Because that seems flaw-ish.

Can the battery be removed?

Most laptops I used worked fine when hooked up to the wall with nbo battery at all.

Not readily, in this case. No pun intended.

On an utter tangent, one major flaw with a lot of dialogue-driven shows is that the dialogue isn't character specific.

Archer is the one on my mind right now, but it's a common thread. Dialogue may be awesomely witty, but if it could be coming from anyone's mouth...

This is something I try to keep in mind with my NPCs.

In my case, it was that I had: the tabletop, and the drawers. The tabletop is just a list of objects on the table. The drawers are part of the sideboard.

But the drawers are a part of the tabletop too. They're a part of the broader system.

so I am going to rejigger my classes just a little bit.

Ah, a hierarchy problem?

Yes. Or, a way I was naming things affecting my thinking problem.

@BESW Programming is like that magic you described where someone with access to a true name of something could do anything to it.

Names are important.

I was just thinking of that conversation.

They do actually compare it to programming, esp. in the third book.

Someone hacks entropy.

there are a lot of times I've helped out newer programmers who have given their stuff goofy names (a single letter, the name for something else, or something else strange) and have a bug and can't get to the bottom of it because theoretically it makes sense, but then I take a look at what the things they have named actually represent, change the names, and the problem shows itself.

@BESW Oh my.

They change entropy?

Temporarily. On a local level.

It has to do with the setting's origin mythos.

Before the beginning, there were Powers. Angels, gods, makers, whatever you want to call them. They were themselves made by some Higher Being, but He's pretty hand off.

The Powers created the universes, designed the physical laws, made elements and people and basically everything.

Except for one Power, who stood aside and watched.

The Lone Power wanted to contribute something special, something that would leave His mark indelibly on all that is.

So just as the Powers finished fashioning existence and were about to set it in motion... The Lone Power stepped up and created entropy. He invented death.

The Powers couldn't remove His gift without invalidating all of theirs, but they cobbled together the Laws of Thermodynamics as a patch on reality to compensate. And they removed death's sting by creating wizards.

The purpose of wizards is to mitigate death, to slow down entropy and make its effects less painful.

So now the Lone Power goes from race to race and individual to individual, peddling his fear: he fights wizards to make entropy scary and to increase it.

Wizards turn out lights when they leave a room, convince a tree to stop strangling its neighbor's roots, talk a sun out of going nova before its time, comfort a grieving child who has lost his mother.

What setting is this?

The book series Young Wizards.

I strongly recommend the first four books.

So, in the third book, a race of computer beings, newly-awakened to wizardy all at once, a whole planet of them, decide that entropy is stupid and they're going to stop it.

By.... Freezing the universe and letting it live for milliseconds every few centuries until they've found a better fix for this obviously faulty program we call reality.

@BESW Ha!

The Lone Power, naturally, thinks that's hilariously awesome.

Really?

Imagine, even if they can only achieve it on a local scale: stop entropy and you stop life. Dead in its tracks.

The misery, the missed opportunity, the act of stealing away the lives of billions on billions of creatures.....

Wizardry, the computer beings are too young to know yet, is about preserving life and enabling it to grow and flourish. Stopping entropy entirely is antithetical to that goal, because whatever unknown physical law reality was originally planned to run on, it's now a system in which entropy is inherent to life.

> In Life's name and for Life's sake, I say that I will use the Art for nothing but the service of that Life. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way; and I will change no object or creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened. To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is right to do so -- till Universe's end.

I have a question about this series but I am afraid the answer could equate to potential spoiler

Oh?

You've said that young people discover the Art and have boundless ability because they don't know what they can't do.

At some point, a book (or something) appears for them with the Oath, and if they accept it, it will be their personal guide to the Art. I presume this is after they have begun realising they can mess with the Art.

Those who do not take the Oath only remember it as some kind of fantasy novel or something like that. But do they retain their powers?

No, the Art requires skill and training which fades from their minds if they ever reject it.

And no, usually the Manual is the first inkling humans have that the Art exists. Taking the oath triggers your powers.

Other people, like whales, know that wizards exist, and respect them in their society.

Oh, okay!

You can reject the Art outright by refusing the Oath, in which case you never had power to begin with.

:O

Wizards can also abandon the Art later. It's a hard path to walk and some get tired.

But that is a sad thing. You lose the art and forget it exists, but you always feel an emptiness you can't fill. And the universe expends a lot of energy when it creates wizards. Giving up the art is an act of entropy in itself.

The Lone Power often tempts great wizards to abandon the art in exchange for easing their troubles.

(Cypher, if you don't recognise him!)

Heh.

only vaguely analogous though i'll admit

Sleep now, I think. Ttfn

Goodnight!

wraurgh

Why do I always write strenght?

Strange, this room has tags on it but none of the tags work.

rpg.stackexchange.com/tags/rpg/info

this-tag-isn-t-real

tag-tag-tag-tag

still, those link to a void tag page

Yes, yes. The markup is just markup, it doesn't validate the existence of the tags.

the ones under the room's title don't

The default markup links to a list of questions tagged, whereas the ones in the room title lead to the tag's info page.

I see

Like clicking on "Learn more" when filtering by tags.

@BESW paizo.com/threads/…

@Lord_Gareth Like three posts are on screen and I can't be sure which you just linked.

MattR?

Yep

Why am I getting this link?

Because I feel the enrage

I don't even know enough about the subject to know why.

All you need to know is this sentiment - they believe that point buy hurts roleplaying.

[he said happily]

Which is like

AAAAAAAAAARGH HOW CAN YOU BE SO STUPID!

Ah. Well, inasmuch as it supports a play focus which we know can coexist with rp but which we also know often supplants it....

PBuy is for fleshing out the concept you have in your mind. That's why White Wolf favors it

Or systems like FATE that let you determine everything about your character

Etc

Yes, but in Fate it doesn't allow optimization, which is a minigame that frequently overshadows rp.

I've yet to see that happen and I'm at 15 years of roleplaying and counting

I'm not saying it's a global truth, just that it has some truth in it.

Across six different states and the grand adventure of online gaming

I've seen it. [shrug]

I've met players for whom the only source of rp rose from mechanics.

For them, rp was a way of making unavoidable liabilities fun.

Good mechanics were their own reward and justification, no rp needed.

In that context, "rp stats" were the game's way of signaling to the player "insert characterization here."

I thought it was silly, but it HAPPENED.