I do not object to having my artwork saved in a harddrive, personally. In fact, I know a person who has used one of my images as her default desktop wallpaper.

I consider it illegal, though, for someone to alter my images in one way or another without my explicit consent (Which will usually be a \"no\" ), to claim authorship, or to distribute without mentioning the artwork is mine. As unlikely it is to happen, if publishing and earnings enter the equation (and I am excluded ), I will not be very happy.

Anyway, I do have that image in my hard drive. I\'ve meant to edit it for months, but something always came up.

- Golbez

Quoted from one of Annah\'s logs
[23:34] <14Princess_Aelya> heh...golbez and drak fought over me first

It appears there are still parts of my past that remain hidden by the thick fogs of selective amnesia. Or someone simply perceived the wrong impression.

It is a fun rumour nonetheless, I suppose.

- Golbez

I fail to see where shares fit into the game theme.

I could see it happening in a science fiction game, a futuristic cyberpunk thriller where cities, nations and the world itself are dominated by greedy corporations (A Shadowrun-esque setting).

But there is no stock market in Yliakum, or a parallel to Wall Street. We live in a setting where differences where settled with a battle in the arena, steel and spells are the rule of thumb and the closest thing you have to a corporation is a tavern or a smith.

And guilds, as the game conceives them, are organisations of individuals with similar ideologies and beliefs, not a regulation of a craft or skill (Such as a Thieves Guild, or a Trade Guild, for example).

From my point of view, buying and selling shares would be a simple and blatant \"No\".

- Golbez

I think that before we tackle the economy model to be applied in game, we must first be more aware of the economic aspect of the setting. So far the only thing that lies in front of us is the currency. We know we have trias, hexas, octas and circles.

But we do not know if the economic model is similar to the feudalism and manorialism of the Middle Ages, or if the economy is regulated by the Yliakum government through the strict control of Guilds, or if the suggested \"post-Adam Smith\" concepts would be applicable in a medieval fantasy setting.

A lot has been discussed about \"businessmen\", but if you ask me, there would be no such thing as \"businessmen\" in Yliakum. Crafters, smiths, merchants, yes. But not businessmen. And in the days of yore (When speaking of \"free market\", \"variation according to supply and demand\", \"inflation\", and such terms were totally unknown) the prices were not so liberally established.

Simplifying the economy in excess will lead to it being dull and uninspiring. On the other hand, crafting an intricate and complex system will lead to it being exploited by a few and, let us be honest, how many of the players DO understand the complexity of world economics? This ignorance will undoubtedly end up with the system not being properly used.

So where do we draw the line? Is it truly worth it to spend hour after hour of brainstorming about Yliakum\'s economics when probability favours the chance of it not being properly accounted for by the players? Would a more automatised and less realistic system suffice for the needs of the gaming community? And the King of Questions: How much does the in-game economy contribute to the gaming experience as a whole, knowing that its hyerarchical importance is not as massively recognised?

Just some thoughts.

- Golbez

\"Voices\" and accents can be easily RolePlayed. Different ways of speaking and emphasising certain aspects of the language can be picked up and learned with little effort.

I completely adore playing characters with marked accents, or with a noticeable twist in their speech (Overly complex like a Renaissance fop, or excessively simple like the Half-Orc next door with an intelligence score of -3 ). They tend to stand out due to people being subtly encouraged to focus on the text a bit more. But I do not think it would add much in game depth to force everyone to type constantly and permanently with an accent. In fact, it would drive them bonkers.

And I do not think a code for an accent is particularly feasible, it would necessarily be limiting and unrealistic due to its mathematical nature. A language, on the other hand, is more resembling of an organic entity of its own, and does not respond to such firm structures.

If you want to play the Dwarf with the stereotypical accent, more power to you. \"How be ye, lad? Thet would be good, aye! Oy, we gots ta help tha others!\". Or come up with new and different accents for the other races.

Racial languages, however, are an entirely different issue, and the developer team should consider if it is in theme to welcome their presence. Given the heterogeneous origins of the different cultures, it would not be far fetched at all to build a language system.

I have seen in a few online roleplaying games a different method that instead of scrambling letters according to a skill level, it handled the code much differently.

Each letter of the alphabet would receive a \"difficulty value\", that is, the difficulty to recognise the sound. Vowels and the most used consonants would be set to a lower difficulty level, whereas more esoteric characters such as \"x\", \"k\" or \"w\" (for example) are not as easy to pick up for a language student.

What the skill rank in a determinate language does (Say, Language: Elven = 30%) is to set a maximum of comprehension for the difficulty of a word. With 0% having a comprehension level of 0 and 100% an infinite value (You understand everything fluently).

So...how do you decide on the difficulty level of a word? Simple: You add the values of the individual challenges of each character (We will call that value DC from now on, for Difficult Challenge).

Example:

My character has 35% proficiency in the Dwarven tongue.

35% equals the ability to comprehend words with a DC equal or inferior to 20.

Well, let\'s see how that works.

Let\'s take the word \"Hello\". Supposing that the letters have the following DCs:

H = 5
E = 2
L = 3
O = 2

Then the word would have a DC of (5+2+3+3+2) = 15

My character would not receive the word scrambled, he would understand the meaning.

However, if a Stonebreaker comes up and says \"Morning!\"

M = 4
O = 2
R = 4
N = 5
I = 1
G = 6

Then the word has a DC of (4+2+4+5+1+5+6) = 27

The sounds are too complex for my character to understand.

Of course, the code would do all the math automatically, and filter in a blink of an eye which words we understand and which are way too difficult for our characters\' intellect.

It may seem a bit complicated at first glance, but the code is simple, and effective. It does not scramble random letters (which often results in awkward and unrealistic lectures), in opposition it filters complex words from more common ones depending on which letters compose them.

What do you do with the words that are NOT recognised, you say? Well, it is even simpler. The staff comes up with a list of say...fifty to a hundred sounds typical of the language. For example, we want the Elven language to sound very melodious and easy to the ear. So we propose sounds such as:

aelrir
moriebendir
salieras
leliomen
orie
ad

Etc, etc, etc. After we have a good number of made up words in the pool, we simply ask the code to randomly replace the non-recognised words for one of the fake words. I assure you, reading a scrambled text composed of only 100 words has enough variety to look realistic.

Anyway, that is my proposal for a language system. Do not ask me to write it any tidier and in detail than this I am no coder, so this is as far as I can go.

- Golbez

The quirk us humans have of assigning a certain \"meaning\" to a colour is  called \"synaesthesia\". This capacity means that each hue evokes in our psyche a determinate concept.

Which is why a man in a dark suit of armour invariably represents \"evil\" and one in golden plate mail will always strike the average individual as \"good\". Or another example, the division of the chromatic circle in \"cold\" and \"warm\" colours.

I understand Adeli\'s point, though. A society instinctively tries to delimit the different meanings in conventions according to their ease of recognition (Any form of language being the prime example of this), and it can be a bit odd to see two slightly different hues of blues representing two completely different aspects of magic. Not that it bothers me, particularly, but it is something I had never noticed before.

I am assuming that you are writing a story in which the different ways of magic are involved, and you are trying to recreate a separation of each way through the colours.

I would suggest considering Azure as a green-tainted blue for your story, if you are attempting to make a clearer visual distinction for each way of the arcane arts. And remembering that not only this visual distinction is given by colour alone: Other variables such as differences in garments and their styles, jewelry, amulets, and particular symbols and anything you can think of can help to convey an idea of individuality.

- Golbez

If we do have big wavy swords for some reason (rendering them impractical and excessively hard to control), I sincerely hope they are not named \"Flamberge\", as that popular denomination is incorrect.

The typical long swords (and special dueling swords) carried by Knights in the 17th and 18th century were the original \"Flamberges\", which is a derivate from \"Flamboyant\". They received their name from the exquisite patterns and materials of the hilt and pommel, but the structure was very classic. Flamberge was first a moniker given to Sir Renaut de Montauban\'s long sword, in the 8th century.

Nowadays, they call \"Flamberge\" to that huge ondulated sword, which was historically of only ceremonial use back in the 13th century. Experts denominate give it the name of \"Flammards\" or \"Flambards\".

I would personally be pleased to see \"exotic\" weapons such as the schiavona, the katzbalger, the gladius, the smallsword (Descendant of the rapier), the tuck, the cinquedea, and the scramasax.