: Well, yeah, you wouldn't want to be a Shade. Most people
: wouldn't. Turquine obviously wasn't real enthusiastic
: about it, but he agreed because he's a crazy
: revenge-obsessed Dark mage.
Sure.
: I mean, would you be *more* likely to want to be a Shade
: if the very guy responsible for your transformation
: warned you that he was going to torture you
: mercilessly afterwards? That doesn't inspire
: confidence.
We can't tell; let's drop this point.
: Come on, you can't make GURPS Myth without the permission
: of the owners of the franchise.
Right; Bungie gave them permission to make GURPS Myth, exactly as it is. It's no more than a Role Playing Game based on Myth.
: And Bungie-permitted
: is Bungie-approved.
Wtf? No it's not. There is nothing anywhere saying that. It's a somewhat reasonable assumtion as Bungie's name is on it, but that facade is all there is.
: They're notoriously protective
: about allowing their storylines to be developed in
: other formats.
Obviously not here.
: And Jim Ruiz, the "guy in the Bungie store,"
: doesn't just get to sell and plug whatever he feels
: like that day. Does Alex have to come to your house in
: his robes of state and give you a signed affidavit
: that Bungie approved of GURPS?
YES! There is nothing ANYwhere that says GURPS is what you claim, not even the book itself! It's a shame that's not legally possible anymore.
: If they allow it to be
: published with half a dozen of their people in the
: credits, and plug it and sell it on their site, then
: obviously they approved it.
What?? Ok, that's, again, a reasonable interpretation, but there is nothing at all which says that.
: Santa's Head told us that Scott Campbell "talks
: about the original design documents from Bungie."
: Not "reads from", not "shows to
: us," not "waves around on the end of a broom
: handle," but "talks about." I talk
: about the design documents too. So does everyone else
: on the Asylum. As in "I believe the design
: documents contain X," and "boy, I wish I had
: the design documents."
Actually, I had many conversations with him on Myth after that. I think Forrest might have been there for one. Santa clearly told me how Scott is going by the design documents, and that he denounces GURPS as having too many errors, and that it wasn't written according to the design docs., unlike M3.
: Other than that, every MJ posted statement about their
: story qualifications has completely omitted the design
: documents. Andrew Meggs said "Scott Campbell
: wrote the story,
From the design docs.
: but he's spent a lot of time
: researching all the sites, every line of text (written
: or spoken) in both games, and even the GURPS
: stuff."
And he denounced GURPS.
: Santa's Head said that Scott's knowledge
: is based on "based on all of Myth's original
: text, of which I am not the expert I'd like to
: be."
: And all the audio interviews I've heard run something
: like "It's our job to figure out a good story to
: fill in the holes left from Bungie's games."
: Design docs aren't mentioned.
You can't possibly believe that the design documents hold all information. They were a sketch of sorts which was filled in to make a rather complete story, but it can't cover everything. Scott then writes a story directly based, rooted, founded, upon that info.
: Now I don't think MJ is at all being intentionally cagey.
: And if there's a place where they actually say
: "Yes, we have the design docs, and we're adhering
: to them," then I'll be very happy and rank Myth
: III on the same level or slightly below GURPS. But I
: haven't ever seen that statement, so please, if you
: find it, point it out to me.
I'm on it.
: Bungie's own products contain errors. If GURPS contains
: more errors,
Nothing more than a typo.
: then we rank it below the the original
: games. Which we do.
Hell yes.
: But that's no reason to throw it
: out when we know how much Bungie contributed to its
: creation.
We know nothing of how much Bungie put into it.
: Bungie tried to correct *itself*. Same people, same
: information, all the design docs. Just a revised and
: more consistent world. MJ's world cannot be perfectly
: consistent with Bungie's because they're different
: people and have a different informational set.
No, Bungie doesn't exist anymore. Everything Myth-Bungie is now in the hands of MJ. They hold everything, including all rights. Saying that they don't have rights to the story when they clearly have everything possible is more ludicrous than saying that GURPS, unapproved by Bungie for its story, has such rights.
: We were never told what Take Two was given by Bungie,
: except the rights to the engine and franchise. Design
: documents were not mentioned.
Except by the designers…
: And again, what do legal rights have to do with it? If
: the Mythworld you're interested is in defined as the
: sum total of the information provided by anyone
: legally empowered to do so, then why would you care
: about discussing it? The only reason I can understand
: to do story analysis is if some group of people have a
: consistent conceptual world you're hoping to
: approximate.
I can't understand what you mean by this.
: And if your focus is determined by legality, then GURPS
: should be gospel. Licensed and sold by the legal
: owners of the franchise.
::searches frantically through GURPS:: Let's see…"GURPS® / Myth / Roleplaying in the World of the Fallen Lords", no, that's not it… "/ Based on the/ Award-winning/ Computer Games/ Myth: The Fallen Lords/ and/ Myth II: Soulblighter / Written and Produced by/ Gene Seabolt" hmm…not Bungie…"/Edited by/ Alain Dawson" the list of identitiless credits goes on, no one by Seabolt said to have written it…here at the bottom of these, "/ GURPS System Design † STEVE JACKSON • RUSSEL GODWIN † Pring Buying / Managing Editor † ALAIN H. DAWSON • MICHAEL BOWMAN † Errata Coordinator" huh, the guy that put in the errors… " / GURPS Line Editor † SEAN PUNCH • ROSS JEPSON † Sales Manager." Now there are some tiny little writings here. "GURPS and the all-seeing pyramid are registered trademarks of Steve Jackson Games Incorporated. Pyramid, Illuminati Online, and the names of all prducts published by Steve Jackson Games Incorporated are registered trademarks or trademarks of Steve Jackson Games Incorporated, or used under liecense/." Gese, Sili, it looks like everything belongs to Steve Jackson Games Incorporated, not to Bungie. "Gurps Myth is coppyright ©1999 by Steve Jackson Games Incorporated. All rights are reserved. Printed in the U.S.A/ Myth: The Fallen Lords and Myth: Soulblighter are trademarks and Bungie is a registered trademark of Bungie Software Products Corporation, and are used under license."
Wow, Sili, there isn’t one piece of any of the info you claim it has. Bungie didn’t sell GURPS, except in retail. It didn’t license it with anything more than rights to use the titles and some info from it.
: Like I said, we may choose to drop Bungie story
: discussion and switch to MJ + Bungie story discussion,
: but they're two different realms of study.
It will be absurd to believe that conversations should or would stay centered on one set of data or the other. They are the same thing because it never did anything but change hands and have full legality go to Take Two.
: See above for the disproof. :-)
Where? You just proved it by disproving your belief that Bungie gave explicit permission to use information more than to make their little RPG. GURPS is more different a beast from Bungie than MJ is from Bungie because MJ has more legality.
: Besides, there's no
: objective argument to that. You're waiting until M3
: comes out; in the absence of design doc confirmation,
: I'm not. Personal choice.
(please pardon the following jibings; they’re all in good fun, and I mean nothing by them; I couldn’t resist :-)
Personal choice, eh? Well, Sili, I guess I’m just saving myself for the right resource. What are you? Some kind of Myth-Information whore? You know what, that sounds like a lisp pronunciation of misinformation whore, some kind of faulty info-maniac. You h00r.
:-D
: I wasn't even trying to explain it. All I was saying are
: that there are two clear categories of Un-beings in
: the game. You can call them Zombies and Self-Aware
: Undead, or Undead and Unliving; doesn't matter.
Agreed.
: Again, I was simply proposing a classification technique.
: To be honest, I think that when you start bringing
: things like "quantum foam" and
: "creatures drinking in spirit from the
: ether" you're outside the realm of discussible
: Myth story analysis-
Those are analogies, Sili. I thought you of all people would appreciate them.
:-it's certainly an ingenious and
: attractive theory, but I don't think it's particularly
: provable or unprovable. So I must pass on discussion.
: :-)
Agreed, there’s no proof of it.
: And while I'm not committed to any particular explanation
: of Undead versus Unliving, or Zombie versus
: Self-Aware, I have to say that both "you can make
: self-aware Undead if you have the Dream of
: Unlife" and "you can make self-aware Undead
: if they don't have a chance to lie around as corpses
: with their brains rotting" are simpler
: explanations than a thirty-paragraph post. ;-)
Perhaps :-).
: Yup.
Yup. …So, about that giant turnip…
: It did not happen in-game, but we've seen both Alric and
: Shades fight in-game so often that I think we're
: justified in estimating their success in a potential
: fight.
Nope. Those are different Shades. Only what we are presented with is canon to the story in any form.
: We can believe that a Myrkridia can outfight a
: Brigand without ever having seen it, because the game
: gives us a good idea of their relative combat skillz.
Right, just as people in such a Mythworld would make bets, or how kids while reading comic books might bet that Superman could beat Batman in a fight. Unless Marvel creates such a scenario, it’s only speculation, whether or not the kids make a very acurate analysis or not.
: Anyway, Alric can lose vs. Sinis on Legendary if he has
: no experience. It's probably hopeless to ask which
: difficulty level corresponds to the "real
: Mythworld," but this clearly makes Alric vs.
: Shade fights an open question.
Yup.
: Shades don't seem to have much magic that isn't devoted
: to killing targets in front of them or raising the
: dead. Whereas I would guess that Alric or another
: Avatara would have a fairly wide range of magical
: talents--we've seen him teleport and crack a cliff
: face, and I'm sure there are many other things he can
: do. Hence, in a prepared conflict where each combatant
: had a chance to set traps or escape routes or give
: himself other indirect advantages, Alric would do
: better.
I see now; thanks.
: In the interests of simplicity, I would consider most or
: all Fallen Lords to simply be high-powered versions of
: extant creatures (high-powered both because they were
: extremely talented to start with and because they were
: backed by Balor), plus a few extra perks. A living
: mage, taken to Fallen Lord level, becomes The
: Deceiver. A Shade, taken to Fallen Lord level, becomes
: Shiver. An unliving or living hero, taken to Fallen
: Lord level, becomes Soulblighter. Et cetera.
I like this; agreed.
: The Deceiver, evidently, never died. He's just a
: Balor-enhanced, thousand-years-of-practice former
: *living* Avatara whom Balor "bent to his
: will". That so little is known about Shiver's
: past suggests that she was either Dark or dead for
: most of the time that Myrdred was a living Avatara. So
: I'd guess that Shiver died early on in the Wolf Age
: and was either Shadified on the spot or raised later
: and Shadified by Balor (if anyone can make Shades out
: of long-dead corpses, Balor can. And perhaps Shiver's
: spirit is generally more "loosely attached"
: than most, so her deaths frequently leave her spirit
: behind).
Her spirit doesn’t need to be "left behind" any more than anyone elses. It can be reattained because it’s strong, lights up like a becon, imo.
: Or maybe she just wasn't an Avatara at all. The games
: don't actually say.
Right; I’m excited to find out.
: Well, the conversation doesn't say that Alric saw Sinis
: die, merely that he knew him beforehand, then saw *or*
: heard that he'd died and thought he'd seen the last of
: him. So he could be a contemporary without actually
: being present at Sinis' defeat.
Potentially, but it seems unnecessarily cumbersome.
: Even after Connacht's attack plus a thousand years of
: natural erosion, Sword Age Rhi'anon and Rhi'ornin
: still contain walls and columns twenty feet high. So I
: believe that Connacht's destruction of the Trow cities
: could not have been total. Which means that there
: could still have been partially-standing buildings in
: smaller and more remote Trow cities of the early Wolf
: Age.
My oppinion is the to the contrary. I guess the point is dropped…
: I personally think Sinis' defeat *did* happen in the Wind
: Age. But I think that (as discussed above) Moagim
: Reborn must have been alive for at least several
: decades before he actually appeared and started his
: Great War;
But he didn’t appear before Connacht imprisoned the Myrkridia, then the Trow, in that order. Balor appeared decades before he might have had to hit the mark chronologically (he was early) because it was a Light Age before he arrived. There wasn’t much of any Dark in sight. He had to start from scratch; raise armies…litterally, raze empires, summon Fetch, and do a bunch of other things to prepare. Moagim was in the heat of a Dark Age, and wouldn’t really need to procure much of anything, and not compared to the level that Balor did.
: he had to mature and marshal his forces
: just like any other Leveller. So he could have been
: around for a Mazzarin-shade to defeat a good Sinis--or
: even for a living Mazzarin to defeat an evil Sinis. We
: don't actually know when Mazzarin died, but GURPS
: characterizes it as "decades before
: Connacht." And it makes sense that Mazzarin would
: have died late in the Wind Age, when you think of how
: incredibly screwed the Light must have been after the
: Watcher rose to prominence and killed him. I don't see
: how the Cath Bruig or the Province could have survived
: at all if they had to wait several centuries for
: Connacht to take his place.
Myrdred was there.
: Are we? I didn't notice. :-)
Ah, yes, well, all things are fleeting.
: I sure hope we are, because
: if I don't quit blathering and focus on Seventh God
: soon I'll be suffering the indescribable tortures of
: Creation.
Lol, well-put.
