I'll be unavailable as far as Mafia type games go for the next few weeks, but ya'll feel free to carry on without me!

My dad played Diplomacy via mail back in the day. He said it was a lot of fun. I haven't found anything digital to replicate it.

I've been working on a flexible dedicated proboards that can host factional and observer chats and I think it'll work.

What has to happen is -
1. The moderator of the last game passes the admin password to the new mod (or the gogfather resets it)
2. The new moderator creates as many hidden groups as they need.
3. The new moderator creates a new board for each group, assigning access only to the relevant group.

And that's it. I'll try and check today and try and make it so standard members can't see a register of members, so that it doesn't become necessary to get people to sign up to a proboards that they'll never need to use.

I've made a gogfather account who is the only admin, disabled the info block that tells everybody who last posted where, set it so that post counts are hidden and titles don't change according to post count.

Anything anyone can think of that might break a game if we don't sort it?

Can't you move threads around? If so, that might reduce the creation of boards. Simply create a couple of generic boards (Hidden Board 1-4, Observer), move to public chats when done, reuse these boards with new permissions.

Also you could have multiple GOGfathers I guess? So if one GOGfather doesn't provide the necessary setup fast enough, the others might? And even better, the game mod becomes a moderator of the selected boards, so you don't have to pass the GOGfather account repeatedly to other people. I think.

Does it mean while a game is in progress, you can't view previous games hidden chats?

These hidden chats would be moved to a public subforum where they can be read and viewed by all, that's the point yes.

Lots of OT.
I finally get some breathing room at work.

It is not.

This is one interesting list. Books that are all about million years old (or at least 30) and then modern manga. Is it to balance each other out? :-)
Almost every thing you listed I have watched and basically none of them I have read (maybe except the Star Trek novels, depends which one those are).
Have you picked those older books because you like them (I am not saying they good nor that they aren't!) because their cultural value or some other reason? I understand you chose Highschool DxD for its cultural value but I wonder about those other books. :-)



Thanks for the recommendation but I certainly do not enjoy Victorian literature. :-) There is not many genres I would enjoy less (OK, there are many but most of them is considered trash by most people).

I was looking into Mars series recently but I always get mixed reports about it. First I saw it recommended like 2 years ago so I started looking into it and found it interesting. Then I read reviews later and those were quite indifferent to it or bored so I put it away (looking for it, not the books). Later I have someone else recommend it again and got interested once more. But I found out it is hard to come by here as it was only printed in low numbers. I only found Green Mars in antique bokstore this year and I decided against buying it as I don't have its predecessor anyway and I read some conflicting reports about the book again.

I only read it this year and it was fine. Certainly got old and the czech translation was just laughable so I can imagine it could be similar in other languages as well. I suppose cyberpunk was new thing when they translated it so had no idea how to do it properly.
Similar thing is czech translation of Hyperion series. I read first 2 books with old translations and it was quite baffling a lot of times. Then I got the other 2 with brand new translation and found out it can be also made properly. Sometimes it makes a hell of difference.
I don't regeret reading Neuromancer, but I wouldn't mkiss much if I didn't.

As for Ender's Game, it is quite alright YA sci-fi novel. It's written decently but would be quite forgettable if not for the ending part I think. What I find very good is Speaker for the Dead and it is what made Ender's Game worth reading. I then burned myself with the sequel to the Speaker (I don't even rememeber the name), where the series crashed hard, IMO and I had no interest in reading on. Finding later what kind of idiot Card is only made me not think of continuing it ever and I don't miss it at all.

Moderately strong recommendation from me, to help sway you back into trying to find them again. :)
KSR is not an author I recommend to everyone, and over half of his books I'd basically never recommend - but his Mars trilogy is still what I'd mostly advise starting with, and tends to be received pretty well by a wide variety of readers. Even now, nearly 30 years later, Red Mars is still the seminal work wrt the settlement of Mars. Rooted in deep science, but with a lot of attention given (particularly later in the series) to political and societal effects. His characters ("scientist heroes") are deeply memorable. You might not like every viewpoint character - you'll probably even detest some of them - but they'll certainly get under your skin, and start to feel like people you've known for a long time.
There were paperback reissues of the entire series as recently as 4 and 5 years ago by Del Rey and Bantam, and Del Rey did a trade paperback reissue just last month, so you should definitely be able to find them new.

Standalone novels by KSR that'd make decent alternative starting points to see if you like his writing at all: New York 2140 (probably his most accessible novel), The Years of Rice and Salt (an alternate history; not connected to his main multiverse), Red Moon and Antarctica (closest in style to the Mars trilogy, but probably even harder to find).

Have you read much science fiction in general? If you give some likes and particularly dislikes, and some direction of what types of books you'd like to read more of, I'd be happy to give you some personalized recommendations based on that.

(Same offer to anyone else here who's interested in science fiction.)

It's fine to read these works as novels after you've watched their movies. Sometimes the books have a lot more nuance to them and some details that the two hour movie skims over. Sometimes the story is just different (looking at you, I Am Legend). And yes I realize my list is a mish mash between very old and manga.

I chose this list because cultural value yes, and also familiarity. Some of these old books I end up liking, some maybe (looking at you, Dracula). If you want something recent-ish with a bit of cultural value, there's the Hunger Games books. It's basically a mish-mash of a couple of genres in one: dystopia, battle royale, drama, action, science fiction. The whole package is pretty nice if you like reading about crappy dystopias and how they like to pit people against each other in battles to the death.

Hosting list has been updated. Some creative interpretation has been exercised. Got a problem with that?

Ooh yeah thanks for putting me back on.

Guess with Christmas around the corner I'll wait for it to be over first then if Micro can start SH we can do that first, and if not I'll do a sign up thread?

No point in starting anything now and putting it on hold because of the holidays.

EDIT:
Or we could do another Russian roulette quickly. And that's totally my idea and not something Joe just suggested to me in chat.

Christmas themed Russian Roulette.

Go, go, go.

Ooh! I could host a Russian Roulette I reckon!