Suyoi

Well, it's about time, right? I... am... the oldest one... on the forums. Figured I'd try and put up a picture of myself. I'm usually in the Reborn Chat (and minecraft server) and not the Forum as much, but here I am: ^_~ Be gentle on this ancient being!

If a Pixelmon server was added to the roster, I believe it would be interesting. My only question would be what other mods would be available/necessary for Pixelmon? Would we be using Spawn of Psyduck mod? What about something like Peaceful Pack to allow other ways of item generation rather than brain-mashing pokemon? I understand the problem with some players using older computers and not having the power to run too many mods, but I am curious to see what mods would be added, if any, to Pixelmon.

When I ran some of the latter games regarding the Shadow of the Crescent D&D universe I compiled, I would often fill the time between games with little NPC dialogues and interactions for my players to read. Most often, these didn't give away any real clues, hints or unbalanced out-of-character knowledge; rather, they were used to give the flavor to the scenes they had played as well as to jog the memory of the players as to what transpired within the game itself. A few of these are rather short, and they do come from different periods of the game world. I'll try to post them as close to the order as I can. There are a lot of setting details and if anyone wants, I can add a glossary. This first one comes from right after the quiet ending of the second age, The Age of Houses and tells the story of Aldo, a nimble tailor who only wants to bring his familial house, House Laeric, back into the prominence it once experienced before being decimated by the player characters' House. It also gave them a little insight to the El-Sharan Guild of Mages which one of the players helped organize from just a bunch of pseudo-isolated wizards and scholars into a powerful watchful force separate from the ruling queen, Eska Rathagal, the Red Queen. The second is just a paragraph long. I had started it as a second vignette for the players regarding the happenings on the other side of the mainland. It involves an impetuous little mage named Cadence who has a very strange and different view on magic; he believes that magic should be given away freely for the good of all. He heads the infamous Institution for Magical Inquiry which routinely sells little 'fluff' magic items which the institution's colleagues create. Not like full-blown wands of fire or anything along that caliber, mind you, but a self-cleaning door mat, a piece of cloth which could return the shine to any metal it wiped once, a spoon that never stirred out the contents of its container, even if held upside-down. Of course, there were accidents and a lot of the items had drawbacks. Cadence, being the leader, often had his tower stationed within the walls of South City, Demarest. Towards the end of the Age of Houses, the whole of South City had removed all internal influence from various Houses which had been plaguing the city with turf-warfare, culminating in the sacking of the city just twenty years earlier. The city now elects various councilors who hold office for a limited amount of time and cannot be of any relation to their previous seat-holder. Recent events had seen rather disturbing deaths occur for some earlier councilors, such as one being whisked away of all body fluids and left in a desiccated state at the bottom of his stairs, and Cadence wanted to get what information he could from the appointed man. The players never ventured out east to even encounter the brat wizard, so I didn't develop the scene: The last group I will post is is the beginning of the third age, the Age of Anguish, where the players unknowingly are all part of the events that cause the gods and deities to come plummeting to the earth. This is when the current D&D group fell apart, unfortunately, and I have a lot of material changing the lay-out and history of the Crescent involved in these posts. The first one is right after the characters delivered, or rather almost delivered, the Blood Jade orb to Ryltar's Keep, known as the Black Keep. One of their NPC party members, as he was on watch duty, was attacked by zombies and fled with the orb in his possession, out of sheer fear. The party awoke to the onslaught the Blood Jade brought their way, killed the zombies and zombie-like putrescent glob, and tracked down their 'friend' to the keep. The mage of the party traded information for supplies with the leader of the keep, Lukhan, and the group continued on their quest to help the cleric get back in touch with their god. This is the afterword between Lukhan and Easene, an envoy for the School of New Thought (created by the same mage that organized the El-Sharan guild because she felt the El-Sharan guild had too much power and wanted her own school.) The second vignette is about Loressa Coreg. The Age of Houses left the Throne of El-Sharah, or Adoran as it was called, vacant. The final queen in a long line of queens, Cetalia Nasmec, was known as The Civic Queen by those who loved her house-less approach to independence from the caste-like system. She was also known as the Mad Queen by everyone else, especially the houses who helped her gain the title of Queen. In the end, she was overturned and the five great houses, some called Royal Houses (House Coreg, House Laeric, House Rathagal, House Borren and House Waterdeep(the player characters' house) set up a Pentacracy. The Council of Five was established to basically see to the day-to-day functions of running a government and continuing rule without a single leader. Society ground to a halt, civil projects were neglected, the wealthier became wealtheir, resources were drained, crime was only kept in check by the sheer corruption of the law... not a happy place. Loressa had come into the knowledge which indicated she was a potential candidate to become the next queen, succeeding the long-abandoned throne. Her familial house, House Coreg, had not directly held the throne, though had a few Monarch Consorts (equivalent to no-power king) and many said her claim was an utter farce. Still, she had gained enough of a following to defy the rule of her own house and strike out seeking aid in confronting the Council of Five. A well-versed swordsman, her preferred blade was a bastard sword, one of the noted hallmarks of her house. This takes place the morning of the last month of the third age. The last vignette I have not finished. It involves one of the final events of the Age of Anguish, at the climax of the Godsfall. Loressa faces off against Atrimonde, a man who has gathered pieces of a fallen god. The fallen god was cast out into an alternate universe (Ravenloft) prior to the first official age, the Age of Kings. The players would be off in their own fight against with a few choice gods of various settings (Eldath, Hanali Celanil, The Red Knigth, Tempus {Forgotten Realms}, St. Cuthbert {Greyhawk}) during these events had they chose to help Ryltar's Keep. It is a little bloody. It starts from Atrimonde's perspective then shifts to Loressa's perspective with a slight jump-back in time, but not too hard to follow, I hope. Artistic license and what not. It was inspired by the 5-word story thread here on the Reborn Forum as I tried to come up with a single story within just 5 words. Atrimonde's words are the 5 I chose. The end event is still up in the air as to who ultimately wins the fight. Loressa does gain a little help the final goddess falls. In the end, the whole game was just a way to inject the Crescent with its own pantheon. It started with a box, a horn, a dwarf, an elf, and a human and ended up with a scarred land brought back from its self-imposed exile into the waking world around it. I hope you enjoy and leave any questions and comments below. I'd be happy to answer them. Maybe even dig up more such stories and vignettes or character profiles.

This used to be all orange groves, far as the eye could see! Barbara Stanwick and I used to take the trolley!

Decided to go ahead and plug this into the official Roleplaying subgroup! Go ahead and give it a look over! Much appreciated, ~Joshie

"Saucy" is a good one but I think I'd have to give it to "dissonant."

This is tough because I have always liked fast Pokemon, especially in earlier generations. But, that being said, I have a very VERY soft spot for Defense. Take whatever you get thrown at you and whittle them down. And my mascot would probably be either Bastiodon or Cofagrigus.

Stratos, I appreciate all the information! It is really good to see some background of what happened earlier. I used to run a play-by-post game on a forum before, back in 2006. I kind of also like the idea of using an available Showdown chat room. My idea would be to try and set up a time frame, once or maybe twice a month at most, to sit down and play as a group, utilizing whichever method would be best suited at the time. This would be similar to the Gaming Nights that Rose has been doing. So, if we have people, like Piruluk, who doesn't have a mic, we could still use another method. I think some Skype rooms have a chat available for people who don't have mics to still participate if we use this avenue. Again, as I await for my wall of text, I am flying by the seat of my pants, so to speak, with the different programs for a table-top feel. I always enjoy seeing the reactions, even just by text, of the players as events unfold around them. It is what makes running the game fun for me. I would also utilize a play-by-post system similar to the Roleplaying threads, maybe? This would allow different time-zones to get in the game and still participate in various events, stories and plot lines. The thread would be used as well as a 'down-time' system between off-game weeks. Not necessarily like a 'players' journal' but adventurers, for example, spend a lot of time on treks though various portions of their journeys and creative commentary between players would be good. One of the downsides to play-by-post only games is when the action is stagnant; where people would be stuck in an event if characters drop out, for example. While, not a problem per say, it can cause a little bit of a hiccup with scenes, character development and plot lines On a game mechanic level, I'd award XP for all sorts of relevant posts, plot advancement, character development just like in good ol'fashioned table-top D&D. We would use the chat room or Skype as a period where more combat-oriented action would take place, since combat is the most time-consuming event in D&D ever. This way, the action would still feel faster pace than random posting and hoping people can keep up with actions within people's threads. I don't foresee player character versus player character incidents, and would probably discourage out-right altercations between player characters, but jumping in a chat between major game sessions wouldn't be too bad. My biggest worry is the game structure. I would like to use one game universe in which all the players exist. I have ran enough games both on-line and in person to manipulate events to keep the pace flowing and mood appropriate. (I even ran a one-on-one with my best friend where it was a multi-pronged many-character alliance trying to take down the 'big bad.' Confusing, but still a memorable experience.) I have not, however, ran a duo-styled game like this and the experience of mashing the two mediums is going to be... different. Daunting, yes. But all games have their unique challenges. I always appreciate a good challenge.

Yay! Welcome to Reborn!

TFW something tastes completely different from the way it smells and ruins it forever.