Fyrd Argentus

I have been asked to head up an anti-bunny team. Just how big are these teams going to get? http://magicduel.invisionzone.com/topic/9113-md-birthday-team-formation/

I still think a player that carries a torch unopposed ought to be able to cash it in for 1 point. This would force lands to defend themselves, etc.

Announcing here the formation of a second formal team, per Mur's link about the Birthday Contest Teams. SOMEBODY has to oppose the minions of the Bunny Kingdom, and it's going to be US. If you were forming up a similar team and want to discuss a merger, or simply needed a team to join for this worthy cause, please get in touch with any of the team members: These folks are on the challenge creation committee (limited to 20) and will also compete on the Bunny Challenges: Fyrd Argentus *DST* Kyphis Mighty Pirate Kafuuka Culter Esmerelda mocove Burns Shemhazaj Chewett display name (aksjfhdasf) Rhaegar Targaryen Prince Marvolo Tarquinus Ivorak and growing! The following will compete on the team, and help play-test - Please let me know if you want to be involved on the challenge creation committee actually creating the challenges. The latter group is limited to 20. [s]Orvid[/s] - alleged alt, Mur has rules against. Passant the Weak - requests to be riddle tester The Warrior Brulant xrieg ------------ assign discrete small tasks Mith ------------- whatever Sasha Lilles Eon -------------- solver Luke27 ----------- tester DragonRider7 AmberRune Jester BFH Shiona Tipu Yrthilian Blade Kuroda Phantasm Yala Sviseusen

Some day I will want to make the 4 instruments described in my papers. I'd like to start getting a line on who might have these, and what it might take to get them. Winderwild Feather (surely I can pluck one from my own Winderwild?) Knator Bone Knator Hide Loreroot Oak Wood (sounds like a plank from the woodcutters) Unicorn Hair Mithril (alleged to be an elemental's heart) Medusa bones Medusa hide Query to crafters - can sacrifice of a Medusa, a Knator, etc. qualify for certain of the above raw materials in making a magical item? [Edit: typos fixed.]

I did eventually get my trade done. Took a chance timing coincidence on PM's traded, and a rush to the Park.

So the totally clean way to do this is Sasha finds someone who has a wp, is about to make an item of their own, but is willing to delay their gratification for the coins. Each player (eventually) makes the other's item, and they swap. But this brings up another idea. Suppose my wish is that somebody ELSE gets a spell, or custom item, or special ability.... Why could I not use my wish to give somebody else powers? It would still be my wish, just somebody else's benefit. (Do you hear those rules bending...?)

I have one with Emerald Glare/Claw 1 and Claw 3. I have another with Emerald Glare and just Claw 3. What are you offering?

"Spoiling" the game for someone who wants to solve the puzzles themselves is the root issue. It should be obvious that you never spoil it for bystanders by giving away answers in public. Applying this concept to private conversations gets a little more bizarre. Do we play "Daddy knows best?" and not give out information when the player is frustrated and asking for help? This has to be a matter for judgement and can't be covered by rules. We should try to make the game as good as possible for such person - finding the right balance between tease and reward. But remember, this is not supposed to be a "zero sum game". We should be doing things to create ever more mystery and excitment in the game. Write more quests! Does everybody know that I'll put a pickle in the log of anybody who asks? Who knows what is on everybody's [Q] docs. There should be an infinite supply of such things to discover in the game.

Great idea, I'm sure you'd get some interested players if you set up registration. The number of weapons, rooms, etc. might have to be adjusted based on how many players responded. Definitly need to find a way to control the "how often you can PM a suspect" question - how about you must alternate? No second question until they ask you something in reply. Prizes - you need to ask people to sponsor your quests. I could kick in a wp as long as (the usual caveats) you get enough participation and have a clean winner who clearly worked for it. But I have a limited supply - ask the kings directly first. Firsanthalas has been generally supportive of new quest creators.

Okay, if we're talking game principles, you have this collection of ways that the universe might operate. Doing magic in fantasy, you selectively emphasize one while simultaneously ignoring the effects of the others. In real life, we are trying to figure out what the principles underlying the universe are with the assumption that they do NOT just switch on and off randomly, or at the beck and call of a wizard or a Mur. Obviously, in the game, they can and do. The rules change constantly. In real life, if something like that were to happen, we'd call it a Miracle, (or Hypnosis, or Inception, or the Matrix, or.....) Do I believe Science works in MD? For times short compared to Rendril's programming cycle, yes. Do I believe Principles work in MD? Sadly, only in role play.

Having read all this thread, I still don't really know what you mean by "The Principles", so as to how this is set up in opposition to Science, I have even less of a clue. You surely are not talking about the MD game principles, are you....? Good Grief! Science is a way of better understanding the scope and limitations of what I call principles...

[quote name='nadrolski' timestamp='1297046177' post='78545'] What time (Server Time) do you usually go online, Master Hitoshi? [/quote] He's been very hard to get in touch with for a transfer. Got one PM saying very sorry, he's been busy in RL..... We're still trying to connect.

Sure I'll give you 2sc for it.

I have a 45 day old sharptear with claw 1.

Well, I hold a PhD in Physical Chemistry and have been TA for graduate-level quantum mechanics courses at Stanford University. I make my living pretending to be a scientist...

Did somebody mention Quantum Mechanics? Agreed, science at its heart has nothing to do with ethics. You must be honest with yourself in observing your experimental results or you're not doing science, but that's where the requirement stops. After that, scientists are all too human. Culturally, there was a long time where the US public thought scientists walked on water. This was back when standards of living were jumping up back in the 1930's-40's-50's-60's due to their inventions, ranging from antibiotics to pesticides and fertilizer, and peaking with the war-stopping Bomb. "Better Living Through Chemistry" and all that. Since then, partly because we have realized all gifts are mixed blessings, that image has been torn down off the pedestal. Perhaps rather than saying scientific ethos is dead, we should say veneration of scientists is dead.

For either one of the dark archers - your choice of 1 gc or a young Sharptear. Please let us know how you view the value of all these different offers.

I am treading near the edge in some of my quest creations. Thought this would be a good place to discuss. The issue is finding a balance between being totally unique and creative, and trying to fit into the MD realm and it's rich imagery. Step one was using MD figures in my riddles - Drachs, birds, Windy's Pub, lore guards, etc. This is balanced against making up the distant realm of "Queen Esmerelda" as one of my prior abodes. I mingle it a bit having a Knator mentor in the distant land of my birth that was a refugee from MD. (see my papers). Step two is the back-story for my lost path adventure. There is a Princess and Imperial soldiers that are shadows of Marind's Bell - but shadows only. I definitly can't take it upon myself to write unfounded history of MB, especially after the Ancient MB Lore fiasco (see forum). This Princess is NOT Marind herself... though it is fun to hint and misdirect. But here I am claiming there was once some OTHER princess in MB... On the flip side, I use a number of spectral monsters that are reminiscent of the monsters clearly from other realms (mummy, vampire, werewolf, etc.) How best to proceed as I expand on the story of the Lost Path? The characters I am developing have flavor and backgrounds, easily affiliated with the 4 main lands. Should I simply claim they are from those places? Or should we just consider that a "translation" of where they are really from? These lands are archtypes, and resonate with similar places in other realms. I use the word "Shadows" above advisedly - in the sense of Roger Zelazny's Amber series. That the real world casts an infinite number of shadow worlds through the dimensions that are almost but not quite the same as the one next door.... Unless I hear arguments that convince me to take a different course, here is the "Party Line" I am going to be following.... Any reference by me (or another player) in a quest to a land for "flavor" is refering to a "shadow" of the real MD realm. I as a player can't presume to make up "new" MD history, but any history I make up for the quest can be found resonating with the real MD off in some other dimension. My musical magical abilities to wander between dimensions is meant as a justification for that, and the reason I can "strengthen" these resonances between worlds and make it possible for MD players to interact with things. So references IN MY QUESTS to spirits of a King, Queen, Princess, and Prince of the archtypical four lands are really reference to resonant spirit shadows drawn out of other dimensions..... not to be taken as straight MD historical fact. This issue really cuts across any creative writing of stories, quest, songs, personal papers, etc. that brush up against MD history. How free should we feel to make claims and inferences, and make up supposedly historical figures of greater or lesser importance? Anybody care to weigh in on this subject? Postscripts: Chewett - I did not mean actively misdirect. But if one mentions a princess and MB, people leap to all kinds of assumptions, as clarified in Mur's "Show of Force" thread. Awiiya - I obviously feel I am creating something of intrinsic value here, or I would not be doing it. I see MD as an evolving community project rather than something frozen in perfect crystal. Sorry you are so easily repulsed by this distraction. Quests are of course optional - this is a GAME, after all. What makes a story "nice"? The issue I'm trying to raise is not about teaching vs. entertaining or such, the issue is about style. In a nutshell, should we try to integrate our work seamlessly into the MD milieu (as we should with artwork) or should we do something distinctly and unambiguously different, thus emphasizing the patch-work-quilt nature of the MD community?

I'm envisioning something akin to a multi-player game of chess at a clickie. I need a reality check on data structures possible within MD before I embark on this big project, and teaching myself the coding details. Am I correct that we are allowed ONE and only one variable to be universally stored and accessible through a clickie regardless of which player accesses it(using store and retrieve functions)? But that one variable can be an array? In the punch-card days, an Array was a numbered list of finite pre-defined length. In MD script it is of variable length, theoretically unlimited, the index number the computer might use is hidden, and an entry is 2-part consisting of "tag" and "data". Tag is text, data is anything. Correct? A variable not previously filled is "null" not zero? Is there a practical limit to the size of the array we can store? When does it start impacting server cost or whatever?

I would happily take the responsibility of handling a few codes for the MDA land, and in fact have a few from MB already. As winner of the best 2010 quest, I think I can judge what a good use of wp's is. I do log and check mail at least daily. On the down side, I can think of only 4 active MDA folk (plus Kyphis? - not sure of his intent). Rendril and Innocence don't seem to create quests (they do other things), so it's just me and Curi on Story Night using them. Or was the intent for this focus person to give wp codes to anybody qualified? "I have a dream...." of recruiting more quest makers for Legend Speakers. The unanswerable question on my mind is - would having a wp pool help in that recruitment? At any rate, I would be happy to assist any king in handing out codes/prizes per their specific instructions.

"... get Legend Speakers to help support...." Hmmm.... In Curi's defense, there are only 2 of us left in Legend Speakers, and I'm pretty busy. The focus of my limited game energy remains quest creation. Curi is indeed at the pinch point of making Story Night work without much internal alliance support. If this sort of thing (Story Night) appeals to you, and you would be sad to see it go, maybe you should consider joining Legend Speakers. The Alliance is whatever you make of it. Contact either Curious or me to discuss further. Of course even short of that, any level of support with Story Night will be appreciated. I would offer rewards for helping if it were not for the fact that the best people do it for love. But you will earn my gratitude and all that comes with that.

Heretic Archer ID: 41189 Age: 703 Tokens: claw2, firedrop, blooddrop3 I'll bid 5 sc to start. Or an untokened BP age 182. Or a sharptear age 10.

We have buttons for [Wishpoints Top] [Same country] [Most Popular] [Active Veterans] [Item Owners] so why not one for MP level (i.e., the 6's)?