PW: I'd love to see a retrospective of the game, with your impressions of how people discovered the words, learned to use magic, how it differed from what you expected, and how the new world grew.
I'd be glad to write something up. Anything specifically you feel like you want answered?
Nothing specific; just your perspective as mod.
So that's how he made that turret.
How would I have made a sentient weapon? I tried it with a mace at the very end of the Arena but clearly screwed something up. Also, what would you have done if the attempted Catstaff had been pulled off? And a vacuum cat?
Retrospective can be found at the end of this post.
As per sentient weapon, I believe using the "intelligent" word when making it would have worked. especially if you said thats what you intended when making it.
And catstaff would probably just result in an adorable abomination. I would have just ran with it, really. And vacuum cat would have just annihilated itself after a few seconds.
Vaccuum cat.
Meow.
VWOOOOOOOOOOSH
Anyway, Would it have been possible for me to make runic "grenades", basically, attach a timer to an effect, possibly Conversion, so that if I had the Conversion rune on a wax ball set to convert wax to, say, force, it would push things around while depleting the wax?
Also, was that dust actually of any use? I was always attempting to find a way to enchant part of the weapon- which of these solutions would work?
1. Create a normal sword, and a suitable hilt. (broken staff or something.) Remove sword hilt in some way. Take imbue circle, imbue blade with dust. Use circles to combine "hilt" and sword. Run about, cubifying foes.
2Do above, but ignore combo circle- just kinda put the hilt on the blade.
3. If there was a word for "disassembled" or possibly with a clockwork sword, disassemble sword and have a nonstupid hilt.
4. Wear gloves of dust protection all the bloody time.
I dunno if that particular way of making them would work, but something like scratching a summon circle on a stone and then having it summon explosive fire or better yet, many explosive vacuum, would have worked.
Also, either the enchant or curse circles would have been best for weapons if you're trying to use one of the more dangerous elements.
If you made an minion out of Antimagic, would he help you?
If you made yourself antimagic steel, would you be able to cast spells?
Where is the Antimagic word in the list?
What would happen if you made an Spheric dimension made out of pure (Fluid/Solid/Gas) magic?
Im really hoping someone will pick up the game, shuffle words and circles (And perhaps add some new ones, like Virus/Disease) and attempts a new go.
There isn't really an anti-magic word. Though you could say the protect words and circles can be used for anti-magic. And yeah, if you had an anti-magic tattoo you could still use magic, it just wouldn't effect you. Although someone could just get in close and use the "mark what you're touching" thing to override it.
Dimension of pure magic would probably just kill you. Cause burn out if you walk in. Although, it would be a great magical energy source if you could figure out a way to harness it....
Wow. Well, thanks to Piecewise for running the game as long as you did, it's pretty amazing you went as long as you did.
Still, I'm sad it ended (I had plans! I had machinations!), but at least now I know some friends of mine will be quite happy. Only eight at a time though. And I get to see all the delicious words!
I'm also in favor of hearing PW's general thoughts on the game, especially around the discovery of things- how often was there someone who was trying every way to do something except the right one, and was just getting so close?
And a question: when you said it's time to move on, by "extension of this game" did you mean the mad max with wizards thing? Because I'd prefer that over poison.
Votes:
MMWW: 2 (syvarris, GreatWyrmGold)
Poison: 0
BOTH!: 2 (Empiricist, Xanmyral)
Either really. Poison is what I'm working on now (I think it has more unique effects then this game had words) but after that...I really should finish The End is Nigh....But after THAT I'll make MMWW, or whatever it will be called. God I have so many games I'm making. Thats not even all of them.
I always knew the system had more possibilities to it than I had discovered, but this is something else. Thanks for running it piecewise.
A question: How much did intent matter for determining spell effects? I noticed a few times it seemed to help, but I also changed the word order so I'm not sure.
Edit: I also noticed the description of the protection circles. I wonder what would have happened if someone tried to enter one with a blood rune?
Edit 2: Something I was meaning to find out in game: What happens when only part of an item is in a circle? Say, putting the blade of a sword in a conversion circle.
The intent could influence more vague things a lot. Clockwork things for instance; I mean, bow lightning clockwork magnet could be anything from a bow that fires electric magnets to a railgun, depending on what people were thinking about. And if they rolled well, of course. That and those words that targeted via where you were thinking and used will rather then dex.
Someone walking into a circle that protected from blood would incur an end roll. Best case scenario, they bounce off and are now bleeding from the nose, eyes and ears. Worst case...they make it into the circle but their blood doesn't.
Only the part in the circle is effected.
A few words specifically mentioned "what the caster is thinking of." For the most part, though, I believe intent mattered little.
So how DO you make a booze plant?
A couple ways really. I mean, booze and plant together with a form would work. Or just booze and plant together in a summon circle, since elements summoned together in a circle would mix while words wouldn't. That or use the "combine" word or circle.
I think you'd do like (Plant contain booze).
That would end up with more of a Keg plant then anything, but yeah, that works too.
More questions for PW:
What are the mechanical effects of a mageblood transfusion?
Will you continue to develop the world for us? Flesh out the lore, make combat stats for the wizards, ect. I could do it myself, but you seem better at it.
How do the communication circles work? I get the channels, but do they just transport voice when someone is standing in them? If there's a bunch set to the same channel, and someone talks in one, does the voice come out in every circle?
Gods would change what they want you to do once you leveled up with them, (Sha-calun the everflame would want you to just use fire to get the first level, then he wants you to actually kill things with fire) but it doesn't say anything about that in the gods file.
I think you'd do like (Plant contain booze).
Quielshar Uristrast Hobitaeod Shubha, then will a boozeplant to grow 
Depends. Mage blood from the Bartender or from the machine you would find in Gren's laboratory? One grants like 3 or so extra points of pot and pool for a short time. The other grants it permanently but, well, it has side effects.
Gladly, I have a lot of it already in my noggin, even if it's not written out. Anyone check out that deadlands swamp? I like that place. But yeah, lore and world building is stuff I have fun with.
Basically, the communication circles work by transmitting voice at the lowest version but higher versions let you do more, like transmit a "hologram" of yourself and even remotely control creatures or people. I think it says that on the list? Or did I forget to write that down? And yeah, it would connect to every circle on the same channel. However, since you could have several runes (Channel fire ice stone for instance) for channel, they would be fairly secure. Though cracking into them would be possible, of course.
Yeah, that was sort of "play it by ear" thing. See what took too long and what was too fast and adjust. Same with their piety powers, there are probably a few I would change since they weren't very good in hindsight.
What we need is a way to reuse these words and these runes without someone reverse-googling their way to full encyclopedic knowledge.
If you want, I can delete that link and it will be unavailable to anyone who doesn't already have it, pretty much.
I just read the god files, and suddenly realised that the god I was following was utterly USELESS for me unless I knew exactly what all the circles and runes did and could apply them in useful ways in combat.
I should have gone with Blastel or Scarlon...
To a degree, yeah. Although, he had his uses. There was a hero who would have a bag full of stones, each with a teleport circle on them. He would throw them at the beginning of battle and use them to teleport around, shooting you from behind and forcing constant awareness rolls.
Well.
My two cents (only two? Australia doesn't even HAVE 1c or 2c coins! Better make it 5c 
).
Anyway, I just wanted to congratulate Piecewise. He has done a tremendous job here with la Perplexicon, it shall share space in my DF memories alongside bloodthirsty elephants and loosing my entire embark to carp in mere minutes. But moreso, the skill of the GM, @PW you, has been exemplary. Just as I was joining initially, I was worried I might have a mediocre turn, I might be a little too boring for this game. But as you can see in my sig, I thought things happened a little differently!
(For future reference:)WELCOME TO PERPLEXICON! I HOPE YOU LIKE RESPAWNING!
-snip-
I want to say a particular sorry to Bigf00t, who did a ton of work on those python programs only for me to go and pull this. If anyone intends to use this system in the future, I suggest asking him for a copy of the program, because for as little as I used it, it was an invaluable resource.
-snip-
What do you guys want to do?
As much as quoting this feels like grandstanding on my part, I just wanted to give a big thanks to Piecewise. It was no trouble, and I had fun! I'm just glad that it was useful, even if only for a short time. Honestly, the really hard stuff (eg: player tracking inc modifiers) I hadn't quite figured out yet, and now that I have the files, I can figure it out, finish the program and I can run a game with my friends at uni!
... Reads word file ...
Wow, I love what you did with Null's char, thats some badass tattooing right there.
OH! Thats why you laughed at me when I used "Kallth" to try and turn my arm into something that doens't bleed. I would have shot myself but I was saved by my own ineptitude /irony.
OH and PW, NOW I get what you mean by effect:word! Oops.
"Contain (as in to hold something inside something else): Sharsazsho"
Oh.
I think you'd do like (Plant contain booze).
You know, for the longest time I thought the "Control" word was "contains" back when I was reading arena, oops. Later on, I'd go to make something "Ahh yes, suchandsuch contai.... dammit, WHY DONT I KNOW THAT WORD!". Now I do!
EDIT!: @PW, what was going to happen to those claimed by The Other? This me wants to know bad enough me is abandoning grammars.
There's a reason he was covered in wrappings. Gotta conceal all those zero pool usage tattoos.
Oh, and the idea was that, after you fought your way down through the catacombs (which would connect lots of places together. The upper levels formed a sort of fast travel method once they were opened and cleared out.), through layers of dead kings and warriors, you found find Fauscht guarding the last door. Deal with him, and you enter the deep ruins. Get through there, to the deepest section, you'd find null bound in the deepest chamber. Or at least what passes for Null, now that he's basically the tip of a massive god being's extension into this world. Before you fight him, however, you would end up fighting every single character either killed with zentol or who reached 8/8 corruption.
Perplexicon, A retrospective Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the Zentol.
I'm doing this from memory without looking back at the thread. Any inaccuracies to reality can be attributed to that.
I didn't expect it to get so big; that's for sure. I started it all with the intent of playing it for maybe a few weeks, letting people get a handle on the words, seeing how the system worked. But it gained momentum and people seemed to be having a lot of fun with it so...I just kept it going
In the early days, those first days in the arena, it was a break neck arms race. Harry was the first one to figure out how to use elements to kill-he garstopit'd Irony and someone else-and suddenly everyone was doing it. And then someone, I can't remember who, summoned a steel, poison cleaver and promptly dissolved his own arm. It went on like that for a while, jumps in technology so to speak; alliances forming between two or three people and then being broken almost as quickly. A lot of those early discoveries were either just translating in a list sort of fashion or blindly throwing things together and seeing what happened; least thats how it seemed. Once you got the connection between material and form it was fairly fast, but the page four words, and to a degree the targeting words, were hardly breached.
The big advancement, as I recall, was staffs. That was the weapon of the day. I believe it was Tsuchi who first made one with the ability to control plants. That was a bit of a important point for me too, because he just said something like "Staff control plant" and I was, for a while, completely unsure what to do. But I figured, eventually, that it meant a staff that was made of plants and could control plants. And that was when it really began. I'm not sure if you guys just thought the staffs could control what they were made of, or how long it took before you realized the importance of that other word, but soon everyone was making staffs. Staffs to control crystal and lightning and flesh and blood and anything else imaginable. And many a joke about flesh rods was made and the people did rejoice.
A lot of it is a blur, to be honest; moments standing out amongst long periods of relative peace. There was this...upper class of older players. The ones that had been around a while and survived a few battles or had hidden in the corner and lived mostly by not attracting attention. Onyx, patiently grinding away. Toaster, first one to find the word to breathe life into things. Tsuchi and...was it Kin? My memory fails me in these late hours. They stood on those upper levels and watched as the new men spawned and murdered each other. Occasionally, one of those new men might get strong enough to take down one of the vets, to replace one, but it was all stable, for the most part.
I miss those days, friends, they seem long ago.
Eventually the game began to really pick up with tons of new players on the wait list and I began wanting to have a way for more players to play. It was about that time that I began creating the whole second part of perplexicon, along with the rune and circle system. I worked on it while waiting for someone to hit 20 souls and when Toaster eventually did, in came Null.
And man oh man, did I pull punches with null. I originally wanted to have him just come in and start wrecking your collective shit until you all banded together and managed to murder him, but I quickly realized that, although he's not doing anything you guys couldn't, my knowledge of the system basically means he's unstoppable as long as He plays conservatively. You guys just didn't know enough to stop him; hell, toaster was basically just throwing rather simple elemental spells and beams at him and getting slapped down repeatedly.
At that point it kinda be came me attempting to teach Toaster and everyone else to branch out from their stagnating arsenal of arcane beams. That and killing time while I finished up enough to make the world explorable, at least for a while. After that was done, I killed off Null and the second part began.
Part 2 tomorrow, tired now.
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Topic: Perplexicon: Magic is Confusing:Derm has entered the Booze Dimension (Read 1009637 times)