Posts made by TwoGunBob

There's the amount of coordination and that does kill some spontaneity. Example would be that the heroic player(s) would have to allow the villain to rob the bank successfully knowing full well that this leads to the funding of the giant city destroying laser that will be the battleground for the climax.
Also hoping the bank robbery doesn't lead to the villain starting something crazy like cutting off hostages faces and wearing them while the hero is paralyzed by the agreement the robbery would be successful. I can imagine the fall out.
"You said I would get away with the robbery!"
"That was before you starting mutilating hostages and river dancing in their entrails."

I'd like to give the benefit of the doubt that people could hash out an easy agreement but I've seen wild things happen in the MU* world.

I'm just spinning my wheels here thinking worst case scenarios that would make me die a little more on the inside. Villainous victory to a more awe inspiring epic loss is a good thing for certain.

@Thenomain This, a million time this. The first cry asking why must they always lose needs to be headed off at the pass. You lose because you're the villain and liking to win just once just isn't in the cards. It takes a little bit of a roleplaying masochist to accept this and that they are providing a great story of losing. That pesky ego and desire to win usually gets in the way, though.

Okay, Agent Orange may have been Mike Palm and the All-Stars but thinking about it I don't think I've ever seen Agent Orange that wasn't an aging Mike Palm and two younger people playing the Living in Darkness album. For all his abuse, Joe Queer of the Queers looks in better health than me. I still had a good time heckling Agent Orange mercilessly until they played 'I Kill Spies'.
Conversely The Toasters show last month was great but bittersweet as I remember when The Toasters had a full horn section, keyboard, and crowded every stage with so many members. It was weird to see it drop to a five piece band but I think ska is pretty played out unless there's yet another revival percolating that I haven't heard about.
It was just nice to get out to some shows and see a few bands I haven't seen since the 90's.

Ah heck, I finished all those undead Roman figures with bows, swords, pilums, ballistas, whatevers. I reached out to the wargame community and managed to buy a set of cavalry for the range from a person in the Netherlands. The range was originally Russian and discontinued in 2003 so they are getting harder and harder to find. Got them painted up a little while back and decided to take crappy phone camera pics of them just cause.

I really need to get an actual computer again and quit relying on my phone to do everything. The days when I'd try (unsuccessfully) to use a light box and edit the pictures... I kind of miss it.

@surreality Watching Taboo but there's something bothering me about it that I can't put my finger on. I should be enjoying the ride cause I love the period it's set in and everything about the show's production is awesome. I still find myself nitpicking this show so unfairly for some reason. I'm in it for the season but often left thinking plots and character motivations are a bit too plot convenient and character reactions artificial. Might just be my general mood these days, though.

@Jaded RIP Special Agent Albert Rosenfield

"half wits, dolts, dunces, dullards and dumbbells" My general fallback for disparraging most everything. Man, I'm going to miss that guy.

@Arkandel This... Woke up this morning and the sinus pressure was gone and life was once again at a level that can resume normal functioning.

Texas... Yeah, hun, sugar, sweetie is sometimes, in the still remaining Bible belt of Texas is a way of verbally attempting to disarm a female by men that I rather thought were a relic of the past. It can be a term of endearment but in the 'olde countrye' the rednecks still use it to try to imply subjects are beyond the cognitive grasp of women. It's gotten better, much, much better but since moving from the mid cities back out to Gawd's country... Oh how I weep for the human race again. As I say recently, a bottle of whiskey in every cabinet and a gram of meth in every glove compartment, let's make America grate again.

Edit for clarification as broad brush stokes and all that.

@surreality I'm glad to say that since getting back into the miniatures painting it's been a great anxiety killer. I'll never be a professional by any stretch but just sitting with the quiet, my thoughts, and a paint brush has been a good valve for my sanity. Was a time I'd mu* and paint but when I started realizing how much painting I was getting done between responses I had to take a look at where I was playing kind of.

@Ashen-Shugar And still awesome to me after all these years. Brings me back to the Christmas jealousy of those kids that got the GIANT Shogun Warriors. You know the ones, and you know the envy you felt if you didn't have them.

@Ashen-Shugar It was not a decision made lightly for certain. As much as I wanted anything BUT the VT-01 at the time it was cherished. I had a similar situation with all my model kits when I was 17. Went to work on a Saturday, came home to find them all smashed to pieces and the family response was to get over it, kids will be kids. Besides the money spent on all these Japanese import model kits, the time put into assembly and painting was ridiculous. I mean, my painting was pretty mediocre then (as it is now) but it was still time invested. It was probably close to ten years before I started painting anything again because I was so upset over the incident.

First thing that bubbled up was my mother getting the boxed FGU Aftermath! game for me. I wanted that game so badly and was that ever a world of disappointment. I joke the game should be called After! Math! because of the complexity making the game a complete bore and drag to play.

She also got a Macross VT-01 Ostrich fighter when I was 13 that I resold awhile back for $1500 when I needed a car quickly. She was happy a toy she got me for Christmas bailed me out of a sticky financial moment.

Finishing a painting project is something I love. Undead Romans for Dragon Rampant finally unboxed, assembled, painted, and added to thanks to some generous online people in the wargaming hobby. My mother bought these for my birthday and since her passing I was hard pressed to even look at them.

Course I also hate that I've gotten lazy in that my computer blew up and I haven't been assed out to replace it leaving me to take lousy unedited pics with my phone.

Sad, I didn't (and still don't) know many people but yeah actually played under corruption back when I was active.

I don't know if I'd call it good TV but I'm enjoying season 2 of Mr. Robot. I'm always partial to Christian Slater so I've got an automatic soft spot.

Painting, I love painting miniatures (and occasionally going to the game shop and playing with them) but since mom passed I've had so much apathy for sitting down and putting brush to figure. It's been four years now and my output of finished figures has been negligible with various responsibilities. Still, it felt good to sit down with my kids for the past two weeks and paint again. We've been working nightly after I get home from work (or playing Mahjong when we have a fourth wind) and it's helping me get more positive.

Wow, going through I've been a real lump (hobby-wise, working way too much overtime until recently) and haven't had a good sit down, play a game, and take photos of it as we play in two years.

I need to get out and play more as well as paint more.

Cynicism in Shadowrun became something of a joke. I mean it was an oft surprising moment when a run wasn't ending in a double cross or a double double cross. I think this may have been symptomatic of game masters thinking their players would be surprised by how clever they were in the double cross and just generally weren't. "Mr. Johnson was a stooge of a dragon? Do tell... sigh..."
Now I never played of SR mu*'s because of their reputation so this is all experience over small scale tabletop groups around Texas in the 90's with a small sampling of game masters. Although it did seem that CP2020 players thought themselves as the sirius gamers of the cyberpunk genre whereas they seemed to me to be a little too caught up in the cyberpunkiness to have fun.

There was almost a universal power trip to Shadowrun wasn't there? A player could usually find an archetype that portrayed their collective fantasy from shaman to rock star and while the odds were stacked against them, their collective crew could usually (occasionally? sometimes?) be count on to come together as a team when the chips were down. Shadowrun seemed to be able to combine the individual hero trip and meld it together into a team on a run. This is my memory of the good games rather than the ones that crashed and burned because of a disruptive player or two playing chromed out street samurai that would disrupt the game if it wasn't all combat, all the time.

I was crushed when my high school/college/post college group dissolved to start jobs, move across the country, disappear altogether, etc. Somehow I stumbled on to MUDs and played a few but found them not to my liking at all. I remember getting my feet kind of wet at Invid Invasion MUX and not knowing enough about behind the scenes kind of admin things going on that players were generally doormats to the awesomeness of the staff's PC's.
Things improved a lot (sarcasm) when I shifted over to the WoD and got into Texas Twilight and just as I thought the place might be somewhat sane it went crazy with.... Harry and Cat I think it was, starting their own MU* set in... Florida? Start Your Engines: Indianapolis by Night was in there and I had fun in the Sabbat sphere until that blew up as well. Something about polyamorous wiccans or something. Actually staffed on the Dragonlance MU* that was pre-Catacysm. Ansalon Dreams I think it was called and it blew up as well. By then I'd run out of steam because survival rates of friendship after multiple MU* meltdowns is kind of small.
Looking back at it I think my MU* radar was attuned to getting into a place right as it was going critical. I guess the beginning was around 1996 or 1997. I think maybe Amberyl's List came up in a search and I started researching how to connect.

Mark Sultan mixed with The King Khan and BBQ Show (same thing really) because I needed a break from Shannon & the Clams.