Well, I was in IRC discussing the RP briefly, and I mentioned something I thought most people though, but someone felt I should post it. UTM: if you think this is unecesary and redundant, PM me and I will delete it. I would not want to litter your RP thread.

 "well, it has become largelyassumed that Janeous is behind the plague, and is somehow controlling it. He attempted to do in the vespers before, so it is likely he controlled the plague to cure the vespers, to make people turn against them."

you bring up a good point. A person could just not roll or ignore the RP if they didn't want any part of it. However, a person can't just get sic if they want to. Many elementary school children could probably attest to that. There is a certain element of chance in it (ok, probably not if you reduce it enough in biology and physics terms, but lets just say it is to avoid a headache of calculations).

I for one applaud nightstalian. At least now he is sticking up for himself and not letting that girl walk all over him.
Phinehas: you say the letter was childish. He could have done a lot of more immature crap, like giving her the silent treatment for a week, or spread dirty gossip about her, or whenever she walked by, pretend to cough and say "whore!". And I know this may be a bit of a stretch (ok, a tremendous stretch) but the declaration of independence created by the United State’s founding fathers was somewhat similar. They listed the wrongs committed against them, and declared that they would cut themselves off from England. so, were the founders of the United States immature? Alright, I admit this is just a random tangent that has little to do with this, and in fact all this conversation about the letter seems irrelevant to the original topic. 
Zorbels et alii: you say that women do not pay attention to money, and claim yourself to be different. You claim that love is formed on something deeper than superficiality and trivial baubles. I suppose I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. But for those who doubt those beliefs and believe humans are not that righteous and good, I will look up a quote from a psychology textbook I own (Psychology 6th edition by David G. Myers (yeah yeah, it isn't the latest edition, but it has pretty much the same info and is a hellavalot cheaper)).

(After a long time scouring the book) crap... I can't find the specific quote. I'll try looking for it again later to find it. I do remember the gist of it though. It basically said that males are attracted to females who appear youthful and healthy, while females are attracted to males who are more mature (older) yet healthy, dominant (assertive, type A personalities), and affluent (powerful). Now affluence can take many forms, such as wide social networks and connections, charismatic ability to sway others, physical prowess, or money. So there could be some element of truth to the idea that a women's affections could be bought.

Now, don't go thinking my page turning was fruitless, I did find a nifty section that has some good info. (For those of you who would feel inclined to check the book, it starts on page 677). The section is on what brings about attraction, both friendly and romantic.
1) Proximity: geographic closeness. If you live in the same area, go to the same classes, ect. You have more chances for repeated exposure to one another. Richard Moreland and Scott Beach did an experiment in 1992 showed this by having 4 equally attractive females sit in for 0, 5, 10, or 15 class sessions in a 200 student class. At the end of the experiment, students were shown slides of the females, and the students were asked to rate their attractiveness. The ones who had been seen most were ranked highest. This is an example of something called the mere exposure effect[/i].
2) Physical attractiveness: yeah, people are shallow. Now for a quote so people won't yell at me for interpreting it in a cynical manner.

“In one study, Elaine Hatfield and her co-workers (Walster & others, 1966) randomly matched new University of Minnesota students for a Welcome Week dance. Before the dance, each took a battery of personality and aptitude tests. On the night of the blind date, the couples danced and talked for more than two hours and then took a brief intermission to rate their dates. What determined whether they liked each other? So far as the researchers could determine, only one thing mattered: Physical attractiveness (which had been rated by the researchers beforehand). Both the men and the women liked good-looking dates the best. Although women are more likely than men to say that another’s looks don’t affect them, a man’s looks do affect women’s behavior (Feingold, 1990; Sprecher, 1989; Woll, 1986).”

3) Similarity: opposites repel. “Friends and couples are far more likely to share common attitudes, beliefs, and interests (and, for that matter, age, religion, race, education, intelligence, smoking behavior, and economic status) than are randomly paired people” (p. 680)

Well, there you have it.  There is a section following that that has information about the psychology of love. I may ad on some to this post later.

Are those the weapons that the guard NPCs have in the BD region?

Finally, read through the bloody thing. Now, onto my input.

First of, I am absolutely amazed by how much you remind me of myself when I was younger and (more) naive. A lot of the same crap happened to me that happened to you.  I liked a girl, I tried professing my feelings, got kicked in the head while trying to jump ladders. Turns out, she only saw me as a friend, but the guy a year ahead of me who smoke and drank was seen in a different light. Eventually, I started getting the feeling that she felt uncomfortable being around me, so I slowly cut off contact with her as much as I could. I saw this as an attempt to try to make her life better, and hoped some day I could feel nothing for her in order to cause her no more discomfort.

Anyways... yeah, I grew up (somewhat) since then. I realize now it was nothing but a stupid crush, and I bet you will come to that eventually. And about your post saying that we all are biased in thinking that love hardly ever exists in the teen years, I give you this to think on. If someone is saying this, they are probably past their teen years. They have probably gone through this crap already. I've heard of a few examples of people growing up and marrying their high school sweetheart, but this is rare.

Second, you seem way too idealistic. She was an angel? You knew her better than anyone? This all sounds like lined from a fairy tale to me. I used to be a romantic too, but then I realized that there is no place in the world for one. I’m not trying to insult you or make you feel bad. I am trying to help save you from a lot of self inflicted misery that I went through. The world is a dark, shallow place, and maintaining your current outlook on life will ultimately lead to a lot of disappointment.

For the one who said men and women are pretty much the same (can’t remember who said that, or where) you are mostly correct. Males and females are very similar biologically, with small differences in muscle strength along with primary/secondary sex characteristics. The big difference comes from the gender roles established in our various societies. In US society, men are expected to repress emotion, not wince at pain, be confrontationally and emotionally unavailable, and energetically seek out sex. I doubt any would question the final point, in part by the fact that male virginity carries a large negative stigma along with it, while usually female virginity is praised. Females on the other hand, are expected to devote great energy to their physical appearance, be emotionally available, and pretend to be innocent and morally superior. This last part causes females to say that they look primarily for aspects besides appearance, such as humor, intelligence, empathy, etc., when looking for a boyfriend/lover/spouse. This however is false, as females are just as shallow as men. I recall one study in which subjects were put into a speed dating setting, given a minute to meet a person, then pulled aside and interviewed by the psychologists. When asked what the subjects (both males and females) first noticed in their dates, all but a handful said physical appearance. So, where does this leave US society? We are left with a society that expects men to be a#####es, and females to be hypocrites. I know I will likely get a lot of angry posts because of the previous statements, so let me tell you a story to reinforce my statement. When I was in high school, one time this guy I know suggested that I kill myself. His girlfriend was right next to him, and could hear it perfectly, and even scolded him for it. Even so, Such a suggestion, jokingly or not, is a horrible thing to do. Did the girlfriend leave him because of this display of incredible insensitivity? No. They stayed together. People don’t give a d### about kindness or personality. If they did, why would the less attractive nerdier people in high school who are kind, humorous, intelligent, and all that crap be constantly shot down, while the alcoholic, smoker jocks that are cruel and insensitive get all the girls?

Now, NS, (nightstalian) mind if I call you NS? Great. In your posts, you spoke quite loftily about this girl, describing her as angelic even. In my opinion, this might have been part of your downfall. For one, you put her up on a pedestal, placing her high above you. If you told her any of these things, she may have begun to get the feeling that she deserved all those compliments, and therefore agreed that she was better than you. If she thought she was this angelic picture of beauty, and you were so beneath her, why should she go out with you? If she is so wonderful she could hook herself a fish much bigger than you, so why settle for you? In my opinion, you might have made yourself too available. Humans seem to naturally seek out the things that are more difficult to obtain, probably thinking the grass is greener on the other side or some similar mentality.

There is another thing concerning your lofty descriptions. If you said those things to her, without ever dating her or anything, you may have creeped her out a bit. If someone suddenly walked up to you and professed their undying love for you, you would probably be taken back by it. This is just speculation though, so I could be wrong.

I hope that some of this may be able to help you in some way NS. I doubt it will help your current situation, but perhaps future endeavors. Me? I’ve chosen to be single. Dating seems like too much of a headache from what I’ve heard 

BTW: I’ve never seen that Ladder Theory before. Thanks for posting it.

This reminds me of the battle system used in Azure dreams, though I doubt many here have heard of it. It is one of my personal favorites, even though it is a fairly unkown game. Anyway, onto the relevance. In Azure dreams, you battle with familiars. there are three types of ways the familiar can aid you. 1) cast magic directly on the enemy; 2) physically attack the enemy directly; 3) cast magic upon your weapon to enhance your attack. Your suggestion for weapons conducting magic sounds like the third option. In Azure dreams, any weapon can have a spell cast upon it to add to its dammage, but wand type weapons have an additional bonus for the ammount of dammage done. Also, if my memory is correct, certain spells have unique effects beyond just doing dammage. The reason I bring this up is that I think this could work and would help expand the tactics of players.

My goodness this is an exhaustively long thread. Anyways, on to my personal input.

I support the system described. I feel that having some previous /says also recorded would prevent a harasser from logging out to avoid incrimination. I would be somewhat concerned about the warning that is given, because if a person is harassing someone it would be easy to figure out who sent the report. The harasser could then get others to bother the reporter. Personally, I have had someone bother me in game, insulting and cursing and such, so I feel the /report command is good when someone just won't leave someone else alone.

As it has been pointed out earlier, the devs and GMs are doing this service for free. It seems rather childish and very ungrateful for some people who take advantage of this service they provide, to then yell at them and threaten to bring law suits against them.

what about ulber brain soup? a dish fit for an octarch.

(you eat the brain because the hearts are so scarce.)