dev_chieftain: (Devpony)
We're all caught up now! In general, I'm not sure where I'd like to see Adventure Time go. I love the show thus far, though, and if Finn's going to maybe take a chance with the Flame Princess in coming episodes, I would be totally down for that. I like Princess Bubblegum a lot, but I don't like seeing Finn suffer-- I've been stuck waiting for someone who had no intention of actually going through with anything with me before, and it totally blows. So, the resolution of him finding someone new, growing past his crush on PB and being able to deal, that sounds like a nice resolution to me. It seemed like a testament to how upset he was to see him cry, considering the ridiculous crazy stuff he's weathered with the immediate follow-up of "Nah, I'm fine, dude!"

With that said, I safely received Being John Malkovich and Interstella 5555, so now I can show them to Danny.

Yesterday's session of D&D was totally crazy. First we had to recap the events for Christian since he was away the week before; then we proceeded to do a bunch of wacky things. This included splitting up the loot we'd acquired from Zarathustra's lair while finding her necklace and mirror for her; one item found was a suit of armor imbued with the ability to send all creatures running in fear, which Sabine took. She then handed over her old armor (emblazoned with the symbol of Sulafta) to Iris, who insisted she would need it cleaned before she could use it. A spear went to Kelta and so on. (I haven't caught up the summary here, have I? Denar died when Esra polymorphed him to try to cure a plague that we all nearly died from. Ironically, the polymorph totally cured the plague-- but when turning back, Denar passed away, so we had to have him resurrected-- thanks to the gold dragon, Zarathustra, after we cured her of a madness-inflicting curse-- through reincarnation. He came back as an ogress, named Kelta.) Before we left there was some minor business, like Llewain giving Asha a raise...

IMPORTANT FACT: Everyone on the ship, except Asha, is paid at least 5 gold per week. Asha is paid 1 gold, 1 silver.

Exchange: I could be off by a factor of ten, but: 1 gold = 10 silver. 1 silver = 10 copper.

ESRA: Honestly, Asha, you're all right sometimes, provided you don't consistently complain about not getting a raise.
ASHA: Hahah...uh, gee, now that you mention it-- and since it came up naturally, and stuff, um. Llewain, could I- could I get a raise?
LLEWAIN: You know what, Asha? YOU KNOW WHAT? That's a great idea. How do you feel about making 1 gold, 1 silver, and ...two coppers?
ASHA: *flatly* Really? That's-- geez, boss, do you even have any coppers?
LLEWAIN: *checks his bags* No.
ASHA: Then, maybe you could--
LLEWAIN: Do you have eight coppers you can give me in exchange for this silver piece?
(Dev: You're such a cheapskate!
Bret: Meh!)
ASHA: Uh...sure. *he hands over eight copper pieces and takes the silver*
(Bret: And I THROW THE COPPER INTO THE OCEAN)
ASHA: No! What are-- why did you do that? That was perfectly good copper!
LLEWAIN: That's right, I owe you two weeks' pay. Do you have eight more copper?
ASHA: *hesitant* ...
LLEWAIN: You want this silver, right?
ASHA: ...okay, well. *he hands over eight copper coins for the silver.*
(Bret: And I THROW THOSE INTO THE OCEAN TOO
Dev: But WHY
Danny: Pffffffft-!
Bret: I THROW THEM. I do it.)
ASHA: No! Why would you do that?
ESRA: He's right, that's currency you're wasting, Llewain. To what purpose?
LLEWAIN: *ignoring Esra* You going to go dive for them?
IRIS: *tiredly* I will pay you five gold NOT to go dive for them.
ASHA: I can't believe you! *storms off*
SABINE: Hahaha, let's set sail before some idiot goes diving for those useless copper coins!
ESRA: They're not useless! Someone of Asha's class is honestly safer with smaller coins-- people won't assume he stole them.
LLEWAIN: Naaaaahhh.
IRIS: Honestly, he made a net profit of 4 copper, so he's nothing to complain about.

*Iris sneaks off to find Asha*

ASHA: *answers her knock eagerly* Y-yes, miss Iris? What can I do for you? Do you need anything?
IRIS: Oh, well, you see. He's too embarrassed to admit it, and it's not a raise, it's a, um, bonus, a one-time sort of thing, but this is for you. *she gives him an amethyst, worth 100 gold*
ASHA: Oh, wow! Thank you! I-I'll do whatever you like, miss Iris, really!
IRIS: In that case, could you clean this armor? *she hands over Sabine's old armor* Thoroughly.
ASHA: Sure, sure!

Once we set sail we headed for Carina, but in town were sidetracked by Maligos, who was pestering us through dream-controlling folk, and Bishop Dinta, whom we found in the local church. Taking Dinta hostage and temporarily expelling Maligos from his host, we decided to escort Dinta to the Council of Four for fair trial (which is secret code for "putting the helm of opposite alignments on him to see if that fixes him"). We nearly left immediately, but Esra worried for the crew's morale and insisted we stay at port overnight.

SABINE: No! Who cares, they'll be fine, they got paid!
ESRA: But they can't spend their money if they have to stay aboard! It's for the best, let them carouse. It's only a day, and so long as we do not harm him, Dinta has agreed to come peaceably.
SABINE: This is stupid! We should gooo, come onnn! I never leave the ship!
ESRA: Well, you should!
SABINE: Nu-uh!
ESRA: *pointing* Sabine, I order you to go out into Nys and have fun tonight!
SABINE: *lassos ESRA's arm, then ties him up and THEN ties him to the mast* I'll do whatever I want!
SYLVIA: Oh! Lady Sabine, uh...should I call back the rest of the crew?
SABINE: Leave 'em! *she stalks off the ship* I'm going into town.
ESRA: *struggling* Damn it, Sabine! ERGH. Could-- somebody help me?

Here, we made use of the Carousing Table, which I think Danny found on Jeff Rientz's blog; I might be misremembering. In any case, Sabine ended up rolling 12 and waking up with a splitting headache!

(Danny: You have the ultimate hangover as you awaken!
Dev: What're you drawing?
Christian: The thing. How much does it cost to get tattoos?
Danny: Huh?
Christian: Tattoos.
Danny: Oh, 10 gold.
Christian: Heheh, then Sabine wakes up with all her hair shaved off, and THIS *holds up his drawing* tattooed over her face, centered around her eye! This part is patterned like dragon scales.)

SYLVIA: Shall we set sail, Esra?
ESRA: Hm. Is everyone back aboard?
SYLVIA: I think so, though some of the crew are hungover. Can't hold their whiskey.
ESRA: Oh, dear. Should we wait, or will we be able to pull together a skeleton crew?
SYLVIA: We should be fine.
ESRA: All right, well in that case--
SABINE: *limps on deck*
ESRA: Oh my-- Sabine?! Is that you?
KELTA: Who is that?
LLEWAIN: Yeah, hey, do you belong on this ship? I don't recognize your face.
SABINE: *cringing* Not so loud. *scowl* Yeah, it's me.
ESRA: Did-- *frown* Did you find that diplomat you kept insisting you were going to kill? And lose?
SABINE: Naw, man.
ESRA: My goodness, you really shaved it all off.
SABINE: Yeah, yeah.
ESRA: --um, yes, Sylvia. Now we can set sail.

On the way (at sea, but not too far out of port), Iris offered her magic (cursed) comb to Esra mysteriously while she, Esra, Sabine and Llewain were on deck. Seeing that it had no effect on his hair, Iris grew frustrated with the mysterious comb and combed her own hair with it.

And turned into a medusa!

She turned Esra and Sabine into stone, but Llewain managed to avoid her stony gaze, and she became deeply desirous to mate with him. (We have been joking for quite some time that Llewain will just leave Iris-- as portrayed in the mysterious dream we shared months ago-- once they have kids, and they sorta kinda have some modicum of romantic tension going on). So she led him belowdecks, warning the rest of the crew to look away, and turned Dinta into a statue. Satisfied, she then fucked the snot out of Llewain, which was mostly okay except for the part where her snake heads were constantly biting him. (She cast slow poison on him beforehand to keep him from dying.)

Following that, she rushed off to her room and laid medusa eggs.

On the upside, Xenocrates was able to discern, through use of Esra's mage lab, how to turn those made stone back into flesh. On the downside, it required used of the medusa's blood. We decided to leave Dinta a statue for a while, and Iris turned Esra and Sabine back, then removed the curse upon herself, as well. Since she had no ability to cure Llewain of the poison until the next day, she belatedly realized that she would need to turn him to stone to successfully save his life.

We all agreed we'd let her and Llewain be inside Iris's cabin, as she wouldn't be able to turn herself back until the next day, either, and closed the cabin doors.

Iris pulled out the comb, combed her hair, and--

died, instantly, failing to survive the system shock of being turned into another being. Luckily, Llewain survived the poison-- but Iris may be gone forever! And when her medusa eggs hatched we're all probably going to get medusa'd. Particularly amusing is the fact that earlier in the session, Esra asked Iris during an argument about the conflicts between the religion of Sulafta and the religion of the Birds of Heaven if she objected to being brought back to life if she should fall in battle at their side, then, and she said she would.

Knowing us, we might try to bring her back by going to Rukri anyway. Man, there were a lot of points last night where I was laughing too hard to breathe!
dev_chieftain: (rain)
Adventure Time is awesome, but the nature of the setting and story is such that it is not actually stopping me from getting back in my freaking out over mortality place. The episode about Jake wanting to see the prophecy of his death through to the end was totally rough on my heartstrings. Damn it, Finn, I totally think your solution is awesome. Even if it makes me all sad.

In less creepy (to me) thoughts, I've been thinking about how I would handle certain elements of running tabletop games that go longer and are more deadly than the ones I've run before.

Resurrection: Now, I think resurrection should totally be available to the party, but it pisses me off when it's got never got an effect. Here's how I think it'd be interesting to handle.

*Cost: cheap as dirt. It's easy to get your friend revived.

*Urgency (part the first): If you do it quickly, then the consequences are pretty much invisible. As the resurrectee, you would essentially have a sense of having gone into the light for a moment, but then you came back. Disconcerting and weird and probably a little nervewracking, but you'd get over it after a bit. (Roleplaying will be enforced by electric cattle prod.)

*Urgency (part deux): If you take a full day to resurrect your friend, they will be Messed Up when they come back. Because in the time it took you to resurrect them, they were reborn elsewhere. They've started to forget their past life already. As the resurrectee, it'd be difficult to remember names, places. Important details of your past might be forgotten. Also, you might have the strangest urge to go back to the life you are now denied. You might even follow those urges, depending on how you want to play it. (Roleplaying will be enforced by a demonic stare.)

*Urgency (the other part): If you do it after your friend's body has started to rot (this would vary in terms of time based on terrain; a body in a swamp might rot faster/more easily than a body in a dry desert castle), there is a chance that your friend will come back undead. The amount of forgetting is higher, the difficulty of re-connecting with your friend is greater. This also puts back the use of rituals like Gentle Repose, which might do things** to the friend's soul while also preserving their body for resurrection purposes. As the resurrectee who is not Repose'd, you would essentially be like a zombie self, remembering only the most bittersweet pieces of who you once were. You could still become a whole person over time, perhaps, but you would need to make new memories to fill the void left by the old. See below for if Repose'd. (Roleplaying will enforced by the banshee howl of the unknowable creatures of the id.)

**- A body held in Gentle Repose would essentially also trap the soul, preventing it from proceeding on to the next life as it should. While resurrection in this particular idea would usually account for stillbirths (so and so was brought back to life; the baby he was going to be born as therefore can't be born), with Gentle Repose there is no baby the soul was sent to. This would have its own consequences, as the soul would be in limbo the whole time until the friend is resurrected. Instead of having the 'I went towards the bright light and then came back' experience, you might have the more terrifying 'there was nothing I could feel it THERE WAS NOTHINNNNG' experience to roleplay. Yes. Roleplaying will be enforced. BELIEVE those characters, baby.

I'm of course exaggerating the seriousness and creepiness of the scenario, and in my experience, resurrection doesn't have to come up that often. But I think the deterrents to resurrection should totally be the creep factor, and not the cost. Cost is lame. When a party is arguing about whether Jerk the Wizard is really worth the five thousand gold it'd cost to revive him, I want it to be because Jerk the Wizard was a total jerk, and not because five thousand gold is a lot of money.

As for out of character discussions about it occurring at the table, I want those to be tinged by the player's own feelings on having to roleplay coming back from the dead. If the rules are "you can't just ignore it if your other friends take too long or do this; that is a part of your character now" then the option is always there, for players who don't enjoy being melodramatic (and for shame, why are you even playing an RPG? Honestly!), to just make a new character and say 'whoa guys, no thanks. Do not resurrect me, playing a resurrected character would just be toooooo spooky!'

As for games I'm planning to run, there is STEAMPUNK LONDON coming up. I'll have to sound out my players and make sure they're still potentially available. Here's hopin'.

And back to serious towne, the bill for my first car payment arrived today. It's not due for a month, but I have the unpleasant feeling that the financing company may not be willing to accept online payments, which bites. I do not remember to buy stamps, ever.

Mr. Socks

Friday, March 16th, 2012 03:16 pm
dev_chieftain: (rain)
My aunt is going to have to put down her cat, which is super sad. When she related the whys and how it's going down, it made me get all weepy and sad, and it's not even my cat. Anyway, I keep meaning to write cheery stuff, but I wanted to mention him because we've had funny stories about him for years. He is a neurotic cat, who likes to fight and play almost as much as he likes to lick the hair off of himself. And he is very sweet.

Yes.

Uh, last night we started watching Adventure Time, curious about it. It's really awesome and crazy! We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.

Finally getting done with one BIG part of this three-part project I've been struggling to finish for work. Pathfinder is tonight, though, so I can't work very late. I'll probably do work from home to make it up, but some part of me still hopes I can magically finish the rest of the dang project before I leave for the day. Keep dreamin', right?
dev_chieftain: (chuckle)
Original Post: I hadn't realized Zac Efron was younger than me! Well, now I can begin my illustrious career of being an older lady who makes everyone uncomfortable for leering at young men (and women)!

Looking forward to it!

Edit: Did I mention I'm trying out Mortal Online? They have a 14-day free trial. The game is interesting, more or less a graphical MUD. That of course means it's also deadly, and hilariously gross; Danny has been mixing copper coins and water to eat on his character. Or, you know, preparing his own corpse from a previous run. "You have made inviting raw human corpse!" is such a clear statement of how odd it is to play MUDs.

My character hasn't done much, as I only played for a few minutes before beginning to get incredibly motion sick. First person games are NOT for me. During these minutes, I avoided getting killed by a giant spider, nearly ran off a cliff, picked up some basic skills and, realizing that 'tame animal' could be used on the rabbits swarming the forest, ran around like an idiot with my hands out as my character shouted "C'mere, rabbit! Don't be afraid...heeeeere rabbit..." until one of them became her pet. I named the rabbit Madeira, though I couldn't tell you my reasoning for that, as I didn't really have any.

Anyway, once the headache progressed rapid-fire to full nausea, I turned the game off, and I didn't really play any video games yesterday so I haven't looked at it again since. I like it, and would like to play it, but if the nausea happens as quickly as it did the next time, I probably won't be capable of doing so. Small edit: Apparently I should have looked this up sooner. This is commonly referred to as simulation sickness, apparently.

Also: It might not be animated with bouncy boobs like this contest entry I did for Melissa, but comment to this post requesting a drawing!

I will respond via MSpaint (mouse only), Photoshop (tablet) or paper (usually pen)-- whichever's easiest, unless a preference is specified.

The wackier the request the better! I will sacrifice quality* to ensure your request gets drawn. Will start drawing when I get home, if there are requests.


* - assuming you consider any of my drawings to have quality at all, ahahaha

EDIT: Drawings!

Completed: 2/3

Internet Bubbles

Slug girl (cute)

In progress (sketch not done): Faure and Esra having tea.

Would have finished all three but I got home from work so late I ended up lounging around trying to avoid computer screens until midnight!
dev_chieftain: (gulpo)
The tricky thing about Batman: Year One is that it's good, and I like it, but it's not really about Batman. I write stories like this too, stories focusing on a character that I'm maybe less attached to so that I won't be focusing too much on that character. And in the process, maybe sometimes you realize how interesting this otherwise-side-character is, because you're focusing the story on them. Since Batman: Year One is really about Jim Gordon, it's hard to say if it's only titled what it is because it wouldn't sell otherwise.

The straight-to-DVD movie they recently made of it is pretty good. The animation is superb, with the continued exception of vehicles being CGI while everything else looks hand-drawn. Seriously, guys, the vehicle CGI looks like shit. Please stop it. It is ridiculously jarring and always obvious.

Good things about it: Art style closely matches the original, I felt. Particularly noticed the almost chillingly expressionless media-persons, which felt accurate to the original comic. The fight choreography looked great, and it was fast-paced enough to be fun to watch.

Bad things about it: Vocal casting was definitely hit or miss for me. I'm sorry, Ben McKenzie, but you came across sounding a little more like a bored, but obsessive serial killer than Batman, to me. Likewise, I just don't care for Eliza Dushku; of course, I also don't care for this portrayal of Catwoman, so I guess it doesn't matter. She looked hot, she was muscular, and that was nice and all, but boy, was she petty. And apparently an ex-prostitute. Gee, thanks, Frank Miller. Still, this is nothing new.

I like Jim Gordon, so I like the story more or less. I'd never been able to read the comic all the way through because the affair with detective Essen made me annoyed, so I'm glad to have watched this, since the way that was resolved makes me interested in picking up the comic again. I do think that this is a problem I might not have if I'd read this before anything else. Then it wouldn't be symptomatic of a tiresome movement to "humanize" characters by making them awful people; it'd be the first, and I could be impressed by the idea that Jim Gordon is still a good person, even though he bullies his bullies, and cheats on his wife.

Also, rambling about the new Hobbit movie and my mistrust of it. )

Edit: I also received my second-to-last package of doujinshi, finally. This means I only have one left, and it's even the one I most recently ordered! So that is cool.
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