovious rileisönship? Bat tu ädd tu tö konffuusön still juus tö Lätin alfabet?

Ai taip "jshds", Ai pronouns it "rogue".

Mairkurion {tm} wrote:

More historical linguistics! More etymology! Less political postmodern BS in English departments!

Yes! The only reason none of this makes sense to people is because they haven't studied its evolution to understand why the lanuage is the way it is.

Ou, täts ö greit saggestön, evriwan whuu wonts tu löörn Inglis shuld olso löörn old Anglo-Saxon, mediival French änd ool thous things. Then whai not zäst gou bäk tu tät old Anglo-Saxon if it wos so hot änd greit?

Well, whenever Inglis spiikers disaid tu kam ap wit standardised fonetik spelling sistem ai äm luukin forward tu sii what it luks laik. Atöwais ai maight kiip on wraiting laik this hiör. Bikoos ai think this brings houl njyy karakter tu Inglis längviz änd shuld bii triited äs art.

No problemo, Tekila Sonrise!

But that would be a short I in Sunris then, rhyming with "his".

And for the record, I pronounce rogue ro-gu-e, because that's the pronounciation which fits the spelling. Maybe you should keep the spelling as it is and just change the pronounciation.

Of the American majors, I have tasted Corona and Budweiser (maybe others, I might have forgotten).
They are a bit "what's the point?" beers, I can drink them and they might go well together with food but if I feel like drinking a beer I would appreciate it to have bit more taste and kick (I am not a big fan of pilsner beers anyway).

Heck I can just see some wizard now sitting down with the spell equivalent of a Desktop Computer running "Save throw analysis" programs for each of his spells, when a illusion chimes in with "Are you being watched? Stop those pesky Diviners now with our patented Lead Tents!"

Just to be nuked by his conjured Avoral "firewall".

And that's where summoning spells also come in handy: KD50 tests! Somewhere there is a mage who can give pretty accurate estimations how many of each direct damage spells it takes to kill various common summoned critters...

Yeah my general opinion is that if it is a spell you know, you know the details about it too...

Though in my opinion it would be "Why waste time only getting one person with hold person with a save for nothing effect, when I can take stinking cloud hit a group, have a chance to affect them each round, and have nice side effects from the spell too?"

This would be the point where I would allow metagaming too: discussing the mechanics of spells the character has (or arguably spells in general, at least if the character has nice spellcraft skill...)

Same goes for magic items and monsters the characters are familiar with: players are allowed to use mechanic terms about those even when their characters would use different terms...

...actually I don't watch that much scifi and fantasy movies...I am somewhat picky watcher and scifi and fantasy have had too many stinkers for me to just check out any unknown film, I need good reviews before I bother.

Otherwise I am quite versatile watcher, and a lot depends on mood. Comedy, horror, drama, romance, thrillers, all go. Not a big fan of documentaries though.

Oh...I thought he had actually read the particular module in question. Making guesses as to what places/objects might be trapped (based on prior D&D experiences) is indeed metagaming, and I admit that I've been guilty of it in the past. "You're going to touch that crown that's lying on a table out in the open? I'll be hiding around the corner, thanks..." =)

Certain amount of caution is understandable, if the player characters operate in a world where traps are commonplace :)

And acting like this in a real world is kind of fun too.
"If we were in a D&D module/horror movie/something now that would be such a bad idea".

You will join the band, make couple of gigs and put out a self-published single (possibly a split), then later when you are big and famous all the hipsters say you were at your best in that band in summer '09, and the single will be selling for major $$$ in eBay.

Again, what when not metagaming breaks immersion and character? What if people need to metagame to adequately portray a character because they are not up to the task themselves?

If you want to play a veteran fighter and war leader, for example, are you allowed to take 5 minutes to plan the reaction to an ambush with your group, while your character does react in the blink of an eye?

This would be the part where meta-gaming in my experience is allowed in moderation; also when inexperienced players play more experienced characters, other players and DM can give suggestions what might be a good spell to cast or such because the character would probably know that.

Otherwise metagaming has rarely been a problem, those who have done it usually either get rid of the bad habit or look for a different group, because most of the players also make a division between in-character and out-of-character and some are real sticklers ("I as a player know this is bloody stupid but this is what my character would do" is a phrase which has been uttered more than once).
And several players also do plan the tactics well before when possible, sometimes leading into quite odd gaming sessions where not much actually happens and players/characters just discuss how something should be done. And in ambushes or such unexpected situations characters can make rash decisions which in retrospect will not come off as good ones.

Understandably this gaming style is definitely not for everyone but as said, metagaming is rarely a problem and sometimes it leads to interesting roleplaying situations (it is not unknown for players to withhold information from each other, or even lie, and sometimes there are "ooh, I wish they would have known that thing I didn't tell them then" scenes...)

Not the first one to notice this, and even thinking about continuous true strike weapons have commonly been ruled to cause "Your character disintegrates. Make a new one." reaction on DM :)

Varying degrees of in-game logic has been used to explain why it doesn't work, but it all comes down to one thing: that's a game-breaker and thus unacceptable.

Children are indeed good models for CN characters...I doubt anyone would consider Bart Simpson as insane.

I'd also say hedonists with moral qualms could easily be CN; do things which make you feel good, be too self-centered to be CG but shy away from doing any actually bad stuff. Check your local newsstand for gossip rags, they tend to feature plenty of these types as do several reality tv shows which pop to mind (who would you rather have in your adventurer group, Hannibal Lecter or Britney Spears?)

Paljon onnea vaan,
paljon onnea vaan,
paljon onnea, Erik
paljon onnea vaan!

Valegrim wrote:

I think you should go back and read pg 106 of the players handbook; yeah; ce "the destroyer" bs if you think that can know love. Maybe some vanilla evil guy could get there; but not someone who is called demonic.

But they're only compared to demons. It's like calling someone an 'imp'. Those descriptions the PHB gives are just exaggerated definitions, not altogether reliable.

Unless one goes by definition that 99% of human beings are true neutral.

The one flaw in the article is that it doesn't tell you what specific material was covered in the written portion of the test. If it was policies and procedures that a company officer would need to know, then I could see a very strong argument being made for the validity of that portion of the test. If it was just a bunch of random firefighting trivia, like what size hoses does the department use, then I could see an argument for throwing it out.

Putting weight on written tests for desk jobs does make sense as that is a big part of what those people do.

Oral tests do have a bias too, and they should be used mainly when they are representative...eg. people in team leader positions should perform well in oral tests.
Unfortunately multiple choice written test is fast, cheap and easy method of ranking people and that's why they are so popular...

And one all-evil group of ours was a family who did that self-centered selfish bit but the selfishness was centered on the family; characters were loyal to each other but everyone else was fair game. Kind of mafia thing (and possibly if one of the members would seriously endanger the others, there might be consequences "for the good of the family", but we didn't get that far).
There have been other individual characters who have similarly believed in something or loved someone, and would be ready to do bad things when necessary.

Outsiders may deal with absolutes, but mortals are always mixtures. People with evil alignments are capable for all the feelings but they might express and deal with them differently.
Reminds me of a short story I read, of a woman who becomes obsessed with a happy family she observes and who is willing to do anything to keep that family happy...for a psychopath example :)

EDIT:

Just read the news article. Here's an important quote:

"The promotion exams were closely focused on firefighting methods, knowledge and skills. The first part had 200 multiple-choice questions and counted for 60 percent of the final score. Candidates returned another day to take an oral exam in which they described responses to various scenarios, which counted for 40 percent...But after the results came back, the city says it found evidence that the tests were potentially flawed. Sources of bias included that the written section measured memorization rather than actual skills needed for the jobs; giving too much weight to the written section; and lack of testing for leadership in emergency conditions, according to a brief filed by officers of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology."

And what any of that (quoted matter) has to do with race is beyond me. There is no bias--for questions based on memorization of a topic, either the test respondent knows the answers or they don't.

Correlation between education and performance on written tests has been reported to go to both directions: having better education helps performance in tests, even if that education was not related to the field tested.

Andrew Turner wrote:

I have a PC who's a completely unoriginal combination of Frank Black and Gregor Eisenhorn.

Until I clicked on the first link, I thought you might have made a character based on the dude from the Pixies! I'm gonna pretend I wasn't let down.

Likewise, especially considering that I have used couple of musicians as a character base so it wouldn't even have been that far off, and seen others do it too (a rogue based on Flavor Flav was...entertaining).

I did use more character concepts from scifi and fantasy in the beginning but later prefer to get my influences elsewhere. And it is preferential if the others are not aware of the influence or if it is one they are not familiar with, it is more a rote for me to get an idea who my character is.

And I have also played myself. And my high-school teacher (she was eaten by zombies, and there was much rejoicing).

And every now and then when I watch a movie or something I come across "god, I'd love to play her/him!" characters.

Moorluck wrote:

lynora wrote:

I haven't used it, but it's one of the books on my wish-list of things I'm going to buy someday.

It's a suprisingly solid book IMO if a little silly here and there.

Good luck finding it though,from what I understand it was pulped but you should still be able to track a copy down somewhere.

(it can also be ALOT of fun...think temple prostitute of Sharress as your groups only cleric ;p)

Been there, played that, but without the rules to back it up :) That's why I want the book.

Likewise, I haven't seen the book but there has been a sacred prostitute cleric in one group and other similar stuff here and there.

KaeYoss wrote:

I think a lot of actors play "the same role" over and over again because no one ever offers them a different one. Look at Jim Carey. How many movies that were not comedy has he made now?

Typecasting. The studios only see an actor as a certain type of character, that's all they ever offer. It's also why so many actors really interested in challenging themselves branch out to do independent films and stage as well as start their own production companies.

On the other hand, there are some actors with limited range who do work best in certain roles. Kevin Costner seems at his best in baseball films.

Some actors are indeed unfairly typecast and could do much more given a chance. Some could do different roles well if the director was good (I think Carrey is one like that, he could spread out as long as someone with iron hand keeps him in check and prevent him from chewing up the scenery).

...but I admit also that some of my favorite actors are those character actors who don't have that much of a range but owns that limited range (elsewhere I have mentioned that Christopher Lee in the cast makes any movie worth watching, and there are others like that).
That said, actors like that usually work best in second or third billing and not as main characters.

Feels like Jack Nicholson has been phoning in most of his performances lately, just playing the Jack Nicholson character. And while I have liked some Samuel Jackson films he has been in so much crud that nowadays he counts as negative for me (he lacks the histrionic camp quality of Nick Cage).

Me too. I thought Korean and Japanese both rated a 5 out of 5 for English speakers. Really, the difficulty of the language has to be relative to the first language. No way should English be a '5' for a French speaker. Nor should Korean be a '5' for a Japanese speaker.

Definitely (except that both Korean and Japanese are isolate languages and not related to each other). Some claim Finnish to be really difficult to learn but there the problem is mainly that it is just so much different from most other European languages.

I have to agree that English has horrible pronounciation system which I guess is evident from numerous "how do you pronounce these names" discussions also in these boards or spelling bees in schools (which would be completely ridiculous in most other languages, as the words and names are pronounced like they are written). English also does not score well on vocabulary, it being ridiculously unwieldy and often having little logic, so if you come across a new word you have little way of figuring out what does it mean...
Basic grammar is easy, Bad English is indeed one of the easiest languages to learn which should explain its status as popular second language...and while English is widespread language now, I would guess that eventually it will share the fate of Latin and splits to several local languages...

I've got to say, I was a LDiC hater. Then I saw Gilbert Grape and The Aviator, and had to step away from the hate.

I think Leo suffers a bit from Star Factory thing, he gets mostly pretty boy roles where he doesn't get to show his acting range...I guess John Waters and Tim Burton rescued Johnny Depp from having the same fate.

Speaking of Oscar-winners, how is Halle Berry doing nowadays? I didn't see that Monsters' Ball which earned her the statue but she was just bad in X-Men...

Shadowborn wrote:

While I don't consider much of what Cage has done to be noteworthy, I have to give him the nod for Leaving Las Vegas. He was amazing in that movie. It's likely the best thing that he'll ever do in his life.

Before that he was very goog in Wild at Heart with Laura Dern and Willem Dafoe.

Yup, Cage was good in couple of films but after those he has started to get considerable name recognition on the turkey department...

Similarly, everyone who wants to have an opinion of Leonard DiCaprio should see What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

That said, I'm sticking with this avatar, which bears a striking resemblance to me really. Now that Lisa Stevens and the rest of the Paizo crew have changed their avatars to South Parkian models, and Lady Aurora doesn't post much anymore, it's just MWBeeler and I. I think perhaps we share an unspoken tontine... to survive one another and be crowned "the wolf head guy." It isn't much of a life goal, but hey, you know my motto, "Aim low and sort of try."

I am also sticking to my old avatar, and noticed with amusement that if one lists the avatars on the order when they became available, mine is the least popular of the first page :)

So I guess I am the resident rusalka by default.

I wish my wife were in a better mood.

Granted. She is in much better mood after starting a secret affair with a new lover.

I wish I was immune to diseases.

FabesMinis wrote:

This hyperbole is quite offensive. Pdfs... the Holocaust. Right....

Some people don't understand subtleness. You have to show them what happens if you use faulty thinking. And even though everyone should know just how bad the results of such faulty thinking can be, people don't think about it. They hear it on the history channel, adapt "nazi" as their favourite bad word, and do not learn the lesson.

Well, exactly, that's why one should also avoid using the word in discussion as that automatically brings the level of conversation down. Respect Godwin's Law, even if in perfect world it wasn't needed.

Titanium Dragon wrote:

3) While it is fair to be annoyed that PDFs are no longer available for the time being, it is still possible to purchase the books yourself and scan them in manually, if you want to use them as PDFs for some reason. Yes, its less convenient.

That is possible for the 4e books and for most of the 3.x books. But for older books, that are long gone OOP that is either very expensive, or not possible at all.

This would be one of the main gripes.

And as a tangent...Oscar for Best Picture has meant Oscar for best spin machine for quite a while; Oscars which still have some credibility left include Best Screenplay and Supporting Actor/Actress...

You know, I might be upset about this, had I not started to ignore the existence of FWotFC back when they pulled the Dragon/Dungeon licences.

I still pick up interesting old stuff from old book stores when I come across them (reasonably priced), and I have friends who also have a nice selection of hard copies of 1st and 2nd edition stuff (which never fall accidentally on top of operating scanner, of course) but as it is FWotFC has not seen my money for a while now...

I wish I knew what to wish for.

Granted. Immediate physical pain brings whole new focus to your life as you cannot think of anything else than hope it would go away.

I wish for cold fusion to be economically viable energy source.

David Fryer wrote:

As I thought more about this I realized that Europe is a prime example of how tribal identity has become national identity and in many cases political identity as well. Most States in Europe are named for the dominate tribe or confederation of tribes that lived in the region. Therefore the region dominated by the Germanic tribes became Germany, the Franks created France, and so forth.

Did the Franks create France or did France create the Franks? I thought I remembered that there was some historical debate (going back to the revolution even) about the extent to which the Franks were the main cultural group and how much historical revisionism was going on even then.

There definitely were other people active there, like Bretons and Aquitanians, and for quite a while Provence was in many ways a separate entity from Ile de France (sp?) where Paris is located...

One should also point out that borders and national identity were still rather fluid things when Holy Roman Empire was big, and nation state of France got more definite identity only during 100 Year War.