Comment 1 for bug 368127

I ran across this bug report when I was experiencing a very similar problem -- one which I think Adam may be experiencing.

Adam, is it really crashing randomly, or does it reliably crash when you try to save the game? When it crashed via saving the game, it will likely leave a save-file around which will also crash if you try to load it. If that's the problem you're encountering, then it is the same problem I've been having.

That problem has been reported upstream, and upstream has a patch:
http://wiki.t-o-m-e.net/BugReport930

I can confirm that after applying the patch on that page, I can save new games. The old partially-saved games (from earlier attempts to save the game) are a total waste and need to be removed. The way to check (and remove the crap that won't load) is simple: If the game saved properly, it should show up in the list of saved games (on the "New Character"/"Load Character" screen).

The saved files are placed in "~/.tome/2.3/save/". The bogus files show up in pairs, like: PLAYER.new PLAYER.pnc -- PLAYER (the default save file name) isn't usable until these two files are removed. Proper save files will have no extension (just PLAYER) with an additional user.$UID.svg descriptor file (appears to be one-line per save file, or per character -- I'm not sure. $UID is my system user-id).

I'd love to see this patch rolled in, as the game is extremely frustrating without it. A new player starts a new game, has a great time. tries to save the game, and *poof* -- the game is lost.

As the URL says, this bug is more visible on Ubuntu systems due to the use of Fortify. This particular bug wouldn't cause memory corruption until the user saves and that usually happens at application termination -- it is quite possible that folks not using Fortify would have never noticed the bug. The upstream folks are also working on 3.0. We need this patch.