The Drunken Lizard Pub

I'm not sure if you really want to fix this, as it would enable people to sleep their way past 9th level, but here is what I get:

[puff@condor eschalon_book_1_demo]$ padsp ./eschalon_book_1_demo
Setting sound driver: Default
appstub.linux signal handler 11

Machine is Core 2 Duo 6300/4GB ram ...

2 sound cards usually confuses HAL/DBUS, not pulse audio. Iif you are running 64bit, not all the 32bit sound stuff is installed, and not all the pulse audio control software is installed in either 64 or 32bit. If you can convince HAL to detect both cards (and not continuously overwrite the config ...

Or just go back to a 2.4 based kernel, this new 2.6 stuff just ain't right. (hint, if both fedora and ubuntu are moving to something, it might not work well now, but it will eventually)

configure normal (not openAL) sound then start game with "padsp eschalon_book_1_demo" (for the demo version).
padsp is the sound wrapper that translates from OSS to PulseAudio. This should work with the new (8.x) ubuntu as well.