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QCF Design Community • View topic - Horatio's plan...
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Re: Horatio's plan...

PostPosted: Thu Aug 30, 2012 8:59 am
by Nandrew
The "humans are the real monsters" problem is a little oversaturated itself -- far more interesting to have a morally dim conflict where neither side is particularly pleasant. Anything else is kinda preachy.

There is actually only one unambiguous group of "good guys" in the Desktop Dungeons world. Even the Life Druids of the western forest tend to be nasty and violent.

Anybody looking for a deeper story should be piecing together the lore bites in the various regional subdungeons, though. Otherwise, I like keeping the narrative unobtrusive. ;)

Re: Horatio's plan...

PostPosted: Thu Aug 30, 2012 11:40 am
by Lujo
In the immortal words of whoever wrote the flavour text for the MtG card Orcish Artillery - "So they want to kill my men? TWO can play that game!" :D

Also, ruining someones economy completely IS about as degrading as genocide. We had a bit of both over here relatively recently and people are still wondering what was worse - war or capitalism...

And the "humans are monsters" theme is a bit oversaturated.

Re: Horatio's plan...

PostPosted: Thu Aug 30, 2012 3:27 pm
by Darvin

Re: Horatio's plan...

PostPosted: Fri Aug 31, 2012 12:59 am
by Leotamer

Re: Horatio's plan...

PostPosted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 1:46 pm
by Wargasm
Speaking of in-game text, the Rogue Gold challenge boss should probably also mention that in the old days, we actually had to eat and we were lucky if we could tell one monster apart from another. ;)

EDIT: Oh, and [extreme nitpick] the ability "Poisonous" should be "Venomous." There's a technical difference between poison and venom.[/extreme nitpick]

Re: Horatio's plan...

PostPosted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 6:35 pm
by Lujo
That there isn't really a nonsubstantial nitpick, linguistics wise. Unless it is elsewhere defined that the game allows the signifier "Poisonous" to denote the meaning of "venomous" on top of what it allready means, the quality of a "poisonous" monster would rather apropriately be described as "causes poisoning upon ingestion or consumption, or an interaction in which said object is passive". So tehnicaly, it suggests a "poison on death" effect rather than "poisons on attack", with a possible implication of you ingesting the monster or bits thereof as well.

Inuitiveness and gameplay uniformity wise, yes, that IS an extreme nitpick.

Re: Horatio's plan...

PostPosted: Sat Sep 08, 2012 12:34 pm
by Fran
Well, that depends on your access to language.
In german, poisonous and venomous share the same translation, because in the german language, there is no distinction between how you're poisoned so there is only one word. Until now, I only knew the translation of the words, so it made absolutely no difference to me (in fantasy games, I always guessed venom is just a fancy way to say poison, propably coming from the middle ages, and maybe a bit stronger than regular poison).
However, now that I read your explanation of the meaning of the word, it becomes obvious that this isn't the same in meaning.
Oh well, this means I propably should look up the difference on a couple of words with the same translation now... for example, I have no clue about the difference between a dirk and a dagger, as this also shares the same translation.

Re: Horatio's plan...

PostPosted: Sat Sep 08, 2012 1:46 pm
by TigerKnee
Funny thing, Mark Rosewater (head designer of Magic The Gathering) actually wrote an article on the "Poisonous" card ability about that. Yes, "Venomous" is technically the correct term but the creature deals damage through "poison counters", and they decided to go with "Poisonous" so as to not "confuse" people.

Re: Horatio's plan...

PostPosted: Sat Sep 08, 2012 1:56 pm
by Wargasm
That's a fair bit trickier; there are things called dirks and things called daggers, but there is nothing 100% consistent about when either term is used. MOST dirks are single-edged and MOST daggers are double-edged, but I've seen exceptions to this, too. The closest thing I could come up with to a consistent rule would be that just about all things I've seen classified as dirks are used for piercing/stabbing, whereas daggers tend to veer towards slashing/cutting; either could be used for the opposite job, but they'd be worse at it.

However, I don't think the distinction is ever of vital importance; if you called an emergency hotline to report someone had been potentially fatally injured by a dirk or dagger, there'd be little difference in the treatment. The difference between poison and venom would be rather large, though. (Interestingly, while one could say "envenomed", the victims of poison and venom could both properly be referred to as "poisoned", which would help explain why only pedants and native English speakers would ever know, much less care, about the difference, unless they were medical personnel.)

Re: Horatio's plan...

PostPosted: Sat Sep 08, 2012 8:25 pm
by Lujo
I know about the Mark Rosewater article, some of his stuff on MtG design and flavour in particular is actually quite worth a read.

And regarding poison and translation it's even weirder in my language - "otrovan", depending on which sylabble you stress (no stress markings unless vitaly important) means either "poisonous" or "poisonED" in the first person male singular which is the most generally used form. So there'd be a whole separate conundrum if a character with the poison boon god poisoned.

And we don't have a separate word for venom either, it's "otrov" for both. My analysis was purpusefully verbose for joke purposes, a more simple way of putting it would mean that "venomous" would be a characteristic of a living creature with "natural" poison, while "poisonous" would be a quality of a non-living thing. Reporters and such have had a tendency to use the phrase "poisonous viper" since "venomous viper" sounds too poetic and aliterative.

I'm actually down with Mark rosewater, and that very article popped to mind when I said it was an extreme nitpick when considering game mechanics and terminology clarity.