OOC

Tiberius, you go on about people spelling your name incorrectly... The word for the event where the Maori people swear at you is called a "Powhiri". It's almost spelled phonetically, like the rest of their not-quite-right words. Have some respect, man.
I personally am against the idea of a Justice League thread, unless it's not really like the Justice League on tv. This is why:
</font><ul type="square">[*]<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I don't like the idea of us all ganging up on some NPCs, or ganging up on one person who is the bad guy, as our relative powers are measured mainly by how far we are willing to go to win (like introducing world changing powers. (Of course, not nukes anymore. We've learned.)</font>[*]<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The whole Superman and Wonderwoman doesn't really do it for me. For it to work in a magic sense some characters might require Old brown cloaks with hoods and some dust. And some books. Even the background idea of the Justice League might permeate into the thread and irretrievably hamper the serious nature some might be wanting. Someone would inevitably come in with spandex to ruin it, too.</font>[/list]<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I'm a lot more comfortable with an all on all, although getting it all frantic in close quarters might complicate things further. A battle between two teams of aligned magic users in a pretty open area would be interesting, but having someone with destructo-magic cooperating with a brainwashing magic person against a light magic person and a dark magic person would need some explaining (although I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult).
However, don't let my groaning dissuade anyone from doing what they want. Thread starter on anything gets thread direction, and anyone disagreeing might be better for having adapted for situations they might generally have regarded as less then ideal.

Also, what are your definitions of the various types of magics? Necromancy is fairly self explanatory, but terms like "Magery" and "Sorcery" are not so well defined. I have personally come to define Sorcery as elemental magic in most cases (though not so much ground), and Magery as a more brainwashing, or "charming" angle at the problem. Summoning is also pretty self explanatory, though whether that coincides with summoning undead is another matter altogether. (Also, is spelling "magic" as "magick" as much a waste of time as it looks? I'm sure it is meant to convey some sort of arcane ancientness, but...)
A number of books written by Julian May examined a future in which humans went and joined into an organisation of races in the stars who utilised metapsychic powers, and these were dealt with in a simpler fashion. Abilities were collected into a few groups, such as telekinesis, redaction, coercion, creativity and extra-sensory perception, and each person had their own little reading of how powerful they were at each, though more powerful characters were generally pretty good at all of them. Latent psychic powers were spoken of too, but these didn't usually end up with people breaking out and having powers. It was more of a carrier thing, where someone's children might have powers, and so the readers could say "That's what I would have.", and not feel too left out.

As a side note, I saw some Justice League the other day. It was nice, although I realised that Wonder Woman is the stupidest character I've seen. She deflects bullets with her magic bracelets, and can fly for no reason*. She also has a magic lassoo and an invisible plane.

* - A lot of superheroes have good explanations for their stupid powers. For example, Superman has his Red Sun thing (which does happen to go against simple Darwinism, though...), and The Flash can walk through walls because he can vibrate at super speeds so the atoms and molecules pass around each other (Also scientifically stupid, to some extent, but at least they try).

Batman is obviously the best of the lot, because he has no superpowers, is a doctor, is incredibly smart, is a businessman, makes all sorts of gadgets, is inherently tuff because his parents died and the bats thing (and still managing to pull off the head-of-a-major-company thing) and most of all, he has Alfred.
However, in the show Justice League his awesomeness is to some extent challenged by the outright cleverness-in-stupidity of The Flash, who makes nice little quips about things in a very Colonel O'Neill type manner and is still very useful.

Paintshop Pro: This message takes up 2/3 of my browser area. On your windows, I can only imagine...

It's hard to say, Frost. Who knows what the long weekend will bring.

Thread idea: Magic (hasn't been done yet).

Lowest level: A fight thread where each figher chooses a different school\style of magic.
Highest level: The Justice League. (Does anyone remember the 'Who's Line is it Anyway' game where the team had to use all their super-powers to solve a crisis?)

Quote:

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Originally posted by Gerald Blake:
Tiberius, you go on about people spelling your name incorrectly... The word for the event where the Maori people swear at you is called a "Powhiri". It's almost spelled phonetically, like the rest of their not-quite-right words. Have some respect, man.

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well sorry, I happen to be racist.

And it's "O'Neall", I believe. Two l's.

My opinion on both magic and Justice League threads. What about finishing a thread that we've started before? Nothing ever went wrong with the sci-fi thread, except that too many people posted, and after it was fixed nobody could be bothered going back to it. Dark Alley died for a similar problem, and lack of interest on the part of some people.

Same goes for Fantasy RP. These were all good ideas, only they were never realised simply because people lost interest, stopped posting, or were killed by other pople who posted in the wrong context.

Inventing a new genre isn't the answer, in my opinion. I mean, we haven't done "Paris" either, but it doesn't mean that we should. You could try "The subway", but many of the better early threads worked because people had interest and didn't know where the threads would go. We seem to have done it all, to some degree, and have begun repeating ourselves.
Example: Take the mall. It started out as a simple post the described a setting. Also, the bus stop thread. and several others I've probably forgotten. These evolved very differently, the bus stop becoming a social experiment and the mall developing into a gunfight, and eventually dying because everybody just pulled out bigger and better weapons until someone produced a nuke.

Then we had the Alley. Which had an introduction (swordfighting guy) and evolved again into something new and interesting (ie, no guns) and people were willing to post. That too, died, when everybody realized that they couldn't actually hurt the other players. And of course we had lots of stupid characters, guys in cars, guys coming out of the ground, Whimpy mcDonothing aka Kenny.

I can't think of any other really good ones right now.

My point is, I don't think it's anything to do with the actual setting or basis of the thread. it's all about participation. If you have a first class teacher, with no pupils, they may as way be the most useless teacher in the world, because they won't accomplish anything. If you have a spaceship that can travel at the speed of light, but don't have anybody who knows how to fly it, you might as well not have it at all. Comprendo?

Like, for instance, "What good is a phone call, if you are unable to talk?"

My point exactly. Just my two cents.

PSPSPPPS: Bus stop has dropped off the front page. Poor effort, somebody. And if sci-fi comes back, will anyone post? I'd like to see if we can finish it.

<font color="#333366" size="1">[ February 04, 2004 04:58 PM: Message edited by: Tiberius Frost. ]</font>

I agree with you, Martin, in the sense that we can always explore new things.

But in my opinion if a thread dies before it's real story is realised then it fails. Remember the bomb thread? Both Walk in the Parks?

Sci-Fi was good, I thought, because it had a certain social aspect to it while still maintaining the action that bus-stop lacked. I'm sure there were other threads that acieved this that I can't remember right now, because it's late and I should be in bed unable to sleep. I'm not saying that everybody should make the effort to fix my sci-fi thread, I'm just saying that it could have gone somewhere, and everybody (or at least those in it) seemed to enjoy it. It took off, and died before it could be finished.

I'm one of those people that, if I watch the first hafl-hour of a movie, I have to sit there and wait to see the end. Unless it's really terrible. But it has to be really bad. The same is true for these. If a thread starts, and then dies, I get kinda annoyed because I wanted to know where that was going. It doesn't really occur to me that this is just a bunch of idiots posting when they should be studying\working\attempting to sleep.

I'm tired and can't think of anything else to write. But it's getting tiring just posting here in OOC. We could try a prison thread, but I'm sure someone would drop the soap or something.

So now I'm going to yawn and post this rubbish. And I am ashamed at how much I sound like a re-run of one of Gerald's philosophy posts.

I don't like reviving old threads because I see it as unneccessary difficulty. I mean, you obviously are attached to the sci-fi thread but I'm not. The big re-edit was, to me, time we could have spent doing a new thread.

On the other hand, it was a great thread and since I'm not in many of those, I'd be happy to go into it again. I will take a look at it sometime if no-one else bumps it up.

(Perhaps I should say: I dont' see the point in trying to revive old threads for the sake of it.)

I suppose you're right in that no genre is going to make a perfect thread. But there are definitely styles we have never done, and I think it's important that we keep trying to expand what we do here. When I talk about a new thread idea, I probably really mean a new style idea and the thread is one intended to allow-encourage it.


When you talk about threads dying... I don't see that as a bad thing. Gerald didn't seem to have any intention for his debate to rage forever. A fight, if it's pure fighting, is only going to last as long as a fight scene in a book before it gets repeditive and boring. No-one writes wholes novels of fighting.

People do write whole novels of novel, and I've seen RPG threads (Sci-Fi ones, actually... So I'll add another point of support to reviving your thread) that go on and on and on... and if they do, that's great. But I would not say a thread has failed because it died.

<font color="#333366" size="1">[ February 05, 2004 12:54 AM: Message edited by: Martin Scripts ]</font>

You're right, of course. The sizes of our OOC threads come in places #1 and #2, ahead of all of the in character posting. This is because we aren't too bothered about getting rid of these ones, and we are being lazy with our creativity again. All of our threads are fading away, still unmatured and underdeveloped. Threads like our debate were alright in that respect, as the nature of the thread had some self imposed limits, but that was as good as OOC anyway.
The idea of creating more threads, however, is still aimed at achieving longer threads - the idea is that web will find an idea we are all willing to stick with, that will be interesting in the long-term and get a few pages long (and a good story going, if we're lucky). The more avenues we explore, the more likely we are to find one with whatever nice things you hope to find in an avenue in it, if you know what I mean. Biscuits, maybe.
This concept may indeed be flawed, however. It provides an out for us if we get a little bored. It's like writing for leisure - you stop when you don't feel like going on. We get that way a bit, and perhaps instead of persevering we might just make another thread, and never get anywhere. Perhaps instead of changing what we want and finding the best thread for us we should be refining what we have and changing it to a direction that will satisfy us to a level that we are inclined produce a mature (and lengthy) thread.

To these ends, I propose the following:
1) Discussion of ideas in threads to a perhaps greater degree than is currently employed, to allow people not in charge of things to know what is inside the bounds of the thread starter's intentions and what would help the story progress.
2) A greater inclination for the thread starter to communicate with the the mods for the deletion or editing of posts to aid the thread progress. If someone's post offputs the atmosphere you were trying to make, get it changed. If they break out a nuke for no reason, get it deleted. It's not a big deal, but it can be if it hampers the story.
3) Filler posting. Even if you're not currently in an active position in the thread (Tiberius in the Hell thread is a current example), post something to give the others a break. Roll around on the ground in agony or something. Posting in a 1-2-1-2-1-2 fashion is not as fun as if three or four get involved, and mix things up.

I broke out my List Of Things To Do the other day, and decided that clocking Quake was a little overdue, so I did that. I couldn't figure out how to pass the second to last level of E4 (I just wandered around, no enemies, found a few secrets but couldn't find the end, so I grenade jumped to a rocket launcher and followed the teleporters to the end. Finishing it was good, but I hate those blobby things. Lots. They're too small, but killing one around the corner with a grenade launcher is quite satisfying, as is spraying a room full of them with the Thunderbolt.
Funny I should mention the Thunderbolt, actually. Lots of people call it th lightning gun (even in code), for simplicity, and I just found that the SNG is actually officially (I think) known as the Perforator. Kinda fitting, but it sounds a little stupid.

Currently I'm partway through Quake 2 (I don't know how far, I haven't played it much before, and the levels are more continuous than in most other games I've played. There might be a map somewhere, but I haven't seen it.
First things of note - the shotguns don't suck anymore. It might have just been Quake 1, but they're a lot better than I remember. Like Doom. Doom had kickass shotguns.
Second - The levels are deceptively linear. I mean, I found a little secret level with lots of secret compartments in it off to the side, but other than that the game gives you a lot of little pathways that all seem to go in generally the same direction and probably meet up fairly quickly. More realistic that way, I guess.

To compensate for ticking something off from my List I ended up adding Grim Fandago and the Monkey Island games. It's never going to end.
(I'm realising that this is kinda like my LiveJournal here.)

Tiberius, Gerald's going to run into you real soon. Don't worry, everything's going to be fine.
Don't die on us, lad. Were almost there.


If you really want to bring something back to life, post in it. I will read what I need to read and then post in it after you. That's like a 2 for 1 deal, and should open your topic up a bit more.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Gerald Blake:

Tiberius, Gerald's going to run into you real soon. Don't worry, everything's going to be fine.
Don't die on us, lad. Were almost there.

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Oh good, I was getting worried that I'd just die quietly in the gutter. I would roll around in agony, except I'm unconscious. Incidentally, I'm not sure that's so good. I really need to end up back in the New World for what I had planned. But whatever.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Gerald Blake:

If you really want to bring something back to life, post in it. I will read what I need to read and then post in it after you. That's like a 2 for 1 deal, and should open your topic up a bit more.

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yea, I did this with the sci-fi thing. It didn't work. I also remember doing it in the dark alley, and it worked for a little while but then died again. Though I think that was specifically the thread, the story wasn't so good.

SSPSPS: I'll stop posting for a while soon. Because I'm moving. Anyway, it just means that I'll be in a coma in hell for a while longer. but I guess that's ok.

<font color="#333366" size="1">[ February 08, 2004 07:34 PM: Message edited by: Tiberius Frost. ]</font>

Looks like we did it again. Another post in the Hell thread would be great, and I would go in after that. It has to be Nora's turn by now.
I'll post in the Sci-Fi thread if anyone else is interested, too. Or a robbery.

Tiberius, is your signature getting growing?

I finished Quake 2, and that was all good, apart from the fact that the bosses weren't too great, and the little robo-dog things were evil. Does anyone have a copy of Starcraft sitting around? That's another thing I need to do.

Can i join your txt based rpg game

Seathia, if you're reading this, you can come back if you like. We're not going to hassle you any more.

Clarke, are you planning on doing that thing in Hell? The one to prevent The Baddies from getting a foothold in the area. If you're in for that, we should talk to Tiberius. If he doesn't have anything against it he would be the best person to bring it up, as he is the elite person sent from HQ. I can't do it, as I have no real standing. That is to say, I'm ranked under you. You could do it, but that would leave Tibeius as nothing more than a glorified courier person.
Something tells me he has something up his sleeve, though. We can all go back now, get him fixed up and just say that we were out to meet one of our friends. Which is, strictly speaking, true. We can stall for a bit until Tiberius comes out of a coma / gets back online and then break the plan to the residents.

Sorry if that was a bit vague for some of you.