i thought Kzin don't have tails?

I'm not sure about that Mephitis.  Anyone have an idea?

How did you use the old ones?  I dont see those anywhere.

They do, but are almost furless, which is why during the Man-Kzin Wars, the humans often referred to them as Rat-Cats.

Sentient species taste better...

Hit the "Next" button in the emoticon window.

 Hmm, that button doesnt seem to exist for me....

Sentient species taste better...

Hrm, princtscreen doesn't seem to work on this machine, so I cant give a screenshot of what I'm seeing.

Right above the "banhammer" is a "prev" and "next" in the header.  I just checked in IE7 and it even exists in exploder.

Nope, definitely not seeing that.  Maybe at home with Firefox I'll be able to.

Sentient species taste better...

Yeah, it works for me.  You've got the "Digi*cons" on the first page, and then on the next page you've got "Classic."  Yay!

That's why I checked it with IE7, to eliminate browser issues being the reasoning.  I saw it, so unless your stuck with IE6 or something...

It doesn't show up in IE6.  It works fine in FF3.  I can't check it in IE7 at work, since I can't upgrade to it here.

Here it is in FF3

And IE6

What Motti's pic of FF3 is what it shows up as in IE7, thus why I didn't see it as an IE issue.  Turns out to just be a problem with IE6 lol.

In the mean time, time to taunt KP...

Yep, I have IE6 and cant update...but I can copy and paste other people's smilies.    You're taunting gave me the full list Loups!

Sentient species taste better

KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!

Leela: "For 100 quatloos, who did the captain maroon on Ceti Alpha V?"

Shatner: "KHAAAAAAAN!!!!"

Fry: *beep* "Uh, Khan?"

"From hell's heart I stab at thee! (with a silver dagger of course) 

Sentient species taste better...

Hrm I wonder if I report my own post if I can get it deleted since I cannot edit it....

Small tidbit for those lycanthropicaly challenged (or those that don't have AS much time on their hands as I), not all lycanthropes weakness is silver.  Oftentimes it's a material native to their area.  In this case, yeah...werewolf=silver, but a Loupgarou (mountain version) is only harmed by gold and if the magical weapon wasn't made of gold, then it only took the plus of the weapon in damage...

My personal favorite from Ravenloft in the lycanthrope section was the Greater Wolfwere.  You had to deal out enough damage in one combat round to kill it, otherwise all it's HP would regenerate back.

/geek off

Yeah, as has been noted elsewhere, we're dropping IE6 support across the board since it's below 10% share now and it's such a PITA to deal with all its quirks and bugs. Grey backgrounds on the emotes is one such issue (IE6 does not properly support PNG transparency).

Now that we've segued into the topic of D&D... In a couple weeks, I'll be running the first 4th Edition campaign that my group has played.  I'm wondering if anyone here has opinions about the new edition? 

I've read a good portion of the PHB, but not much of the DMs guide or Monster Manual.  So far my impressions are overall good.  There are a lot of positive changes, like contracting the number of skills from forty-something to 17, making many combat actions more straightforward (1 roll), gaining a set # of HP/level, giving all character classes new powers/abilities almost every level, making characters less equipment-dependent, and in general more clearly defining many things that were ambiguous in 3.5.

There are some things I dislike too, such as the only alignments are now: good, lawful good, evil, chaotic evil, and unaligned (neutral).  Info on evil gods is also very paltry....I think they're intentionally sensoring themselves in that regard, so as to avoid criticism from religious groups.  I thought the old alignment grid was one of the few things in 3.5 that was both elegant and useful.  There is also no Barbarian class, gnomes as PCs, and only a small number of magic items to choose from.  I hear they're coming out with some book with thousands more, but there should have been a lot more in the core books.  BTW, magic items are now in the PHB, which I think is a good idea.  They've added "flavor" in some odd areas, like giving a specific name to the written form of many languages.  For example, written dwarven is now called Davek.  I think thats pointless, will be confusing, and I dont expect people will use it.

New PC races include Dragonborn and Tieflings (sort of half-infernal people).  Here is a funny video on YouTube with someone "interviewing" a gnome and a tiefling: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UqFPujRZWo

Sentient species taste better

there are times i wish i had gotten into D&D; but now, being older, and having only a limited knowledge....well, really what committed group wants to take the time to help the Noob out?

what an interesting coincidence. there's a chance i'll be getting a 3.5 game going in the near future, realistically managing to get D&D going for the first time (for myself) in years.

as to your question...

i was really excited by rumors surrounding the online aspects of 4.0, but when the game was released, i found all that to be rather underwhelming. the computer-based aspects of the game seem very disappointing IMO. here they could have made D&D come alive visually (not to mention acoustically), automated/computerized much of the tedium, and even allow players to game together from a distance. but what i've seen so far is about as exciting as a wet fart.

i haven't looked too deeply into the rule set itself. i think streamlining isn't a good or bad thing in itself. i personally don't mind the complexity of 3.5 (it's certainly a lot more accessable to new players than 2.0).

heck, i wouldn't mind paying for a totally separate "D&D-PC" game if it lived up to the standards of a modern 3D game. there's some truly amazing art that's been done for D&D over the years, and companies like BethSeda have even done pretty impressive things in terms of developing tools for home users to build their own 3D worlds. there's even technology out there that allows you to "mask" your voice in real time (i.e., speak into a microphone and sound like almost anyone else on the other end). while i understand that not everyone has the PC hardware to do all this, it's also the reason i wouldn't mind a separate product for those of us who do and who are interested in something like this.

actually D&D virgins are my favorite. they think differently and come up with stuff more experienced players wouldn't think of on their own, which makes much more interesting campaigns. for me at least, roleplaying > dungeoncrawling, so even when you have a character (or take an action) that isn't "the best thing to do," i usually award (as a DM) bonus XP for originality, creativity and good RPing.

I haven't looked into 4.0 at all.  WotC lost me at 3.0's release.  I know they need to make money somehow, but gawd damn, do they really need to come out with a new book of class/skills/feats/races every other month?  First edition had what...2, maybe 3 books total that had classes in it?  I know it's not a good economical model, but they lost me when the game became a money-sink like all those damned card games.

Campaign setting book sets were fine, as I've mentioned that I througholy enjoyed the gothic-horror setting of Ravenloft for 2.0.  Other than those though...too much.

Ok, that rant aside.  I like they are re-simplifying the skill sets from the 40s to 17 as well as trying to streamline things, mainly combat.  Combat really took up too much real time im compairson to the rest of the game and it got to the point that you started dreading a fight.

One thing I totally dispise of that entire rule-set of D&D though (as well as most any other rpg though) is the HP system.  Ok, I can understand the thought process behind a higher level person should be able to take more knocks...but why should you need a stronger healing spell to repair the same % of hp that the lower level spell ended up beign able to do earlier in life?  Travel really limited the ammount of knocks you could take.  An Uzi always felt just as threatening in the beginning of the game as it did in the end when you weren't taking into account gear.  The threat of someone coming at you with a longsword when you are level 10 in D&D isn't as fearful as it was at level 1.

I really don't foresee me getting into 4.0 either since my circle of friends really spread out since college let out.  We once were able to meet once or more a week to play.  Now with us spread out over the state, it's harder to get together even every weekend, let alone every month.  When we do get together due to this huge time-spread, we want something that can be picked up and dropped in one session.  Trying to get/keep in character with something that we haven't done in 3 weeks is just troublesome.

Thus is how I ended up playing lead or bass guitar in rockband...and after a few drinks, bolting out the lyrics to Wanted Dead or Alive.

THAT I would pay good money for.

As for the 'who would help a noob out'.  I agree w/ dystopic, fresh meat is tons better than worn vetrans.  They seem to have more fun since EVERYTHNG is new to them.  They haven't played every race/class combo in the books to death.  They haven't fallen in a rut of SSDD.  I first got int D&D 13 years ago, so it was getting to the point of 'I've been there, done that'.

Sure the rules would take you a bit to learn, but the rolling the dice end of things isn't what the game is about (yes, you heard me right WoW generation).

did you ever play any of the RPGs in the WhiteWolf universe? Mage: The Ascension might've been of particular interest to you.

I got into Vampire and Werewolf.  I did have a disclaimer about 'most rpgs' in there...and sadly I picked a perhaps less-known rpg to hold up on the soap box with me.

The multitude of books for 3.0/3.5 was one of my primary complaints.  Information was scattered across hundreds of books!  Luckily for me, one of the guys in my gaming group manages the local gaming store here, and he has about 90% of the books, and an encylopediac knowledge of where to find the info you need.   A ajor contributor to that problem was the idea of OGL (Open Gaming License), which let any third-party create content for the system.  The licenses for 4.0 are going to be a lot tighter, which will hopefuly mean a lot less source books.

I wasnt too interested in the online aspect of 4.0, because I prefer the engagement of sitting around a table with a bunch of people.  The ability to create visual settings & situations is definitely alluring, but for actual interaction, face-to-face works better for me.  I always said that 3.0/3.5 would make a much better computer game than table-top RPG....to many conflicting and interacting rules.

Complexity is good, if it adds something to the game-play or mechanics, but when it slows everything down and in addition doesnt make any logical sense, then its not worth it.  I think with 4E, the streamlining looks good so far, but since I havent actually played yet, I could be mistaken.

D&D virgins are just fine...like Dys said, they often bring a fresh outlook and new ideas.  You just have to find the right people Silver.

I like a good mix of roleplaying and "roll-playing" as my group likes to refer to it.  I'm something of a actor/power gamer/thinker in terms of classifying my personal style for RPGs.  I tend to like to play religious fanatics or chaotic wariors & rogues.  The paladin-crusader is my favorite achetype.

HPs have always been a point of contention in RPGs.  I think to make a system work well, you have to cast aside any pretenses of realism in that regard.  I cant think of any system where it works that well.  The Cthulhu system though was pretty decent....no levels and no increasing HPs.  It also has one of the highest PC mortality rates, hehe.   Rolemaster was also good, and also very deadly.

Sentient species taste better...

In Traveler you could die DURING character creation lol.