Masks Chit Chat.

[Raiko]

I’ve created this thread as the adventure is going to branch out a little. Mr.Handy will be playing Detective Sergeant Jones of Scotland Yard, and Zielonobrody will be playing his partner / boss Detective Inspector Barrington.

They aren’t currently allies, strictly speaking, so I’ll need separate OOC threads. Hence a chit chat thread; it’ll never rival that thread of Laraqua’s, but we do need somewhere for non-game chatter.

So this is a good time to welcome Mr Handy and Zielonobrody to the game. I’ll try to have a private “Scotland Yard” sub-forum up later today, and hopefully the police game will running by the end of next week. This is something that I had planned to do from the start of this chapter, but the player who was supposed to play Barrington never returned.

BTW: The cops are allowed to arrest the others if they like.

Hmm, more threads for me to keep in sync. :rolls:

Hey Trixie! Look another chat chat thread for ya.

[Raiko]

Since this is mostly for non-game chat, and since we really should probably know each other a little better by now (and I really don’t have time to read all of Laraqua’s chit chat threads), here’s some stuff about me.

My real name is Gary, but you already know that cus I put it in all my PMs.

I live in rainy Lancashire in the north west of England, and work as a software engineer for BAE Systems (formerly called British Aerospace).

Other than CoC, which I never get to play face-to-face, my favourite RPG is Shadowrun which I’ve played since it first come out. The nice thing about Shadowrun is that it’s easy to add Cthulhu type horror between the cracks, so my players who don’t want to play CoC end up playing it anyway!

Shadowrun’s been on hold for the last year or so, as we’re playing Paizo’s excellent Savage Tide adventure path for D&D 3.5. On the subject of D&D/Paizo I love Pathfinder (another game that’s really CoC behind the scenes) and hate 4th Edition.

Other than RPGs, I’ve got loads of kids so I don’t have much time for other hobbies or an (offline) social life (:cries:), but I love watching football (both the English and American versions). In the English league I support Manchester United, I had a season ticket until a couple of years ago. In the NFL I support the Raiders (:().

That’s contrast, one is possibly the best team in the World at the moment, and the other is one of the worst!

Oh, and I’ve got an Xbox 360, love GTA4 and I’m looking forward to trying Resident Evil 5, and possibly the new Silent Hill (might look for a review from Laraqua).

BTW: Don’t feel obliged to volunteer personal info. This game’s been fine so far without a ‘lounge area.’ But I thought I’d kick things off for those who were interested.

[Raiko]

One more thing.

I think that everyone has posted except for DSIGFUSS, so I'll try to move the game along ASAP.

[Mr. Handy]

Hi, everyone! I'm glad to be aboard.

How much leeway do we have for character creation? Do our characters have first names and backgrounds already established, or are we free to choose them? Do they already have stats and skills determined, or should we follow the character generation instructions in the thread in the General Information subforum?

I've played Shadowrun before in college and also enjoyed it, but it's been a long time. My only problem with the system is that certain numbers (multiples of 6) cannot be rolled. I like that it's open-ended so you can keep adding dice as long as you roll a 6, but the probability curve should be smoother (for instance, by adding the next die to 5 instead of 6 and adjusting TNs accordingly). Maybe this was fixed in later editions. In a game I made myself I had an open-ended d10-based system where 0 counts as zero, and you get to roll another die and add it as long as you keep getting 9s. It's very easy to calculate probabilities that way.

The last time I played D&D was 2nd Edition. I've played some non-D&D d20 variants that are similar to 3/3.5, but I prefer BRP to d20 any day. From what I've heard, you're right to hate 4th Edition.

Games are pretty much my main hobby too. These include not just RPGs, but also computer games, board games, and gamebooks. I also make my own games when I have the time, which isn't often. One reason for that is that I'm busy running Zombie Apocalypse (which everyone is welcome to join), which is probably the only game on this site that's been running longer than this one - it started on another site, though. That one's even more of challenge when it comes to keeping threads in sync.

I don't know much about English football, but I do watch American football and I'm an Eagles fan. As cruddy as the Raiders are now, they've still won the Super Bowl, which the Eagles haven't done (yet) - the Raiders even beat them back in 1981.

I have a PS3 in addition to my PC. RE5 looks good to me too, but I haven't even played RE4 yet. I've got it, I just haven't had time to play it (or Silent Hill 4, for that matter).

[Laraqua]

I run a Vampire: the Masquerade LARP in the Camarilla official chronicle where the bungled attempts to be clever by the PCs led to the building they were gathering in being cordoned off, evacuated (except for the basement floor they were in) and then being overrun by STARS. Some surrendered straight away, were processed and released. Some shot back. A couple were torpored. Some fled through tunnels connected to an underground trap door. LOTS of fun! Lots of hard work. I'm a VST for around 25-30 PCs at a game.

I used to run Demon: the Fallen but it's on hiatus as it's hard to get players who are interested in a Call of Cthulhu-type investigation game, even when it's a higher powered one where you get to play the supernaturals.

I've been running a fiendish campaign of D&D with a church that sends out teams of captured fiendish PCs against the Apocalypse.

I run too many games on here

I love Fall Out 3 and am currently immersed in it. I play WoW on occasion. I'm Job Searching and hating it. I miss being a university student. I'm deeply in love. And I wish I could have a pet cat in my flat but am sadly allowed no pets.

Also, Silent Hill rocks, as does Resident Evil (at least from 4 onward when it comes to RE). Try Forbidden Siren. It starts on Hard Mode and just gets harder but the plot is so much more surreal and awesome than anything else's. Project Zero (a.k.a. Fatal Frame) also has an awesome plot that is creepy in an urban legendy sort of way (not like the movie, but like those stories that get under your skin).

[Mr. Handy]

I played Vampire: the Masquerade back in college (and a little in grad school). I only played tabletop a couple of times, but I've been in a few LARPs.

I'd like to run more games on here, as I've got lots of cool ideas, but Zombie Apocalypse is taking up way too much time to allow me to run anything else - it's like running four games at once! Maybe once the cast of characters gets whittled down to something more manageable or during the break between Chapters 4 and 5 (there shouldn't be much additional prep work required) I'll have a chance to get something else started. One idea I had a couple of years ago is a relatively short adventure called "The Devil's Right Hand" set in modern-day Phoenix, Arizona. A notorious serial killer has just been caught, but there are some aspects of the case that don't make sense. Is the nightmare really over? There's also an idea I had even before that I call "Alexander's Possession" set in Greece in the early spring of 1941, where an Allied expedition is racing against time, rivals, and the impending German invasion to discover an artifact once owned by Alexander the Great that some believe could tip the balance of power in the war. The one I want to run the most I just thought of a few days ago. It's called "Space Oddity" and involves parallel investigations in July 1969 and 2009. This one would probably be set in Philadelphia. I don't want to give away too much about it, but it should be quite a trip!

I haven't played Fallout 3 yet, but you'll probably love Fallout 1 and 2 a lot better. The graphics might not be as impressive, but the gameplay is top-notch. You can pick them up cheap, for only $6US each (which is a lot less than I paid for them, and even that was well worth the price). I've never played WoW, but I've heard it can be addictive, so good for you for not letting it dominate you. I've played Silent Hill 2 and 3 and enjoyed them (2 moreso than 3). I haven't played 4 yet, but that's next on my playlist after I finish Space Quest 6 already. I've got Resident Evil 2 and 3 on my PC and have played and enjoyed them a bunch, but it's been years. I've got PS2 versions of Code: Veronica X, 4, Outbreak 1 and 2, and Dead Aim, but haven't had time to play them yet either (notice a pattern here? ). I don't think I've ever seen Forbidden Siren or Fatal Frame, but I've heard about them and will keep my eyes open for them.

[Decrepit]

I'm Jim, living in southeastern Iowa, U.S.

Pretty much all of my current gaming, apart from this, is board gaming. In my younger days, I played a lot of AD&D 1e, a very little 2e, and a fair bit of 3.5. I used to like to get RPG books that I'd maybe read, probably wouldn't play. Shadowrun was among them. I tend to clam up in face-to-face games; I'm a bit more frothy here, though I still tend to defer to others and play characters who aren't exactly central to the missions. I've got a couple kids (9, 7), a wife, and a cat I keep trying to give away. None of them really likes gaming much, including the cat, although he'll paw at the boxes if I let him. I have a Wii but the wife and kids use it more than me; I got a fairly high-end PC a few years ago, after a series of Macs, thinking I'd really play some games but only ended up playing KotOR (which admittedly was excellent). I'd hardly associate the GameCube with hardcore, but that was the phase when I was more into video games than now.

[Mr. Handy]

I've got KoTOR I and II and have played both of them through once each, though I'd like to play them again if I ever have time and try different things. The first game is indeed excellent. The second one is less so, but still enjoyable. I hope there's a third one, and that its designers focus on the things that made the first one great.

[Raiko]

I’m a little busy today, so it’ll probably be tomorrow before I move things on.

I’ll try to put the Scotland Yard sub-forum up today though.

Shadowrun 4 dropped the old ‘reroll 6s’ rule for one where sometimes rolling a 6 gives you an extra die. Things have kind of gone full circle, because whereas the original World of Darkness games were very similar to Shadowrun, but using d10s, the latest edition of Shadowrun is like a copy of “New WoD,” using d6s.

The new system means that results are more linear, and there’s no ‘dead spots’ anymore, but it has lost a little of it’s charm.

****************
I played 1st Edition AD&D at school ages ago, and we eventually started using various different systems for fantasy games (WFRP, GURPS and Ars Magica mainly). I owned 2nd Edition, but I don’t think we ever actually played it.

We switched back to D&D when third edition came out, as Feats looked like a fun idea, but we adapted our long running existing game to D&D and started at level 4.

My Savage Tide game is an experiment as much as anything, it’s a well designed level 1-20 adventure so it’ll hopefully show us all the good and bad sides of D&D at various levels. I already know that Pathfinder RPG is better than 3.5, but I’m determined to stick with vanilla D&D right through the campaign.

This weekend I’ve also been talked into starting another game via VTT software (Maptool), as one of my players can’t play face-face anymore. I’m planning to run Paizo’s Rise of the Runelords AP, which is excellent. I’ll be trying out Savage Worlds rather than 3.5 or Pathfinder as I’ve heard very good things about it. Between the tabletop and vtt fantasy games I’ll know which way to go in future (if Savage Worlds is as good as I’ve heard then I’ll use that for future fantasy settings, otherwise I’ll use Pathfinder RPG as a replacement for 3.5).

I like BRP, but I think it’s a little too brutal for fantasy games. Personally I like realistically lethal combat systems, but I know from prior experience with WFRP, GURPS and my old Shadowrun 3 house rules that my players don’t really feel the same way. Barring any ‘save or die’ effects, D&D normally gives you a round or two to realise that you are in over your head, so that your precious character can bug out. BRP, WFRP and GURPS don’t. One second you’re bravely drawing your longsword to face down the minotaur, the next you’re laying in two halves in the middle of a pool of blood!

Savage Worlds is somewhere in between I think.

****************
I’ve got Fallout 3, but I haven’t played it much at all yet. I never tried 1 & 2, which is surprising as I loved Baldurs Gate 1 & 2.

I’ve not played RE since RE2, as my 360 is the first console I’ve owned since my old PS1.

[Mr. Handy]

No rush, take your time. I'm pretty busy during the week anyway.

I didn't know that Shadowrun had lost its way, as I haven't played it in over a decade. I recently bought the Shadowrun PC game since I now have a computer that can run it and it dropped in price to $20, but it looks geared mainly to multiplayer battles. it can be played solo against bots, but it doesn't look like it's got a story-based single player campaign.

I've heard good things about Savage Worlds too, and I've also read through the Quick Start rules. It's a very intuitive yet powerful and versatile system.

I also like combat systems that are realistically deadly. In epic heroic fantasy, you might want to avoid that, but I've always found it rather silly that as a 10th level fighter (or even 2nd level) you can just laugh off someone threatening you by pointing a crossbow at your back. In Call of Cthulhu, a lucky shot from a .38 can kill anyone, no matter how tough, which encourages finding solutions other than combat. GURPS is actually more of a middle ground. It's easy to knock someone down to 0 HP in GURPS, as HP totals are similar to BRP, but actually killing someone through raw damage is a lot tougher. In BRP, you're mortally wounded at 0 HP. In GURPS, you can go to -HT before you even have to roll against HT to survive. If you have an HT of 12 or higher, that means you're likely to survive after taking massive damage, and you can even stay conscious and keep fighting through sheer force of will. If you have an HT of 16 or more, you're nearly impossible to kill or knock out unless you've taken at least 96 damage. Sure, you may be in a coma for months afterwards, but you'll probably survive.

You'd love Fallout 1 and 2. I have Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, but haven't played 1 much or 2 at all (again, lack of time). I did like what I played of Baldur's Gate, but I think Fallout is better.

My PS3 is the only console I've ever owned. It's backwards compatible, so it could play old PS1 games, but I haven't been lucky enough to find the original Resident Evil or Silent Hill, both of which I've heard are excellent. The vast majority of my games are PC games, collected over the last 16.5 years. Now that I've been working full-time for the last seven years and change, I have enough money to afford the games I want, but I no longer have the time needed to play them.

[Decrepit]

I remember when I briefly switched my high school players from D&D to Top Secret: SI and found it interesting that they found getting shot was kind of, well, deadly.

[trixie]

I find it amazing that in live campaigns I die more often than not....and yet on here, I've yet to lose a character. *knocks on wood*

Perhaps all the keepers are afraid of losing their players on here, whereas your presence is taken for granted of in a live campaign because...well...where are you going to disappear off to...the laundry room? LOL

Still, I love all my characters but wish a few of them would die of natural causes. It happens so often in tabletop but in two years I still haven't lost anyone on here. Weird!

Hey Trixie! Look another chat chat thread for ya.

Oh dear....my reputation precedes me. Or is that I have it advertised in my signature! On a personal note, my real name is Karin and I'm a mom of two in suburban greater Vancouver. I game a lot on here, and Saturday nights in tabletop. Other than that, I'm not a video game fan or anything, just really love to write and this gives me the chance. Plus I'm a social butterfly, so this is a good outlet for that flitting and fluttering I naturally need to do. LOL I'm a huge fan of the muppets and play on Dark and Moody Forums as well, where I play Miss Piggy and get to abuse the ranks and be completely self involved. Nothing like me! *bats lashes innocently*

[Laraqua]

The latest Silent Hill game ... I want.

End of story.

[Mr. Handy]

Trixie, you did lose a character in a game on this site. Remember Shilo, in Ash? If you really want to have a good chance of losing characters, you should play Zombie Apocalypse. I haven't lost a character yet in any games on this site, and I love all of mine too. I don't mind that they've all survived so far, though. I also am planning to run Space Oddity, the game I mentioned that's set in 1969 and 2009, if you're looking for something groovy and less deadly (which is not to say there's no risk of death).

Last week I bought a used copy of Silent Hill 0rigins (that's a zero, not the letter O), the prequel game on PS2. Don't know when I'll have time to play it, though. There's also Silent Hill Homecoming on the PS3, but I don't have that one yet - I'm still waiting for the price to come down. Is that the one you're drooling over, Laraqua, or is there an even newer one?

[trixie]

Handy, I have bad news. Shilo was doomed from the beginning. She was set up to die, created to die, and told to die by her puppeteer. So I don't think she really counts. LOL

I guess you're right though, I can't claim no one's died now. But don't you really want to give Shilo a kiss?



I have too many games, so until someone bites the biscuit I have to pass on rolling anyone new. They must die! I need BLOODSHED!

[Mr. Handy]

Well, that explains her recklessly suicidal behavior. Now I don't feel so bad about not being able to save her.

I'm in too many games too, so I know what that's like. While none of my characters have died yet, some of the games I've been in have. Good luck with the, uh, getting killed thing.

[trixie]

Yur right of course....she was a little obsessed with walking OUT the doors of the big comfy building....why would anyone leave a cinema anyhow....popcorn, pop and gummy worms galore? Heat and warm water and crazy flying things outside?

Except for the dead lady in the bathroom it woulda been quite cozy. LOL

[DSIGFUSS]

Hey Raiko...

Are we starting up again in the Spice Shop with the burgling and the Hey Hey?

[trixie]

Yes I'm also wondering about the belly dancer and the Hey Hey. While we're talking hey hey anyhow ....LOL

[Mr. Handy]

That's right, Nethaniel, you keep breaking the law, and I'll keep practicing saying "You're nicked!" with a suave British accent.