Kafuuka

[quote name='Firsanthalas' date='07 August 2009 - 12:23 PM' timestamp='1249640622' post='38903'] Personally, I don't see why we shouldn't be able to exclude players from quests. For example, if I find people cheating in a quest, why should I allow them participate in other quests? [/quote] Seems fair to me, but what will stop them from using an alt to solve the quest? Denying quests for personal reasons doesn't seem constructive to me. Instead of allowing a person with a different opinion to see something you made and perhaps get a more positive opinion of you, you invite those people into disagreeing even more. It is entirely human to respond in kind; denying quests to those who deny you. At the end of such an escalation, both parties will be exhausted and look like fools in the eyes of neutral observers. In this kind of battle you cannot win, you can only cut your losses.

[quote name='Shadowseeker' date='07 August 2009 - 01:39 PM' timestamp='1249645180' post='38907'] Or you just skip algorithms and thinks for a bit with paper and pen and take a few hours.. Depends on what you want to do, can you code faster or calculate faster. [/quote] The algorithm I use is only 20 lines long in c++, while it does over 22 015 calculations. Which is next to nothing for a computer; it solves it instantly. Out of curiosity I wrote a brute force algorithm once. Even with some optimization and a dual core computer I estimate it takes 7 hours to solve the puzzle. Personally I'd suggest coding, with that amount of calculations it is very easy to ruin it by being sloppy. And I don't recommend trying it at random, although rumor has it someone did find it that way.

[quote]Please be warned this Paper contains my opinions. They may/probably will offend you because they, in all probability, concern you or your friends. You have been warned. Enjoy![/quote] Probably the worst disclaimer ever. [quote]I mean hell, if I were a child and saw a maxed Grasan, I would probably shit myself.[/quote] But if you were a grasan child, you'd say 'hi gramps, can I have some humon flavored candy?' If I remember the children thread well, the problem is people roleplaying child birth and then having a parent-child relationship with their alts, which is about as genuine as having two alts fall in love. And the children should stay babies for a long time, depending on their race. Hybrid children in puberty should be fun to watch though: give them a book on biology and explain what a mule is and can't do. Apologies: genuine apologies do exist. Sadly a lot of people say 'I am sorry... but [it's all your fault and I'm not sorry at all, actually I'm mainly saying I'm sorry to prove I am morally superior to you]' That sucks. Generalization sucks too. Overly nice people: Characters can be nice all the time, they'd just die really really fast. Turning the other cheek when being stabbed is not something Darwin would recommend. There's no danger in being nice more often than being rude though. Actually, being rude all the time is a bad move too. Unless you are powerful enough to make an enemy out of everyone... godmodding? Lame RP: having an original concept is good, but not falling into godmodding is a lot more important in order not to ruin the good concept. Overall, people are likely to be offended because of the disclaimer and generalization. The way you put it, you expect everybody to be a source of irritation to you, or at the very least to have close friends that are 'at fault'. Of course generalizing things will help a lot to meet that expectation. I have a small list of common RP errors in my beliefs papers, no one ever complained about those. Few people probably read it, but I think the main difference is that I wrote it as a guideline; not a rant. I tried to keep things light and funny, while adding enough argumentation and persuasion. Just maybe some people will actually read the whole thing and learn from it. That is its raison d'être.

[quote name='dst' date='02 August 2009 - 10:53 PM' timestamp='1249246422' post='38572'] One question: is this "game" really played? [/quote] On occasion, I haven't been active that much recently; blame the season. I did log a part of the conversations that were relevant on my part. Those are 38.2 Kb of raw text, maybe that gives you an indication of how "big" this is? I have no idea how active other people are though... it wasn't my idea to bring this to the forum and it doesn't seem to have made any impact either.

[post='37471']I stick to my earlier idea:[/post] add one more form to the (Q) paper editor, that allows people to input a small comment on what they edited, or leave it blank if it was only a small edit. Whenever a paper is saved, store this comment and the time at which it was done. Next to the announcements, forum, free credits... links, add a new one that displays a list of times when people edited their (Q) paper and the comment. It's simple stupid, yet efficient. Players don't really need more information than who made a new quest recently. (and it should be ridiculously easy to program.) While quest solving and designing are related, I don't think that all people that are good at one are also good at the other. Having to buy an announcement feature will reduce the quantity a lot. If the above suggestion is followed, it could be easily extended for hatelists too; afaik that is the most likely place to find a non RPC quest. I'd prefer to have a Q page though.

It was not my intention to bring this to the forum, but perhaps that can be turned into an advantage. More sleep, less alcohol will probably help. Meanwhile here's two things that immediately caught my attention: [quote name='Leucretia' date='21 July 2009 - 03:30 PM' timestamp='1248183020' post='37590'] [characters that are] Minors...get with Kafuuka and introduce yourselves and mention that you would like to join his plan to break the adult code. [/quote] I'd rather people would not suddenly try and roleplay with Kafuuka using meta information. There is a very small amount of characters that know Kafuuka is up to something. I have deliberately spread information slowly because it does not make sense to 'raise an army' in a single day. (Real life made it easy not to be tempted into speeding things up anyway.) I wont stop you from stalking Kafuuka or other people, but I do expect people to separate in and out of character knowledge. [quote] This should be great fun! Just remember, keep it clean and fun. We do not hurt people or say things that should not be said.... [/quote] And I quote: Windy gives Asterdai an evil look Asterdai: "what!?" Windy: "If you break the code, I will cut your throat, my love."

[quote name='Shadowseeker' date='20 July 2009 - 03:44 PM' timestamp='1248097476' post='37539'] total of 100? make it 240 I think..rough number, but I'm positive it's about that number total. [/quote] And how many of those aren't already spent? And how many of those that are still available would people be willing to spend on a gamble? I'd appreciate it if people were to answer those questions instead of just giving me negative reputation points. My estimate of what would be left for gambling is about 10 wishpoints. Starting with over 200 distributed points, in the next few days half of them will be spent on access, xp resets and creatures. And then people will hold on to the remaining points for really cool and tangible rewards that might be released in the future. I doubt more than 10% will gamble with their points. And given the possibility of adding a previously spent requirement... I don't think reviewing 10 wishes is going to take that much effort and after the initial ones, it will take a while for the 'daring' people to get new points; to the point some might argue that it is going to be so infrequently used it might as well not be implemented.

My main concern is that wishes should be unique, while the wish shop makes them generic. To actually make an unique wish should cost any number of wish points greater than zero. Some wishes are small, some wishes are big, some are impossible. The way I would design it, there could be four possible outcomes such a gamble: 1. Your wish is granted. 2. Your wish is conditionally granted: you get a vague description of what you must do and upon meeting the requirements it gets granted. This might include sacrificing more wish points. 3. Your wish is ignored. (you do get notified of this though) 4. Your wish is interpreted wrong and you now live with the consequences... if you are still alive that is. The more you ask for in your wish, the more likely you end up with a bad effect. Personally I would also reward originality. Also it seems like so much fun to think of wrong interpretations and considering who will get to have this fun, this makes an excellent persuasion to implement it. I don't think it will take that much time to review, since this feature is not going to be used daily. There are not that many wish points given yet, a lot are probably already used and how many people would take the risks? You could loose more than just a wish point.

[quote name='Harion' date='19 July 2009 - 08:03 PM' timestamp='1248026606' post='37483'] starting and ending quests is not integrated into the game i don't mean the quest itself but only joining one. like, on the quest page a button can be clicked to start the quest and then a new page opens up for the quest to be read. starting the quest should automatically list it on your "ongoing quests list" which should also be coded into the game (currently, we have no way of tracking our quests except by writing it down on the notes page) likewise, a button to quit the quest should also be added. coding this kind of quest system into the game also allows quest creators to track players doing their quests. we also may do away with those: send me a pm if you want to do this quest and instead have it automated. anyone who wants to start the quest get the info they need by clicking the start button. filtering players that can do the quests can also be done.[/quote] I disagree. It is not too much work to keep track of which quests you are doing yourself, using memory or pen and paper. You'll need them if you want to solve some of the more difficult quests anyway. [b]IF[/b] a quest maker wants to keep track of who started his/her quest, the private mail method works for everybody. The update does not work for everybody for ladder quests because you'd naturally use the RPC items to track quest progress. Tracking can be useful in experimenting with quest design, but then you would really want to track it from beginning to end and not just get the success rate. Obviously if you don't want to track anything there is no need for a pm nor a button at all. Furthermore an 'ongoing quest list' would, in my opinion, break roleplay immersion. My characters' primary ongoing quest is to survive. Next on his agenda are having fun and thwarting an evil conspiracy. There are already people that refer to their papers like their character is walking around and handing people they never met nor know if they are literate, a copy of their diary. If we add an ongoing quest list, people will refer to it in character, while most quests are out of character, unless you are roleplaying a time loop where different people happen to intercept the same coded message and solve it in the same way the previous group did. I do not know much about the MD code, but programming what you suggested seems like a lot of work compared to what I suggested. The ideas aren't mutually exclusive so this isn't the most weighty argument. And the necessary code for the ongoing quest list gets even more complicated if one player has multiple quests running at the same time (there are at least 2 RPCs doing this). The cleanest programming solution I can think of would largely favor giving only RPCs the ability to make quests that can appear on your ongoing list. (The reasons are security and overhead.) This would make quest-making even more exclusive. As for voting and commenting on quest quality: the only ones who might know enough about a quest are the ones that actually finished it. If I heard correct, getting a dozen people to try your quest is considered a success for an unadvertised 'fun' quest. If people only bother going after rewards their comment on a quest will be plain: 'yay I got it' or 'booh the reward isn't good enough.'

[quote name='Fenrir Greycloth' date='18 July 2009 - 05:32 PM' timestamp='1247931150' post='37405'] Something does need to change with these quests. I had a quest that was completed by three people on my hate page. The quest was to write me an essay on the behavioral patterns of knators, or the social hierarchy of the knators. Perhaps this quest was to hard for most people or noone knew about it. I think that more people should have the ability to makes quests, not reward them, but to have a quest page. In order to get the quest activated the player needs to get the quest approved by an rpc. This will allow many more quests, and a way to control the quality that comes from them. [/quote] There are a lot of quests that few people know about. Every now and then I 'hunt' for quests to do and read hatelists and quest pages to see if there's anything new, but I never noticed yours. It would be a bit easier if everybody got a quest paper and it would finally allow me to stop using the hate paper for quests. I do not think there should be a manual verification of who gets the paper and who doesn't. If there is a need for distinction, it can easily be done by changing the color of the quest paper icon. There's brown and gold icons and it should be possible to code that non RPCs get a brown quest document icon and RPCs get a gold one. And if for some reason you need more levels, silver seems like a logical third color. In the past there were attempts at listing all available quests on the forum, but it doesn't seem to work. Perhaps this should be automated as well. If everybody has a quest paper, it should be possible to keep a log of when that page was last edited and make that list available somewhere in the game. Of course there should be an option to make small edits would getting to the top of the list, but that is but a matter of making a check box for small/big edits. Maybe an option to have a comment next to the edit date too, svn style. [quote name='Harion' date='19 July 2009 - 09:29 AM' timestamp='1247988577' post='37456'] yes! 15 players that will be sought after! 15 players that may make or break the quest. that's exactly what I'm talking about. too much power given out to players that could make or break the game. hey, this 15 people can do ask anything they want from other players just to grant knowledge of those letters. seriously, can i play this game without being ultimate slaves to other players? like what do i need to do to get that quest? [/quote] There are nice and power crazy people, good and bad quests. It is your choice to try a quest or to ignore it. Of course it is annoying to be unable to even begin a quest, but this will happen to other people too. A lot of quests reward the first player to solve it. Sometimes they get solved before you are online to read the description... You can still solve it for fun, without the reward. Perhaps you can laugh at the 'chosen' people when they are having a hard time. eg Marvolo's current quest is a very nice game theory experiment. [quote name='Burns' date='19 July 2009 - 10:32 AM' timestamp='1247992330' post='37459'] there is no goal, there is no high-score, there is no 'end of game' you can reach... and personally, i don't see where hardcoded ladder-quests would take the game to, now it's never ending, but what happens if you are on top of the ladder-thingie? 'Congrats, you beat the game and wasted 267 days of your life!'? or do you then go on with the RPC-quests until you beat them all? [/quote] I think the use of more ladder-quests is to keep people occupied long enough for them to understand that there is no goal. How many games are there that don't have a goal? The only ones that come to mind are dwarf fortress and all the sim and tycoon things. It can take a bit of time to adapt. PS dwarf fortress is cool, but even though the ascii art is outdated it still manages to slow down on a dual core once you get a decent amount of livestock

[quote name='Harion' date='18 July 2009 - 08:44 AM' timestamp='1247899441' post='37375'] there has to be a way to keep the hardcore MD players happy and yet still keep average gamers playing perhaps an easy setting for those who want it? i've been wondering why there are no non-char NPCs that give out easy quests (that doesn't expire!) so that it'll at least give some players the feeling of progressing in the game instead of being stalled when they can't get over certain parts of the game[/quote] There's 6 billion people on the planet, even if only one percent of them would be interested in MD, that would still crash the server. Sometimes bigger isn't better and I don't think making an 'easy setting' would work. People are already tempted often enough to cheat, use loopholes, alts, blatantly ask for solutions to quests that have high rewards. I don't mind giving people a hint but giving the answer... There already are a couple of ongoing or periodic quests/puzzles/competitions. The Berserker puzzle, broken pattern, Loreroot guards. The heads contest. The torch competition is being tested. And some new ones have been mentioned on the challenges pages for a long time, so hopefully they will one day be available and give new people more options on things to do or look forward too. And then there is the whole factions thing, which is aimed at integrating new players faster too. If I remember correct it is to encourage small non-temporary quests with small but tangible rewards, giving players a lot of things to do. (until they have done all the new static quests and are stuck with the non static ones again) [quote name='awiiya' date='18 July 2009 - 10:31 AM' timestamp='1247905871' post='37379'] I think you overdo it on the "exclusive" part. I think MD is exclusive only because it takes a smart person to play this game. Well, play this game and succeed, I should say. The veterans that I know (because to some degree I consider myself a veteran) are all intelligent people, and have earned their place in this game.[/quote] Patience is perhaps the most important skill in MD. Obvious examples are creature age and not leaving an area ten seconds after you type 'hello' because no one answered yet. Maybe you have to be smart to notice that this game is played at a different pace than most games and then you have to decide whether you have enough patience and want to be 'hardcore' or go back to fast paced action. Maybe you have to be smart to be patient? I have to admit I have little patience for the impatient and I don't mind this kind of selection at all. Though it would be wonderful if MD could teach patience before people give up and I think that in a some cases it does.

[quote name='Shadowseeker' date='15 July 2009 - 05:00 PM' timestamp='1247670012' post='37139'] As for the quest, I see...people wish interactivity (which means endless work though), which I cannot afford seeing I have no way (or had, until the RPC changes are done) to make everything automatically. It was meant to be a fair quest, and I by myself would tend to give people I like better events and those I dislike more negative ones...hence how it turned out.[/quote] Getting random events is indeed fair. The interactivity problem lies more in getting random results after we decide on an action, enhanced by having no idea about the odds - The stew is a lie! - and not that many actions to choose from. Although there was a riddle, but I managed to fail that one epically Aside automation, collaboration would reduce the workload too. I don't know what the limits of rpc tools are, but rpc tools aren't the only method. They're probably easier to use than writing c++ code, but whatever they gain in simplicity, they loose again when trying complex things that they weren't designed for. If they are fit for this sort of quest, then the difficulty in writing should be similar to using python or some other script language.

It was quite random to me. I'd hoped that finding more pieces of the map would stop me from walking in circles and getting offered nauseating stew, but I never got there. It was a bit disappointing to read that it'd end before that. Overall I think you're quite insane to do this without any automation.

[quote name='dst' date='14 July 2009 - 11:33 AM' timestamp='1247564027' post='36991'] Toy soldier? Plastic? In MD? O_O WE haven't even invented hot water or the wheal in MD,yet you want plastic? I didn't even read more. So I suggest as a start a complete change of names. [/quote] We've got coffee, last I checked that required hot water. And there's wheels and gears too, but no plastic. Maybe a tin soldier? Tin hasn't got that high a melting point, you can melt it with an open flame, whereas steel and other materials can require complicated forges. Bronze, wood, stone...

[quote name='Muratus del Mur' date='13 July 2009 - 01:12 PM' timestamp='1247483562' post='36922'] There is a possibility that there will be one wp given out by solving a quest, the broken pattern quest. Currently i am rewarding it with a wp but its slow and i miss to reward some that did solve it, so i think to make it automaticaly, even if its obvious that most will use the solution to get a wp for their alts too..but its just one afterall (and puzzle could be randomized based on player id ).[/quote] If you can solve the puzzle once, you can solve it again. Randomness only increases the time to solve it. Changing the starting tile would give me a minute of work to get the new solution. Most of the wish shop items mentioned are anything but unique. If you use a wp to get an item for your character, that is something unique and lasting. If you buy 'ten uses of spell x' it is neither lasting, nor unlikely that someone else will buy the same spell. I'd like the option to spend a wp on an actual wish: you write down what you wish for, pay one or more wp and it gets reviewed. No guarantees that it will come true, or if it is granted, that it is like you wanted: your wish might be impossible, or interpreted wrong. (eg If you wish to be undefeatable in combat, you might become unable to participate in combat altogether, hence nobody can defeat you.) It would be a manual process, but how many people have wish points and are willing to take the risk? I'm certain there are lots of people that have unique wishes though. You can write your wishes in your papers or on the forum, or try spamming mail... none of that has a guarantee it will be read and by spending wish points on it you would once again prove your dedication to your idea.

[quote name='MRD' date='11 July 2009 - 06:49 PM' timestamp='1247330997' post='36779'] I have people i deny rewards to all the time. it happens. [/quote] Why? I can understand that sometimes it does not make sense for a certain character to do a story driven quest. Or that quests are targeted at specific mp levels or active day requirements. Or if people are known to cheat. Depending on the reward you give, it is possible to do the quest with an alt and get the reward. What is the point in denying specific people then?

[quote name='Guybrush Threepwood' date='06 July 2009 - 07:05 PM' timestamp='1246899905' post='36336'] E=MC^2. Einstein was showing that mass and energy are indeed convertible, as you've said. However, though I've never heard this mentioned in any class, I don't believe it's possible to have energy without mass. Those particles you mentioned have kinetic energy because it is mass moving.[/quote] It is possible to have energy without invariant mass: electromagnetic waves have zero invariant mass. (Visible light is nothing but electromagnetic waves with wavelengths within the range we call the visual spectrum.) The way relativity works anything that moves at light speed must have zero invariant mass and cannot be slowed down (in vacuum), while nothing that has an invariant mass greater than zero can be accelerated to the speed of light. [quote name='Grido' date='06 July 2009 - 09:02 PM' timestamp='1246906920' post='36356'] actually just remembered something, and i'm skipping over most of the points here, because well my head is being lazy atm, and my typing fingers hurt. In a complete vacuum, some particle which i cant remember the name of, and it's anti-self appear and then destroy each other, meaning that something can come out of nothing, but just to clarify, and i'm not sure how this works, but the particle can ONLY appear on the condition that it will be annihilated momentarily later, so cant be sustained. [/quote] Quantum mechanics allow the laws of physics to be ignored for times that are smaller than can be detected. (Heisenberg uncertainty formula, which is of the form: delta E * delta t <= Planck's constant) A practical use of this is scanning tunneling microscopy. Subatomic particle physics allows certain conversions of energy into matter and matter into other forms of matter. There a couple of invariants like in chemistry: energy (or mass, using E=mc²), momentum, angular momentum, baryon number, charge, color charge... Using those rules it is possible to list a number of decays that happen in the universe. As an example: a photon (pure energy) of 1,02 MeV can decay into a positron and an electron, which each have an invariant mass of 0,51 MeV. The positron is the anti particle of an electron and has the same amount of electrical charge, yet the opposite polarity. If a positron and an electron meet, they will annihilate and the resulting energy will be converted into photons. At CERN they accelerate positrons and electrons to high velocities, giving them a lot of energy, and then let them collide. If the total of their kinetic energy and the energy from their invariant masses is large enough, particles with higher invariant mass may be created. If you combine both of the above, then it is possible, for a very short time, that invariance of energy is ignored and a positron electron pair is created. Normally both particles are attracted to one another, meet and annihilate again within that short time ( about 4 * 10^-21 s). Such particles are called virtual particles, because they do not exist long enough for anyone to notice. In the vicinity of a black hole, it is possible for one virtual particle to fall into the black hole and the other to continue its existence outside of it, thus becoming a 'real' particle. The black hole can loose mass when anti matter that is created in such a process enters the black hole, and the equivalent mass in matter escapes from its gravitational pull. For an observer it appears as if the black hole is emitting electrons and slowly loosing mass, without any violation of energy/mass conservation. This is Hawkins' Radiation.

[quote name='Burns' date='06 July 2009 - 07:40 AM' timestamp='1246858803' post='36262'] i might be wrong with that, but chaos is [i]per definitionem[/i] not ordered, if i understand the idea of it correctly... chaos does necessarily mean that there is no order you could find, all you could see is the opposite/abscence of order [/quote] In maths, chaos does contain some form of order. Here's a fragment from a syllabus on dynamical systems, about the definition of a chaotic function: "And finally, perhaps somewhat paradoxical, we want there to be a form of regularity hidden behind the chaos" This leads to some weird form of deterministic chaos and nice fractal images. You might argue this is not true chaos, but then what is? Brownian motion is a stochastic process, but given enough molecules, it results in order. The digits of pi are chaotic (afaik) yet we have algorithms to calculate them. If it is possible for a human to see some very complicated order in what originally appeared as chaotic, does it loose its status as being chaotic? Given enough time, is there anything that humans will not be able to make up a system for it? In the beginning there was nothing, in the end there will be nothing. What lies in the middle? These are bold assumptions and the words are ambiguous as mentioned: the beginning of the universe or the beginning of a person? In the beginning of x there was nothing, in the end of x there will be nothing. What lies in the middle? x. In order to talk about x, it has to be somewhere: at the beginning, the middle or the end. Unless x equals nothing, it doesn't exist at the beginning or the end, so it must be in the middle. You can then substitute random words for x, thus mixing logic and ambiguous words. (which is a bad idea of course) It's easy to assume x is the universe: the beginning of the universe, of everything. Then in the middle is the universe, in the middle is everything. But words being words, you could say if everything exists, then things that I can imagine, but are not real, should exist too.

[quote name='Fenrir Greycloth' post='35567' date='Jun 28 2009, 09:22 PM']Both of them are correct. A line is a never ending figure. On a 2d plane, it would appear to be a circle viewed from a 3d perspective.[/quote] And if we were to put the circle on a curved plane (or whatever the English term for that is), we can make it look like a pretzel. I don't think the engineering faculty would like that answer though. Besides the distance and angle to the 2d plane matter a lot too when talking about appearing to be. @Esme: Burns said every shape can resemble cyclicity. This is not the same as being cyclic. It isn't difficult to mirror a spiral. Clockwise becomes counterclockwise or you get something in another plane. While a spiral has cyclic properties it also has properties that change under said transformations...

[spoiler]Since it's for engineering, there's no doubt that it the question is about projective geometry and the answer is a line. Projective geometry is build upon lines that always meet (if necessary at 'infinity'), even if you would usually call them parallel. Hence the paradox. Another way to look at it is by using the curvature ( 1/R ) which is a measure for how bent something is. An infinite radius equals zero curvature. A line is not bent and thus has zero curvature. If you check the dimensionality a line is the only option. A line is not the building block of anything finite. An interval and a point are candidates for building blocks.[/spoiler]

[quote name='Metal Bunny' post='35079' date='Jun 27 2009, 03:04 AM']So try and at least make it look like it makes sense. Roleplay a werewolf? Okay, but please don't roleplay like you are stronger than every mortal human, when that mortal human is a higher mp level, has higher stats, better understanding of rituals and has better creatures. It's like seeing that dude as a ''lvl 80 commoner'' and you are a ''lvl 1 changeling''.[/quote] drifting oftopic but I strongly oppose the idea that mp level, ritual knowledge and stats have anything to do with roleplay. How many 'protectors of the weak' and other paladinlike characters are there in the game? And how many of them sacrifice defenseless creatures on an altar in order to get better stats? [quote]So next time, please don't roleplay as if you can actually eat me. Roleplay that you want to eat me.[/quote] Quoted for truth. (although I think metal bunny would taste awful)

I haven't bought any tokens yet, but since you're gathering support here's my two cents: The problem is caused by counter intuitive behavior of the martyrism ability. If martyrism where changed to work on a percentage base, like steal life does, it would be a lot more intuitive and the problem would be solved. Taking one token from a creature and randomly placing it on another creature implies the randomness of the whole process is gone, since you should be able to keep this up indefinitely. (there is always the chance it would gimp the next creature it appears on, so limiting the amount of redistributions doesn't work). How about a button that strips all tokens from all creatures and randomly redistributes them? The chances of getting all of them on the "right" creatures should be incredibly low. If everybody thinks the above two are silly and nothing else that solves the problem at its roots is implemented, then yes I vote for the option of deleting a token, since that still seems better than being stuck with an "expensive" useless creature.

[quote name='Shantu' post='34631' date='Jun 24 2009, 09:16 PM']Like our race is not overpopulated already.. HIV and such exist to reduce our numbers, as animals can't do it. And I'm sure some of the 6,7 million people will survive to see the work of their ancestors, or to continue it.[/quote] Because of our diverse gene pool, for every disease an amount of people are resistant to it. Some humans survive, otherwise the disease will get extinct after killing it's last host too. Killing humanity is not their purpose anyway, although the high population density is required for them to develop and the result can be a sudden decline in population. For global warming, engineers are already working on backup plans like putting mirrors in orbit around the earth and shield against the sun. Of course if they mess up inches and meters again, we're all doomed. Overpopulation: I don't think the earth is incapable of supporting this many humans, but if everybody were to have the same standard of life as we enjoy and we don't advance our technology and change our production methods... I read some articles stating we should all add insects to our diet, because they are more efficient to grow and are very nutritive, can't see it becoming popular yet, but it's an interesting idea. Save the forest, eat more termites!

Since role playing is about interaction, it is a bit silly to play both your character and his/her children. (or worse the character and the spouse.) Incorporeal? I've always played the game as if my character has a 3d body and the ability to walk in XY directions as well as jump up and down. There was a discussion about MD being flat, but I considered that flat as in a discworld flat, not 2D flat. 9 months is for humans, with the strange creatures and hybrids around, who knows how long it takes for them, if it is even possible to further mix races? And that's not only on a genetic level, for some combinations I'd like people to draw me a picture of how it happens and pay my psychiatric expenses after looking at it. Also after 9 months, for humans, you are stuck with a baby, not a twelve year old trying to live on his own. Although if you believe in the stork story it makes sense, so at least my character doesn't see any problems @Akasha: if for each time someone equates Mur to a god, someone else equates him to poo, is that balance?

[quote name='pamplemousse' post='34629' date='Jun 24 2009, 09:02 PM']First, the time. I chose 04:00 server time (which is 9:00 in the evening for me) as I often see people "awake" then, and it is a good time for myself. However, I understand now that it is very late in the evening for my friends across the pond. Would 2100 be better for the non-American continent? I do not think that holding a Story Night twice a week is a good idea and I highly doubt that everyone will be happy with the day and time, but it is my hope to include the most amount of people.[/quote] How about alternating the time: one week at 21h next at 04h. And posting the logs somewhere. That way more people have the chance to participate and we can still read all of the stories if we want to. [quote]Grammar/spelling-In the interest of understanding I do ask that some effort be made to make the story as clear and readable as possible. I understand that grammar and spelling is not the most fun thing in the world and no one will be judged or critiqued for errors. [i]I do not wish to discourage anyone from participating because of this guideline. [/i] If you need help, or wish to discus this further, please contact me. (On a side note: I am a terrible speller )[/quote] If you prepare a story, how hard is it to run it through a spellchecker or let someone proofread it? In general I don't comment on spelling or grammar, unless I see people making the same mistake often. But now that we are discussing it, I must say that a lot of people who according to their flag have English as their primary language, spell incredibly poor. It's gone so far that I've looked up the difference between lay and lie about 10 times now. People pick up your mistakes and repeat them, spread them like an epidemic. Here's what my dictionary says: to lay is to place something; to lie is to recline