Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: star2wars3 on November 05, 2015, 10:05:27 pm

jase casted a healing spell

((Jase did no such thing.))

((TBF, they have very similar names.))

a plant that feeds off of heat

extreme heat flamethrower

((ಠ_ಠ Whelp.))
Dibs

The Gambler looses a roaring laughter, fell and terrible.
Summon a glass scalpel and a thin and small (~1 in across) glass razor-edged disk. Slice. him. to. ribbons.
If there is a chance, insert the disk between C5 and C6 in his spinal cord, which should cause nonlethal full-body paralysis - gotta let the others have some fun, right?. Then drain his luck just one more time, to seal the deal.
If the mind wipe field were to kick in, it would be just my luck for it to kick in too late to save Dwen, wouldn't it?

It seems that attacking a plant that feeds off of heat with a laser, a weapon that uses heat to deal damage, may not have been the best idea.
The thistles -though perhaps kudzu might be a better name for them/it, considering- surges upward and outwards when shot, and feeds hungrily on the heat that the laser makes when it hits. It flashes across the distance in an instant in thick, ropy vines, and sets to work consuming the soft warmth that the sentry emits, tangling and attaching itself within and on the surface of the sentry's workings.
It is of perhaps more minor note that the Kudzuthistle uses this opportunity to set root on the opposite side of the boulder that had previously stymied them/it.

((What do the turrets fire anyway? The thistles' reaction will be very different if it's a laser-y sort of thing than if it's a bullet.))

Quote from: jaked122 on November 01, 2015, 12:48:40 am

TL;DR, we're chemical reactions wearing clothing.

Let's suppose you're right. If so, do you see how removing the chemicals might be a problem?

I gave the analogy a couple pages ago: drawing a picture of the relationships involved in an explosion does not result in an explosion. Draw a picture of the molecules that compose gunpowder and draw a picture of a blowtorch...that picture will fail to create an explosion.

Even if you assume that consciousness is a result of physical processes, it's still quite a leap of faith to assume that "uploading" in the sense of creating a software copy of your brain's neural network would also result in consciousness.

Your metaphor would be apt if we were saying that an uploaded consciousness was a fleshy brain doing what it does, but we're arguing that having a simulation would give rise to the same emergent phenomena as our wetware stuff, which is an important distinction. I doubt anyone would argue that a program on a computer was literally a brain made of water and protein.

I think a better metaphor would be writing an algorithm on paper line-for-line then transferring it to code. To make it more closely bound to the current debate, let us say that transcribing it to code requires us to erase the algorithm on the paper.
We can execute the code on our wetware (well, we could before we transcribed it)- just walk through, again step-by-step, and keep a tally of each variable at each step. We can also run the code on the computer. I would argue that the two algorithms are functionally identical. That is, if they were given the same inputs, that they'd give the same conclusion, including whatever phenomena arise out of the code we've written, such as bugs leading to variables going out of bounds, or a bug causing the whole thing to enter into an infinite loop.
Yes, the code on the computer isn't the same as it was on paper- it's just hard ones and zeroes, after all, compared to the elegance of letter and number - but it acts the same in practice.

Necropost.

Well, if we're necroing this, might as well go all in.

I just realized that I never replied to you.

For example, please try to rationalize how a blind cave bear somehow managed to beat out every single species of bird to become the animal associated with a sky god.

You could say that the birds aren't actually connected with the sky. When's the last time a bird has hatched young in the air? In fact, a case could be made that birds are creatures of earth, not sky. They do hatch from a rock-like egg, and are land-locked for a good portion of their lives, after all. Heck, some of them can't even fly.

A blind cave bear, a creature that can't see, and must instead rely on hearing and scent alone to survive and catch prey? They require the air, rather than just using it to get from point A to point B to escape from predator C. They need those elusive airborne properties to survive. They're completely helpless without them. At least a bird can run away in the proper direction if land-bound.

Think about it from the perspective of an unwary Dwarf. They are just futzing around, hiding from the wildlife, when all of a sudden, this giant monstrosity catches their scent without even looking in their direction, and all of a sudden, without needing to look at them at all, it's charging at them. Is it not possible that that dwarf might see its sudden detection of them as a decree given to them as a sky god of some form, and the bears are the god's symbol in the depths?

Or why a god of pregnancy would be represented as a skeletal male dwarf.

Inevitable boner comment. No, really. A bone-like male body-part gives rise to a pregnancy. It's just looking at it a strange way. Rather than saying "oh, look at that pregnant woman" its going "oh hey, he put his 'bone' in her and now she's pregnant" and drawing the conclusions that they may.

Heck, they could see pregnancy itself as a skeletal dwarf growing flesh until it becomes the baby. It's not really that far-fetched, considering some of the guesses we've had in the past as to how it all worked (sperm are totally little people, right guys?).

Or why a god of nightmares and deformity would be named "Luxury Palacejoy the Festival of Dances."

In the dwarven world, injury isn't seen as nearly as bad as it is in ours. There is no exiling of the cripples, no killing of the weak (unless we as Overseer cause it). It could even be seen as a good thing. After all, it's equivalent to a "get out of work free" card, unless your attendants die. In fact, it could even be seen as a luxury, in some cases. After all, this is a world where, relatively commonly, people will just go crazy and make their fellow dwarf into a mug before returning to normalcy. Being wounded is one of the better things that can happen to you. You get to lie around all day, not having to face goblins or fight elves and humans.

And could it not be said that someone thrashing in the throes of a nightmare is performing a dance, of sorts?

Or why a dwarf civ would show their god of law, honor, and justice depicted as a kobold.

Imagine an origin story where the kobolds were once a grand and civilized society, but they angered the gods, and were cursed to their current state, living in squalor, unable to speak, and incapable of making food and wealth for themselves. Is it not possible? It's likely, even. It's a myth with a moral - treat the gods with respect and don't disrespect their will. That's something that myths are supposed to do, after all.


Now, these are a bit weird, but I kinda like that. Why would I want to see Generic Sky God Number 374? Once we clear away our preconceptions, we can start to get interesting things.

Something is only counter to a category if you look at it with our tinted eyes.

Quote from: RAM on October 31, 2015, 03:50:35 am

>[ S ]Slime: Ascend

((How do you escape BBCode inline?))

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