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Messages - psymann

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1
Other Games / Runescape
« on: May 05, 2012, 06:53:50 PM »
If I've recommended Runescape to anyone, please allow me to un-recommend it.

It used to be a good game (boring in places, but good).

Now it's changed ownership and the new owners have thrown away much of the good principles of the old game-makers.  As a result, they have devalued the game through a series of updates to give away free in-game experience very easily, done too little to prevent bot/macro players using illegal software to get ahead and sell in-game benefits for real money, and, by far worst of all this last month, after years of saying that people shouldn't be able to get ahead in the game by being rich in real life, have now offered in-game free stuff in large quantities to anyone who is willing to pay extra.

A once good game has turned into a money-grabbing game where rich players can get ahead, as can those who are willing to illegally buy benefits from third parties.

So if you were considering playing Runescape, I would now suggest you consider other options where once I'd have encouraged you to try it.

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Other Games / Re: Board Games
« on: May 05, 2012, 06:49:52 PM »
Puerto Rico is the best of the dozens of good modern board games that I've played.  That or Race for the Galaxy which is similar but with cards.

I also like Kingsburg, which is unusual since it has so many dice yet surprisingly little luck as a result.

Alhambra is a good, slightly easier, game that I save for people newer to board games, and they always enjoy it.

I've really enjoyed Power Grid the couple of times I've played that, despite the fact we got the rules wrong a bit.

For a few more players, Bohnanza (bean trading card game) and Perudo (poker-like dice game) are very popular with a couple of different groups of friends.

San Marco, sadly out of print, is the prettiest game I've got, and is great for three people, though takes a while.

And for Pandemic is great with my family who don't like competitive games, since it's a co-operative one where you all team together to try to beat the game (ie save the world).


All these and far more, along with pictures, reviews and more, can be found at:

www.boardgamegeek.com

which is an excellent site for any board-game fan.

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Other Games / Re: Diplomacy: The Game of International Intrigue
« on: May 05, 2012, 06:45:10 PM »
Played this once at uni with friends from my badminton club.

It was an amazing experience.

But since it lasted hours and hours, and since the amount of backstabbing of each other seemed likely to make enemies out of friends, we pretty much all agreed it was brilliant but we never wanted to play it again.  And I never have done.  Once was quite enough, though I am very glad I played it the once.

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Other Games / Re: Settlers of Catan
« on: May 05, 2012, 06:42:17 PM »
You can play settlers (or the cities&knights expansion) at games.asobrain.com

It's free.

Due to copyright (I guess) they've named the games something different, but the rules are exactly the same as the board games.

Settlers -> Xplorers

You can also play carcasonne (another 'gateway' game like settlers, a popular choice for people new to decent modern board games) on that site, where it is called Toulouse.



Once you've got going with settlers, there are loads of other good board games you can try.   You can find details on hundreds of them at:

www.boardgamegeek.com

I personally find that "Puerto Rico" and "Race for the Galaxy", which are somewhat similar in gameplay, are both absolutely excellent games and are distinctly better than Settlers of Catan.   Those two get requested more than any others when playing board games with my friends.

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BM General Discussion / Re: Region Description
« on: December 18, 2011, 08:27:29 PM »
Mine was reviewed today as well:

Quote
Description Reviewed   (5 hours, 37 minutes ago)
The new description of your region has been reviewed by a GameMaster, and has been rated bad.
Please keep in mind that these ratings are just feedback, and as we are all human, are influenced by mood and other circumstances. If you disagree, that's fine.

I did change it recently (couple of months ago), so perhaps it was reviewed because of that.  However, the only things I changed were grammatical, ie changing "it's height is almost as great as it's breadth" to remove the errant apostrophes and before that it hadn't been updated since about 2009 I think; it may even have been 2007.  Since the description has been there far longer than I've been in the realm, it's not something I can just go and change without removing items of information that may be part of the realm's rp'd history.

It doesn't do any of the obvious mistakes (eg list the names of the current lord/knights/realm or go on a political rant) - the only mention of characters and any politics is to say that a previous lord built a wall following a revolution.  Since wall-building and revolutions are game-mechanic driven, they are factual and I see no reason why they shouldn't be listed in the description to give a little history, given it was related to the region in question.

The reason I didn't change anything other than grammar when my character took the lordship was because I thought it was ok.  Obviously the previous lord also thought it was ok.  As did the one in between (unless he just didn't care) since it hadn't been changed by the previous lord's character either.

I know the message says that it's just feedback, but if the game master doing the rating thinks he's seen something bad about it that all three-or-more previous lords have missed, then it's not much use to me if he doesn't point out what the problem is.  He may well have a good point - perhaps he's noticed some part of the description that is anachronistic or clashes with information somewhere else in the game - but clearly I've not spotted it as a problem, or I'd have changed it.

If you want me to improve my description, you have to tell me what you don't like about it.  Else I'm just going to assume you roll a dice and click "bad, good, excellent" at random without a penny of thought going into the process.

6
BM General Discussion / Re: Fame: points in the beginning of a family?
« on: September 28, 2011, 06:50:40 PM »
Aha, ok, so it's just not actually as definite as I thought then.  I was thinking, since it was on the Fame Box page, that "Unique Item" gave fame, for definite.

Clearly either it's to do with owning a unique item, not finding one, or it's just an educated guess that isn't actually right ;-)  Either way, not something for the bug tracker.

7
Other Games / Re: Dave's Galaxy
« on: September 28, 2011, 12:59:11 PM »
Okay I'm starting to get so many planets that I simply don't have time to work out which are where, doing what and manage upgrades. I can't imagine how the top players manage it.

it looks as if the longer you play, the more colonies you get, and the longer it takes to manage them all, making the game seem lightweight to start, and then take ages in, say, six months' time.  And that feels rather like Tribal Wars, which scares me.

I guess that just confirms my earlier suspicions... which is why I dropped out of playing some time ago, I'm afraid.  And you're not even up to six months yet ;-)

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BM General Discussion / Re: Fame: points in the beginning of a family?
« on: September 28, 2011, 10:25:05 AM »
And now, my adventurer has found a unique item, but I've got no extra fame for it, even though that's supposedly meant to be a known fame point.  Is there some way to get a unique item fame point without actually finding a unique item? :-/  Or should I just be taking all this to the bugtracker?

9
This Forum / Re: update
« on: September 28, 2011, 10:23:08 AM »
Yep, this one's much nicer, thanks :-)
I don't even mind it being dark - I think I can get used to that.  Though it might be better if the quotes were a darker shade that the normal posts, rather than being a lighter shade, since at the moment the quotes stand out a bit better than the actual posts, which is a shame.  Maybe just as simple as swapping over the quotes' background colour with the background colour of the darker posts?
Anyway, even without that, it's nice again now :-D

10
This Forum / Re: update
« on: September 23, 2011, 03:11:41 PM »
Prefered the old one, but I get that it has to change, and this new look is ok...

...except for the left of the screen.  Any way to get it to stop wasting the left two inches of the screen with blankness?

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BM General Discussion / Re: Fame: points in the beginning of a family?
« on: September 22, 2011, 01:51:22 PM »
I also have 2 points that I am unsure where they came from, but have two theories:

1 from Family Prestige of 20 (but I would have to count the Prestige of an Adventurer) + 1 from Unique Item (but I would have to count a Scroll as a Unique Item).

That seems fairly reasonable.

Certainly Family Prestige of 20 does include adventurers - I've got that fame point on both my accounts at a time when I needed the adventurer's prestige to make up the numbers.

No idea about the Scroll, but I guess that makes it quite likely that Scrolls do count as Unique Items.

12
BM General Discussion / Re: Fame: points in the beginning of a family?
« on: September 21, 2011, 04:16:03 PM »
I've just gained 2 mysterious fame points as well, also for a new family.


New account... and now I've got my first 5 fame points all in one day. Particularly unhelpful for me to try to work out what they were for. I have three characters (two warriors and one adventurer) who did the following:

Between Sunrise and Sunset:
 Mardel - Took part on the winning side of an attacking battle to end a takeover attempt, though retreated from the battlefield in the process. 10507 vs 8763 CS.
 Mardel - Gained 2 Honour and 2 Prestige from above battle
 Mardel - Increased to 10 Prestige overall as result of above (1)
 All Chars - Increased to 20 Prestige overall as result of above (1)
 Despite these happening between sunrise and sunset, the fame points did not appear at sunset. Fame was still at 0 after sunset where I was expecting it to be 2.

Between Sunset and Sunrise:
 Parve - Bought adventurer gear taking from 31% to 33%
 Parve - Wounded by an alpha monster for the second time in the same region in consecutive days
 Orlen - Bought from 35-50, then from 50-52 (max possible for his honour) mixed infantry troops
 Orlen - Won an election for a lordship (10 votes for, 0 abstentions, 9 not cast)
 Orlen - Became Lord as result of above election (1)
 Orlen - Added to a realm's message group

So I was expecting to get three fame points for all that happening together, though oddly they all appeared at sunrise, not sunset, so I guess fame is only credited at sunrise each day. One for 10 Prestige for Mardel. One for 20 Prestige for them all put together. And one for Orlen becoming a Lord. But yet I got 5 fame points, so what were the other two for?

Could it be for participating in that big battle (the first really big battle he's been in, and certainly the first really big battle he's been in and helped win)? Seems one of the most likely.
 Could it be for the adventurer getting more adventurer gear? Seems unlikely.
 Could it be for the adventurer getting wounded by the monster? Seems also unlikely.
 Could it be for winning an election? Such that winning a Lordship election gave two fame points, one for the lordship, and one for the election win? Possible, perhaps.
 Could it be for recruiting over 50 troops for the first time? Possible, perhaps.
 Somehow I need two fame points out of all that lot, and my bets are on winning the big battle, and getting the 50 troops, but who knows :-S

---

The two common ones I could spot with Danlawyer was the recruitment of 50 troops, and the acquisition of a first fame point (though that latter one sounds like a fairly unlikely one to give fame for getting fame!), though having said that, Dan said all his mysterious fame then diappeared again the following day, so I guess I keep an eye out tomorrow and see if it drops back to 3.

psymann

13
Helpline / Re: Where does the sun set?
« on: August 22, 2011, 11:38:49 AM »
Back on topic:

In case of doubt, assume that the BM world is very much like earth.

Fab, thanks.

14
BM General Discussion / Re: Rebellion
« on: August 21, 2011, 10:10:36 PM »
Family fame?  :P

I would have thought that would have been an OOC reason for inciting a rebellion, and therefore frowned upon, no?  Aiming for family fame always sounds a bit like powergaming.

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BM General Discussion / Re: Rebellion
« on: August 21, 2011, 07:41:44 PM »
Also,  gather a cause: An inefficient, tyrannic, heretical or otherwise evil government is more likely to find people willing to fight it than a normal one.

Presumably he already has a cause - otherwise why would his character be wanting to start a rebellion ;)

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