Planet Elite: United states of Superior Americans

Planet Elite to disband

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 08:37:14 GMT

Because guilds are finally getting the kick in the pants to be used for what they were originally intended, I will be taking down this Planet Elite guild in the near future. I might replace it with a serious guild, as I have several ideas as to what it could become. It will probably end up being a sci-fi games guild. There are not enough good science fiction games on Byond, and I think we should bring attention to that fact.

Someone, pretty please refer me to a half-decent RPG.

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 20:38:06 GMT

Well, that was a lot of time I just wasted. I decided to get back into Mystic Journey; it's not the greatest, but it's a decent way to pass by the hours in an RPG environment while being social at the same time. Unfortunately though, the server hosted by "XxArchmagexX" has an abusive moderator that goes by the name "Red" who felt the need to lay in to me despite the fact that I had done nothing to her (heck, I had never even made a single statement directed to her or about her) and then half the people in there of course had to be pricks and join in. Apparently they think I am a "retard" and am worthy of beratement even though I had been nothing but nice to all of them. I left and don't feel like starting all over again on the other server.

I thought about making a long ranting post about it, but none of you really care about it most likely. We all know there are jerks who unfortunately are in position to ruin games and make our time seem like it has been spent in vain. So instead of ranting I'll try to be productive instead and ask if anyone knows of any decent RPGs on Byond that have a reasonable playerbase/moderators that won't ruin the game for me. I don't keep up very well on the games list since I usually do the programming and not the gaming, so I don't know much about what all is out there.

I've also been considering taking another crack at making a game. I know, I know, I have never finished any of my games so far, and I tend to overextend myself and then get bogged down and end up scrapping projects; but I think my computer science course I had last semester - Programming Logic and Design - has helped me a lot and will enable me to manage my programs better and develop them with much more ease and speed, so I might actually be able to finish something for once.

I have ideas of what I would want to make, but I'm to the point now where I can be very flexible in what a game offers as long as I have a good experience with the people I'm playing it with; therefor, if I make something I might be taking some input as to what type of RPGs some of you like. As long as it brings in some of you who are fun to game with, I don't mind deviating from my preferred game designs. If you feel the same way and want to leave a comment concerning that, prease feel free.

If I do make a game, I might do it with VB or C++ instead of Byond; I'm not sure yet, so if you know others that are looking for a good RP time but that don't use Byond, their oppinions are just as welcome.

Police Brutality + Mechanical Bull + Drunkards as far as the eye can see = A very interesting night.

Sat, 04 Nov 2006 14:48:56 GMT

Yesterday was the 21st birthday of a friend, so obviously she wanted to go out and get completely wasted. We ended up going to three different places to drink (except I didn't drink; I was one of the designated drivers) in Syracuse, NY last night, all with their own interesting stories. If you don't care about my personal stories and just want to read the police brutality part, skip to the sixth paragraph (4th from the end)

The first place was called Daisy Dukes, a country/rock themed club that is known for a mechanical bull in it. I was the only one in our group that rode it; apparently hundreds of pounds of mass knocking you all over the place is frightening to some people. I was determined to show off though, so I was on it for a while and the guy at the controls kept turning it up until it was at max power. Finally, he started making it spin fast back and forth while it was bucking until I finally got dizzy and couldn't keep my balance anymore. The thing threw me across the bullpen and I landed upside down against the wall. When I got up, everyone in the place started cheering and whistling for me, and when I climbed out of the pen people were slapping me on the back and congratulating me. More fuel for my already bloated ego. The hand I was holding on with was beat up when I walked away, but it was worth it. My thumb is still swolen and I have chafing-burn marks on the back of my hand.

I don't remember the names of the second and third places we went to, but at the second place everything was all painted black or covered in black leather. Here Brittany (my girlfriend) asked the bartender for a cotton-candy, and him and the people around him thought she meant she wanted a condom and they all broke out laughing at her. After she explained, he said he's been bartending for 8 years and has never heard of such a drink. She hadn't had one in a while and couldn't remember what was in it, so she just got something else.

One of her brothers is gay, and there's a gay/lesbian bar up the road from there that she goes to sometimes with him. She told me that's where she usually gets that cotton-candy drink, so I don't know if it's something they made up, which would explain why they didn't know about it there.

By the time we got to the third place, Brittany had a bit much in her, but she had another drink or two there as well. About the only interesting thing that happened there was her tipsyness. Someone told her that this bar sold food too, so she led me away from our group and we went to find where. Well, the first place she checked was in the hallway where there's an exit and the doors to the restrooms. I let her look around the hallway for a few seconds before I told her this might not be the place to look for food, then went and asked at the bar and they said they don't sell it after 10. Also, I had to escort her to the restrooms and back twice while we were there, and both times on the way there and the way back, she got lost (mind you, this is a small place. To get to the restrooms you go around a corner is all) and tried going through a door that led to the kitchen. There were some other funny antics, but I won't go into them all.

After a while we left, and most of us were standing out on the sidewalk in front of the building because one of the girls was looking for her boyfriend in the place. While we were standing there waiting, some cops tried to arrest a guy that was just across the street. He resisted and tried to wrestle one of the cops to the ground. After one helped the other to get free from him, those two cops got him down and proceeded to punch and kick him for a while after he was already down. There were a bunch of people around shouting at the cops "You have him down! Just put the handcuffs on him, stop beating on him!" When the cops finally stopped and pulled the guy up, his face was messed up and all bloody, and he was bleeding from the back all over the back of his shirt too. The bouncers at the place we were at started shouting at the police across the street too, telling them to pick a fair fight instead of ganging up on someone and beating the stuffing out of him (Not the words they used, but I've been trying to keep profanity out of the post so it doesn't get filtered).

I even have an interesting, if unwanted, event on the drive home. When I was on 690 in the slow lane, a van came up right next to me, put on its blinker, and tried to change lanes right into the side of our car! It scared the heck out of me, and I swerved to the right, straddling the white line on the side and driving dangerously close to the concrete barrier and having this dumbbutt halfway into my lane, so I hit the brakes hard and got back in behind him. That was the first accident I've almost gotten into while I was driving. And Brittany was even more scared, as she was in the passenger seat and would have been the first into the barrier.

Later, things got good again. When we finally got home, it was very late, so I wasn't about to wake up Brit's mom to drive me home (It was Brit's Grandmother's car I was driving, so they needed it back), so I used that as an excuse to spend the night with Brittany (we're both 21 and still live at home). It was the first time I've slept with her; it felt great to fall asleep with her in my arms. And no, we didn't do anything there - besides, we were both very tired and she had had too much to drink.

Altogether, it was a very interesting night.

Nasa Announces Dark Matter Discovery

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 08:41:22 GMT

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/aug/ HQ_M06128_dark_matter.html

"Astronomers who used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT Monday, Aug. 21, to announce how dark and normal matter have been forced apart in an extraordinarily energetic collision."

Press conference is Monday.

How to tell if you're elite.

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 19:40:18 GMT

I just created a new guild, and I listed ways to tell if you're elite in the application process, as that's the only requirement.

I might as well list it here too.

Ways to tell if you are elite and better than everyone else:
1) You are American or at least pro-American.

USA: The S stands for Superior!

If you're elite, please join and help me make a statement to the anti-American -----s.

New Blog Theme: Science

Sun, 25 Jun 2006 20:17:35 GMT

In light of the fact that I like science more than fantasy, and that I didn't have many posts about my previous theme of D&D anyway, I decided I will change my theme to science and technology. Mostly math, astronomy, chemistry and physics based probably. What got me thinking that I should do this was my post about star evolution which, oddly, was in my thread about Iraqi WMDs (hefty off-topic sub-thread). The off-topic subthread was detached from the main and is now here: ID:466849

I've deleted some of the posts I already had, but I left two of them about D&D because of the resources they contained in case anyone cared to access them.

I might as well say something about the sciences while I'm at it here.

I just bought a book today called The Essential Dictionary of Science. This thing is great and I highly recommend it. It is very insightful, and I've already learned several things since it explains topics in a way that is not purposefully confounded. I previously had to dig for things mostly on the internet which means mostly looking stuff up on Wikipedia since it is the easiest way to find relevant information, but that is not always accurate, and even when it is the people who make articles often try to make science topics sound overcomplicated, much more so than the topic really is.

For an example, I looked up pions and it described them in the easiest, most straightforward way: a pion is a hadron consisting of a quark and an antiquark. As many of you may recall, I did a research paper on antimatter a while back, and I mentioned pions enough in that; but I did not actually know exactly what one was, so although I had a general idea of what was involved, the pion part seemed like an odd magical aspect of the formula. Now it makes much more sense.

And if anyone cares to discuss the aforementioned topic from the forum any further, that would be a nice way to kick off the theme.

Oh, and if anyone ever gets downwind of any interesting science/technology news that I haven't posted about, please give me the heads up as I like to keep informed and help others to do the same. You can either comment to this post or email me or whatever works.

Special classes: they're generic, yet they're closer to what you want.

Sat, 08 Apr 2006 17:53:40 GMT

Thanks to RagnarofBurland for showing this to me. I was talking to him the other day about my vision for the future of P&P RPing, and I tried to explain my idea for an RPG rules set where you don't have any classes, but rather you have "modules" to mix and match to create a completely customised character. Well, it appears D&D already has something close, which should keep me appeased for the moment.

Hypertext d20 SRD has an interesting article here that I read through about a concept known as generic classes. I had not heard of it before.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/genericClasses.htm

Basically, with this rules variable you limit your game to only 3 classes, and those classes are very generic. However, they aren't predetermined like your normal classes. Basically, you set up the class as you see fit, and thus your character is highly customised to be how you want. It's a great concept; check it out.

Since your spells are more open-ended, imagine getting a spellcaster and mixing and matching some potent combinations. Go grab Heroe's Feast so you never have to resupply, Major Creation and Greater Magic Weapon so you can always have a +5 weapon at hand, and whatever one you want at that, and Transformation so you can be a fighter whenever you want, and a good one at that. Then grab some healing spells and some other offense/defense spells and whatever you like for utility ones... alright, this is getting out of hand. What would you do with some of this freedom?

Another article there that RagnarorBurland linked me to which is quite an interesting idea is about gestalt characters. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/ gestaltCharacters.htm

That gestalt character thing is good for groups that can't muster up enough people for a well rounded party.

Does anyone know whether that website created these ideas or not? I had seen people use gestalt characters on the WotC board, so I thought either it's an official rules variant or they got it from that site.

Also, does anyone know of any other interesting rules variants that enhance the gaming?

Miscellaneous D&D Stuff

Wed, 05 Apr 2006 11:03:49 GMT

I was wondering how to kick off the theme, and I thought a good way would be to share D&D resources. If you know of any good D&D stuff that I don't, I'd like to hear about it. Drop me a link in a comment.

First on the list has to be the webcomic "The Order of the Stick". This is a great work of satire on D&D.
Order of the Stick
Rich Burlew, the guy that owns that site, also has some other great things on there if you want to browse around. I like his articles on game world development.

For core rulebook related information, if you don't have them, then these are a couple good places to go. And yes, they are legal suppliers of D&D information from the core rulebooks.
System Reference Document v3.5
Hypertext d20 SRD
The first one of those two also has a very nice spell-search tool that helps you quickly and easily look up spells by name, type, class, level, school and so on.

This site has pretty much every official feat ever made and has them in a well organised layout that makes it easy to find feats of a specific type you're after. It saves me a lot of time when trying to find suitable feats, and it gives me plenty of interesting options.
Feats
That site also has other stuff on it, but I haven't bothered looking into its other resources yet.
I have found several other huge feat databases, but I think this is one of the best.

And there is a Dungeon Master utility I have here that some of you might find useful. I'll see if I can dig up the address to the site where I got that. (edit: RagnorofBurland has kindly given the link for me. See his comment for it. Thanks)

Obviously, the WotC site itself also has lots of D&D related stuff since, y'know, they now own the D&D name.

And again, share what you have too. It's always good to find new resources that help out with the gaming.