Ravenswing

Not Another Server Merge Discussion.

Also, 'aglutinate' is more or less a word in English. It means much the same, but would tend to apply to more technical circumstances. Chemical processes, that kind of thing.

Um... it means that you have some hounds and they should be released to chase after something...

Good picture, btw.

The world we do live in tends to operate at two levels. One of them is the world you suggest, and that's very, very bad.

A lot of the time we get the 'society is to blame' argument. If 'society is to blame' than no one is actually to blame, so it isn't anyone's fault. The guy that robbed you at gunpoint wasn't really bad, it was society's fault. This is a bad way to live.

On the other hand, we have the blame culture mechanism which tends to come into play when there is a systemic fault, but the organisations involved don't want to change and the grieving relatives need some specific person to blame. Here, systemic faults are hidden behind some individual who is identified as being 'to blame' for something. In this case 'coroporate' responsibility hides behind a scapegoat. This is a bad way to live.

So, if I were you, I'd wake up and realise that sometimes individuals are at fault, and sometimes it's a systemic problem, and what's actually important is that you realise when you, yourself, are at fault and deal with it appropriately.

In a similar vain, I have not consumed sufficient quantities of a certain herbal material to consider myself even vaguely as a 'dude.'

I am a man. I don't even bother with an avatar these days, but if I could be bothered, I'd probably use Ni, and she's female (that's her hip and sword in the sig block). I would be most happy to confuse people in this manner.

If it was PP, we'd have cute fades when we changed pages. This is more MS Paint. Though the backdrop was probably done in Poser (I recognise the cityscape models).

The only similarity I can think of is that they burn works of art, books, almost anything that tends to promote the idea of 'feeling.'

It's actually a mash-up of a number of themes. Nothing new under the Sun and all that.

I feel that's a flawed argument since no nation or society has ever been able to fully control their populace, or even really attempt full control.

Of course, some attempts have been made, generally in the form of eugenics programmes such as the forced sterilisation of the 'insane' (in the US) and the elimination of 'undesirables' (in Nazi Germany), but these are hardly effective examples.

PS. I'm not surprised the analogy between Equillibrium and 1984 doesn't go down well. Equillibrium has more to thank from the drug-induced societal stability of Brave New World than it does 1984. The imagery is 1984-ish, but equally owes a huge amount to Nazi and Soviet staged events.

Okay, hold up. A vastly powerful telepath could do so, yes, but even Xavier couldn't do it without Cerebro.

Kill him quietly, somewhere where no one would ever find him and don't tell a soul.

Frankly, the question is not whether that's ethical, which it isn't, but whether there's even the slightest point.

Bin Laden, like Hitler and many others, is a figurehead and removing that focus does not automatically lead to the removal of the issue associated with it. I'm no political analyst, but I'd guess that Bin Laden is not required to keep radical terrorists going. 'Editing' his mind would do nothing, a lot of his people would assume he had been 'messed with' and plot something bigger and nastier.

Killing Hitler might have stopped the Holocaust, but it would not have stoped the Second World War, which might have been worse if it wasn't being run by a psycho.

One of my other RP friends, Shadowe, has a character capable of almost litterally controlling the world (at the molecular level). That isn't backed up by the ability to understand absolutely everything and predict the results of your actions, however. As a result, 'The Legendary Shadowe' tries very hard to just be a 'normal' hero.

It isn't simply that the kind of thing you propose is unethical, it's that the probability is that it wouldn't work and may result in things being massively worse than they are now.

You could choose not to defend the character. It's really beside the point.

You're right, that's classic, and Spidey would save the people, and whether or not he also stops Electro depends on whether the storyline is about to end, or he should escape this time. Narrative Imperative has at least as much to do with character decisions in a comic book as any other factor.

Actually, it's the entire premise of the film Equillibrium. All emotions are supressed by a drug. There is no more war, or murder... but there is killing, lots of it. 'Feeling' is a crime punishable by death. If you want to feel anything you risk being gunned down or incinerated.

One of our GG roleplayer, Zortel, created Unity Earth. It's a world where everyone is essentially controlled by an alternate-Earth version of one of her characters (Zortel, actually). It's interesting to see the range of reactions to it portrayed by people's characters.


And yes, FFM, Ellie is an overpowered Mary Sue. Just for the record, my own character War Crow developed in a way which turned him into a virtual god. He placed limits on himself to control his powers and make himself 'human' again, otherwise he was unplayable. He doesn't see much action anyway these days, he just doesn't sparkle any more.

My current main was designed to never get like that. She's human, and isn't ever going to be anything else. Her greatest worry is that she isn't human, considering what she can do.

No, there really isn't a need for that, or a point in doing so.

It's very difficult to do that in a computer moderated game in any satisfactory way. I've played seevral games which use some form of 'moral compass,' mostly based on D&D and so using the D&D alignment system. The problem is that it is almost impossible to cover every potential eventuality. These games were conversation-based and either the designers did not consider what I would do in that situation, or they would include something, but their view of what it meant alignment-wise would be horribly different from mine.

If there had been a human GM, I could argue my case, explain the character motivations, and (hopefully) be treated in the way I would expect if my case was good enough. There is no arguing with a computer's pre-programmed perceptions of what an action means.

So, Going Rogue is likely to have 'moral dilemmas' to deal with. Expect them to be fairly black and white. The only grey possibility is if they start allowing for 'dark heroes,' the kind of guys who would blow Fascade's brains out as soon as they heard he had the capability and didn't understand why he shouldn't do it. The kind of guy who does believe that a few dying to save many is a valid option.

If that option is open, I'll be happy. My old main always toed the grey line. My current main is certainly in line to head that way. And I have another character with an 8000 year history of falling off the wagon and trying to take over small contries (or continents).

I'm not exactly holding my breath, but I'm hoping.

The character concept is fine. It was used for a villain in a rather entertaining DC comics edition, a JLA book, IIRC. However, it's a one-off. Do you think a character which is, essentially, better than everyone else is a good character concept?

Xavier has done it before. If it's one brain, or have someone do that to every brain in the world... The needs of the one is outweighed by the needs of the many.

I made a rather extensive study of this.

Yes, men are more likely to make female characters than women making male characters. There are a number of reasons for this. However, I know several women who do make male characters. The reason you don't think there are any women playing men is that they are generally better at it than men are at playing women.

A (female) friend of mine used to hate playing men, and now rather likes it. I think it's a matter of confidence. Women don't think they can play men well, so don't. Men think they can play women well, and usually can't.

I generally create a character with the sex that feels right for the character concept. I am pretty good at playing women (maybe better than I am at playing me ), so I don't have a problem either way. If I have no intention of roleplaying a character, it may well turn out female because the costume options are better.

I think I currently have more female CoX characters than male ones, but it does depend on what I've deleted and created at any given time. My first 50 was a male, the second one was female. Both have been extensively roleplayed. My LotRO character sheet is mostly male, the WoW list is fairly heavily female.