Jump to content

TheRedStranger

Administrators
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    2,264

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    442

 Content Type 

Posts posted by TheRedStranger

    Horror Tabletop!

    in GM's Workshop.

    Posted

    On 3/8/2021 at 3:58 PM, MoKat said:

    The Dark Sun setting (for D&D 2e) was rather crunchy too, but it was more survival & much less horror. The box set recommended rolling up 4 "related" characters (brothers, cousins, friends, gang members, etc.) at the beginning & characters started at level 3. There have been efforts to port the setting to D&D 5e, and now there are rumors of WoTC doing something official because of playtesting for an overhauled psionics system.

    @Mike Arcade He is. Big fan of psionics and Dark Sun. He would be thrilled if they took that angle. 

    • Like 1

    Video Game I'm secretly Making Don't Tell Adults Shhh.....

    in The Game Factory

    Posted

     I was there back then, and I want to see your ideas realized. As for character design, I really do recommend Z Brush. Personally for my music I use Logic X. But unless you want to plunk down for a Mac, you will need to get something else. Matt is a pretty successful music developer (he actually did intro music for Howard Stern of all people), I will contact him and give him his music setup. 
     

     What are you looking to really “DIY” and what do you want to outsource? Music, design, and programming are very disparate skills, and it’s always good to get help with one developing  aspect here or there. The big challahs of game design, like movies and large creative projects like comics, is delegation. It’s the most important talent you must develop.

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1

    Sonic Prime

    in Everything else

    Posted

    On 3/1/2021 at 11:49 PM, Wulfsbane said:

    Only thing i've seen is some guy name Justin Peniston is one of the writers. His resume is... nonexistent as he's only written 3 episodes total between 3 series. So one a piece. However, that's kinda common in cartoons now-a-days as usually there's a collective and one person does one episode and then someone else does another one and so on and so on.

    Ian Flynn has said he's not currently attached to it but the way he makes it sound is that he's being considered or he has been in talks.

    That makes me concerned that it will be disjointed, a multiverse perspective ultimately cheapens a plot on fundamental philosophical level. Hard Multiverse Theory basically states all our choices really don’t matter, it’s all a random number generator where all potentials are actualized anyways. You make no significant cosmic differences to existence as existence allows all the  negative alternatives anyways. Heros cannot never be heroic then, the struggle of good and evil meaningless. 
     

     You can possibly do alternatives and avoid this background philosophical nihilism. But seeing how these things go...I doubt the lore will be rich enough to justify alternative Sonics in a way them makes them distinct movers and characters. I expect aesthetics over substance and a chasing of that choppily-animated (and overated) Spider-Man movie I never liked. 

    The Lab: Roleplaying Mechanics

    in GM's Workshop.

    Posted

    On 5/27/2020 at 4:10 PM, MoKat said:

    Call of Cthulhu RPG: A brief look at the lore and mechanics

    I like how Puffin explained mental health vs. physical health.

     

    {Edit: Fate does pretty much the same thing by tracking physical stress & mental stress.}

    It’s the same with End of The World but even more simple. You have a pool of positive and negative D6 dice for a check. Roll under your relevant ability score and you succeed. If a positive and negative dice are equal, your roll is canceled which gives failure a 16.7% edge in an even positive and negative roll.  This makes you clamor for more positive dice by the GM with creative or meticulous play. However risky play leads you to have more negative D6, increasing you chance of gaining stress in three relevant categories, social, mental, and physical. To get rid of this pool you must take thematically relevant traumas, which add additional dice until healed.  Since the ability scores are 1-5 you can get buffs and debuffs of 1-2 score wise or by use of additional blue dice, or at the cost of some additional negatives. 
     

     I have actually had a plan to expand this system into a homebrew, adding three additional sub scores for each aspect. Debating on turning it to a D20 system for more granularity. I also think lacks a good upgradable skill system. 

    • Thanks 2

    Horror Tabletop!

    in GM's Workshop.

    Posted

    On 11/15/2020 at 1:28 PM, MoKat said:

    Here's Puffin's Halloween Replay.

    [Warning: there's a little profanity, most due to Dick's reaction to hearing his uncle's recording]

     

    Call of Churhulu seems to be a really fun system. It breaks the mold with a low-ball d100. I think that granularity and low margining really gives it both a cosmic and survival horror appeal. 
     

    I have all but one of the main books now. But have not had much opportunity to play it. It’s more crunchy than most and since I do a lot of D&D games with people who prefer and sometimes need something more fluffy, I have to stick with a complexity level of D&D 5E or below, like EoTW.

    Illimitable Library Zone: Critques, Current Reads, & Challanges..

    in Media Miscellania

    Posted

    I just finished James Luceno’s Darth Plagues and Matthew Stover’s redemption of a flawed movie, the novelization of Star Wars Episode Three: The Revenge of The Sith.  Darth Plagues is a tenebrous romp into the seedy underbelly of Star Wars lore. Where the prequels leave you in mysteries where nothing is solved and plot holes seemingly abound, both books respectively show you how the sausage is made, and fills the jarring gaps of the films, which were by way of their filmic trilogy nature were limited in their expression of some seriously respectable lore. 
     

    In Darth Plagues the messy first draft jumble of Phantom Menace is bandaged up and molded (and a bit lampshaded) into a more cohesive narrative. We see how the Sith used all political ideologies respective weaknesses to their advantage, the rigging a privatized galactic banking system to gain increasing hegemony over a overly bureaucratic galactic senate. Both red tape and lawlessness are deftly manipulated by the charismatic upstart Palpatine (Darth Sidious) while his new master Plagues carries out an ancient evil plan from the shadows. So much of the politics is explained and embraced in a game of conspiracy, espionage, and wet works dripping with blood and venom. 
     

    Luceno’s prose is freshly Latinate and erudite and flows well from the minds of his adroit characters and offers a novel juxtaposition from the zippy action-oriented focus of the traditional films. You feel like you are sitting aside Thrawnian mastermind perspective over their flashing of blisters and lightsabers,  yet all the more eldricht in its approach. The betrayals, the missing links connected, and the new depth you discover about old favorite characters will enrich your Star Wars experience, especially when it comes to the prequels. They only moderate flaw I see with the work is that it feels rushed at the end and deserved to be more than one book. Some plot lines seem to not be fully closed, one whole beginning-chapters character, for example, is literally on pause. There is. Sort of sequel called Maul , but I already know it should have been two books instead of one. Plagues-focused first and then perhaps a more Sidious focused one second. Sadly that is the way of corporate publishing of such a big IP with so many cooks in the kitchen, I can get a since of corporate bureaucracy hurrying the plot along about the end. Overall though this is made up for a bit by making Syfo Dias and Dooku’s characters be more than one dimensional plot points to further a plot, they are given presence and arcs upon the page. 

     As for Star Wars Episode Three, it really dominates the movie hands down. Dooku is fleshed out and his perspective given time to reveal, and Grevious is not a laughable goon with a wussy cough, but a soulless and graceless reflection of the coming Darth Vader . We get to climb into a fearful and doubting Anakin’s mind, and his descent into desperation and corruption in order to save his child and wife is given a more sweeping arc. The Jedi are way less dull and stupid, their dumber actions in the Lucas script lampshaded by Stover writing them as more weary and dogged of Palpatine and certain political mechanizations more detailed in the novel’s plot. Yet this is more aptly toned to Star Wars than Luceno’s more villainous spy-thriller vibe. The flash-Gordon bombast and heroism flashes across the page in dog fights in space and saber fights on warring capital ships. But this fades slightly with later.

    Sidious looses some trademark cheese that makes him absolute cinema-redeeming fun in the movie. He is instead much more chilling and subversive, and given a more Flemming-esque makeover. He is still larger than life but not in a truly in your face kind of way. Which if both counter points were reconciled, would be absolute perfection to behold. Sidious in the novel has the robust peanut butter , but Sidious in the movie has the sugary junk-foody chocolate. Someone should have mixed them up. 

    Another example is the ending lightsaber fight and an many ways the other more martial fights. Stover adds the technical perspectives and internal drama of the fights into them, which makes them uniquely novelic, and gives us the film version cannot in such deeper character perspectives. Yet the film does do better in showing warriors external complex martial prowess (in many ways too much to the point of some technically showy and soulessness drawn out fight scenes).  If Stover made the fights more visceral and martially-minded, diving into each juke and parry with more tension and stake-description, I think it would be another example of perfect synthesis. 

    Sadly, nothing can redeem the needless plot point from the movie script on Utapau that led Obiwan on a carbon copy goose chase from episode two, and served no ultimate purpose but to enrich the villains. It makes Obiwan a useless character in the middle of the story.  Grevious in retreat has no meaning as it does not pose any ticking time bomb or big existential threat, it merely prolongs a war Sidious wants to speed up (and would have done anyways by killing the backers of the war on Mustafar).  He could and should have easily been a destructive and agenda-ruinous wildcard for both Sidious and a corrupted Anakin and the Jedi Order alike, and both a omen and lesson for a more sauve death machine to come, Darth Vader, in his defeat. Even though both him and Dooku seem to be particular apotheosis of Vader, this subtext does not chain into the plot in any actual and concrete way. The whole Grevious plot line sadly could not be relocated in a more cohesive manner to the story as a whole, but at least Dooku is not just a quickly decapitated waste of a cameo by the late great Christopher Lee in this rendition. 

    And of course, Padame still feels like cheesy Hallmark cringe in some moments. Every love scene with her still oozes with N element of the film’s corniness. Its not how people who love each other really talk and comes off weird and alien sometimes. It feels like a parody depiction of love when expressed directly, though in Anakin’s ruminations it feels more heady and emotional than melodrama of Padame, who feels rather useless to the plot in an active way in her more mandatory from-the-script scenes. She partially has descended into a trope of a pregnant damsel alongside Anakin, which are all script-mandated scenes, yet treated more like an active counter to Sidious in new scenes and scene extensions in which Stover has boldly claimed his creative license. 
     

    Overall, I recommend both books to any fan of Star Wars, even if not devoted in your love of the brand. If you must read one, read Plagues. But Revenge of The Sith will help to mend your jaded disposition of the Star Wars prequels. Both also flow really well into each other.

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1

    Survival Horror Games

    in Video Gaming Discussions

    Posted

    On 12/2/2020 at 9:31 PM, Nagol said:

    Resident Evil: During The Storm is a mod that takes place during the events of the infamous doomed town of Raccoon City. You play as alcoholic STARS reject Kevin Ryman as he goes though the streets of the doomed city in the hopes of rescuing survivors. Not sure if there will be any tie-ins to the original trilogy or even possibly Outbreak (The game Kevin stared in) but so far During the Storm is looking like a solid mod.  The creator also made a Resident Evil mod called Mortal Nights if you wish to check it out. Its really difficult and should be attempted by veterans of the series.

     

    There is a lot of buzz on this one. @Nagolcan you do an update on this one for everyone? Oh, and are you going to LP this? You make the ideal choice to crack wise from the POV of a character like Kevin. 

    • Like 1

    Animaniacs or the beating of a dead satire horse

    in Television

    Posted

    On 12/5/2020 at 11:44 PM, Wulfsbane said:

    I don't think kids now really care (nor should) about political stuff,

    To me preaching to someone’s kids about politics is like rushing to talk to them about sex, possibly even before their parents do. It’s taboo, almost always wrongly motivated, and can get creepy fast, even exploitatively manipulative.

    Most children swallow up what they see concretely and without abstract nuance. We don’t develop abstract thought until typically early adolescence anyways. For example, if I ask a eight year old if he could lift a feather that weighs 500 pounds, he would most likely say, “no, feathers don’t weigh 500 pounds.” If you do this to someone typically around 13, they suddenly will start saying something like: “If that existed, probably no. It would be heavy and dangerous to touch.”  That person is able to abstract much better and consider principles and ideas properly. However, if you say...depict politician X as a evil monster, they will either feel typically two ways, mad, sad, or confused you insulted someone their family may like, and take it as an attack on them; or, they can more literally believe that X is a monster, which helps stimulate ironically the toxic trend we have of demonizing others that think differently than ourselves, which in a modern democracy is hugely counterproductive, and individual life potentially ruinous. You can make a powerful psychological argument,  that “woke” cartoons actually are very exploitative of children due to their reactive perspective, or, the more abstract themes will be critically missed entirely, perhaps unwittingly accepted wholesale. And isn’t that the textbook definition of propaganda? It is a form of media designed to be unwittingly accepted by the masses, typically to the point of exploitation, for the benefit of entrenched power group. 
     

     It is very possible to talk about moral themes to children, bigger and more timeless moral concepts. Star Wars does this excellently. For example, Vader and the Dark Side teaches us that dark feelings like hate, fear, and anger can lead you to being consumed by evil. Hate makes you powerful today, but at a great cost tomorrow. Compassion and redemption are greater virtues that overcome this, much like Luke did with his Father.   Another golden example is Satam versus the preachy mess that is Captain Planet. 

     Overall, nuance of ever shifting politics are the opposite of that, they are abstract application of moral ideas children have yet to develop. We must not waste our time trying to make children think the way we want them to think in 2021, but how to think for their own future. That takes altruism though...and I don’t see Hollywood as very altruistic to young people. Just ask young people who had to deal with Harvey Wienstine, Kevin Spacey, etcetera. Ideologically, they are a very creepily incestous little group, clinging onto the power that gained in the 20th century during mass media, and are loosing to a more free and equal social media.  Most films and cartoons from the area are created in a 12 mile radius in crazy self-destructive San Francisco.  I don’t expect children to get anything positive from that mess.

    Sonic: Day after Doomsday

    in Auditions.

    Posted

    @MoKat, @Wulfsbane, and @Mike Arcade - you up for this now? Wanted to wait after the holidays were over. It’s going to be in a novel style, Past Tense. Prose and good writing is the way to boost your chances of survival. I will be using FATE and will help you all set up character sheets via PM’s. 
     

     If I get a yes - I will need character ideas. Hope to get us started this weekend hopefully. 

    • Like 1

    Tabletop to Forum-Based Game Conversions:

    in GM's Workshop.

    Posted

    There are a lot of wonderful Board games out there can be easily converted to online play for forums. Seeing how we are a creative focused site I think some in particular could make wonderfully useful ones in the artist atelier. 
     

     Here is one I think we could covert easily: 

     

    One we could convert easily for this section is:

     

    Got any ideas on how to do this? I do, but want hear you guys first. Also, other games you think we could easily convert?

    Sonic Fan Animations

    in Audio & Video Works.

    Posted

    On 11/2/2020 at 3:30 PM, WarTraveller said:

    Revved Up is hella fun, and it's nice they brought in Manic without endless Underground jokes. Hopefully Sonia's next.

    Feel free to share more here for us. It is indeed easy low hanging fruit just to make joke-is-just-reference jokes. I recommend avoiding them non-ironically. 
     

    Here is a good one. Would like to get in contact with the artists actually. 

    https://youtu.be/VTeleM2qLyo

     

     

     

×
×
  • Create New...