The Big Hello (Again) Thread

[Iku-Turso]

Oh, hello Corangrane

[Splunge]

Gah! I just posted this in the SPS Forum by mistake:

Welcome, Corangrane! Also nice to see another geezer-ish (relatively speaking) member of the Boards! (Not to mention a (I assume) female to help reduce the male/female ratio.)

[Legrasse]

Hey guys, I just joined. I'll remain Legrasse on the forums, named so after the inspector from The Call Of Cthulhu by H.P.Lovecraft.

I'm a huge fan of CRPG's, some of my more favoured ones are the Baldur's Gate games -not the console travesties-, the Icewind Dales, Planescape: Torment, all of Troika's contributions and dozens more.

I live in the UK, and I enjoy gaming, movies, reading and good company.

I'm currently,

Reading: George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four
Watching: Ghost in the Shell
Playing: Temple of the Elemental Evil

Nice to meet you all, I look forward to contributing where I can.

[Iku-Turso]

Welcome! Always a pleasure to have another Lovecraft fan on the Boards!

[Loreseeker]

Hello, Legrasse. Welcome!

[pokeyloki]

Avatars? I'm still struggling with smileys!
My first RPG was Betrayal at Krondor a couple of , well actually like 1994...
BG rocks, pokeyloki

[Iku-Turso]

New members keep popping up, welcome pokeyloki!

[Ziad]

Welcome pokeyloki! And well done on mentioning Betrayal at Krondor. Not my first CRPG but definitely one of the best I've played.

[pokeyloki]

I let someone borrow my copy of BAK and never got it back
Hi everyone, thanks for the welcome, it makes me feel all warm 'n fuzzy!

[Nakia]

Welcome pokeyioki. Another one who cut their game teeth on BAK, the best crpg game til BG came along. Fortunately you can still dl-legal- for free BAK. Unfortunately you have to DOS Box it.

[Chandos the Red]

Hi, all! I'm back for the moment. I may not have power yet, but I have a 5000 watt generator sitting in my backyard, since the incompetent power company, (Centerpoint) has not been able to restore my power after more than a week after Hurricane Ike, so I had to take matters into my own hands. However, we have hot water (gas hot water heater) and since I have a gas range and a big gas powered grill outside, I have been able to cook hot meals as well. But no air conditioning and most of the Northside of Houston, including The Woodlands, is still without power. The "news sources" claim that I should have power restored in 5 days. Anyway, I'm sharing this electrical connection with my laundryroom and gameroom, so I am only able to power up my office when everyone else is busy with other things. Anyway, I just wanted to say hello to everyone.

[Nakia]

Glad to hear from you, Chandos. If loss of electricity is the worst that happened that is good. Hope every thing else is good. We have a visitor who lives in a trailer park in that area and I hear that Ike did a bit of damage. She says she was lucky and her trailer wasn't damaged but some others were. Someone she knows was pretty much wiped out but belongs to a group that will help him out and of course there is insurance but it is still a scary thing to happen.

[Chandos the Red]

Oh, yes. My house had zero damage, except my front door sticks, which, all things considered, is very good. But it's a new construction. The night of the hurricane, my walls were literally shaking. I had to move my pillows on our bed because they were against the wall and were vibrating the top of my head. Many of my friends have had large trees fall on their homes. One such friend, is our stock broker, who is having dinner with us tomorrow evening. Her home is a total wreck and still without any power. However, I have three kids, one which is a one month old baby, and until I aquired the generator, no laundry, no clean clothes, towels, baby bibs, or whatevers, etc. The heat was making the baby uncomfortable, which means that he cries - a lot.

The good - I was able to get food and ice, which was in very short supply here on the Norhside, because our grocery store brought in generators to power its store, and otherwise, I would have had to flee the city and stay with friends in North Texas because the lines to get food and ice in other places on the Northside were around the buildings and a 4 hour wait.

FEMA is here except the "news media" has almost no information. For instance, they say "FEMA has a pod in Imperial Oaks." They don't say where in Imperial Oaks, but my wife drives over there just to have a look and see what's going on. She dirves all over Imperial Oaks, which is really a large area, past the community center, the schools, and never finds it, and she gets lost in the process. So much for the "news." They were even asking that listeners call in and tell them what was going on in our areas, because they had no idea what was happening in the city. But the citizens of the city were great, and really pulled together to make it as far as we have.

But the worst part was the lack of information. The night the lights went out, and for days after, I had no internet, cell phone service, and no home phone service. I listened to the radio, which turned out to be almost a complete waste of time. Really, one would think that a "world class" city could do better in that regard....

[Taluntain]

It's good to hear that you're all ok, the rest will get sorted out eventually. You'd think that the organizational side of things would have been way better by now, though - it's not like this is the first hurricane in the area.

[Fluesterwitz]

Hello all, first-time poster and still finding my way in this magick realm. I sincerely hope power will be back soon in the real world. Good luck!

[Montresor]

@Chandos: Good to hear you're all OK. Hope you'll have power again soon.

@Fluesterwitz: Welcome to the boards!

[Chandos the Red]

Thanks, all.

And welcome, Fluesterwitz.

[Iku-Turso]

whoa Chandos, heavy news, glad you made it...

@Fluesterwitz: welcome *tips his imaginary hat*

[Nakia]

Welcome, Flusterwitz to land of magic. Hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

[Krentaris]

Hey all, just figured it would be courteous to drop by saying I'm here. Well, as you can see, I joined quite a while back, but only posted marginally. Not sure how long I'll be here now, either, but since I'm getting back into BG & Infinity Engine games I figured it would be a good idea to see what's going on. It's a very pleasant surprise to see that the communities for these excellent games are still surviving. A testament to their quality, then, I suppose.

Now, while I may not be as old (experienced?) as you people who had the pleasure of playing many of the Gold Box games and so on, I still love a good quality RPG. That's not to say I haven't played my fair share of console games and JRPGs, Grandia, Star Ocean, Final Fantasy etc - I even enjoyed some of them, shock horror. But that one fateful day I (well, my parents) laid hands on a copy of Baldur's Gate, nothing would be the same again. The manual was in French, actually. I had to learn the rules myself. At around age 12-13, not to say that it matters, but still.

While I do enjoy some of those games nothing comes close to the experience the Baldur's Gate series can elicit. And oh my, the Forgotten Realms did take over a lot of my imagination for a while. As I have not been fortunate enough to find anyone interested in playing a tabletop game, the PC is as good as I'm getting. I still think the older games are the best ones, I'm very much a purist. I may even be criticized for it, but I haven't come across an RPG as good as BG2 since I played it. NWN was passable with the user mods and online community. Had a lot of fun PvPing there. Some fun, original build testing. NWN2 was horrible for me. It's like it was trying too hard. No real emotion.

Now Dragon Age on the other hand... I've seen some of the trailers for it, and I crapped my pants. I've only just come to appreciate the work of Nietzsche, for example, and I found the quote at the beginning of BG1 as I have just started replaying it very appropriate. Imagine then my surprise, then, when DA also opens with such a passage. It's claimed to be the spiritual successor to BG, and as I see the previews, I easily see why. I really hope it's as good as it should be. Since BG2 only KotOR came close to replicating that experience. I've been waiting too long, damnit.

[Urithrand]

Hey, I just thought I'd leave a post to let everyone (or at least anyone who noticed I haven't been around) know that I am still alive and well, and hoping to return to regular posting, chatting and general merriment soon. I have had a great deal of RL crap recently, and I've also had an extended (and extended, and extended) illness but I am recovering nicely.

Not going into too much detail about my fantasy life (you know, that one with bills and jobs and stuff) but I've been under uber stress recently, so sorry if my absence has left you short staffed Tal, but don't give up on me yet!

I should be back in time for all the exciting news about SoZ (though by the date of release I may well be playing it as much as writing about it)

So hi to everyone that's missed me (and those who haven't, dammit!) and I'll be back on the ball in the near future. Love to all and their extended families (hey, I'm supposed to take them with water!? I thought smokable prescriptions were unlikely...)

[Nakia]

Sorry to here that you have had problems but glad to know you will be back with us. I have missed you especially in the FAI. My best wishes to you and hope you will be back with us soon.

[The Magister]

Sorry to hear about that Urith. Life seems to pile up things like that every now and then. Hope your back soon

[Loreseeker]

I'm sorry that you had troubles in RL, Uri, but very glad to hear that things are ok now.
Hope to see you around SP soon.

Take care. (and have fun, too.)

[Taluntain]

Good to hear from you again, here's hoping you come back soon!