House of Ainsley: Out-of-Character Discussion

Well, I just got done making more pogs and underlays, and I've come to a realization:

Lava is really frickin' hard to doodle up.

The Lava pattern that comes with Paint Shop Pro, unfortunately, looks something like red pancake syrup poured over darker red pancake syrup. Real lava doesn't look anything like it. It's a whole smattering of yellows and oranges, with some black or dark gray chunks of crust floating on top wherever the lava's cooling off a bit. It's molten rock, so you kind of have to expect that. So, being as committed to details as I am, I Googled up a bunch of lava photos, copy-pasted them into PSP and went to work.

And, well, here's all that I came up with:









Yeah, I'm not completely satisfied with it. It doesn't have a lot of that black, rocky crust and the tiles don't quite mesh together seamlessly. I'll have to keep plugging at it if I ever want to cook up the perfect batch of Gametable lava. But in the meantime, it looks a hell of a lot better than red syrup.



(Oh, yeah...I whipped up an "on fire" status pog, too. Because sometimes you need an extra reminder that someone splashed you with burning oil and you're still burning to the tune of 1d6 damage per round.... )

Whadayathink?

Tain wrote:

I gots strong-armed by Maz/Seamus here into posting an intent to join. I tried to tell him I'm a terrible RP'er but he laughed. So I guess I can give it a shot, after all the worst that can happen is I explode, right?

....

Right?!

Nah. Explosions are quick and comparatively painless. Now dissolving in acid...that's probably the worst that can happen....



*gets to work on a "dissolving in acid" Gametable pog*

Anyhow, welcome aboard! How much did Maz explain about the campaign-in-progress here? And where did he rope you in from, might I ask? He had mentioned some Shadowgirls thingie (which kind of sounds like some weird porn site, but I'm not pointing any fingers...).

Wraith wrote:

Don't worry, we can build you a special suit that contains the blast (so we'll be safe O.O).

Well, as long as the suit isn't accidentally designed to be frangible....

Wraith wrote:

Welcome to the Vale, by the way! *waves*

What she said.

Hrm, well I can stand it if it's a nuclear explosion! Seriously though I'm not the greatest Rp'er, I'm barely passable. So expect a "actions speak louder then words" approach

Maz gave me a bunch of links in between scenes of The Thing. I think I've got the general gist of what's up and can pick up the rest easily enough. As Maz can tell you I'm pretty good at picking up the rules and getting into the story..... Too good! LOL!

Yupper Maz found me at Shadowgirlscomic.com (the comic part is rather important lol), where we had a RP forum going. It was a lot of fun but turned to crap lately so I'm free to try other games.

And thank ya kindly for the warm welcome. I just hope it's not too warm. I find it disturbing that the second post after mine was a bunch of Lava!

Wraith wrote:

I hope this isn't called stealing - but dragonfable has some real good lava in it. Course, it's flash.

Also, Shadow thought it was desert when he glanced at it, lol.

So when does Shadow plan on actually gracing this subforum with his presence, anyway?

Anyhoo, in respect to Tain and any other new players who may take up a character with lineage in the House of Ainsley (and saints know we could use one or two more...), I recommenced work on the new Ainsley family tree last night. This is but a sample below, a branch of the tree encompassing two or three generations (including the final lord of the bloodline himself). So you can imagine how bloody huge the entire family tree will look by the time I'm done with it, considering that the entire House of Ainsley--from the latest Ainsleys (Jana and Josia) all the way back to the progenitor, Bardos Ainsley I--goes back about two- to three-hundred years. And, of course, that's including all the siblings and branch-offs; thank badness I saw fit to throw in a little inbreeding here and there, or else the family tree would have been even more massive.




I'm planning on doing something with those red lines, of course. They're ten pixels wide, so I'm thinking of layering on some 2-pixel-wide gold stripes centered in the lines, to give 'em a snazzy flair.

How does it look so far?

Random thought:

What did Corwin ever do with that cart wheel and the spur, anyway?

umm the cart wheel was used to help block the door later i think, and the spur? i don't remember.. i think he probably kept it, since it was one of the first thing that was his and his alone, and didn't come from gwenlyns hand

Wraith wrote:

LOL, I thought I missed you guys, so I went shopping

Ooh, what did you buy?

S.E.A.M.U.S wrote:

umm the cart wheel was used to help block the door later i think, and the spur? i don't remember.. i think he probably kept it, since it was one of the first thing that was his and his alone, and didn't come from gwenlyns hand

So were the trident and the cart wheel. And the boat oar, the tin hairpin and those thrice-damned dwarven bagpipes.

S.E.A.M.U.S wrote:

also, is it just me or is soloing difficult when you first start out? i had a stormtrooper/officer that had to take doewn dome gang on coruscont and they wasted him

Oh, soloing's a huge pain when you're starting out. Are you online now? I'll be logging on in a bit, once I've had something to eat. Imperialside, I have a Stormtrooper/Soldier and a Rodian Scout who are having trouble with those thugs too. I also have a Wookiee Berserker dealing with those crystal snakes and howlers Rebelside, and of course I have my usual fringers.

Also, fringers get it a little easier as far as early leveling because you can pick fights with banthas and womp rats for easier XP (since womp rats and banthas will actually run away now and then, and banthas typically fight in Parry Mode for some reason).

Spoiler:

Hmm... let's see. It was food. So nothing exciting.

But I'm going to the mall tomorrow.

(gosh... when did it get to the stage where you had to plan a week ahead just to go shopping?)

Oh yeah, Admin noobishness here, but how in heck did you do the spoiler thingy? (in the forum)

i belive it's (spoil) (/spoil) or (spoiler) (/spoiler)

you can usually check the syntax by "quote" ing a post that has the code in it

S.E.A.M.U.S wrote:

i have a quarren rebel techie on yavin 4 right now named quin

Let's see...which characters do I have in play at the moment?

Breck Blackornn (Human/Imperial/Soldier/Stormtrooper)
Hraarloka (Wookiee/Imperial/Healer/Stormtrooper (ick, but he'll be a Sith someday....))
Kessa Beneseph (Human/Rebel/Teräs Käsi/Commoner)
Ruskooro (Rodian/Fringer/Tech Spec/Spacer)
Zaniya Lir'oolsi (Twi'lek/Fringer/Soldier/Trader)

So yeah, I have a few characters floating around.

Wraith wrote:

Hmm... let's see. It was food. So nothing exciting.

But I'm going to the mall tomorrow.

(gosh... when did it get to the stage where you had to plan a week ahead just to go shopping?)

Ah, the halcyon days of youth. I remember jumping on the bus to go to shopping malls and the airport--just on a whim--back in my teenager years. Life at home sucked, so I tried not to stick around much. And before the airport shut down their video arcade, I was beating Black Tiger in 45 minutes on one quarter.

Loved that game.

Wraith wrote:

Oh yeah, Admin noobishness here, but how in heck did you do the spoiler thingy? (in the forum)

1) Highlight the text that you want to Spoilerize. If you don't know how to highlight text, either hold Left Click and drag the mouse cursor over whatever you want to highlight, or hold down Shift and use the arrow keys to do the same thing.

2) Click the Spoiler button up there, the one between the Strike and Host an Image buttons.

You're done.

Hmmmm, never even knew there was a spoiler button... but now that you point it out, I remember there always being one.

Huh, the things you learn.....

The House of Ainsley wrote:

Okay, I'm hoping to do a lot of work here today...after I get my beauty sleep, that is. Does anyone have any special requests, aside from "Post on my chapter already"?

Not so much a special request, but I am looking to do some little things before heading onto Trock Reik. I'd hate to spend a week or more just trying to make a deal for a bowl. Can we perhaps do a little speed posting or should I just send you a bunch of 'what if's' and let you decide how it all settles?

GoldenDrakon wrote:

The House of Ainsley wrote:

Okay, I'm hoping to do a lot of work here today...after I get my beauty sleep, that is. Does anyone have any special requests, aside from "Post on my chapter already"?

Not so much a special request, but I am looking to do some little things before heading onto Trock Reik. I'd hate to spend a week or more just trying to make a deal for a bowl. Can we perhaps do a little speed posting or should I just send you a bunch of 'what if's' and let you decide how it all settles?

What-Ifs are perfectly fine; we had a few of those posts on the old forums, and they do work. "I climb the wall and look. If I see any guards, I climb back down and tell my friends. If I see guards and the treasury, I climb back down and tell them where the treasury is. If I see no guards, screw my friends; I'm shimmying down into the courtyard. If there's an unobstructed path to the treasury, I climb down, go to the door, check the lock(s) and search the door for traps."

That's kind of a long example, but you get the idea.

As for speed-posting, for a while I've had it in my mind to try just that with Gametable. Right now I'm using Gametable to make those nifty little dungeon-level maps for these topics, but Gametable does have interplayer-link capability; the Game Master sets up the host--maps and everything--and the players jack in. There's no voice chat function (even though you could get around that with Ventrilo or Windows Live Messenger or something similar), but there is a text box and a function for dice-rolling macros which the GM and the players can customize (the dice rolls are visible, of course, so everyone else can tell if you're rolling an honest d20 or a rigged d3+17). There's also a pog scanner function, so everyone linked together can scan everyone else's Gametable for new pogs and underlays, then copy them to their own Gametable. If I cook up a new batch of pogs, you'd just link into my Gametable and hit F5 to copy those pogs to your own client.

Gametable's free, of course...just Andy's big, squishy labor of love. It looks like Gametable's up to Version 2.0 now, and I'm still running V 1.2 Beta. Looks like I could do some upgrading tomorrow. If that goes well (and I manage to copy all my pogs and underlays to the 2.0 client), who would be up for helping me test-drive this multiplayer function over the weekend?

I'd be game to try it out, but scheduling would be an issue. And my comp's decided to clunk out at the moment, so I've got to service it in a few days.

Anyway, could people tell me their timezones please? That way I can keep a better track of where you're at. Thanks!

central us time (it's 10:38 pm here right now)

Central Time Zone here as well. Would that be 16 hours ahead of Australia or 8 hours behind?

Anyhoo, I'm going to set up a Gametable thread where we can schedule these get-togethers, link up and speed the game along (which will really be nice once I get all three characters on the same page).

Until we all get the hang of Gametable, though, I'm just going to hash together one or more out-of-continuum test adventures, with Corwin, Karnoz and Sylvea all at their normal, non-prologue-ish 5th Level state. Since these test sessions don't fit into the continuum of the campaign, I'm thinking that the test adventures shouldn't have any effect on the PCs' items and spells and such; once we're through with a test adventure, any expended ammunition, magic item charges and such are replenished to their original counts, and any items gathered during the test adventures will be taken away after the test adventures are done. This is only a test, after all.

On the other hand, it may be a good idea to allow any Experience Points gained during the test adventures to be banked towards the ends of your Chapter Zero prologues, just as my way of saying "Thanks for the help." How does that sound?

can you put up a link to game table


or i could just find it myself.. lazy bastard me

ok, i'm currently hosting a gametable game,

hosting ip is 68.187.146.46

nevermind, since i have no mapping stuff setup i can run a mission, but i have no missions setup to run. i'll wait til ain'sy can ohst.. GET ON SKYPE< AIM< OR YAHOO YA YAHOO!!!!!

The Gametable download link is about six posts back, but here it is again.

http://gametable.galactanet.com/

I think we'll try it without any voicechat (at least in the beginning), just to avoid complicating things.

Also, I'm going to make that thread now.

Well, I have a yahoo account, if that helps. I have a mic around somewhere if we're ever going to do chat.

Also, check out afore mentioned thread by Ainsley for some time stuff.

Apologies for the added delay, but we had a pretty nasty shock last week.

My father, who's getting well into his 60's, still keeps himself active and does what he has always enjoyed doing: heating and air conditioning repair and installation, among other things. Who can afford to retire these days, right?

Well, last Tuesday he went to work on somebody's distributor unit up in the attic. This customer, Kyle, is pretty well-to-do; he's a full-time firefighter, his house is less than five years old and it's a pretty fancy two-story brick house with an in-ground swimming pool (the nice kind, with a little in-ground whirlpool tub off to one side) and four bedrooms. So this house obviously cost a pretty penny; unfortunately, the less-than-five-years-old air conditioner went on the fritz and Dad went to Kyle's house to give it a look-over.

It turns out that the air conditioning system wasn't the only substandard thing about this fancy new house. Dad pulled down the folding mini-stairs to climb into the attack, and right when he was about to set foot on the attic floor the whole mini-staircase ripped out of the ceiling and collapsed! Dad fell about eight feet and landed right on his back. FLOP! And, according to him, he lay there for who-knows-how-long until he finally came back to his senses, grabbed his cell phone (which he sometimes leaves in his truck; thank goodness he had it on him that time) and called for help.

It's also very fortunate that Dad works a second job as a paramedic for Champion EMS here in Texas. His own immediate boss (Dustin, the paramedic station's captain) took care of Dad himself and did a damn good job of it, then gave Dad a free ambulance ride out to the hospital in Tyler. They gave Dad a morphine prescription and a thing or three to treat the mild concussion and stop all the swelling, and, even though he's the staunchly independent sort, he needed constant help and attendance from me and two immediate friends of our family for the first few days after the accident.

He's off the morphine and getting around on his own now, and he seems pretty well back to normal. But there's always that sobering realization that the accident could have been a whole lot worse for him. Broken bones, paralysis, even death...these we certainly do not need. Yet we're always hearing about people who do suffer worse injuries from falls, including falls which are less than eight feet.

Yeah, this world needs D&D physics. Fall, take a few points of damage, get up and go about your business. None of this business with bruising and concussions and broken bones and whatnot. It would be nice.

Anyway, Kyle and Dad had a good look at that folding stairladder. The blasted thing was nailed up into the ceiling joyces with nails. Just a bunch of skinny little penny nails! Who the hell was the contractor who used penny nails to secure a loadbearing structure like a stairladder into the ceiling? That's an installation which should not be done with anything less than quarter-inch wood screws, and plenty of them! Hell, I'm a far cry from being a professional carpenter, and I still know that! What's this guy's excuse?

I'm hoping that Kyle slaps that stupid contractor with a lawsuit. I hate rampant litigation, but when someone's shoddy craftsmanship threatens another person's life and well-being, I think such civil punishment becomes necessary. At best, the contractor gets a financially painful lesson about doing a job right the first time and corrects his misbehavior in the future. At worst, he loses his business, but at least he can't imperil anyone else with his terrible work....

So I just had to get that off my chest. Dad pulled through his recovery just fine, I'm going to eat dinner with him at the lakehouse and then I'm going to come back and see about catching up with the House of Ainsley campaign. It sucks that you three have to put up with my delays and absences and family matters and occupational accidents, but I still haven't forgotten y'all. I'll be back.

Ah Ainsley!

I'm so sorry to hear all that, but I am very happy and relieved that your dad's getting on okay. It's touching to see a man of your age so close to his father, I hope for both your sakes that he had many! many more years yet

Anyway, don't worry too much about absences and stuff. As always we are more than aware that Real Life takes precedence. So don't sweat it.

Say hi to the chickies for me

think of it this way Wraith... are all priestly type characters healers (to use an everquest comparison, do you play a druid, cleric, and shaman the same?) the answer is no you don't. many people in City of Heroes seem to have the opinion that if you are playing as a defender (the "support" class of city of heroes) your job is to heal. period. nevermind that two of the defender specialisations don't even have healing abilities. (then again, people seem to think that those two are worthless because they can't heal)

My character in City of heroes is a defender who's primary abilities are debuffing enemy accuracy (making it so that the enemies have a harder time hitting your party) with one ability that allows some healing, but is more often used to lower enemy accuracy.


a good example of different playstyles would be the difference between Corwin and Silvea. Corwin is more of the "in the thick of things beating his enemies into submission. from what i've read of silvea so far I just don't picture her in that role.

S.E.A.M.U.S wrote:

a good example of different playstyles would be the difference between Corwin and Silvea. Corwin is more of the "in the thick of things beating his enemies into submission. from what i've read of silvea so far I just don't picture her in that role.

(Of course, it helps that Corwin is a Cleric with one level in Fighter, doesn't it? Take more Fighter levels and you can start raking in those sweet bonus Feats, too. )

LOL, I keep forgetting that Corwin is a Cleric

you aren't the only one Wraith.


and i don't know if i'm gonna pick up more levels as a fighter yet.. maybe later...

you know, in a few years when we get the devil of tides up to current LOL