Balmon

Answer: Kevin Bacon Deathwish II Apocalypse Now Osmosis Jones Can I also add? This is a particularly easy game if you were in the mind to cheat...

Buddy. If you want high quality posts, please check your spelling of "expalinations". Set a good example, eh? I would love to see an in-depth Ghost in the Shell game. The only one I could find was this crappy Tachikoma-riding shoot 'em up thing. I'd like one that's basically as well-crafted as the Complex episodes. You know, a mix of shoot 'em up, with a bit of sleuthing, and some kick-*** music and rhetorical dialogue. I think the world of Ghost in the Shell has TONS of potential for great games - considering the interesting angles it takes on the issues of robotic implants in humans, and so on, and so forth. Am I missing something? Is there one like that already? Phil

OOC: Based on my research, the only known creatures to be able to survive batrachotoxins are snakes, and a few others. Short of ending the story at the point where the incurable toxin entered Sung's body (eventually the brain) and destroyed it, I thought I'd make use of that little fact and extend things for just a little longer. Sorry if it's too far-fetched! ************************ IC: The only thing that prevented Sung from crying out was the sudden impact of the toxin. As the blade ripped through the muscles and tendons of his thigh, he could feel the burn of the poison working its way to the bloodstream. He attempted to grasp the hilt and wrench the steel free, but he sensed his hands immediately go numb. Sung's mind raced frantically. He realized immediately that it was no ordinary poison. No amount of healing could get rid of this. His vision suddenly flickered... then it went blurry... he was losing feeling in his extremities... what was this...? He could barely make out Lee walking away, as his sight clouded further. I need to... darkness. Nothing. Sung, already fallen to his knees, crashed to the floor. He eyes were wide open, though without any sort of focus, and his breath was rapidly shortening. Lee smirked. Then, Lee's voice... though slipping in and out of hearing, "You fought... tonight... now to take... Sorashima." "[I]No[/I]." Sung raised his head slightly, and heard Lee stop in his steps. Sung's voice had barely carried above the stillness of the temple hall. [I]Focus[/I]..... dark... [I]focus[/I]... darkness.... [I][SIZE=2]FOCUS[/SIZE][/I].... [SIZE=1][I]Help[/I] me[/SIZE]. Sung's head thudded back on the floor. He could sense no more. Lee turned back to Sung and walked over to his comatose body. "Impressive, China man. No man I know could hold on for that long. You were indeed worth my breath. I will... aughhh!" Lee immediately backed away from what he saw. From somewhere beneath Sung's robes, a thin stream suddenly appeared. It had a silver-blue hue about it... it was a substance clearly not of this plane. Almost silk-like at first, more streams appeared... eventually, a form began taking shape around Sung's body. As Lee watched, a large form began taking shape... first a formidable torso... two monstrous paws... a long, muscled back then filled out... "Tiger." Lee barely whispered in awe. The spirit beast roared with a ferocity that shook the very foudations of the temple. It was perhaps three times the size of a normal tiger, and had formed protectively around Sung - like a mother protecting its young. It roared again, this time, the impact of the sound caused Lee to backstep. Momentarily off balance, the Ki-spirit suddenly bounded forward and swung an enormous paw at Lee's head. It connected. He barely uttered a noise as his body cometed through a wall. Large billows of dust and chunks of wood flew through the air - much of it striking the zombie-like monks still on the floor. The shape dissipated. There was complete silence in the temple. Then, slowly, seductively, more streams appeared again, this time, smaller, though much longer. The length of its body was fairly ornately patterned with scales, though it eventually flowed towards a hooded head. The shape coiled its body around Sung and turned him onto his back. It then wrapped its tail around the hilt of the blade. With a clean jerk, it slipped the blade from his leg and held it up closely to its slits-for-eyes. Then it ate the blade whole. It could taste the malevolence... the severity of the effect of the poison... and knew what it had to do. It looked Sung over critically for a moment, and then its body flashed momentarily. Its body was practically transparent now. Rearing its head, it suddenly dove towards the wound in his leg, growing smaller as it did. Sung's body spasmed violently at the shape's forceful entrance. Snake wound its way through Sung's bloodstream, devouring all traces of the toxin as it coiled, and coiled, through his body. Sung spasmed more and more as the creature traveled deeper... When it was done... and it only hoped it had removed it all... it re-formed outside of Sung's body. Then, with a soft [I]hiss[/I], the spirit vanished. The dagger hung in the air, a few feet off of the ground, and then clattered noisily to the floor; any trace of the poison had disappeared. Severa feet away, Kaze snorted derisively.

Why would you say ALLLL of that - and then qualify it all by saying that no one would be interested. OF COURSE WE'RE INTERESTED. That's why I started the damn thread. So - thank you for sharing. :) Phil

OK - Here's some tough loving comments from someone who might not have any idea about what he's talking about. But here's what I think anyway, since you've asked. [quote name='Box Hoy']I tried making an RPG a while back called "When Angels Deserve to Die"[/quote] Title sounds like a Fox television special ? or some kind of parody on a cliché - it's an odd title anyway. [QUOTE=Box Hoy] Here's the story: It was seven years since the devastating fire. If only humans knew what happened if you were bad in the mortal life. [/QUOTE] Alright. You have two TOTALLY different ideas running right alongside each other. "... seven years since the fire... " You're obviously alluding to some event that's happened since... but IMMEDIATELY you change gears and throw in the rhetoric of "if only humans knew..." [QUOTE=Box Hoy]Willis A. Matthews had died in that fire. His house on Redlace Street had been burned to the ground by a mysterious force. No suspects were found and so the case of the death of the Matthews family was put to rest just like their souls.[/QUOTE] Punctuation. Please. On a more helpful note: The quality of your writing often has a large impact on reader interest. If you have a run on sentence like that last one there, it already makes it awkward for readers to follow... readers and posters need confidence in the person running the RPG. [QUOTE=Box Hoy]"Wake up Willis," said the quiet voice. It came from all around him. He opened his eyes to see nothing but light all around him. Light appeared everywhere. "You've been chosen," the voice continued, "to stop the evil within the world of the mortals."[/QUOTE] "It came from all around him... light all around him... light appeared everywhere..." You've basically repeated these things one after another. This kind of redundancy in writing also leads to reader dis-interest. [QUOTE=Box Hoy]Willis only wished he knew what this voice was talking about. "What do you mean," he said standing up. The voice turned. "A secret evil has inplanted itself upon your world. It is the same evil that destroyed your family and yourself. Because of this the job has been given to you. Hunt down the evil within your world and stop it from continuing it's rage upon mankind," the voice said.[/QUOTE] First. Inplant is not the word you want. Actually, it's not a word at all. Again, more punctuation matters... [QUOTE=Box Hoy]"What evil," he said. The voice did not respond. The light around him faded into his world. Willis stood in the middle of a street. What evil? --- Okay now that, that it over let me explain what's going on here. Willis was killed in a fire by a mysterious evil and now some higher being wishes him to destroy the evil. Little does Willis know that as he progresses he will become more aware of the powers imbeded within him that no mortal could ever posses. [/QUOTE] OK - some grammatical and syntax errors here. Stuff like, "Okay now that, that it over..." that's not really correct. An easy way to check - read it aloud to yourself. Chances are good, by the time I'm done writing all of this, I'll have screwed something up myself because I won't have bothered to re-read it. I would strongly advise doing so. [QUOTE=Box Hoy] ---CRITERIA NAME: AGE: DESCRIPTION: BACKGROUND: SPEICAL TECHNIQUES: WEAPONS: ---Box So what's wrong with this. I only got 2 people to join?[/QUOTE] First thing, you didn't tell people what role they'd actually be playing in your RPG. Would they be other heroes? Opposition forces? The neighbour's dog? The criteria you provided barely.... I'm amazed that two people did sign-up, frankly. You need to give WAY more details about the story, and POSSIBLE character ideas, so that people have an idea of what the parameters are. Here's the information you did provide - which is good - The protagonist's name, an approx. setting (somewhere relatively modern, in a city scape? I think), and some sort of allusion to special powers. Your story also requires SOME level of complexity beyond the one-man-destined-for-greatness tact ? as `hEvN said above. While you are on the right track for things, Hox Boy, you have a bit of work to do. You need to give people a relatively compelling reason to join ? and an essential part of that involves giving them some parameters to work within. If you have any questions at all, or if you want to yell at me for being so rude, please feel free to PM me. I would actually like to offer what feeble assistance I could; assuming, of course, that you are as interested as you seem in RPGs. Phil

Ditto. The main thing that bugged me IMMEDIATELY was that it sounded like a straight-rip from a guide. The next thing that occurred to me was, is this going to be a wade-through-a-thousand-monsters-until-you-reach-a-boss-type-rpg? Mind you, there aren't many of those... and for good reason. The world of Diablo is centered mainly on the premise of multitudinous hacking & slashing (a la Baldurs Gate, Serious Sam, etc., etc.) - which is something that would fall fast and hard in an RPG. How are you planning on varying your version of this RPG? Phil

If THAT'S the state of thing in New Jersey... America's got a lotta' work to do. What kind of inane law is that? By the way, welcome everybody who's been posting in the past little while. I AM reading this daily, by the way, and it's amazing to find such a varied group in the OB. Phil

Backing up to what Arcadia said - I totally agree, if you're concerned about post-quality and member-involvement, review their history on OB. That's basically I did for the majority of you writers out there when I WAS running O Fortuna. Mind you, as you may have seen, O Fortuna was a qualified disaster.... but nonetheless, that was not a fault in my system of recruitment and verification, so much as my own idiocy as creator of the RPG. Phil

EDIT: One more thing people - dont' forget to edit your signatures and remove any information you had on your characters for O Fortuna. Thanks! Memo from the Desk of Philip Chiu Due to my own criminal negligence with regards to the handling of the O Fortuna RPG, I am hereby declaring the closure of the RPG. As I said, the fault lies mainly in myself - for reasons that to do not require further elaboration - I allowed the RPG to deteriorate slowly without my intervention. Circumstances did not allow time for me to perform necessary upkeep. I hope that this incident doesn't leave a bad taste in your mouths - I am in the works for another RPG - and I hope to correct and improve on the things that arose in the short time that O Fortuna existed. So - thanks to all those who participated - and thanks to all of you who have been following. Again, I sincerely hope you all give me a second chance and watch for the next one. Sincerely, Philip Chiu

Basically - I agree with everything `hEvN stated above (especially that extremely nice bit at the end). The one thing I would add on though, is that I quickly tire of RPGs chockful of magic and elementals. I love the medieval genre, but when people start tossing in buckets of fireballs and lightning-encased elves, I am immediately repulsed. I think Tolkein did it best with a minimal amount of magic; if there was magic, it was tastefully done and in given out in moderate doses. Frankly, I'm also annoyed by the endless stream of RPGs that pit Good vs. Evil in a BATTLE OF EPIC PROPORTIONS. While it often does work, there are just too many in OB which function off of this simplistic premise. Actually, after thinking for another second, the fact that the premise is simplistic is not necessarily a bad thing. It's the lack of imagination people have with regards to making use of the concept. That's all. Now you can all wait until my next RPG comes out and madly pick it apart for lack of imagination with regards to its usage of the Good vs. Evil concept :) Phil

Personally - I think an RPG runs best with someone firmly at the reins. While the level of control over the plot is debatable - I think someone who introduces NPCs, creates world-altering events, etc., etc., is necessary for... reasons which I cannot give a proper word to. I always feel more comfortable with something when I know there's SOMEONE out there who at least gives the pretense of being in charge, and in control, and aware of all things, and can solve any problems that may come up. I also think it's essential for someone to just keep things in check - such as to prevent others from altering the set parameters of the universe in which the RPG inhabits.

Memo from the Desk of Philip Chiu Due to my own criminal negligence with regards to the handling of the O Fortuna RPG, I am hereby declaring the closure of the RPG. As I said, the fault lies mainly in myself - for reasons that to do not require further elaboration - I allowed the RPG to deteriorate slowly without my intervention. Circumstances did not allow time for me to perform necessary upkeep. I hope that this incident doesn't leave a bad taste in your mouths - I am in the works for another RPG - and I hope to correct and improve on the things that arose in the short time that O Fortuna existed. So - thanks to all those who participated - and thanks to all of you who have been following. Again, I sincerely hope you all give me a second chance and watch for the next one. Sincerely, Philip Chiu

O Fortuna writers, Just thought I'd take advantage of the funky new system here to sort of regroup and continue. A few of you have somewhat dropped out of sight, myself included, and I'd like to pick-up as quickly as possible before things really die off. Please post any questions or concerns here for O Fortuna as I will answer them ASAP. Thanks Phil

[COLOR=DarkRed][SIZE=4][FONT=Garamond][U]Chapter 2[/U][/FONT][/SIZE][/COLOR] Summary: [B]Lucas [/B] is pulled into the rapidly expanding mystery in Emanil. [B]Mothias [/B] encounters a man, whose identity is not yet revealed, and manages to fend off the attacker ? though not before the cloaked fellow delivers a chilling message for the Duchess. [B]Tobi [/B] meets with other leaders of the Reclamation to finalize the details for the riot on Gunvyle Castle. Note: Sorry for the extended disappearance everyone ? things have been hectic outside the world of O Fortuna. I?m back ? and I promise to stay on top of things. If you have any questions at all for the above ? please do not hesitate to PM. I will respond ASAP. [U]Fas[/U] Emanil - Castle Raynald ? Throne Room ?Fas, what did you find in Yumin?? the Queen asked concernedly. Fas had arrived at Castle Raynald a day after departing from the village of Yumin ? hard riding for the knights, but this matter demanded the Kingdom?s immediate attention. When he left the village, the other knights barely noticed a cloth-bound object he had with him ? he had it with him today. He gave the Queen a knowing glance. She promptly dismissed the courtiers in the massive throne room. When the doors finally shut, Fas strode over to a large table at the foot of the throne dais. The Queen rose from her throne and walked down the steps to join Fas at the table. ?My Knight, are the reports true? Was Yumin attacked? How many survivors are there? Have you sent our Healers to aid them?? Another look from Fas stopped her from continuing. Despite her usual steady composure, one fitting for the ruler of the Kingdom, this was the first major atrocity the Kingdom had faced since her reign began years ago ? she was clearly shaken. Fas began with the stillness in the village, the awareness. She cried heavily. Fas could do nothing but allow her to react. When she regained her composure, he could see a sudden fire in her eyes. ?What do you intend on doing next, my Knight?? He stood and untied the rectangular package that was tied to his back. Holding it up and grasping it by one end of the cloth, he allowed it to unravel quickly. The Queen gave a start and pushed herself away from the table. A large, black, metallic tablet had clattered noisily on the table ? though a tablet in itself wouldn?t have startled the Queen so ? but the slab of metal had been fashioned out of a metal so black it seemed almost to absorb the light around it. The tablet, rectangular in shape, had letters etched into it. ?Letum est mei,? Fas read. ?Death is mine.? Though the words didn?t need to be translated for the Queen. ?I found it in a home in the village, lying on a corpse.? Queen Raynald steadied herself and reached out to touch the tablet. Fas quickly covered it with the same cloth and expertly wrapped it and tied it before she could argue. ?I don?t know what it is made of,? as he said this the tablet seemed almost to pulse, ?But I intend on starting with this. I have avoided looking at it for too long, and I have not touched it yet, save with the cloth. I?ve described it as best as I could to the smiths in our castle already, but none of them could begin to fathom such a metal. They?ve all mentioned a smith in the city, a man by the name of Lucas? I will go speak to him today. Until then, we can do no more but give the bodies at Yumin a proper burial. I have set to that task a few of the knights that were with me at the village.? ?I want them avenged, Fas? she said with fierce determination. ?Yes, my Queen.? He bowed, placed his helmet in the crook of his arm and walked out of the room.

The horse barely dodged the gate as it came crashing back down on the temple steps. “My god…” Sung said out loud, though nothing could be heard this close to the temple bell bellowing its ancient tone. As Kaze rounded the last steps, Sung could see the group of monks in what first appeared to be meditation. Though, before even a minute sigh of relief could escape his lips, he soon realized they were no longer alive. “I am too late...” Their skins had turned a putrid colour and their eyes were devoid of life. They looked almost like puppets, and the puppetmaster was clearly centerstage. Though it was sitting with its back to him, it was clearly quite short and did not seem designed for major physical combat of any sort. Obviously a minion designed for death of the most vile sorts – through deception, deceit, and dishonour. It had almost no clothing on, save for the black wrap covering his waist, and some sort of covering over its legs. This seemed a most pitiful creature really – though from the garbled descriptions given to him on his journey, this appeared to be the demonspawn he had been searching for. Sung nudged Kaze inside the temple entrance and could see the demon notice his arrival. He paused Kaze’s advance. “Demon. I am here to end your…” “Right – end my killing, make me pay for the suffering I've caused AND suffer for the deaths of my people, and so on, and so forth… hold that thought.” The creature stood up and… stretched. “You demonspa….” Sung began to seethe. “Alright - it’s Daemon. And I am Daemon and Daemon alone – you can drop the ‘spawn’. But, for the short time you’re here, please call me Lee. I must tell you, it’s awfully nice to hear some Cantonese after hearing so many screams of agony in Japanese… AND you probably can’t understand me can you… I knew Japanese wasn’t the only language that I should have…” “Die!” Sung cried as he swung off his horse and ran towards the creature. He shifted his posture and hands to prepare for the Side Tiger Claw – this combination would both choke this damned thing and blind it as well. He eyed the Daemon for a sudden counter-attack as he closed the intervening space… and attacked. His left hand shot out and locked around the creature’s neck while the right hand reached out to… [SIZE=4][FONT=Garamond][I]BURN[/I][/FONT][/SIZE] The pain Sung had felt at the temple gates had increased a hundred fold. The poison coursed through his entire left side this time, at a rate dwarfing the previous experience. Sung cried out as Lee took Sung's hand in his right and pulled it off of his neck and held it to Sung’s face – the fire continued to wrack through Sung’s body. “You ARE strong, Chinese man, I can see why they asked me to come. But like all the others, you are ultimately of no consequence. You have learned first hand…” Lee smiled at his own humour, “… why this will be over soon. These monks were kind enough to oblige with no interference,” he gestured towards the freakish corpses in their meditating pose, “I suggest you do the same.” Lee paused in thought while maintaining his grasp on Sung’s hand. “Oh Hell, again - we have this language barrier where you can’t understand a word…” The pain was beyond unbearable, and Sung was beginning to pass out, but [FONT=Garamond][I][SIZE=3]focus [/SIZE] [/I] [/FONT] someone had to [SIZE=3][FONT=Garamond][I]implacable dragon [/I] [/FONT] [/SIZE] shut him up [FONT=Garamond][SIZE=3][I]descends the mountain[/I][/SIZE][/FONT]. Sung looked up at Lee with eyes that had turned totally black. “I… understand… you… fine, Lee,” Sung spat out in Japanese. Lee’s eyes widened as Sung’s free right hand swung up and latched onto Lee’s stretched out arm. Gathering his strength, Sung slowly rose from his knees and managed to step forward into the bow and arrow stance. Sung could feel Lee attempting to pull away from his grapple, but Sung held strong. As he continued twisting Lee’s elbow upwards, he could feel Lee place his other hand on Sung’s grappling arm – but he concentrated… he could smell his own flesh burning… just a little more….now. [SIZE=3][FONT=Garamond][I][B]Tiger’s Claw[/B][/I][/FONT][/SIZE]. Sung slipped his left hand out from Lee’s weakening grasp and swung it down on Lee’s upward facing elbow – Lee struggled harder as Sung, screaming, continued the immense downward pressure,"Now..... stop talking!" The next scream came from Lee as he felt his elbow joint [I]snap[/I].

Sung could barely contain his anger… he had been following a trail of bodies for over three days now - bodies of innocents, fighters, farmers, wives; the people of Japan. The reports came trickling in at first, of corpses, a child found butchered… then, a suspect… a dark warrior, a demon, a ghost, a monster, multitudes of random information from the countryside. His friend, and Lord of the Miyotji Ninjas, Sorashima, slept restlessly, contemplating on sending out all of his men to scour the land. Sung, although a fierce believer in the strength of the Miyotji, knew that any of the ninjas would find an untimely demise at the hands of this killer. He rode out at first light, alone, leaving only a short message for Sorashima asking him to keep watch until he returned. On his dark steed, Kaze, Sung followed the path of the killer, from village to village, finding a slew of bodies on the way. After questioning villagers as he traveled for three days, he felt no closer to reaching this beast. Feeling in need of some time for peace, Sung made his way to the closest temple, and found himself at the gates of the great zen temple, Daitokuji. The very thought of the gardens, the marvelous architecture of the sub-temples, the sonorous sounds of the temple bell, immediately softened his anger. He had arrived to find the gates closed, and placed his hand on the gates to push them open… [SIZE=3][I][FONT=Garamond]burn[/FONT][/I][/SIZE]… Sung immediately pulled his hand back in shock… a quick glance at his hand showed several spots where the skin was bubbling. Disgusted at the thought of the poison seeping through his body, Sung closed his eyes and[I] [FONT=Garamond][SIZE=3]focus[/SIZE][/FONT] [/I] felt the wind suddenly whip around [I][FONT=Garamond][SIZE=3]graceful crane[/SIZE] [/FONT] [/I] him. At the next examination, Sung's hand had begun to heal itself… but he could see a faint, dark mist escape from the pores as they closed. [I][FONT=Garamond][SIZE=3]This IS a demon[/SIZE][/FONT][/I]… "The monks!" he cried out. Sung raced back to Kaze and swung onto its back. "Hyah!" He dug his heels into Kaze's side. The horse wheeled around and gave itself some room to charge. It snorted once (Sung would say to illustrate its preference to not rush the poisoned gates) and galloped forward [I][FONT=Garamond][SIZE=3]focus[/SIZE][/FONT][/I] as Sung closed his eyes again [FONT=Garamond][SIZE=3][I]tiger [/I] [/SIZE] [/FONT] and placed his hands on the horse [B][I][FONT=Garamond][SIZE=3]unyielding force[/SIZE][/FONT][/I][/B]. A silvery plating suddenly appeared to encase the horse's entire body… the gates flew off their rusty hinges from the impact of the charge. As the horse continued up the steps towards the main temple, Sung watched the gates soar past him, one careened wildly off to the left towards the gardens, the other was launched straight towards the enormous bell up above…

Changing my mind - I've been since informed regarding Terra's lack of availability due to an intense workload. I rescind my previous proposition to go ahead, and will respectfully await Terra's return. Juron - while your character is super fantastic... if you do want to continue in this thread... whaddya think about making someone a little less... serious? Just a thought. Phil

You only have Messenger 6.1 - I'm so disgusted - I fail you now. Hm... seriously? I would like a little more in the way of variety. The pics are nice... but something else would be cool. But you're not looking for advice - you want a rating.. 8.0/10

You spent WAY too much time in disc one... and perhaps too much time in your calculations too. I only bothered doing the Lucky 7s with Emerald because of the simplistic math involved with its Aire Tam Storm. But thanks for the explanation. Phil

Bingo. The latter. See, I'm no TOTALLY with it on the system of the Lucky 7s. In the American version, the one I play, I know that if you hit Lucky 7s, your character goes mad crazy and starts pummeling the opponent for 7777, a ridiculous amount of times. After that, as long as they stay in the 7s, everything you do, attack, heal, whatever, is in the amount of 7s. The only time I EVER hit lucky 7s, was when fighting Emerald Weapon, because of his Aire Tam Storm ability. But other than that, it's never happened. My question is, because I've never tried it, if they begin the round in 7s, do they automatically start beating the crap out of the opponent with the stream of attacks? Phil

New York is actually well liked, by the younger generation at least. Many of my friends and colleagues consider New York CITY like Toronto... but bigger and better. But while they consider the poshest spots in New York to be a million times better than the best in Toronto, they consider the crime in New York to be a million times worse than Toronto. True? Who knows. Maybe we should ask Moore to do a special on it. Phil

I'm in Toronto - and I'm just waiting to take the ferry across. Though... the ferry customs people were hesitant about my moose, igloo, and inuit friend. Could you speak with them, Chibi? Thanks Phil

How did you get RUBY to put your characters in lucky 7s? With Emerald, the Aire Tam Storm makes life very easy... but Ruby? Please explain. Phil

Having failed to grasp even the simplest bits of social etiquette, and yet just cute enough to be a Japanese anime character, Sailor Bob flew into the scene to fuse with the Four Dragon Warriors to form....

The toast suddenly grew to a million times it's size and bellowed, "You Have Offended the Great Toastanasianapopolous. I will now force you to combine with your four other requisite parts and battle me till I fall and EXPLODE in a flurry of toasted bits!