Anybody up for a game of stock SE4 at PBW?

[capnq]

Someone else has set up a new game on PBW called "Nivek's First PBW". The settings don't quite match what we've posted here, but I don't see any deal breakers for me. He has two players so far.

[Possum]

what the hell, why not?

[Possum]

OK, I've applied to join that Nivek's game, capnq

You're right, he does have some damned odd options set, but as I said above, what the hell

<tongue-in-cheek>
Let all beware, the direct lineal descendants of the dreaded Poo-Flinging Monkeys have returned!
</tongue-in-cheek>

Oh yes, and let's all remember! F11, Ministers, scroll to bottom and select the option "AI should not make changes to the empire during a Simultaneous Game."

[capnq]

agrreement...me too...muzt prractize mi-go aczent...

[Possum]

mi-go? is this a movie reference? I live in a cave...

Let's hope this Nivek guy is on the ball with getting things going, eh?

This is going to be a wild & wooly game, with Neutrals and AI empires, plus home planets NOT the same size, all warp points NOT connected, and warp points anywhere in the system. All I can say is, I'm going to try very hard to keep a good sense of humor about things, and not take it at all seriously

And may the best monkey win!

[capnq]

Literary, not film. The Fungi from Yuggoth, from H.P. Lovecraft's "The Whisperer in Darkness".

[Possum]

Aha!~ You know, I've never read much Lovecraft. I tend to think of him as a "horror" author, and I do not care for that genre at all.

[capnq]

Lovecraft is a different "flavor" of horror, very psychological and introspective, with very little gore, but his 1920's attitudes toward race turn some people off. It helps to have an unabridged dictionary at hand to look up some of the vocabulary he uses.

Nivek's game has a fifth player pending join.

[Possum]

Hehe, 1920's attitudes toward race. Have you ever read Huckleberry Finn?

You know, that is actually a two-edged sword. On the one hand, when reading old authors their racist attitudes sometimes grate on our modern sensibilities. On the other hand, because they were so utterly indifferent to modern sensibilities, older authors were free to make observations that no modern author would dare.

As a case in point, back in the late 80's, I was doing some serious research on the punic wars. One of the best authors on the subject did his work in the 1930's. As part of his introduction to the subject of the punic wars, the author did some exploration of the ethnic origins of the carthaginians, tracing them back to the "proto-semitic" ethnic group which also gave rise to the ancient hebrews (and many of their most bitter enemies). Some of his observations would simply not have been comfortable to modern academia, lest they be misconstrued as anti-semitic.

A fifth player, you say?

/me rubs hands together and cackles in evil laughter

[capnq]

No, I haven't. Checking his bibliography, it looks like the only Twain I've read is _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_.

There are too many "classics" to read more than a fraction of them. I've been buying omnibuses from the Science Fiction Book Club faster than I can read them.