Now, as a counterpoint to my earlier post in the Fenspace thread:
Perhaps the greatest thing about Fenspace is its collaboritive nature. From what I can tell, people are actually getting along with each other quite nicely, respecting other people's "toys" and working together to make a collective narrative. No shouting or whining. It's, well, it's fundamentally democratic in the best sense of the word. (A lot of credit for that goes to MFnord, I think, who's a great moderator in that he moderates moderately in a modest manner).
It's also an incredibly liberating intellectual exercise, particularly with handwavium. It's a lampshade-hanger, a story cheat, but it has just enough rules that everyone can play with it and then come up with different ideas.
It's also positive about the future. I know that some people think from my last thread that I am a gloomy guss that looks upon happiness with a baleful glare, but no, no! I am a happy, optimistic person filled with glee and joyful expectation about the future. And so are a lot of people in Fenspace and it shows. (It's like Star Trek, really, before the mid-seasons of DS9. Great stories from Moore et al. but against the remit of Star Trek, which was, at its heart, Secular Humanist Utopian Fiction).
It also has a lot of restraint from the writers. Nobody's a Superman Scientist With Mastery Over All He Surveys. It has a lot of genuine characters filled with humanity.
Haven't really changed my mind about my earlier points, but I did want to provide this flipside here.
-Murmur
(Man, I'm posting a lot lately)

What is an ODT file? What program do I need to open it?
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Epsilon

For those who haven't heard of it yet: Cthulhutech.
www.mongoosepublishing.co...ng%20Cobra

Okay, I haven't figured this out yet, so I'm asking here. The sets of special, named enhancement inventions that give you extra bonuses as you collect and install them -- do they all have to go on one power, or can you scatter them about?

-- Bob
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The Internet Is For Norns.

Aside from the church of time and chaos...

Does anyone know where to find an archive of Finding an Anchor by the grum? Google has failed me and any help on this is much appreciated _______________________________
We're definitely playing this game wrong. I thought Vampire was supposed to be a game of personal horror, not about ninja magic-carpet airstrikes at night.
- A friend after playing a session of Dark Ages Vampire.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. THERE IS ONLY WAR!
-Same friend.
_________________________________
Take Your Candle, Go Light Your World.

Good graphics/audio.
Excellent use of the LotR source material.
Interesting approach to giving us the same old classes and combat.
The Deeds (essentially CoH badges) and Attribute (essentially stat bonuses) elements were cool.
The PVP actually vaguely interested me.

The deal breaker? Forced Teaming. How many times do I have to say it? The moment you force me to team to get anywhere, I'm gone.
Sheesh.--
Christopher Angel, aka JPublic
The Works of Christopher Angel
"Camaraderie, adventure, and steel on steel. The stuff of legend! Right, Boo?"

Hello, been a while since I was here.
School work piled on, then a complete burn out.
Anyway, before I get into the whole finding a job thing, I thought I'd pop in and say a few cranky, no-fun words.
Basically, these are a few points, perhaps even criticisms about this whole endeavor.
I hope that it will inspire healthy debate about the teleology of Fenspace.
Firstly: Why the Boskone War should have been total genocide for the entire human race.
Not knowing how or why the whole Boskone thing started, nor how it ended, it's a bit difficult to attribute motives and what-not to the sides. At any rate, ever since Napoleon or thereabouts, Total War has been the name of the game. Granted, we haven't had a full-scale nuclear exchange on Earth yet, but that doesn't mean that it wouldn't happen.
Given this trend in human history, with no real sign of abatement, the Boskone War should have meant extinction for the whole human race. Here's why: weapons proliferation. Even with the censor that handwavium imposes, the most effecient and cheaply made weapon available to the combatants are their own ships. With enough firepower in just one orbital shuttle to take out a city (at least), and with the massive proliferation of ships/weapons, there should have been mass al-qaedaing of damn near every habitat, space station, asteroid, colony, city and biosphere.
The only reason why this hasn't happend is editorial fiat. Which really isn't that good of a reason.
Think about it. If we can start a venomous flame war about, I dunno, which battlestar galactica was better, then how would fans (or fens . . . which works as well as any other name, i suppose) react to each other when they have thermonuclear capabilities and a frightening lack of restraint?
Secondly: Suzumiya Haruhi is dumb, dumb, dumb.
Well, no, not really. It's a great anime/light novel series. She's a great character. However, what really takes you out of this shared universe thing is the idea of a single god-like character out there laughing it up while handing out handwavium goodies.
(not to get into the fact that the whole premise of the series was that she didn't know about her powers being the point).
It further takes away any real mystique that the handwavium could accrue if their origins were mysterious. Where did it come from? How does it work? Who else is out there in the universe? Etc. etc. If the answer to all this is: it's a god-like japanese school girl what did it, then, well, heck. There's not much more to say about the subject, is there.
It also goes against the, for lack of a better term, feel of the shared universe. What is the point of being semi-hard science fiction if it's the product of a god-like being? Doesn't that undermine everything?
Thirdly: Nostalgia.
I read an article (can't find it now, darn it), really an interview with charles stross and cory doctorow, in which it talks about how science fiction has grown afraid of the future. How it's either all elves and unicorns or space opera galactic empires in the year five billion. No near-term future think. A discussion of the singularity was also there, but the point stands that there is a genuine lack of novelty in science fiction.
A lot of it has to do with nostalgia; dangerous, corrosive nostalgia.
Look at how this world was set up, regurgitating the ideas and dreams of dead men like ideological necrophiliac cannibals. Where's the new, the outbreaks of future, in having your fictional avatar live in a world that people born in the ass-end of the last century would have found comfortable and explicable?
Anyway.
Ignore or respond or what have you.
-murmur

The United States Supreme Court has made it's decision in Morse V. Frederick, the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case: they've decided in favor of Morse.
This is disappointing, but about what I expected. At least the findings were fairly narrow: they rejected the government's argument that schools can suppress all student speech not in agreement with the school's self-defined "educational mission," limiting this only to speech that can be interpreted as supporting drug use. I did find Justice Thomas' opinion a bit worrying, though
--The Twisted One"Welcome to Fanboy Hell. You will be spending eternity here, in a small room with Jar-Jar Binks and Dobby the house-elf."
"If you
wish to converse with me, define your
terms."

--Voltaire

I loved the Step but noticed some possible errors. Sorry if I'm vague with citations, but I noticed the errors over a year ago, tried to join the board (user name Essex), failed several times to access the boards, failed in my attempts to correct the problem, and didn't try to rejoin until after I recently moved.
1). Lisa asked Nene to investigate Doug. Nene had a hardsuit screencapture picture of Doug from a boomer attack. Why didn't Nene notice the link? While it is easily believable that she just didn't connect the two events it may have been better if Nene was left with a nagging thought that she'd seen the guy somewhere before so that she could have a 'forehead slap' moment later.
2). Sylia plans to make older bodies for the rescued child boomer but Doug's earlier research on boomers would imply that boomers die after about 15 years. Since Sylia didn't yet know that Doug's nanovirus would extend boomer lives, why would she be making long term plans for a boomer that was already several years old?
3). Doug gave the horoscope boomers samples of his boomer virus. Why? Given what had already been established they should be able to spread it just by touching things.
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"Anyone can be a winner if their definition of victory is flexible enough." - The DM of the Rings XXXV