Found this article while looking for Vegan builds... I, personally, think that the author is reading waaaayyy too much into the skill, but hey, if it makes her happy then I'm all for it. Personally the only thing the skill did for me was to figure out how to kill animals without getting the debuff...
I laughed so loudly at your comment But isn't it great that we can all learn different things from the same input? It's a testament to our ingenuity (and it makes change harder, but ultimately also makes it possible in the first place)
Somebody tell me more about this "online fantasy game"? How do I play multiplayer? Well anyways, any publicity is good publicity
^ Also you hardly intereact with secret Vegan cults, you just pick the next level up in the skill. I'm not sure they even played the game, maybe they saw a screenshot and based it off that.
Actually the entire skill tree is a joke playing off of the graphic novel's/movie of Scott Pilgrim VS The World. One of the Evil EX's is a Vegan, as well as some other stuff like the Simpsons If you watch the movie you'll see the hilarious live reenactment of his fight with him, where Scott tricks him into drinking coffee with creamer in it. The Vegan police come in and it turns out that was his third strike. They strip him of all his Vegan Powers, making him a Fallen Vegan. "No Vegan Diet, NO VEGAN POWERS!!" BTW Level 5 Vegans dont eat anything that casts a shadow (see, simpsons)
The vegan skill line went in because I'm vegan and I'm basically making fun of myself and some of the silliness that occurs in veganism in general. It's just us putting a bit of ourselves in the videogame, like Daniel's scandinavianism causing us to include Lutefisk and a bunch of viking references and Nicholas' math degree and general nerdiness inspiring me to make a Mathemagic skill line (as well as the sadly cut Hermeticism, which would have been a most English school of magic). The Scott Pilgrim tie-in was just a happy coincidence but it did suggest some good ideas for mechanics -- I didn't actually see the movie for a long time, but people kept telling me to see it because I was 1. vegan and 2. had bleached hair off and on for a while there. And yeah, you did get the Simpsons reference. Oh, and the "fallen vegan" status was, to my mind, a riff on the D&D concept of a fallen paladin. Whoever wrote that article clearly hasn't played the game and doesn't realize that most of the skill descriptions are kinda BS. And that Dredmor is not an online game, as pointed out. Still, I love the idea of mysterious vegan cults skulking around... shall have to do something with that if I get a chance. I think it's hilarious that all these veg. sites have picked up the story. In the grand scheme of things it's just a bit of fun and I suppose the inclusion of veganism in Dredmor may show people that vegans exist and that us vegan cultists can indeed have a sense of humour about ourselves.
(off-topic really, sorry) I was and still am very curious towards Hermeticism... will that be added at a later date? (now I could say something about this topic, but I feel it's more honest not too, because it'd be fabricated nonsense not coming from the heart just so I could validate somewhat my offtopic post)
The way we made the expansion we brainstormed up a huge list of new skills then said to ourselves that we needed to deliver at least 5 of them in completed state the meet the requirements we set out to fulfill. We didn't do the Hermeticism skill because it required a chunk of extra code that Nicholas simply didn't have time to do. Likewise, Magical Law would have required some new spell code. Instead we opted to go for the taxa tags and polymorphing code and I think it turned out very well. Maybe in the future we'll get that Hermeticism skill. Maybe!
Oh yeah Magical Law! Okay, fair enough Can I ask that if at some point it becomes extremely unlikely that you're going to still add it, that you then give us your ideas so that we may make a mod with those (and any other fun unused ideas)? -> Back to Vegans!
This would make me extremely happy. The fire and ice reference was a fantastic little surprise; would love to see more English-y things.
Actually, if you look in expansion/game/skillDB.xml , you'll see the Hermeticism skill tree commented out there, with the names and descriptions of all the skills in it. Same goes for Magical Law. The Tourism and Polearm skill trees are in there too, but those don't have any skills listed, so I'm assuming they never got that far on them. So the ideas for those two trees, at least, have already been given to us. Of course, I can only guess what a "Sigil of Ambulance Chasing" would have been... ^_^
Tourism ? My favorite Nethack class could be in DoD ? Sweet. Being Vegetarian myself, I thought I'd really enjoy playing a Vegan but it turns out I like XP more than animals. There's been a looot of BS around vegetarians and video games lately, especially with PETA. Im glad DoD went and had fun around that before someone else like PETA went and did a fake DoD where you have to put lutetofu into tofugod statues...
I don't have a problem with veganism, in principle. I wouldn't recommend it as a lifestyle choice; but if it works for you, great. What I do have a problem with are some of the more extreme points of view that some vegans hold. For example, I got into a long argument with a self-professed vegan in a Skyrim forum -- she wanted to know if she could play the game and not kill animals (particularly predators -- her words -- because they contribute to the environment). Killing dragons was ok because they are 'evil monsters'. And killing people was ok with her as well. I half-seriously said that, as a 'person', I should feel offended. It didn't bother her to let a wolf chew her face off without defending herself, but killing a person was 'ok' in her book. The argument went on from there, and she continued by saying that there were 9 billion people on earth, mostly doing harm to the environment, so killing them is not so bad, but killing animals was evil because there are so few of them. Granted, the conversation STARTED to be primarily about a video game, but as it went on, it just started to get creepy. Good thing I didn't bring up cannibalism -- I'd hate to hear her views on that.
Doesn't it make you wonder what she is so afraid of that she would rather have a belief system riddled with internal contradictions and self-deception than face reality as it is? (this not being a comment on vegans in general, just on this one)
T_T Actually: It seems not that tasty, but it's cool that even such a weird fantasy appears to have some sort of correlation in real life
