Messages

6496

General Chaos / Re: Post the best fight and/or death scenes you can find

« on: March 18, 2009, 04:32:40 PM »

Best fight scene of all time has to be the scene in Oldboy where he is wailing on guys as he walks down a looooong hallway. Sorry, but I can't find the video.

BAM MOTHERFUCKER

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6497

General Chaos / Re: Terry Goodkind is terrible

« on: March 17, 2009, 11:03:49 PM »

Kind of like how in Tom Clancy novels all the brances of the military get along and don't fight about funding? And their intellegence is always reliable. And only the bleeding heart liberal politcal figure keep the heroes from saving the world before page 10.

Not enough technology/weapon porn

"The president stroked his new rifle. The metal is rust blued, the stock is plain black, and the rifle weighs 9 pounds with scope. It’s chambered for the .404 Jeffrey, an old but highly useful cartridge that Hornady just brought back to life. The .404 fires a 400-grain bullet at 2,100 fps, so this is a dangerous-game rifle. It’s been to Africa twice, and has about 500 rounds through it. It is, you might say, nothing more than a highly worked-over Model 70. And this is true, in the sense that the car that Jeff Gordon drives is a highly worked-over Chevrolet."

6498

General Chaos / Re: Could your players survive the Zombacalypse

« on: March 17, 2009, 08:25:39 PM »

I have no idea what that would be like, but I would watch it.

That and "Kong of the Dead", like they talked about in the Dig for Victory Actual Player.

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6499

General Chaos / Re: Terry Goodkind is terrible

« on: March 17, 2009, 08:12:11 PM »

I don't know and I don't want to find out. Terry Goodkind is a serious Ayn Rand Objectivist and the central moral of the Sword of Truth series is that Capitalism rules and communism drools! Also, he fucking dedicated one of his books to the CIA. 4 Real.

6500

General Chaos / Re: Terry Goodkind is terrible

« on: March 17, 2009, 05:28:31 PM »

My brother has read some of those books. I never really saw the appeal and when he told me some about them I decided they weren't worth my time.

Didn't know any stuff about religion/political, I just didn't like Richard. He seemed like a real dick.

Yeah, he is a dick.

# Richard abandons his troops at one point because he doesn't think they are worthy of him.

# While being tortured by the enemy, Richard used his magic power to kick an (evil) 8-year-old girl in the jaw in a convoluted escape plot; the phrase used by Goodkind to describe this power is "Richard's thing rose up in him".

# Richard's latest battle tactics are simple - his army of D'Harans is too small to take on the huge enemy army, so instead he orders them to go to the enemy homeland and slaughter all the civilians, removing the ears of anyone who preaches the enemy faith. Because this is the only moral thing to do

# Richard eventually kills Drefan by ripping his spine out through his stomach. Despite this, he is still able to have one last go with a sword before expiring.*

6501

General Chaos / Terry Goodkind is terrible

« on: March 17, 2009, 02:44:06 PM »

I read one of the Sword of Truth books when I was 15. Even then, I knew it was terrible.

This is proof. http://sandstormreviews.blogspot.com/2006/08/goodkind-parodies.html

# In one book, Goodkind creates a nation of pacifists (led by a small boy) as a strawman argument to display why Pacifism is Wrong. The pacifists stage a peaceful demostration to stop Richard from going to war; Richard slaughters the protestors, who are "armed only with their hatred for moral clarity." Richard also kills unarmed council members.

Jagang is the leader of the Imperial Order, who are the main bad guys. Their philosophy is a bastard mix of communism and Islam, where everyone has to serve the collective and will go to heaven if they die in battle (or somesuch). Goodkind spends several pages at a time detailing the atrocities committed by the IO, in case we were in any doubt about whether they were the bad guys. They also make captured enemies eat their own testicles. They enjoy eating the testicles of captured enemies; it is Kahlan who makes enemies eat their own testicles.**

6502

RPGs / Re: Unusual items in games?

« on: March 17, 2009, 12:38:06 PM »

Another unusual item:

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6503

RPGs / Bad GM habits

« on: March 17, 2009, 02:26:59 AM »

Saw this thread on ENworld and it got me thinking. Here's the relevant part:

For the sake of completeness, I'll relate the issue that sparked the discussion. Basically, there was a water tube coming out the side of a mountain that led into a dwarven citadel (I think this is the scales of war path so this could possibly be a spoiler). The citadel was occupied by orcs or something. The tube was originally for getting rid of waste from mining and forging. Every so often they'd open the valves and dump a load.

So anyway, the PC's split the party. One half thinking it'd be a great idea to climb up the tube to get into the citadel, the other half thinking that's just dumb. The half that went up the tube spent quite some time clawing their way to the end of it, only to discover it was locked and there was no way through.

Honestly whether or not the tube had something interesting at the end is not irrelevant to being a good GM or not. Players will sooner or later do something irrelevant. However, I think one distinction from being a GOOD GM and a BAD GM is this:

A good GM would make the water tube side trek either an interesting adventure OR a dead end that takes only a few minutes of play time to run. If the players insisted on beating their heads on the dead end, the GM would wrap it up and quickly and move on to something interesting even if it meant breaking the 4th wall.

A bad GM would make the water tube boring, irrelevant AND take a lot of play time to run. If it takes an hour of PLAY time to find out its a dead end and NOTHING INTERESTING happens, then the GM is fucking terrible.

So, what bad GM habits do you have to share?

6504

RPGs / Re: Unusual items in games?

« on: March 17, 2009, 01:50:49 AM »

That is an awesome resource!  I just spent some time randomly giving it numbers and the stuff it gives you is pretty neat.  I will definitely use this somehow.

I love how so many of the weird/mystical items can be used as adventure hooks. You should submit a few of your own if you like it.

6505

General Chaos / Re: Intoduction

« on: March 17, 2009, 01:49:01 AM »

I am the host of RPPR, Ross. There's a co-host, Tom but he doesn't get on the Internet that much.

6506

RPGs / Re: Most boring campaign?

« on: March 17, 2009, 01:46:59 AM »

I joined in on a Mage campaign late in its run so my dude had little to do compared to the others. It had an interesting plot but I didn't understand most of it and the GM took forever to get anything done. Some sessions took over 6 hours and I can't remember much of what happened. But that was far from the worst.

I've been in many D&D games that were boring dungeon crawls or string of fights that typically only lasted one or two sessions. I've played in a few failed world of darkness games where the fights sucked and nothing happened.

Generally the boring games happened when the GM took too long to get things moving. I am rather hyperactive when it comes to RPGs. I need shit to happen all the time and I can't stand down time or stretches where nothing interesting happens.

6507

Play by Post / Re: dice roller test

« on: March 16, 2009, 08:50:16 PM »

what did you do to get that response?

I'll fix the 8 smiley thing tonight. I just need to add a space.

6508

Play by Post / Recruitment thread - Law & Orcdom Special Villager Unit - Risus

« on: March 16, 2009, 08:25:23 PM »

Even a world of high fantasy and adventure needs the law. When the law is broken, only a band of brave orcish detectives and the guild of prosecuting attorneys can make things right. The SVU party protects the most helpless of all kingdom's citizens: the villagers who come into contact with adventurers on a daily basis. From the lowly tavern wench to the mighty quest giving mayor, they must put up with adventurers who armed to the teeth with magical weapons and spells and many of whom are suffering from Post Traumatic Resurrection Syndrome.

Obviously, this is based on the RPPR audio skit Law & Orcdom http://slangdesign.com/rppr/2006/09/comedy/law-and-orcdom/

I will be using Risus, which is freely available here http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/downloads.htm

Characters are built as normal. 10 points, no more than 4 dice in a single schtick. You do not have to be an orc. Pick any type of fantasy genre character you want. Each character needs at least a one paragraph description/backstory. I will accept up to 6 players: 4 detectives and 2 prosecutors.

All dice will be rolled in a post. I will allow players to narrate their success or failure within reason.

6509

General Chaos / Free CC licensed video game artwork now available

« on: March 16, 2009, 06:15:02 PM »

For all you budding game designers http://lostgarden.com/2009/03/dancs-miraculously-flexible-game.html

Great as placeholder art if nothing else. I have an idea for a tower defense type game but I am not a programmer. Still, this is neat.

6510

Play by Post / Re: dice roller test

« on: March 16, 2009, 03:37:10 PM »

Rolling 2d8:

(3+2): Total = 5