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Robyn

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Robyn last won the day on March 30 2006

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  1. Re: Swimming Stuff Let an especially clever NPC come up with the idea of carrying a bag of stones to accelerate their descent, only to abandon the bag at the bottom. A mathematically-oriented NPC might carry multiple bags of stone, and some wood; some of the bags counteract the wood's buoyancy, and the rest of the bags provide additional weight for sinking. The extra bags (for sinking) are abandoned at the bottom to allow for moving around, and the rest of the rocks can be separated from the logs to rise to the surface with them. The only drawbacks are having to tug along a large bundle of logs and rocks, possibly against the current, and having to prepare a bag of rocks ahead of time for each trip they will make into the lake. (The wood is reusable.) I assume the rocks at the bottom of the lake are distinguishable in some way, so it will be clear that the contestant is not merely coming back up with the rocks they just took down there?
  2. Re: Alignment Issues I did include multiple perspectives in each definition for a reason. Context matters. Aren't "comprehensive" and "vague" on opposite ends of the spectrum? I meant "comprehensive" as in "thoroughly detailed", not "vague". Increasing detail, and covering more specifics, tends to move away from vagueness.
  3. Re: Realigning Power Defense Rearranging the letters in your alphabet soup again? You've traded in one "I" word for another: Inherent.
  4. Re: Bad Powers Well, not necessarily. Remember that Seduction as described in the rulebook is specifically less about sexuality than making friends or gaining someone's trust. So, this would actually be a legitimate build for a "Babysitter" super; she's just "very good with children", always getting along very well and the kids like her.
  5. Robyn

    freeze spell

    Re: freeze spell The latter seems more SFX-based than mechanics-based. Perhaps an Entangle with some custom Limitation to reflect that it gradually fades away in warmer temperatures, combined with the CE to keep it cold? I would call "water to ice" a 5-point Transform, but considering how long past discussions have been on "the Body of water", you're probably better off not even going there
  6. Re: I'm leaving on a jet plane.... Under the circumstances, I would think Airplane Goddess.
  7. Re: Alignment Issues I don't think you're even following your own argument anymore. I no longer have enough interest to unravel it. I think - not sure - that he's saying the Gauls had more freedom because they did not restrict their lives with regulations and rules. To take a modern example, there are certain traffic laws that are meant to ensure the safety of pedestrians. Those laws do not exist just for "dangerous drivers", they may not be ignored simply because they were implemented for people "not like us". If we accept those laws, we are no longer free to drive (or cross the street) in certain ways. With freedom, it would still be possible to avoid accidents, but a higher level of caution would be necessary for some of those involved (not everyone, though, which is an advantage of freedom). Not if they don't get caught. If they drive perfectly, who's going to pull them over? If they drive perfectly, why bother with going through the motions to prove it? Besides, a test doesn't really "prove" much; plenty of people who get in accidents passed their license exams. Peer pressure? A theory of "enlightened self-interest" was advanced by Ayn Rand, who thought that a free-market economy would lead to a stable social structure; she said that no sane man would take any action without taking into account its far-reaching repercussions, in the larger context; thus, if an obvious madman wanted a gun, noone but another lunatic would sell it to him, since wise traders would see the price in not just dollars but disruption to society as well. Those who were not wise, she believed, would fall to the process of natural selection, including enforcement by other customers who enacted punishment by not shopping there anymore. Thus would intelligence be rewarded and stupidity punished. A society of mostly Good people could remain stable, dealing internally with any disruptions. According to the Good/Evil perspective, yes. To the proponents of Law and Chaos, however, the difference would be just as important as "suffering and death" would be to the proponents of Good and Evil.
  8. Re: Alignment Issues Unless their power/competence makes them a "leader" in the decision-making sense, of course. There can be more than one "leader", depending on what aspect of society they are "leading"; no single leader counts as "absolute dictator", and if one tries to exceed their influence then they will be subject to appropriate repercussions. Any leader in a chaotic society has exactly as much power as each and every other individual agrees that they have. It's like a democracy, only without the majority. The leader governs only by the consent of the governed, either through respect or fear. If the former, cooperation is beneficial, and they will protect this leader; if the latter, cooperation is still beneficial, but with each other to replace the leader with a better one, or perhaps a group. Allowed to? I'm not trying to negate the arguments you did make, just prevent you from continuing to make so many of them in the future. Pointing out a common flaw should hopefully bring you to realize the error in your logic. Considering that many of the arguments you made from this error were subsequently abandoned as David or I challenged them, these posts would probably see considerable shortening if you discontinued such arguments in the first place. That's under propaganda. The distinction is that Law says that about Chaos. Take a set of behaviors which are "Chaotic"; tell every single person that they must adhere to this behavioral pattern. You now have a Lawful society. A society of people who cannot deviate, but must always adhere to a strict set of approved actions, have no free will. They cannot choose. They are not Chaotic. You were the only one who argued for evil. I've assembled the full exchange above (in my preceding post). Both myself and David only discussed Robin Hood in the context of pointing out why he wasn't Evil. I've re-examined the exchange using the compilation I put together, and I can see what you're saying now. The "alternate hypothetical Robin Hood" I see now, so I concede that point. I still plan to argue, though, that stealing isn't - in this context - evil. We now find ourselves within the realm of subjectivist ethics: to offer a hypothetical (not (necessarily) representative of my actual beliefs), I believe that taxes should be voluntary. But the government says that they can't protect just the people who pay their taxes, they have to protect the community as a whole; and expenses scale with people and land, whether taxes are paid or not; and they're not going to charge everyone else more, but I'm receiving the benefit of their protection so I will pay taxes. To their perspective, taxation isn't a matter of voluntary participation. To my perspective, they are stealing this money from me; I'm quite willing to take care of myself, and if my capability isn't as adequate as I thought, well, it's my place in evolution to die, making room for more deserving individuals. Now - from my perspective, I'm simply reclaiming what is mine, or refusing to hand it over. But from the government's perspective, I'm stealing their money, or being a leech on their budget. Who is Evil here? Exactly! And the same goes for your beliefs! Since your own arguments revolve around dismissal of our beliefs, we really do - you can't call your own beliefs "objective" and expect us to accept that for no greater reason than we would assert our own to be. I agree with you that a Yankee/Dodgers axis would not be appropriate - but then, is our agreement at all meaningful? In an objective sense? Does alignment exist only by consensus? If so, it is nothing more than a social construct, an illusion of the mind held by any minds which care to believe in it - and is thus, objectively, absolutely meaningless. But (additional) axes weren't what I was talking about. The point was general, abstract; certainly, Yankee/Dodgers is one concrete example of how the principle can be applied, but would you disqualify any other "alignment" claimant simply because you felt that they weren't (or shouldn't be) important? If you can do that, what stops me (or David) from, under the subjectivist logic of ethics, disqualifying theft from "having anything to do with alignment", simply because we don't feel that it is - or should be - important? I specifically identified that as a stereotype of Lawful societies. But commonly held assumptions are not always true The sort of inflexibility you are thinking of only applies for the metaphysical perspective. I distinguished this from the individual and social perspective because neither people nor society are directly bound to follow these metaphysical imperatives. In that case, my use of "you" to try placing the situation in an immediate context for you has failed. The importance of doing so is to prevent you from arguing based on beliefs which you don't actually support; by confining the discussion to your beliefs, any answers you give can assuredly be related back to the main debate then, without the chance that you will disavow them and claim no contradiction with your other arguments. I encourage you to do so, then; or, at least, to respond to the paladin scenario based on your beliefs. It does mean something to me; what it means will be posted later on. I could very well ask the same of you! You didn't say "if you're simply trying to remove the threat that orcs pose, killing them is not evil". You said "if you're simply trying to remove the threat that evil orcs post, killing them is not evil". You clearly and explicitly identified them as evil, but gave no indication of why you evaluated them to be evil. How, exactly, were they evil? Refusing to pay their taxes? The same goes for your assertion that if you deliberately set out to cold-bloodedly kill people who pose a threat, you're not Evil yourself. Which is to say: they have exactly the same basis. Well, nothing having to do with Good as an alignment, if that's what you're wondering It's an acronym for Mean Time Between Failures; computer hardware tends to fail early or late, so there's a long stretch in between where, for most of that MTBF, you can count on it working perfectly.
  9. Re: Alignment Issues Supplemental history for my next reply. A history of the exchanges about Robin Hood. I advise clicking on the "#234" link in the upper right of this post, if you're planning on opening the spoiler box. That way, you can close it when you're done and won't have to reload this page of the thread to reset the spoiler effect.
  10. Re: Alignment Issues I'm not sure I would consider that as being neither Lawful nor Chaotic, but having elements of both. So, while the Neutral general might be Lawful, they would also be Chaotic. I think Law, by nature, does demand that sort of conformity; it's not just "be Lawful most of the time, and be whatever you want the rest of it", because that would be Chaotic; you don't let people choose when they want to obey the laws, and when they just don't have to. Since we've involved such worlds as Moorcock's and Zelazny's, though, I think we're looking for a somewhat more comprehensive definition of alignment? No such definition exists. No definition exists that is more comprehensive than D&D's?
  11. Re: Variable Mechanics Construct idea. For me? Do you have the right thread?
  12. Re: Realigning Power Defense I agree in theory, though I think that - given how Advantages and Limitations are cumulative with each other - some cost comparisons would be useful to see how Power Defense works out done each way.
  13. Re: Godwin's Law, or is that Godwin's Chaos? One of the browser features I miss
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