Messages

1

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: The League of Extraordinary Gentleman - Listener Edition

« on: June 17, 2013, 02:55:23 AM »

It depends a bit on the nature of the game. If we were planning on play a more investigation/horror themed scenario I think I go with one of the following:

Jessica Fletcher from Murder She Wrote (who as the nations most prolific serial killer could also fit into a high body count game).
Dr. R Quincy from Quincy ME
Carl Kolchak from The Night Stalker

YES!

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Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: The Heroes of New Arcadia - RPPR Superheroes campaign - Wild Talents

« on: June 16, 2013, 04:12:17 AM »

Heh.

I make me laugh.

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RPGs / Re: Game Fodder / Story Fodder

« on: May 22, 2013, 05:55:45 AM »

Parasitic worms that grow and live curled up inside of ants, warping their anatomy over time, until they burst out to go a matin'.

Scale that up to human-size and you've got some good monster fodder.

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General Chaos / Re: What Vidja games are you playing?

« on: May 21, 2013, 05:42:30 AM »

Stumbled across this flash game the other day, combining classic Atari with interdimensional horrors.

It's called Misadventure. Well worth a play.

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RPGs / Re: Eclipse Phase

« on: May 18, 2013, 01:24:16 AM »

Imagine Tacnet in the hands of an obsessively controlling parent.

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General Chaos / Re: Kickstarting for a kickstarter

« on: April 27, 2013, 04:46:40 AM »

Delicious transhuman gravy.

ITS PEOPLE!  GRAVY IS PEOPLE!

Of course it is. Just make sure you get Long Pig brand. Soylent Gravy varies too much from person to person.

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General Chaos / Re: Topic. It's what's for dinner.

« on: April 27, 2013, 04:16:29 AM »

Oh and I hate how the motherland likes to call Aluminum, Aluminium. They are just adding random letters for no reason at all.

Actually, the history of the whole aluminum/aluminium split  is kind of fascinating. Both versions make sense in their own way and, in the end, neither really has primacy (though, from a strictly chronological perspective, aluminium ekes out a win by appearing first in 1811 as opposed to aluminum in 1812, so far as I've found).

Both suffixes, -um and -ium, are used to denote metallic elements. The -um being part of older known elements, dating back to Latin words like ferrum (though it has occasionally been applied to more modern element names, such as platinum). Starting around 1807, however, the naming convention shifted to -ium and has been the standard ever since (titanium, uranium, and of course... palladium). Aluminium/aluminum just happened to come along right when that nomenclature was shifting.

Aluminium is the official standard of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, though they're not especially strict about it. Whereas the American Chemical Society recognizes aluminum as the standard spelling.

So, yeah... words be crazy.

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General Chaos / Re: Topic. It's what's for dinner.

« on: April 27, 2013, 03:34:15 AM »

I also hate that people seem to think they can apply the suffix bi to something and all of a sudden it changes the meaning from twice or both to every other.

I hate when people say "suffix" when they mean "prefix."
 

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General Chaos / Re: Kickstarter: Cool Stuff

« on: April 26, 2013, 04:17:28 AM »

There's a horror game called Among the Sleep that's currently Kickstarting (Kickstartering?). Jim Sterling posted a playthrough of the demo over on The Escapist.

It's like Amnesia, except you're playing as a two year old child. Looks like crazy creepy fun.

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RPGs / Re: I've got a game, but now I need a system.

« on: April 25, 2013, 12:09:49 PM »

Hm. On the one hand, I kinda want to go with Ezechiel357, as my love for FATE burns with the heat of the most ancient stars... but I think I'd have to recommend A Dirty World. It's a very streamlined game, meant for playing the exact kind of grim scenario you seem to be putting together.

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Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: The Heroes of New Arcadia - RPPR Superheroes campaign - Wild Talents

« on: April 23, 2013, 03:17:43 PM »

As much as I love trying to solve a problem by "rubbing science on it," I wanted to avoid having James attempt to "do science" to things if it didn't make sense to him to do so (within the admittedly nebulous bounds of super science).

There's a good example in the latest episode, where Chirop asks if James and Adam can help him transfer money to his son without his son knowing who it came from. The transfer could've been done easily, but keeping a trained investigator from questioning it falls well beyond the bounds of science (unless you get out into mind control, but that's not a reasonable solution).

Also, with this incarnation of James I really wanted to exercise my high-speed technobabble... 'cause it's fun.

12

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: The RPPR Catchphrase, In-joke, and Obscure Reference Appreciation Station

« on: April 23, 2013, 05:24:36 AM »

"We want information. Information... Information..."

From the intro to The Prisoner, the absolute best in psychedelic conspiracy spy thrillers that British television in the late '60s had to offer. Usually referenced by Tom.

If you have not seen this show, just watch it. And read nothing about it beforehand.

The referenced dialogue is about 2:08 into the video below.

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Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: The Heroes of New Arcadia - RPPR Superheroes campaign - Wild Talents

« on: April 23, 2013, 03:19:05 AM »

That's something I thought about quite a bit, actually. James traditionally identifies as male, which made him somewhat uncomfortable in the Pangloss clone body. And, though this never came up in game, I also considered him asexual, so far as orientation goes.

As far as the sexless green goo form is concerned, I definitely think his perception of being male has diminished a great deal by that point. Once his biological functions had been shed, James spent most of his time researching, running experiments, and making things. And with his "universal data port" power (or whatever I called it), I imagined him (or part of him) as pretty much always being online, browsing journal articles and super science forums on the darknet. As he takes in more information--and he takes in a lot--the percentage of his hard drive taken up by his original biological memories gets lower and lower.

He still has memories of being physically male, and of being raised as and considering himself as such. If you asked him when he was in the Pangloss clone or even the robot, he would still have said he was male. But he's probably more comfortable in the goo body than he's been in a long time (though it takes some getting used to).

At the end of the day, while James is aware of psychology, sociology, and gender studies, his primary mental focus is always on technology, so his own gender isn't really on his mind that much. If somebody straight-up asked Green Goo James if he still considered himself male, he'd pause briefly, cock his head and say, "I suppose not, no," before either returning to what he was doing, or engaging the person who asked (or just himself, thinking out loud) in a philosophical discussion as what it might be like to be born as the substance he is now, never having the biological sex mechanisms that we tend to tie to gender roles. Then he'd probably wonder if he could track down the giant shoggoth/godzilla at the bottom of the ocean and ask it. Well, not ask it as such, but plug in and translate its thought impulses into something human-readable. Then he'd wander offer, muttering about research methodology for inter-species direct thought translation...

Wow. I just realized how much I miss playing James. He was fun.

Externally, I just keep calling James 'him' to keep from coming up with separate nomenclature. Calling him an 'it' would seem kind of rude and objectifying. To me anyway. James likely wouldn't care too much.

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General Chaos / Re: Kickstarter: Cool Stuff

« on: April 20, 2013, 10:35:55 AM »

Although their rather ambitious kickstarter failed, the folks behind Project Awakened are at it again, pursuing funding on a more limited scale through their own website.

It's a single player build-your-own-hero action game. Super powered customization without MMO bullshit. I need this to happen.

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Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: Pericles's Twitter Account.

« on: April 20, 2013, 09:23:49 AM »