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AOL NEWS YEARBOOK Earthdate June 1996 |
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AOL NEWS YEARBOOK Earthdate June 1996 |
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THE MONTH IN BRIEF June started with a rash of dead-deaths... six people died on the same planet in just a few hours, due to an error by the owner; and one person died because of a game error and become the first person ever to be reinstated! See the story below. This was followed by WormHole11 going dead-dead during the Cup of Fearlessness challenge in Arena Space - he got so over-excited that he forgot to renew his insurance; and several deaths on the planet Odyssey, a very nasty death-trap that you should all avoid visiting. The GM puzzle was changed... just a little, but it was enough to throw all those who had been given the solution into a complete panic! A whole bunch of new regular events were started: the Magellan Cup Rally Race, Fed's version of Jeopardy, and Karaoke in the afternoon and at night.
This month's pin-up is the centerfold of the calendar! And the figure we see revealingly unclothed is - Cryptosporidium! We see the ugly blob sitting in a puddle of slime. Only scant scraps of clothing hide the delicate parts of Crypto's body. As you peer closer, it looks as though the clothes may actually be the remains of something the blob ate, rather than meant to cover its body. As the putrid one strikes a provocative pose, you can't help but notice the graceful curves of its flanks and the tender though pockmarked flesh that is visible in such abundance. You admire the slimy trail that it has left in its wake and inhale the malodorous stench that lingers in the air. You sit in wonderment and admiration of this (literally) deadly beauty with its killer body. Can you contain yourself? Hopefully you will be able to - at least until seeing another pin-up next month.
Things have certainly been morbid in Fed this week, with lots of dead-deaths to keep tongues wagging. First were the Golfspa 6, proving that sport really can be dangerous! One by one, in the space of a few hours, six people visited Golfspa, got shot down in space, and then died while walking from the hospital to the insurance office. The reason turned out to be a tragic mistake on the part of the planet's owner, who had been editing his space locations to make them more dangerous, and had accidentally made a ground location deadly as well. He's now doing his best to help the unfortunate victims climb back to their previous ranks. A day later, JTMoomau went down in Fed's history as being the first person to go dead-dead and get his character reinstated. That's right, in all the years Fed has been running on various sytems, nobody has ever been restored after a death, until now. Even such luminaries as Hazed and Freya, when they went d-d, had to climb the ranks all over again (and Freya was a Senator at the time!) So why was an exception made for the Squire of Mba? He was given the rescue treatment because his death was caused by a bug in the game. The planet he died on, Alphaone, has a mobile called the Patrol. One of Fed's puzzles also had a nasty, dangerous little mobile called the Patrol. And the game got its knickers in a twist over which mobile was the dangerous one... JT died on Alphaone, was sitting innocently in the hospital, when the Patrol came in and shot him quite dead! To give you some idea of just how unlikely it was that JT should die this way: the bug that confused the two mobiles was in the game for just 4 hours, before the TechDroid spotted it and fixed it. The mobile on Alphaone shows up in the hospital every... say... 15 minutes. And there was a 1% - just 1 teeny tiny % - chance that it would kill someone it encountered! So because JT's death was very definitely caused by a problem in the game code, he has been reinstated at his former rank as Squire of Mba. This does not apply to the Golfspa 6. Although their deaths were no fault of their own, they were not caused by a problem with the game; they were caused by the PO making a mistake. The rule in Fed is that if you go d-d you have to climb back up the ranks yourself, even if the death wasn't your fault, (unless it was due to a screw-up on the part of the Fed team). This isn't the first time that players have gone d-d on player-planets; sometimes it is due to accidents of this kind, sometimes it is due to maliciousness on the part of a PO who deliberately makes a death-trap planet. It is one of the consequences of giving POs the freedom to do what they want on their planets. We have, in fact, tightened up the rules recently to make it less easy for people to make death-trap planets, either by accident or by design. It is no longer possible to put a death-flag on a hospital or on other important locations. We have considered taking things further, and forcing all planets to have an insurance office in the same location as a hospital, but we are very reluctant to take away more freedom from POs to design their planets as they see fit, or to make Fed so totally safe that there was no element of risk at all. A final word of consolation to the Golfspa 6 (small though it may be). Climbing the ranks a second time takes far, far less time than it did the first time, for two reasons: you have done it once before so you know what you have to do and won't make mistakes this time round; and you should have a network of friends to help you out with groat-loans, offers of jobs and so on.
You may have spotted a small green-skinned woman hanging around in Chez Diesel, wearing a snarcott-hide flying jacket and muttering over a pile of computer print-out. You may have wondered who this person is. Well, we're going to tell you. Bella is the character that the creator of Federation, Alan Lenton, has always used in the game on other system. He's just been able to get hold of the screen name on AOL, so at last can resume his career as Bella. Not a great deal is known about Bella's background. She comes from the planet Rigel, where all the natives have green skin (something to do with chlorophyll). Her favorite word is "Phooey!" And, most importantly, she has a very large... [THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CENSORED BY THE GALACTIC ADMINISTRATION]
Have you heard these being said? Here are some of Fed's common sayings, as collected by LucasW123: From Groundhogs - Where do I get a
permit?
The Department of Justice recorded the issuance of 534 Imperial Edicts this week. Once of the edicts of note is official Imperial Edict 19.8-5D. Although the full text of this edict is 7 pages long, after careful translation and distillation by our staff of lawyers, the essence of the edict is revealed to be this: Wpoco is at no time in the future permitted to simultaneously have access to a contraceptive, a time machine and the duke of Zippy. Obviously a proclamation meant to protect the timestream, this regulation raises a series of intriguing questions. Does this mean that the confusing Occcy has offspring? What would such a child look like? Is the child (or worse yet, children!) already among us or yet to be born? Is there any truth to the rumor that NAMcD is Occcy's long-lost son? And those questions are just the beginning. What would happen to the timestream if Wpoco were to have a contraceptive, time machine and Occcy all at the same time? The possible alternate histories and futures are mind-boggling! When asked for her comment on the new edict, Wpoco would say only 'Snoorfy' before going into a prolonged sulk.
After some of the mail we received this week, we thought we should let the publicity seekers out there know that insulting this publication will not earn you a mention in the news or the yearbook. On a related note, if anyone knows where droid parts can be purchased cheaply, please let us know. When we put our mail droid back together after the unfortunately weekly explosions that occur in opening the mail, there were several parts that we simply could not pry loose from the wall..
The Grand Emperor Ming the Merciless has been seen out and about in recent weeks. While he has been out on these little jaunts of his, it seems that Ming has kept himself amused by flogging some of his subjects. Innumerable citizens have been dragged before the Emperor and whipped until barely alive. It seems that no-one is safe from the whim and caprice of Ming, as we have heard that even a Host has been dragged before the Emperor to feel the bite of the scourge. It seems though, that the unnamed reptilian Host enjoyed the experience so much that he has taken up self-flagellation as a hobby! Although the best defense against flogging is a set of fast legs (i.e., run at the first sight of Ming) it has been said that a remedy to the great fatigue after flogging is to drink great quantities of alcohol. Although the news team hopes never to have a chance to test out this solution, it has become a general practice to drink heavily as a preventative measure.
As you know, one of the great joys of playing Federation is the opportunity to role-play. Here is a terrific example of superlative role-playing: AlexisKai suddenly raises his
weapon high. Moments later, the blade glows brightly, and
he slices it down in a wide arc. Amazingly, the scythe
opens a rip in space, which widens like a cat's eye to
reveal a dark abyss, fractured by lightning.
TCNRaptor walks to his ship and as the sun is falling to a peaceful sunset and presses a button on the side to make a ramp fall down slowly and quietly and then he walks up the ramp and you feel the warm sunset hit your face just as the ramp completely closes.
In dog years I'm already DEAD!!! Deathiscom has just gone north.
Your comms unit relays a message
from Shapeless6, 'Where are you when you start as a
newbie???'. Your comms unit relays a message
from RIPsgt, 'what do these programmers do in their spare
time?!'. Your comms unit signals a tight beam message from Pack84084, 'Fighting is bad. If you don't have weapons that is.' Your comms unit relays a message from GASTR6, 'is the castillo exchange on earth?'.
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