House of Ainsley: Out-of-Character Discussion

sorry ainsley... i'm impatient to get to some "new" corwin stuff.. i've been reading and rereading the devil of tides over on guru about 20 times over the past year, and just want to get to brustaag to sell off those novelty skull goblets. it's only good manners and fear of retribution that are keeping me from just copy/pasting the whole thing as back to back posts from guru to here so we can get cracking

If you want, as an admin I can access your accounts and copy/paste stuff for you. I'll have to reset your password but you can reset it back to whatever you want when I'm done. I prolly can't get all of it done at once, but I can have massive copy/pasting sessions.

Of course, that would also pose another problem when Corwin reaches the end of Chapter Zero and has to wait for everyone else to catch up. Hmm.

I could probably just shorten everyone else's prologue chapters and award similar amounts of XP, though...if SEAMUS wouldn't take umbrage at having to do more work (if work it could be called... ) for the same rewards, that is....

And seriously, am I the only one who sees all these red X's where avatar pics should be? That's so odd.

it's not just you ainsley, but wraith seems unaffected... and i don't mind having to "do more work" (if you count playing corwin as a chore)remember? Corwin started on guru as level one, and everyone else who were slackers started out at 5 Corwin was just a little slow lol not to mention that corwins prologue ain't over til it's over, he's been lucky enough so far. Just don't be in too big of a hurry to finish his out, remember, there's stuff that i'd like to happen before the prelude is over. (more on this in a pm)

i'll get started with the postyness to get the 250 posts caught up. honestly i'm going out of my gourd with waiting to get to copy/paste stuff. it would be more restful to get to wait to actually post a response that i havn't already read 20 times

EDIT and it is done... and with less posts since i condensed many of my single line posts and the combat posts into single posts, and removend non game related postings.

and lo and behold... the devil of tides is now caught up to the "present"


*is waiting for the hammer to drop now*

oh, FYI, the avatar issue seems to be fixed by reloading your avatar.

Yes, I've addressed this issue in the Portal. If people would read it, that would be great.

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

it's not just you ainsley, but wraith seems unaffected... and i don't mind having to "do more work" (if you count playing corwin as a chore)remember? Corwin started on guru as level one, and everyone else who were slackers started out at 5 Corwin was just a little slow lol not to mention that corwins prologue ain't over til it's over, he's been lucky enough so far. Just don't be in too big of a hurry to finish his out, remember, there's stuff that i'd like to happen before the prelude is over. (more on this in a pm)

Yeah, Corwin got the benefit of chronological progression with his prologue; I figured that he probably wouldn't have been a Level 5 character when he rebelled against his mother and struck out on his own, plus there were the issues of discovering his heritage and becoming a seafarer. I just didn't think the same approach would have worked for Ashton and Yavana and the rest.

At least it has laid some nice groundwork for the character, I think. Is this truly the end of Corwin's issues with Gwenlyn and Captain Stillwell?

No, probably not.

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

i'll get started with the postyness to get the 250 posts caught up. honestly i'm going out of my gourd with waiting to get to copy/paste stuff. it would be more restful to get to wait to actually post a response that i havn't already read 20 times

Good point. Considering that I have to comb through the same post history that you do, I can admit that there's a certain amount of tedium that goes with that.

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

EDIT and it is done... and with less posts since i condensed many of my single line posts and the combat posts into single posts, and removend non game related postings.

Yeesh. Busy little bee, weren't you?

Hmm. The good news is that I can edit these posts and do some clean-up; the CoHG codes and the IV codes aren't perfectly interchangeable. What's up with Guru adding all those quotation marks to the code, anyway?

There was also the issue of me changing tack and awarding Experience as the characters progress through their prologues, rather than dumping the entire amount on them once the prologues end (which, now that I look back on that latter tactic, really wasn't necessary). Corwin will be Level 5 soon, anyway--well before the end of the prologue--so he'll get to cash in on all his accumulated Experience then, regardless of whether or not I award Corwin as he goes.

So expect a whole mess of edits soon.

(I'm going to remove the spoiler tags from the pics too; there usually aren't enough pics in these threads to seriously break down page-loading times, right?)

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

and lo and behold... the devil of tides is now caught up to the "present"


*is waiting for the hammer to drop now*

*...in the form of a royally ticked-off Gwenlyn Ainsley in storm giant form, descending from the heavens with a Maul of the Titans +10*

Also, I just got over a nasty bout of what appeared to be stomach flu, which had me pretty well bedridden for most of yesterday and today. As if that wasn't bad enough, I had another scare when a power bump killed my computer, and Windows couldn't find my D: drive (which has most of my games, my Gametable apps and files, my campaign notes, some of my Fraps-recorded video and more). After checking my connections between the motherboard and the D: drive, I ran BIOS and did some SMART tests on the D: drive; everything turned out to be in order, and Windows noticed my D: drive after that. But if my D: drive had somehow gotten fried by this afternoon's storm....

Lesson learned: back up your hard drives regularly. I'm thinking of getting one of those USB-compatible external hard drives, just for this purpose; something around 400 GB or higher should be enough to back both of my hard drives up without any hassle every month.

Also, it would be nice if these forum tools--or all forums in general--had a "disable certain smileys" feature. That way, you could still throw a regular smiley in OOC banter, but following the number 8 with an end parenthesis--such as the campaign's dice checks against something with a Difficulty Class of 8--wouldn't give us this guy again.

Either that or I could just disable smileys in all of the HoA play topics. There's a way to do that, isn't there?

actually it wasn't the loading times... some of those pictures break the viewing plane because of the resolution settings that i have to have at work for me, so it was a real pain to read them. that's the reason for the spoiler tags

Hmm. What screen resolution do you have at work?

And weren't you playing Left 4 Dead just a moment ago?

i was playing l4d. at work i'm not sure what it is set at, but... corwins(and gwenlyns house) were breaking the table

There is a function to disable all smiley tags - or this is also a function to disable your post's smiley tags, so when you do a dice roll you can just scroll to the bottom of the page and disable the smileys. This will only happen for that specific post. I can't imagine you doing smileys in IC posts anyway LOL

i can see it now....


Corwin: CAST INFLICT LIGHT WOUNDS (verbal componant OMG Kil ths dood)
Preist of Lathander: OW!
Corwin: I'm in ur tempal killin ur mans!
Priest of Lathander:




also i've been reading through the "time of troubles" novels. i need to find someone who is running a forgotten realms time of troubles campaign.

What if the priest of Lathander's undead? Oh...right. Lathander.

But I'll look around for that clickie, Wraith. Like you said, smileys don't really have much place in IC chatter, what little OOC chatter I throw out is reserved for the little parentheses-clad snippets of cyan-colored text and I try to keep that to a minimum anyway...well, that and the yellow text, which is where I give you d00dz ur phat lewts....

...and the lime green text, which is for Our (Not-Quite-) Heroes and other (questionably) good stuff.

...and the red text, which is for bad dudes and bad stuff.

...and the almost-black dim gray text, which is for when someone keels over dead. Like that wolf who thought it would be a good idea to take a good running start and throw itself at Corwin's trident, for example.

...and for...yeah, you get the idea.

LOL! I have a feeling that there will be a lot of cyan coloured thingies going on in my thread

I don't mind. Cyan = helpful stuff for noobs !!

Yes, indeed. And, as always, if you have any OOC questions, feel free to ask. Don't forget the little OOC parentheses, unless you opt to ask either in this OOC topic or via PM.

Also, I've had a few slight issues with a piece breaking off of my computer desk (namely the keyboard tray, which I was using as a very convenient place to keep my D&D books and House of Ainsley material), as well as continued issues with our houseguests' slobby and imposing behavior (according to which I'm a servant in my own house, apparently), a coworker who thinks it's perfectly okay to show up for work and relieve me at least a half-hour late everyday, a leak in the laundry room and various wildlife running around making a mess of things. I'll do my best to get these prologues posted and replied to tomorrow morning...whenever Melissa and her "workplace rules apply to everyone but me" attitude show up and let me go home, that is.

I'd also like to copy over and tinker with a couple more topics regarding actions which characters in D&D 3.X (and, therefore, this House of Ainsley campaign) may take, as well as a standing status thread regarding our party's characters, their whereabouts, Hit Points, Armor Class and so on.

I'm getting ready for another fun-filled night on Third Shift now. See you all tomorrow!

Don't worry overly much about it Ainsley, though I am more than grateful for the constant updates. I for one know what it's like to have people just up and disappear for god knows how long.

(lol, i did it myself over in lit for about a year hahaa)

Anyway, hope things get better for you. And don't you guys have like timecards at work or something like that?

We do. In fact, I've reminded our bosses to check Melissa's timecards (on more than one occasion), since I suspect that they're just tallying up our work hours and not thinking too deeply about whether or not their workers are punching in and out according to the schedules. Of course, it helps Melissa's case that she's friends with one of the bosses, but even that sort of compassion has a limit, and the other boss despises Melissa. Did I mention that our two bosses are married? Yeah, I wonder what they have to say about all this at home....

Anyhoo, I'm back to work here; just let me grab my dinner and I'll get started. Also, for no particular reason (truly, honestly, youbelievemeright?), I just made some golems!



Enjoy!

LOL, the Golems look cool
EDIT: I'm writing this on my phone! How cool! IV looks great on my phone. I didn't think it'd actually work

Wraith wrote:

LOL, the Golems look cool
EDIT: I'm writing this on my phone! How cool! IV looks great on my phone. I didn't think it'd actually work

I had a bona fide "lol" when I read that edit there.

And for phone kewlies, evidently.

Okay, back to the prologues I go!

There. That took a bit longer than I thought, didn't it?

Aside from my usual tasks around the house, I ended up making about eight more pogs (six of them for Palemare's population of diseased lunatics) and assembling the map for Sylvea. But the real work came when I decided that it was time to change the music. I thought of the perfect three songs for the setting, but unfortunately neither Google search, Yahoo search nor Limewire search turned up any MP3's for tunes from Gauntlet: Dark Legacy, one of my favorite multi-player arcade games. However, someone on YouTube apparently did come across--or create--the needed MP3's, but he wasn't telling anyone where he got them. Fortunately, I have a working copy of the digital-audio-editing program Audacity; after setting the input device to Mono Mix I set Audacity to Record while I played three of this guy's soundtrack videos, ripping the audio directly from YouTube and exporting them into the MP3's I need.

"But Ainsley," you ask, "you mean to say that you ripped all three of these background tunes for Palemare from Gauntlet: Dark Legacy?"

Sure did! Have you ever played the game? The theme tunes from the Forsaken Province levels are immensely fitting for a city like Palemare, don't you think? Just be thankful that I didn't find places in Palemare to fit all five of the tunes in....

"Including the Lich's theme, a tune which could only befit the approach of a boss monster, like some super-psychopath running Palemare as the self-appointed mayor or something?"

Yeah, something like that.

Anyway, apologies for the one-more-day delay, SEAMUS. But for what it's worth, I have an idea how much Experience those wolves are worth. But calculating the Experience for Captain Sharper and his crew is going to be the biggest hellbeast, let me tell you....

Okay, off to bed so I can function at work tonight. Toodles!

Hello again.

Well, tomorrow is our final dress rehearsal (with a small audience) for A Candle in the Window, and then our showtimes are on the 4th, 5th, 6th, 11th, 12th and 13th of this month.

I'm almost out of the woods now. I'm still concerned about some of our cast members who still run into a few potholes with saying their lines, and we still have one 12-year-old girl who can't do an Irish brogue to save her life, and the Tunisian girl playing my character's wife still can't manage a decent scream when my character slaps her character backstage (which in reality is me slapping my own forearm as hard as I can; it really smarts when I do that).

Most of the children on our cast can't act worth beans, of course. Children are so difficult to work with.

But we'll muddle through.

I'll see what I can accomplish here tonight; if nothing else, Saturday morning should be wide open. I'll do my best to get caught up then. Hang in there, peeps.

LOL, well, at least the kids will be cute.

They can be, yeah. Especially Margerita, the Russian exchange student. You should hear her saying her character's lines about King Herod. "And hee was choppeeng up seh bebbeez!" and all that. I have to choke back a giggle everytime she goes through that part.

Well, I'm going to bed now so I can get up at a decent hour in the morning. I might actually have a customer coming by to buy some of my eggs in the morning, and I have to let the chickens out around sunrise anyway; they go nuts if I leave then cooped up in that henhouse past 10:00 AM.

After that, I'll keep my word and get back to work here. I'm still looking over the Experience rules, trying to figure out whether or not the one or two sailors who were manning the Saint Alarice and not fighting the pirates in any way would still receive a cut of the Experience just for being there in harm's way. If there's something that says "No," then Corwin stands to get a bigger chunk of XP for that encounter. But I'm thinking it would probably be "Yes." Kind of like how the party's wizard can still get Experience from safely sticking around the rear of the party after he runs out of spells; he's still learning stuff from watching the fighter crack skulls, the rogue puncture kidneys and the bard inspire his comrades to greater heights of might and valor, right? Besides, as long as he's present and conscious, the wizard still has some capacity to aid the party, even if that means nothing more than swinging his quarterstaff and braining the first goblin to turn its back on him.

But Captain Sharper was a different story, so I'm only going to split his XP among Corwin, Logor and the one mariner who dared to take a swing at the knobby old bastard. Sharper was no milquetoast, either, so that award should give Corwin a nice shot in the arm.

And then Karnoz can figure out what to do with those baby bats and the guy who was smuggling them.

See you in the morn.