last updated 11/11/2003
I've had all I can stands, I can't stands no more! The Discus message board software is apparently fond of eating itself beyond a certain number of users, and did so again today. I've been tinkering with an alternative for a few weeks now, and although I had not planned to open it for public use for a while yet, I've decided to go ahead and do so. The functional new site will be live in a few hours. In the meantime, I've locked down the old message board to prevent further corruption issues.
In other news, I know many are anxious about HW028. It's been several weeks delayed due to a lot of people dropping at the last minute. Some had very good and valid reasons for this, others did not and weren't even planning on the courtesy of letting me know. Hopefully the game will be run by RSI before the end of the week.
"Know, o Prince, that there came a year when the Discus software devoured itself, causing no end to the laments of Crom, and igniting a cataclysmic chain of events. Not since the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, had there been such an upheaval throughout the land. In the midst of this whirlpool of uncertainty, when the fate of the world, itself, was in jeopardy, hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer of both man and beast, to lead the exodus from Discus to parts unknown, to new lands and new software that lay unexplored - to a place of high adventure.
From the four corners and from the shadows they came, bold warriors and daring priests, great generals and infamous wizards, led by a Son of Cimmeria - Its greatest son of all.
And in the hour of twilight, Crom slept not, the fury of a thousand storms upon his breath, as the world that had been was fashioned once more. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but what is Hell when a god pours out his wrath? Though the world shook at its foundation, Crom heeded not the lamentations of neither men nor beasts, and all were left to fend for themselves, in the face of nature gone mad. Heavy are the beads that drip from a god's forehead! Pray that they land not at your feed, lest you drown in the wrath to follow.
October 29th, 2003
HW028 may be the death of me, as far as delays and frustrations go. I waited a couple of extra days to see if the straggler turns would arrive, but as of right now I'm still missing five: Kambulja, Kosala, Khauran, Argos, and Stygia. If I don't see 'em by the time I'm ready to make a mail run this evening, they're going up for grabs and you're out the setup fee to RSI.
October 12th, 2003
I'm aware of the login issues on the message board. It is apparently
due to a corrupt password file, I'm working to correct this. Update: I've
restored the file from an older backup. However, if your profile is newer
than this backup, it won't be there. If yours doesn't work, try requesting
a new account with the same username as the old one. In some cases this will
also recover any customizations made to your account. If you still have issues,
drop me an email.
In other news, the gun has gone off on HW028...due date is midnight on the
26th!
September 29th, 2003
I've posted an update on the HW028 status in the Website Feedback section of
the message board. Hopefully the assignments will go out within a few hours.
September 15th, 2003
The Organizer has filled, I'll be sending out invites posthaste. This one's going to be another Total Privacy game, so remember not to make any kind of communications about it!
Update 09/19: 35 confirmations in...can it be that we'll start early this time? Naaaaahh....
July 7th, 2003
I'm aware of the problems with the message board, thanks to all the folks that wrote in to let me know about it. It appears that around 2am local time last night something went horribly wrong with the server, and it corrupted a large number of files that Discus uses to maintain itself. I'm restoring from a backup now, but there will likely be recent users and posts lost. I'll post here as soon as I have it running again! Update: Everything seems to be working again, I was able to restore from backup.
April 11th, 2003
I've done this late at night, so if you find any errors in the new map updates, please let me know. New maps include 686 final, 695 fifth PY, 706 final, 711 PY 5 and final, 713 PY 4 and final, 719 PY 4 and final, 721 PY 3 and 4, 722 PY 2 and 3, 731 PY 4, 733 PY 2, 740 PY 1, and 742 PY 1. Amongst the many contributors are Jeff Lipson, Clay "the Mouth" Fette, Bill Hufft, Andy Napoli, Laurent Lerner, Nate Hodges, Old Warriors, Vecna, Jonathan Sander, Ken Jones, and Fabrizio Colitti. Thanks for the maps, folks!
March 16th, 2003
Well, MOST people don't want to burn me at the stake any more for the changes to the message board. And I see a few things, like the post count ratings, have met with general acclaim. So maybe it's not all a bad thing? Other than topic listings more than one level deep not making it into email headers, I think all the complaints have been straightened out now...and that particular one requires more programming skill than I currently possess. If someone good with Perlscripting wants to take a look at that little issue, please drop me an email.
Today's cover picture comes courtesy of Charles again...he seems to think I'm a lazy bastard for not updating it more often. I told him not to talk about my momma that way.
There is a fairly monumental pile of maps in my inbox, I guess I'm going to have to post some of those too. I'll be doing that in the next day or so.
January 31st, 2003
I think most of the kinks are worked out of the Discus upgrade now. Please continue to use the feedback section of the message board to let me know of any problems you find. More changes to come, stay tuned...
January 29th, 2003
Going to be some fairly big changes to the HWE in the next week or so. First one is starting today, as I upgrade the message board to the new 4.0 version of Discus. If you can't post, don't panic...I should be done by late afternoon.
December 25th, 2002
In what's sure to become a Christmastime hit tradition, you are once more treated to Santa Conan. Merry Christmas to all of you, wherever you are. I hope you're spending time with family and friends, and having a wonderful holiday season!
November 6th, 2002
HW025 has filled and positions have been sent out. Good luck to those in the game!
August 23rd, 2002
Two positions in HW024 have gone begging at the last minute, and one of them has a non-working email address. If anyone would like to get in on this game (total privacy, no message board or email), please drop me a line. Those already waiting for HW025 would get priority.
Update 8/25: Positions filled, turns going out in the Monday morning mail.
July 24th, 2002
HW024 has filled, and confirmation requests mailed out. Woo! Don't forget, it's total privacy, so no chatting, message board threads, etc. There's a wild rumor floating around that I might be playing in this one, so if you send checks, make sure you don't note your kingdom on them... :-) Also, for those who really really need to, I now can accept PayPal, even the credit card stuff. But you'll have to tack on another ten percent for the fee they charge (at least I think that's the way it works...in any event, it's fifty cents on a five dollar transfer).
Update: I've filled that vacant position, proceeding on schedule.
June 24th, 2002
New to this update: many new maps, thanks go out to Ghab, David House, Fabrizio Colitti, Vince Falcone, Jeff Lipson, Laurent Lerner, Mike Cannon, and Jonathan Sander. Also up is a Brythunia spotlight by the effervescent Steve Smith!
Just to address a few questions coming up a lot lately... First, I'm not updating the site as often as I used to. This is mostly because I'm not spending as much time with HW as I used to do, as well as a general lack of enthusiasm from the peanut gallery (I mean, come ON guys...winners of Organized games aren't even bothering to send in quotes! Where's the boasting?!). Does this mean I'm stoping HW completely, or won't keep up the site? Of course not! But I'm not going to have the time to make weekly updates either. Also, if you have a problem with the message board, PLEASE first take the time to read the main message (below the topics) as well as the 'Issues and Downtime' section before emailing me with the problem. I'm happy to help, but I'll burn out a lot less quickly if I don't have to answer things you can fix yourselves.
While on the subject of the message board, there's a major upgrade to the Discus software I use to run it coming down the pike soon. After some deliberation, I've decided that rather than upgrade (again) the existing forum, I'm just going to start clean with the new version. This will mean that everyone (one more time) will have to re-create their logins/profiles, but I'm afraid that if I do an upgrade, I'll just be carrying over problems from the old version. I'll keep the old one around for reference for a few months, but for space reasons it will likely go away eventually. If you would like to help out the HWE, it would be great to have some folks volunteer to create FAQ's from a lot of the existing topics. Be a shame to lose all that information.
March 25, 2002
This update might be more properly subtitled the "Holy Crap that's a lot of maps!" update. Many, many new maps up, too many to list. Thanks for them in no particular order go out to Ryan Love, Cary Tonne, Aaron Aanerud, Jonathan Sander, Scott DeBee, Lacy Jones, Clay Fette, Laurent Lerner, Andy Napoli, Lee Miller, Ken Jones, and Fabrizio Colitti. Sorry if I missed any names...there were a shitload of maps in the pile!
I also did some general cleanup in the ROKs, and will be pruning the discussions soon, so if you have some pet posts in the archives, might want to copy them somewhere. I have a Spotlight on Keshan to post up, as well as some updates to the Winner's Circle, but frankly after three hours of Photoshop and Homesite, my eyes are crossing. More updates to come tomorrow.
Update 3/25: Ok, three updates to the Winner's Circle from recently-completed games. As an FYI, due to lack of participation, I will be discontinuing the quotation part of the Circle, and just listing player/kingdom combinations. In addition to a lot of minor tweaks and fixes that you won't notice, there is also a review of Keshan by Ryan Love, and an interview with Crom's Pet by Clay Fette. Thank you, Ryan! Um....thanks, Clay?
January 8, 2002
It's not only the first major update of the year, it's also likely to be the single biggest pile o' goodies to hit in one night for the whole 365! I'd forgotten how much work it was to crank out this much at once, but since I've been playing a lot of DAOC lately and neglecting the HWE a bit, I just had to lay as much zesty sauce on this dish as possible.
You'll first notice that not one but two Organized games have just come to their end. In HW 702 it was Alaric Skinner's Khitai that reigned supreme, while the highly-coveted brass ring from HW 697, the HWE Champions' game, goes to Rasmus Pederson leading Uttara Kuru. Congratulations, gentlemen! I have received a final map and some comments for 702 (thanks for the map, Russ!), but nothing yet for 697. Please, top ten finishers from both games...send me your comments? And where is that map, dammit?!
Speaking of maps, there are a whole slew of them up, including latest peace years from 667, 706, 715, 718, 722, and 726. Credits for these in no particular order are due to George Habrecht, Ryan Love, David Sander, and yours truly.
But wait, there's more! Also up is some new fiction from Vince Falcone, as well as a Spotlight on Iranistan by Chance Litton. Last but not least, there's *gasp* a new Scribe interview as well! I think everyone will agree that this one is, well, unique. I have another Spotlight in the pipeline, but this exhausts my supply of interviews...someone wake Brent up and get him writing again. Enjoy, everyone!
January 7, 2002
Time to update the graphic, especially since none of you ungrateful louts showed any appreciation for my 1337 graphics skilz in making the 'Santa Conan' graphic. Hmph. Lots of stuff piled up for updates, will start putting them out tonight. Oh, and for those who wondered and don't pay attention to the message board info space, a lot of the archives HAVE disappeared. In most sections I've trimmed everything over six months old to save space, which was threatening to eat even the expanded space of the new server.