CRPGAddict

[Butter]

He's finished up Wizardry IV and given it a not very high rating: https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-return-of-werdna-grandmaster-with.html

To be fair, his rigid scoring system seems almost designed to punish a game like Wizardry IV that breaks formula. He still liked it. What I found most interesting was this paragraph near the bottom:

I tried hard to track down Adams to interview him for this series. He supposedly lives in Maine. (As always, please don't make any attempts to contact authors on my behalf. Chances are, I've already tried whatever methods you're using and they didn't respond to me, so further attempts are just harassment.) He'd shown a lot of promise as a game designer, contributing significantly to Ultima IV and The Bard's Tale. In fact, there are some accounts that indicate he had more to do with the plot to Ultima IV, including the creation of the eight virtues, than Richard Garriott. An interest in the religion and philosophies of other cultures does seem to unite both Ultima IV and Werdna.

He didn't mention Roe Adams's involvement in Ultima IV during his coverage of that game; apparently he's since read the Codex thread about it.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

So this guy's still a faggot?

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Been reading this guy's Wizardry 6 articles. I noticed that he does this really bizarre thing that's really autistic. You know when you're describing a certain process, and you're describing it with an example of a hypothetical person acting out that process? Like "a person might dig with this certain tool, but he might have trouble with this", etc. Well, when the CRPG Addict does that, as in, describing a nondescript person or character, he'll sometimes use male pronouns and sometimes use female pronouns. This quote, in particular:

Creating this party, I should mention, took a number of hours. I don't love the character creation process, mostly because there's no way to cancel or back out of it if you realize you're getting a bad character. You have to finish creating her and then decline to keep her.

This is something I've seen a few times elsewhere, and it's just fucking bizarre to me. Are they trying to combat the inherent sexism of the English language or something? Because it's wrong. In Latin-derived languages, male pronouns have dominance. In Spanish, if you're referring to a group of men in the 3rd person, you say "ellos", if it's a group of women, you say "ellas", but if it's a group of both men and women, you still say "ellos". Same shit in English. Every single Bible translation uses "Man", "Men", and masculine pronouns when referring to the species at large, even including women. You see this in Tolkien, too: "humans" are simply called "Men". So this is something really subtle but it indicates that the speaker is either a Richard Stallman-esque autist who is going against the conventions of the English language because of a perceived technical fault in said conventions (and because of a bad case of Asperger's), or that they're a feminist cuck. It's probably both in the Addict's case.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

tl;dr is that feminists think everything is inherently sexist

 

[Mustawd]

This is something I've seen a few times elsewhere, and it's just fucking bizarre to me.

IIRC he explains that he goes back and forth using gender pronouns. The dude is a lefty, for sure. But I don't think it needs to ruin the enjoyment of his blog. His weirdness with sexuality in games is also a dumb thing, but also does not take too much away from the enjoyment of reading about the games he plays.

 

[Nutria]

I find it extremely difficult to read when somebody does that. I keep running into "her" and then going back a paragraph trying to find out where a specific person who we know is female was introduced into the discussion.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Absolutely searing socio-political commentary!

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2022/06/game-459-robin-hood-prince-of-thieves.html

the end product of the enlightenment was the french revolution

 

[octavius]

Haven't noticed the Addict doing much of the "include females" stuff; in my experience he always uses the male pronoun, which of course is the natural thing to do if you are a male yourself. But on Jimmy Maher's (I wonder if MaHer is her real name) blog it's so bad I can't read the stuff.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

which of course is the natural thing to do if you are a male yourself.

'him' is gender neutral when you don't know the gender of the subject
it's an episode of feminists getting angry at their lack of understanding of the language

the issue with using 'her' is that it does imply the subject is known and confuses the reader(as we've seen)

 

[octavius]

"Him" is inclusive and "her" is exclusive, yet the inclusivists prefer "her".

 

[rojay]

I find it extremely difficult to read when somebody does that. I keep running into "her" and then going back a paragraph trying to find out where a specific person who we know is female was introduced into the discussion.

For me it's "they/them" when applied to a single person. I'm so far left politically from most of you that you can't see me because I'm beyond the horizon but can we not substitute plural pronouns for singular, please?

 

[LarryTyphoid]

I'm so far left politically from most of you that you can't see me because I'm beyond the horizon but can we not substitute plural pronouns for singular, please?

If that's your position, then you're right over the horizon with the rest of us, buddy. It's either they/them or xim/xer.

 

[Desiderius]

"Him" is inclusive and "her" is exclusive, yet the inclusivists prefer "her".

The irony is that now the language police have now determined that the general feminine (Thar she blows!) is not allow.

 

[Desiderius]

I find it extremely difficult to read when somebody does that. I keep running into "her" and then going back a paragraph trying to find out where a specific person who we know is female was introduced into the discussion.

For me it's "they/them" when applied to a single person. I'm so far left politically from most of you that you can't see me because I'm beyond the horizon but can we not substitute plural pronouns for singular, please?

Use we/us to really fuck with them. It’s just intra-elite (sic) status bullshit.

 

[Morblot]

Haven't noticed the Addict doing much of the "include females" stuff; in my experience he always uses the male pronoun, which of course is the natural thing to do if you are a male yourself. But on Jimmy Maher's (I wonder if MaHer is her real name) blog it's so bad I can't read the stuff.

Yeah, Maher is sometimes pretty preachy; "Ethics In Strategy Gaming, Part 1: Panzer General" comes to mind, and there are others. Compared to him, I find the CRPG Addict pretty chill, even if he has his quirks as well.

I still read them both even though I don't agree with them politically. They are both good at their craft.

P.S. the he/she shit doesn't really bother me; I wonder if it's because Finnish isn't gendered like that to begin with.

 

[Grauken]

the main difference is that the Addict talks about games he plays, Maher summarizes what other people have said about games with the occasional memory of himself playing said games 20 years ago

 

[Morblot]

the main difference is that the Addict talks about games he plays, Maher summarizes what other people have said about games with the occasional memory of himself playing said games 20 years ago

That's just plain untrue, he does play at least some of them. And not just adventure games, but also stuff like Wing Commander.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

He is but one opinion of many on any particular game. I take what he explores and compare it to the rest of the collective of a particular game be those hate, love, or neutral. The sum of all compared to my own opinion and enjoyment is all that matters. He is by no definition the ABSOLUTE verdict on any game, just another entry in the sea of opinions.

 

[Grauken]

the main difference is that the Addict talks about games he plays, Maher summarizes what other people have said about games with the occasional memory of himself playing said games 20 years ago

That's just plain untrue, he does play at least some of them. And not just adventure games, but also stuff like Wing Commander.

I don't really care about adventures games nor Wing Commander, for RPGs my comment is 100% true

 

[Deuce Traveler]

Is he ever going to return to Angband? His Nethack posts were some of the best on his blog, so I've found it surprising how much he seems to be struggling to bring Angband to life. Admittedly, the game is unavoidably a slog, but greater vaults, close fights with uniques, lucky artifact finds all lend themselves very well toward summarising the journey into just a few posts.

I'm sure he will, but Chester doesn't like to bore his audience so he usually waits until he has enough new material to report before creating a new post on a game. Every so often he runs into a brick wall because a game is buggy and then he stops playing and finishes up with a quick summation. I never beat the DOS versions of Angband or Zangband, but they are my favorite rogue-likes. And they take fucking forever. At the last quarter of the dungeon one small screw-up can get you killed, so often you lose your entire character because the game started getting a little monotonous and you weren't paying attention to the danger you were walking into and then you have to re-roll a character and start from the beginning. I love the games, but I never beat them. I wouldn't be surprised if he quits before he can declare a victory, but he should at least get a character to level 40 or so and get close to the final dungeon floors. After that, we should have at least a couple quality posts before he either beats the game or it beats him.

And I called it... CRPGAddict quit before he could declare victory in Angband and at character level 36 (I guessed he'd quit around level 40). http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2022/11/angband-summary-and-rating.html

In his defense, he never realized that most winning characters in early Angband are pure mage characters so that they can cast a Globe of Invulnerability at later levels. Pure melee characters are great at first, but start struggling early in the game while hybrid characters are good enough to get about halfway through. A pure mage, on the other hand, is hard to keep alive at the start of the game, but tears up enemies towards the end.

Anyway, now that he's done he's moved onto BloodNet.

 

[:Flash:]

The CRPGAddict is currently covering an Ultima IV/V clone called "Antepenult". I had never heard of this game before, and it has never been discussed on the codex. So far it's turning out quite interesting.
http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2023/02/game-486-antepenult-1989.html
http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2023/03/antepenult-more-than-clone.html

 

[octavius]

The first interesting Ultima clone I've seen.

 

[Agesilaus]

The first interesting Ultima clone I've seen.

Isn't Teudogar basically a U7 clone? Although I suppose you're just thinking of the older formats. Brilliant game either way.

 

[Berengar]

EDIT: I am dumb I misread last page and thought he was MAKING a U4 clone

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Is this it? https://aminet.net/package/game/role/antep#contents