JanusForbeare

Kind of a shame that they want to take it out of the Planescape universe. It's such a wonderfully crazy place. I miss you, Nordom! Still, the original was awesome, so I'm optimistic about this. There aren't many video games where you can talk the final boss to death. :D I hope they allow character creation. That was my only real beef with PST.

I'm curious about this. I've never played Minecraft, and I don't know anything about it's community. Why wouldn't it fit in on the Nexus? Please don't get me wrong, I'm not being confrontational - just ignorant and inquisitive. :)

Are we talking globally, in the West, or in cultures like India or the Muslim world? I think it makes a huge difference - it's one thing for a Westerner to say, "We shouldn't have arranged marriages in our country because it clashes with our values/infringes on personal freedoms/whatever," but it's quite different to go around the world imposing a western value system on other nations. In Western countries, I don't think there's a place for it. Regardless of your ethnic or cultural background, when you immigrate to another country, you agree to abide by its laws and code of conduct. Your minority rights should and will be protected (to an extent), but they don't extend to flagrantly breaking the law on the basis of tradition. However, in nations with a longstanding history of arranged marriages, I don't think that it's the place of outsiders to bring about a change in the system - at least not directly. In those countries, arranged marriage is often a fundamental pillar of economic and social systems, and can't simply be removed without threatening the stability of the entire culture. Such instability can range from public discontent, to social ostracism of those involved, to financial ruin, to all-out civil war. If foreigners are responsible for the change, then they will be (rightly) blamed for the consequences, and it will be interpreted as an act of imperialism and/or modern colonialism. However, indirect change can be brought about simply by exposing the citizens of such countries to other social systems and values. This is the case in India, where long-term contact with the West has begun to encourage homegrown resistance to the notion of arranged "pragmatic marriages" (as opposed to romantic marriages). This has triggered a slow evolution of the traditional system, which is infinitely safer, from the point of view of national and social stability. EDIT: I didn't vote, because there is no option for "It depends on the setting". :)

Since they can drown, I'd have to say yes.

I'm usually over on the Skyrim forums, but I thought I'd pop over here to post some news about M&B that put a smile on my face: Apparently Taleworlds is working on a sequel to Mount and Blade called Bannerlord. No juicy details have been released yet, but given the popularity of the franchise so far, it's fair to assume that Bannerlord will have higher production values than its predecessors. Our Turkish friends over at Taleworlds have promised bigger and bloodier battles, as well as "highly requested new features". I don't know what those features are - though I would guess that they include a more detailed world map and questline(s) - but I can't wait to see what they come up with! Anyone else willing to hazard a guess about what sort of new features BL might include?

I can understand your argument, and there are definitely good tips in here for new modders. However, I have to disagree with this point: It's not reasonable to expect 90% of mod authors to create new cells - and if they did, Skyrim would be pretty boring, because most of it would be identical to vanilla. The fact is, sometimes mods are going to collide. Of course you want to reduce the risk of that occurring, but that's no reason to shy away from modding vanilla content. If you run across a cell-based conflict between your mod and someone else's (as I did recently), it can very often be solved by playing around with load order. If it can't, you can always contact the author of the conflicting mod to discuss the problem and ways of circumventing it through a patch or updated version of one/both of your mods. Worst case scenario, players have to make a judgement call about which they want more. You potentially lose downloads if you choose option #3, which I think is motivation enough for authors to attempt one of the other solutions, but if they don't work out, they don't work out. In general, I agree with what you're saying. Mod authors should aim for maximum compatibility. It's just good business, if you want to maximize your downloads/endorsements. However, I think it's ultimately the user's responsibility to keep their own game running, not the mod author's. If you download 200 mods in a single night, you better expect complications. Modding your game is always a gamble, and if you're not willing to lose a save, or feel that you are too far along to roll up a new character, then maybe you should stick to vanilla.

This is from the Steam Forums (Courtesy of SuperBoyOfMeat), but it's worth quoting here as well:

Yeah, true, the days of playing as reptilian drag queens are behind us. And Bethesda thinks they're so avant-garde for allowing same-sex marriages in the game. :P It's funny how much people miss spears. Who'd have thought? I'm actually a little bummed out that they're bringing them back in Dragonborn, I have a joke in my next update about the absence of spears outside of Morrowind. It still kinda works, though, since Solstheim is essentially part of Morrowind now, what with the Dunmer exodus and all.

My pleasure. :) I was a big fan of VORB back in Skyrim (which was similar), and was really happy to see that VadersApp had continued his work in Skyrim. It really adds to the immersion of the game when every NPC's body type is a little different.

There is Realistic Body System, which gives NPCs randomized body types depending on their profession and skills (not the player, though). You usually end up with quite a few overweight merchants and innkeepers, among others. Last time I checked, it only worked on female NPCs, but the short description states that it works for both genders, so it may have been updated since I last played Skyrim.

Nope, not as such. I didn't mod Morrowind extensively (though my first attempts at modding were done in its CS), so I'm not very familiar with some of the work that was done for that game. I'd prefer to stick to canonical references where possible, though admittedly they're few and far between. That's part of what makes it fun, though... there's more room for creativity! I missed the bit about netches in the interview. I'll need to take another look. I skim-read, it's a bad habit.

The readme has him listed under "Solitude", so it's a safe bet he's in the Thalmor Headquarters, not the embassy.

Interesting, thanks for sharing. I don't remember meeting that Dark Elf when I played through the TG questline (though I admit it's been a while). The interview is an intriguing bit of lore... though I suspect it's a little out of date. From what I can gather, it was written as a "teaser" in preparation for the release of TES III. My guess is that some of the subjects being referred to got cut from the final version of the game. TES III was originally intended to take place across all of Morrowind, not just Vvardenfell (you can still find some official maps online that show how cells were to be assigned across the entire province), so it's safe to assume that things like "Malahk-Orcs" inhabited the regions that didn't make it into the finished game. As for the "Sky-Lamps", the description makes them sound an awful lot like Netch. I find the comment about the lifespan of Dunmer as confusing as you do, though. As you say, the survivors of the Red Year don't look so ancient in Skyrim. If we take the Dunmer in the interview at his word, it would certainly put Atvir well past middle-age. For that reason, I choose to believe that he's lying/incorrect. Actually, come to think of it, Occam's Razor would suggest that the whole subject's just been retconned by Bethesda. I rarely say this, but in this instance: screw the lore. :D The old lore, anyways.

It makes me wonder how the rules pertain to posting publicly available information about the internal workings of someone else's mod, though. I agree with DraketheDragon, I wouldn't want people re-posting my intellectual property without my consent, but I wouldn't be as adverse to someone who's patched the mod for their own use sharing information about how they went about it (assuming, of course, that I had been unreachable for a while). It's still a touchy subject, but at least you'd still be getting 100% of the credit/downloads/endorsements for your work.

Greatsword: Good. Rabbits: Evil. 'Nuff said.