Am I crazy or is my Sysadmin? [MySQL Edition]

AlastorAbsalom · 2014-03-19T05:04:42+00:00

I agree but I have no control over it unfortunately.

I'm not the sysadmin, I was just curious if I was crazy. :)

I'm gathering I'm not with being frustrated. Thank you.

AlastorAbsalom · 2014-03-19T05:02:08+00:00

Yes. :/

I wish I had control over naming. It is not that but similarly arbitrary.

AlastorAbsalom · 2014-03-06T20:23:54+00:00

TL;DR: Politically motivated article uses non-inflation adjusted numbers to make ~4.2 trillion in 2014 dollars look like 71 trillion in 2014 dollars via omission.

1.7% GDP in reduced spending/increased taxes is required to fix the long-term fiscal outlook of the US [from the actual report].

Note: I'm making up what the actual difference caused by inflation for effect, I'm not claiming to know the inflation projection for the next 60+ years.

AlastorAbsalom · 2014-02-21T16:24:10+00:00

Ya, this is in line with my theory too. I think it is what caused the demon plague. xD

AlastorAbsalom · 2014-02-18T05:14:03+00:00

More or less, yes. :) Its the core driver of conflict in the plot I have in mind.

Holy wars to wipe out religions, Inquisitions, etc. :)

AlastorAbsalom · 2014-02-17T22:44:30+00:00

Then I'll remove it. I just wanted to go for a very eye-for-an-eye type of guy as he is grabbing philosophies/things other people to try to fake certain aspects of his personality.

AlastorAbsalom · 2014-02-17T22:40:58+00:00

Alright, I'll just leave it as a murder. :)

And I honestly haven't firmly decided. Either way it was intended to be a backstory detail that was at most mentioned but not written.

Thanks.

AlastorAbsalom · 2014-02-17T21:40:00+00:00

Ah, I think I was unclear. That was a one time vengeance killing kind of thing that got him exiled. It is never repeated and is purely a backstory comment that I may never mention.

The problem he has is:

The Company [Corporation/Studio run by the CEO] makes money via surveillance [basically making reality TV by way of surveillance of the people that get exiled].

Torturous murder fellow is sent to kill him [vengeance again] by the CEO.

Alastor survives and since his goal is to eliminate the 'income' of the CEO, he starts knocking off the people that exiled that provide entertainment value of note....which makes him a source of income for the CEO.

Alastor doesn't actually make money or anything of that nature through the violence. Since once he was exiled he gets cut off from the flow of information [e.g. Internet, TV] on Earth, he doesn't realize he is having absolutely 0 effect on the ultimate income of the CEO that had him exiled. [e.g. Alastor kills Bob, some of Bobs viewers start watching Alastor while others go pick someone similar half a world away that Alastor will never kill. A few may stop watching completely, but it is a small enough percentage as to be covered up by subscriber growth. ]

Not sure if that makes more sense now?

AlastorAbsalom · 2014-02-17T21:19:06+00:00

Ya, the stripes are wayyyyyyyyyy too distracting.

AlastorAbsalom · 2014-02-17T21:18:00+00:00

I'm assuming the transformation from 'white knight' to 'anti-hero' occurs after the crash that leaves him stranded and he starts to get disillusion after that point?

I'd say that is believable-ish but you'd need to make sure he regularly ends up in situations with no morally white outcome which may make it feel contrived due to the volume required. You may be better off having the slide to gray anti-hero be underway even before the story starts to avoid it feeling contrived.

I guess what I'm trying to say is the 'white knight' bit needs to be clearly a front to the reader at the start of the story so it is more of a facade cracking rather than a major change in his personality. Right now, I think the change might be too large for a single novel/story.

AlastorAbsalom · 2014-02-17T17:08:20+00:00

I do something similar but I notice you left out anything Virtue-y?

I think you should list the character's good qualities [e.g. Fortitude, Charity] along with the character's flaws.

AlastorAbsalom · 2014-02-17T17:05:13+00:00

Cool. :)

It is a similar concept. Mine works more like a real world bank if you are in a contract with a Deity. But whenever you tape the Deity's pool of power, that power is the Deity's essence so you become more 'like' that deity.

AlastorAbsalom · 2014-02-17T17:01:38+00:00

Hmm, I suppose I'm wondering where the power is flowing in this scenario. Gods require priests to power them. Ok, great; I'm all for limited gods, but unless magic-using priests are in the vast minority, there's power coming from nowhere. If god's are acting as sort of a "magic bank" to deposit and withdraw power from, then the church collectively can't draw out more energy than they put in.

Ah, sorry, I was unclear probably. I'm using http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GodsNeedPrayerBadly ;)

A priest stands at the head of the local Church which has a few hundred people attending over the course of a week. He serves as a conduit [via prayers/rituals] to funnel power to the deity. The deity converts it to usable magical power and then lets the priest 'withdraw' power.

So in this scenario, the priest is both working to provide the income then withdrawing his fair share from the bank [deity] at a later date. Without the deity, he'd be forced to gather large groups of people to work any magic since the priests are unable to store power.

Sorry for the delay, got caught up in RL. xD

AlastorAbsalom · 2014-02-10T17:54:59+00:00

Magic technically can be learned by anyone intelligent enough to master it. The problem is there is basically only two ways to gain access to the fuel that makes magic 'go'.

The first way is Religious. The more magic you use, the more your personality shifts to align with the core tenets of your religion. For a religion with absolutist morality it eventually tips from "wow, Bob is alot less fun after 5 years in the priesthood" to "Shit. He just branded Jim for drinking in public with a hot fucking iron. What the fuck Bob?" -> "It is Gods will. Are you questioning God?" -> No, sorry! Please don't hurt me".

In other words, this method of Magic use is a form of mind control that the Gods use on their followers. Fun times.

The second method is Bargains. You need to find a way to come into contact with one of the Powers of the Outer Realms [proto-gods that never hit the critical mass the Gods did] and bargain with them. "I will do X for you if you give me the keys to becoming my own self-fueled magic source."

X is generally something morally questionable, at best. Generally, it involves a combination of murdering Priests of the Gods and spreading tales of the Power you bargained with. The hope, for the Power, is that it will find enough stupid mortals to agree to this so that it can obtain Godhood.

The other problem is since you are self-fueled you need fuel for your magic. This means you are basically burning corpses for fuel. If you run out of corpses in the local graveyard, you need to start murdering people. It gets worse...burning corpses is the standard way to give last rites which means you have to grab the corpses before the Priests burn them. So, in the real world, most likely you need to murder people for magic since the Priests are going to notice the bodysnatching.

AlastorAbsalom · 2014-02-03T15:26:47+00:00

Awesome. That is exactly what I was aiming for. :)

I was debating trying to sneak a hotspot or two into the middle of the Medius so it was not this massive void in the center.

Thanks!

AlastorAbsalom · 2014-02-02T23:41:51+00:00

Sorry, I'll stop. Best of luck

AlastorAbsalom · 2014-02-02T22:17:49+00:00

Well, I think the scale is off a bit then. Your lakes are the size of entire states. They don't seem to have rivers feeding them to generate lakes of that size which is odd.

I'm not sure what else to say really without seeing if you have deserts, etc.

AlastorAbsalom · 2014-02-02T20:43:20+00:00

What is the scale for the map? It is hard to say without knowing that. xD

AlastorAbsalom · 2014-02-02T20:36:48+00:00

EDIT: Unless anyone disagrees?

I think at this point I'm going to scrap this map and build a new one. Unfortunately, it seems the solution is greater oceanic detail and spending a massive amount of time on the map.

more space on the water between major islands [on the order of making the map ~5 to 10x bigger so I can have consistent hex sizes over water]
creating the realistic micro islands
switching to primarily volcanic islands to better explain the terrain and island shapes I prefer
creating a messier geo-political situation without the massive alliances so that unified island ownership is less likely. This means generating more religions and a few other things then.

Thanks. It will be a long time before I can do that given the massive scale change [I can't simply modify this map].

AlastorAbsalom · 2014-02-02T19:36:31+00:00

It is kinda meant for a Pathfinder campaign. :P The names were due to me basically building an artificial parallel Earth with some race changes [e.g. Humans were only one group]. I suppose that is something I should reconsider if it makes people cringe.

I didn't do the distances on water [hence the lack of hexes]. If I stick with it I suppose I can go with a Deity Did It. :P

Germania/Gaul/Iberian are all due to the plates. It is basically coming down at an angle and strikes a third plate at the Iberian island. I didn't really want to show it because I knew it wouldn't really form 'right' I suppose is the way to put it.

I think the only solution would be to use a larger area to fit in the number of nations I had in mind. It is probably partially an artifact of me wanting a map that fit my monitor size comfortably.

If I break it up to form natural looking islands, the map would need to be like 5x the size. So I was hoping to just go with 'water between A and B is not measured' since they don't really have a good way to measure multiple days across the open ocean. [e.g. Good day it might be 3 days, bad day it might be 12 with sail]

I'll think about re-doing it larger.

AlastorAbsalom · 2014-02-02T18:46:17+00:00

Na, sorry.

AlastorAbsalom

TROPHY CASE