Yeah I have to get my hands on it first as well

Lord Believers! Yes of course Mir. You and I will get along _exceptionally_ fine. Uh huh.

Humans don't grow out of their spirituality, their fear of the unknown, their need for safety, nor their need for explaining the unexplainable (which will always be there to some point, science or not - there are final paradoxes that will stand as unexplainable - fortunately). I often play religious people, because those are the most interesting and satisfying to RP. But Lords Believers just suck and Miriam is an evil old crone. No offense Mir of course, maybe we'll get along well RP-wise ingame. Yes.. Trust me

And Tantavalist, I can 'save' you, in regards to MMO2 *wink wink, nudge nudge*. And I also played on impossible and won regularly. If my strategy was allowed to work. I find I lose against human players though, or can get close to losing at least *shudders*

MMO2 is of course the best 4X ever. No argument. I think Alpha Centauri would be better suited for RP though.

That's a huge topic for sure Tantavalist. And I'm one of the persons who think that 'yet' added to the sentence is just wrong on several levels. You can't understand why things exist, as opposed to not exist no matter what you do with science. The same applies to religion of course. The existence of any god or gods can't explain why things exist. How does something come from nothingness into being? That's impossible to explain in science or religion. Sure 'yet', but I believe and hope 'always'. The answer to that question, if it exists, is more about spiritual insight than scientific research though. And yet not. Because spirituality and deep physics have a wonderful tendency to merge and become one out there where the really heavy physics and metaphysics reside. I can recommend reading Roger Penrose for a physicist/mathematician view into that understanding.

Anyway, I just wanted to say, I don't think things are all that simple. Luckily. And I don't think religion is the cause of all problems and science is the opposite. The cause of all problems are humans. No matter whether physicist or faithful. Of course, it's a huge topic.

Oh, and blind faith, the need to accept a truth to believe in that you cannot verify before you have given yourself to it, that might the biggest challenge, with the biggest possible reward. Our Danish philosopher Kierkegaard likened it to taking a voluntary jump into deep waters, meaning you cannot gain insight without a fully voluntary act of death or transcension. It might possibly show you the universe you cannot grasp by science alone. Imo of course

And I'm agnostic myself and greatly dislike views that negatively impact humanism. Many so-called religious views do that, though it's more about the people behind a religion and their traditions and mindset, than about the religion. The framework of the religion can be altered to fit in with the views that some people want to advocate. And if this was not done in the name of religion, humans would invent a new name to be able to do the same.
It's just not all black and white. Religion bad, science good. If you view it like that, the truth will elude you I think.

And apart from that, it's still much more fun RP'ing religious or fundamentalistic people with certain absolute and unyielding truths. Otherwise, it's a bit too 'flexible', i.e. nothing matters, everything goes. More fun RP when your characters and those you interact with have a certain 'bite' to them. Which they certainly have with those views

The thing in common with science and religion is that they're both most likely wrong. The difference between them is that science accknowledges this and tries to be less so.

Individual scientists can grow fond of their pet theories and become sort of fundamentalistic, of course, but as a whole science tends to move forward instead of clinging to ancient theorems just for the sake of it.

As for playing religious/fundamentalistic characters, I do like it, even though it's often difficult to dodge the barrages of undeniable arguments about how wrong you are.

Last edited by Kryigerof (2006-12-08 01:07:00)

I'm still up for this, if there's more than 2-3 players. But I won't be the one pushing for it, as there's a lot to occupy my time currently, and URU coming up too. So please someone push for it and I'm there

And Tantavalist, sent you a PM about MOO some days ago

yes... £5 + taxes + the cost of sending it...

After christmas I will be ordering some books from amazon so I will most likely be ordering it then

Twilight Imperium 3?

That seems like a rather difficult one to play by email without a program for doing it... But if there's a good way to pull it off, count me in. I love that game!

I think most use a WikiMap for the board, and forum posts. http://www.ti3wiki.org/index.php?title=PBeM
Looks pretty complex to me!

I'd totally be interested in playing something like the topic says.. I've always been a fan of strategy games and if we could agree on a game it would be great! Specially if the game has linux support I could run it on my linux box.. some sort of pbem or similar would be the best case with a 24h turn so everyone might squeeze the required minutes to make a turn each day. I remember we tried to play VGA planets in when I was a kid in school and it was pretty interesting.. but that was like 15 years ago..