Western culture has changed quite a bit from the old days. Most people now use swear words on a daily basis, and rarely draw criticism because of it. This is because mainstream society is finally waking up to the idea that the notion of "profanity" itself is rather nonsensical.

These words are permanent parts of the English language that have evolved over thousands of years. They have etymologies and histories as long and complex as any other word you care to name. They are used by everyone at one time or another, because at the end of the day they are just words, and cannot do us any harm. Most children hear profanity every day, and sometimes even employ it themselves. They still somehow manage to grow up into productive adults all the same.

What is it, exactly, that makes swear words inherently "bad" when others that have the exact same meaning are still perfectly acceptable? It seems foolish to the point of superstition to imply that someone using such words is committing some kind of infraction against society, or that their vocabulary is somehow limited to the "potentially offensive."

If you wish to take offense from the use of some specific word that is not directed at you, that's your privilege, but keep it to yourself. Don't push others to censor their words because of your own antiquated notions of propriety.

It has only been a couple of days since I found out about this game, I saw a series of videos on Youtube. After my interest in roguelike-games had been awoken by "Dwarf Fortress" a few months ago, I started exploring the genre in depth. I played a good amount of them or at least got first impressions otherwise, but "Tales of Maj'Eyal" undoubtedly is one of the best I have seen so far. The only thing it is lacking for me is the randomness of the world, it becomes difficult to play through the same parts of the game over and over. But since I started out with "Dwarf Fortress" I am probably spoiled in that regard.

Overall this game does deserve to be mentioned when talking about the best of the best. But judging from my own experience, I can not be sure if the outcome of this contest has been influenced by the sheer number of players who even know a particular game. Roguelikes aren't games of the masses, so statistics can and will be deceptive.

I am getting off-road here. Just wanted to say that ToME is an awesome game, that it deserves it's place in this contest, that it is an incredible gift to be able to play it for free, that I do not care about minor things you are rewarded with by monetarily supporting this project, that I do feel bad I have not yet donated myself for all the fun I have gotten out of this game and that the terrible Internet exposes more and more people who need their noses broken by me.

Thanks for the work and effort put into this. And congratulations on being the best roguelike of 2011!

PS: I know I am late. But should I really care?

There was a blogpost with some level of profanity, but I don't see it at a quick glance. It may have been deleted.

I can see the request, first off because I also find excessive swearing annoying after a while, and also because what if a kid happens to read a blog?

There's always a better way to word something than the swearing, think of it as a challenge if you want, a way of expanding your vocabulary beyond the potentially offensive.

If nothing else, at least keep it to what you'd hear in a PG movie rather than an R would be a great first step.

Why? What do you have against profanity? It gives languages flavour and colour.

I like this a lot.

"i think the active talents would be better on the left side default, there are the other infos of the character too"
Agreed.
But greate release. ;)

some feedback:
- there's no info about the level of the arena
- in the arena the sun paladin has no image, it is an @ (or is it a joke? :)
- it looks like when an enemy unit has "burn(1)" it will get no more damage, so this is kinda misleading
- the number of the shields are kinda ugly, hard to read (maybe there is an other number under them?)
- is it intended a skeleton can be healed by the heal spell of the archmage?
- i'd like to see the damage of the wands in the description
- i think the active talents would be better on the left side default, there are the other infos of the character too

I think general ASCII is defined in source code, I dont know how to change it without disable online profile.

You can try this http://tomenotes.wikispaces.com/file/detail/te4.rar

Any plans to improve on the games general ASCII? I've seen a lot of requests for more of a Brogue style ASCII and I'm sure a lot of players would use it (I'd post links various places too if anyone took on that project).

Once you've clicked edit, click on the bubble thingy
[]

And just drop it where you are situated. It will then bring up a little dialog where you can type your name and additional info if you want.