Ending a Decade Behind the Screens · Page 5

And again, I say

Yeah, all I need is a psionic botch while I'm still in the uterus.

I'm just gonna ride it out. What do babies do in the uterus? Not a whole helluva lot, so why should I be different?

@Oak: Oh, it's a gather! You gave me a spoiler!

@JohnA1nut: internal dialogue is always an option. (but then again, I am more of a story gamer)

Day 24, on which he gets an intuition check. John retains his 2@2 intuition, so a simple check has a decent chance of working (roughly 50/50), but 17+9=26, so he doesn't notice anything.

And what exactly would there be to notice? My ability to gather sensory data is at the moment pretty limited.

(Doing Therapy)

Why not try to use some of those psionics to meditate, and spend the entire time training your psionic capabilities? Also, you could try to forge a psychic connection with the mother. Of course, these are suggestions, I'm not telling you what to do. And I'm not even sure that it fits in with your skillset or personal actions. Don't do what you don't already want to do.

John, if I told you what options might be open to you, I would be giving hints based on my knowledge and making more work for myself. Ride it out.

As for what you didn't notice, well, eventually you probably will.

My e-mail did not take as long as I anticipated, although some of it I admit to marking for later consideration.

I hope to get through posts from Michael, Maxx, Kurt (who just missed me last time), Harry, Nikolaj, John 2, Kyler, and Ryan.

The light panel is deceptive; it looks simple enough, but is actually an energy creation device, which puts the bias at 1@10. Thus although Michael thinks he is just using another psi device, he is learning a new skill considerably tougher than the ones he has already learned. His current bias is 1@3 and his BRA is 2@1, which gives him +34-20=14% chance to learn this new skill. He rolls 83, so it's not happening. He specifies two attempts, so we'll assume he comes back and tries again, once he realizes that it is not quite the same thing. He rolls 27, also failed.

He turns his attention to the telepathic lifter the next day, 05 an easy success for learning a P1@7 (we just calculated 14 as the target for a P1@10 so it's 3% better, 17%), and increasing his bias accordingly.

Maxx and I are still struggling with his out-of-body skill. There's also a separate thread in which I try to address the Spirits versus Souls problem.

I don't know whether Kurt knows just how hard it is actually to commit suicide, even with the full knowledge that death is only a doorway to another and probably better world. It requires a successful difficult will power check, d30+10, and his will power is 1@10, and the die roll is 14, which means 24, not within the range that allows him to succeed at this.

Harry is very much involved in wedding preparations. It undoubtedly helps that he does not need to sleep.

Looking back, Nikolaj rolled 68 on the prayer for third-party revelation for Mr. Kucher--a strong success, but not, I think, one that will invoke the immediate appearance of a supernatural being in the middle of the day. So he will have to await the next day.

John 2 is making guesses about what is to happen to him, and it is so difficult that I cannot tell him anything more than I have told him; but he will continue to grow. The thing he missed was that his heart was beating; since we're going to advance him to Day 32, it is no longer going to be particularly important.

Kyler is continuing to train his new protege.

Ryan is also training someone, and I've spent a bit of time putting together a reference sheet for Mitzu, but I'll roll for the new psi skills. It's first Ryan's skill attempt, then Mitzu's mind reading, then if that fails Ryan's telepathy, then Mitzu's learning roll. But the TK pulse is an instantaneous thing, so we have to do it the other way around, starting with establishing the link and then attempting the trick. 61 means Takano fails to connect, and 46 is doubtful for Ryan with a 1@2 SAL+1@7 BRA+2x7@ world bias giving 43%. Next day is 93, I've got to crunch numbers on Mitzu who has a 1@10 BRA+1@1 SAL+2x3@ bias=37%, 6% chance to botch, we're good. Ryan responds with a telepathy attempt, 96, that is a botch. Telepathy botches are fascinating, sometimes. Let's create a list--in another thread, A Telepathy Botch List.

--M. J. Young

I have dealt with a stack of rather time-intensive posts apart from the games, including that I've wrapped up the botch list thread with a determination of the nature and severity of the botch (the details are still to come in the play thread), but as I look on the one hand at the time and on the other hand at the list of players including Michael, Maxx, Kurt, Harry, Nikolaj, and John 2 (not to mention the need to finish a thought for Ryan), I despair and determine that this will have to be added to my workload for tomorrow.

Hopefully I will manage to cover it all then. Again, I apologize.

--M. J. Young

Hopefully I will manage to cover it all then. Again, I apologize.

Just get some good sleep, that's all I ask.

Curse that stopwatch...

Blame me, I'm the one who got it for him.

It looks like the list has not changed since yesterday--Michael, Maxx, Kurt, Harry, Nikolaj, John 2, and cover that botch for Ryan.

I really didn't expect the target of the telekinetic lifter to be a problem, but I'm afraid Michael picked a non-existent object--I can't even use a GE roll for finding such a thing, because they simply do not exist. He'll have to find something else.

Maxx and I are still arguing about his OBE efforts.

Kurt is not going to be able to hop out of the car and start shooting, given the position of everything; we'll move this forward.

Harry is getting married for as long as they both shall live.

Nikolaj has suggested that they give thanks for the food (at least he didn't use the expression "say grace", which would really have caused confusion, I'm sure). That's not part of the human religious experience in this world, I think, so he's introducing it.

I'm going to give John 2 an intuition check on the languages, not because there's any chance he can hear enough to know anything, but because he might recognize something about the patterns. It will be a simple check, and the dice say 9+12=21, against a 2@2 intuition, that's as solid a success as you can find.

I've settled on a severe temporary insanity for Mitzu as the consequence of Ryan's botch. I'm going with a fear impulse, because it's pretty easy to run for a non-player character and very dramatic in play. Whether he will scream and run at this point depends on a difficult will power check, 28+10=38 which is a failure against almost anybody's will power.

That is almost everything I have to do here today.

--M. J. Young

Note to self:

Since John 3 is getting so deep into the theological discussions with Friar Tuck, I think it will be helpful for me to put a few people down here so I know when they appeared.

• Anselm of Canterbury, Italian assigned Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to his death in 1109. Founder of scholasticism, originator of the ontological argument for the existence of God.
• Abelard of Paris, sometimes called the twelfth centuries most brilliant theologian and logician, began teaching in his own school in 1101, and in other schools around France intermittently through his death in 1142, denounced by Bernard of Clairveaux for heterodox views but never condemned.
• Bernard of Clairveaux, Cistercian monk and in some ways the most powerful Catholic of the twelfth century, founded a monastery in 1115, outlined the Rule of Knights Templar in 1128, died 1153.
• Peter Lombard, student of Bernard of Clairveaux, taught in Reims prior to taking a position at Notre Dame in 1134, had some contact with Peter Abelard (and Hugh of St. Victor) there, becoming Bishop of Paris in 1159, died 1160, wrote the Four Books of Sentences on which all scholastic interpretation was framed thereafter.
• Joachim of Floris, b.1145, Cistercian monk in Casamari near Rome, became Abbot of another monastery in 1177, died 1202, challenged Augustine's conception of history (in which the church age is the millennium and the end toward which history was always headed) with a three-part system in which the Spirit age was dawning, in which everyone would adopt the lifestyles of monks, identified as a prophet by the Franciscans.
• Francis of Assisi, b.~1181, d.1226, founded Franciscan orders in 1209 which included laymen as the the "tertiaries". Sometime after 1205 began working to rebuild churches in Italy, and in 1209 devoted life to poverty, died 1226.
• Dominic of Osma founded the Dominicans 1215, finished theological studies in 1191, became and Augustinian monk 1195, debated against the heretical Cathars beginning in 1204, established followers in a house in 1215 and as an official Order of Preachers in 1216. d.1221.

--M. J. Young

And here I thought I was decreasing your workload by holding back on the posts in my thread... :p

One of these days I want to hear MJ's opinion of/take on/interpretation of Thomas Aquinas's whole 'Unmoved Mover' line of thinking.

LOL--well, John, I had some concern that I needed a broader base of information, and I was recently picking up bits from Tillich's history of Christian theology for my online bible class, so it was handy enough that I figured I should pick up some twelfth century background so I would have a better idea of what Tuck might know and what he couldn't possibly know. In fact, I was finishing up the section today, and thought I should probably add two people said to have impacted Wycliff (who in turn impacted Hus, who in turn impacted Luther):

• Thomas Bradwardine, not born until 1290 or 1300, d.1349, received his BA in 1321, briefly Archbishop of Canterbury from 1348 to his death the following year, too late to matter in our scenario.
• Anonymous of York, identity still unknown, published a paper in 1100 in connection with the Investiture Controversy in which he asserted that the King of England was effectively Christ for England (that is, standing in the place of the Pope, who by this construction is stripped of authority over civil governments). He is also called The Norman Anonymous or Anonymous of Rouen.

I appreciate the effort; yours is not one of the heavier games in my workload, but it does help not to have to post every day to every thread.

Harry, start a thread in "Off Topic" or ask me in a spare moment at Ubercon--if there is such a thing. I was just re-reading a summary of Aquinas' arguments (again in Tillich) but it would be better for you to explain them as you understand them so the group can participate.

Now, let's see what we can do with the game threads for Michael, Maxx, Kurt, Harry, Nikolaj, and John 2.

I recall that Michael managed to get that telekinetic lifter running on a roll of 02 (imagine me remembering that all this time), so he's got two minutes to play with it. I see on checking that my memory is not that good--he rolled five, so he has five minutes.

Maxx has determined to do the out-of-body experiment without a clairsentient link back to the body. It is thus a 5@10 skill without penalty, and he's doing thirty minutes of concentration--oops, no, he's doing something called "concentrated sleep". I'm going to have to investigate this before I make assumptions about it.

Kurt is fighting, presumably using his 1@10 Fisticuffs style B7@1 fast aggressive weapon-adverse attx3 +5 att SM -5 def SM hands. Rolling to activate the style, 90 plays against him. We'll also give the other side an intuition check for surprise, 10+13=23, they will be surprised, so he gets to make an attack without the benefit of the style, MSV+BRA+2xbias-TV, that's 1@9+1@10+2x7@-1@6=37% on an annoying attack, 09 means he landed a blow. The surprise means we come around to the beginning of the next minute, he gets another shot at activating his style, and the fight continues. Unfortunately, he rolls 90 on activating his style, and he's fighting two opponents both of whom will have 1@5 SALs in simple weaponless styles with 1@8 BRAs, 1@7 MSVs, and 2x7@ biases, their rolls for activation are 90 and 80, so they're no better than he at this moment.

For initiative, he rolls 15, they 62, I'm sure they can't hit him on a 62, so he gets the first crack. He rolls 37, the best annoying hit he can make. They respond with attempts to grapple, 05, 18. He's not getting the rolls, as 77 won't get him into style, 52 is still bad for one of them but the other rolls 11. Initiative for their side is bonused by the style, and the rolls are 86, 43, they go first. The one in style will attempt an incapacitating choke hold, 71 out of range; the other rolls 61, still not in style so no luck there. Kurt rolls 58, which misses. The guy in style gets two attacks, and goes for a punch, but 83 misses.

Again, 02 finally gets him in style, giving him three attacks in the minute and a bonus on his chance of success, 11 puts the other guy in style. We need initiative, 83, 68, they failed by less, so they (each) get one, he gets two, they get one, he gets one. They roll 24, 33. He's going to take 2 intensities, and the choke hold is going to connect. 83 and 14 are his rolls, the latter going to hurt the guy behind him a bit--one intensity. The guy holding the choke hold cannot attack otherwise, so there's only one incoming, 58, and now I need to know the numbers because that's not too far outside anything. I wrote

1@5 SALs in simple weaponless styles with 1@8 BRAs, 1@7 MSVs, and 2x7@ biases

which means 1@5+1@8+1@7+2x7@-1@6 TV=48% to hit, this is a miss. Kurt gets one more attack in the minute, 21, which does 2 intensities on the guy behind him (I'm assuming he's focused on that one), and then we're back to initiative.

11, 77, it will be 1-1-1-1-1 this time, so Kurt gets a strike before he has to make his first stamina check, 64 means I have to check his revised numbers, with the 1@10 SAL+1@9+1@10+2x7@+5 SM-1@6=the old number of 37 plus 15=52%. Now he makes the stamina check, 17+20 is all she wrote.

I've got Harry's wedding finished, but that will start next time.

I've a thought about who would volunteer to give thanks in Nikolaj's situation, but I think it would require a particularly good GE roll for that to happen; thus a neutral GE roll will be one of the unidentified new believers, and a bad roll only that it falls to him to do it. The roll is 19, so it's one of the men. I'll devise something that is not really terribly prayer-like, but it should work.

John 2 attempts to get his 1@2 Intensify Senses P5@1 by shifting sensory resources in the brain active, so we'll roll 52, which fails this time. He's going to keep at it, though, and he has little sense of day or night and lots of periods of sleep, so we'll try again, and let's make sure we have a target number: 1@2 SAL+2@2 BRA in a flatlined bias is 34%, rolling 64, 74, if he botches he might come out here and take back that stopwatch he gave me, 36, 58, 52, 33. He gets a GE roll of 16.

--M. J. Young

if he botches he might come out here and take back that stopwatch he gave me

MJ, part of the reason I sent you the stopwatch was to prove to you that I'm not afraid of it. I just hope you don't verse me out with a botch before I'm even born.

I just hope you don't verse me out with a botch before I'm even born.

Heh. You'd better quit getting fancy while you're ahead, then . . .

I am entirely surprised at how quickly I got through the e-mail from the weekend, but then I probably left some of it for tomorrow, because I think I told it to download on Sunday and just worked my way through that stuff. That means I'll have an overload again tomorrow, but at least I am here now and can address game posts from Michael, Maxx, Kurt, Harry, Nikolaj, and John 2.

Michael needs a roll for using the new forcefield generator rod, which is a new skill because it is a force generative, not a telekinetic (it has a telekinetic component, but since force generative devices are the higher bias, it has to be listed there). He rolls 77, which is not going to succeed.

Maxx has caused me to wonder about a detail that has appeared in several skills which in this particular case might not make sense at all: how does he know how long is thirty minutes?

I am going to digress, because I really like this bit from For Better or Worse. Bob Slade, traveling with previous companions including Shella, says that they should remain in hiding for twenty minutes to be certain that those seeking them are far enough distant. He then wonders how he could know when twenty minutes had elapsed, not having a watch, and the only answer that comes to him is that he could count slowly to one thousand two hundred, which he thought was just ridiculous and he was not going to do it. A bit later Shella informs him that it had been twenty minutes, and he wanted to ask how she knew, but didn't because he didn't want to be told that she counted to one thousand two hundred.

The big question for Kurt is whether the plan worked: did Mariska manage to get into the compound undetected, and is she hiding somewhere such that she can make a difference in the events ahead? Since that is outside his control but differs from the "script", it relies on a GE roll. 14 indicates that it's not what he wants, but it is favorable. That means at least she has not been captured.

As with real weddings, there are always more details to cover; and for better or worse, with Harry we aren't really pressing against a looming deadline, because we can always slow time enough to cover the rest of the details.

It seems to me that it was very natural for the earliest Christian worship and fellowship gatherings to be centered around meals, and I'm starting to see just how natural it would be for that to happen in Nikolaj's situation--except, of course, that the orcs and humans are segregated at meals, which is another problem he might have to address somehow.

I'm going to need another GE roll for John 2, because he might be getting a crucial bit of information that will blow his situation wide open to him, or he might just get a lot of routine nonsense, or nothing comprehensible at all. The roll is 5+8+10=23, nearly as bad as anticipated. Sorry, John, the big secret does not yet get spilled.

--M. J. Young

A few folks have faded away, whether or not due to the decreased frequency of updates, but we still have a half-dozen active players that respond quickly when a GM update does happen.

No less than three of my prodigal players have returned over the last week (two within the last twenty-four hours), so I am back up to GMing nine active players in RPoL's MV game.

Therefore, I may be giving MJ even more rest between my GO player posts than I had previously planned... :o

Sorry, John, the big secret does not yet get spilled.

So I still don't know that I'm a zygote, or is there a different big secret?

John, when Maxx harassed me into letting him play as a zygote without revealing his true identity (which I will admit still annoys me), I zygoted him in as a sprite. When Whisp annoyed his referee so much by constantly making every game about picking up girls, Ed zygoted him in as a girl. We've talked about zygoting people in as Timba, The Lion King, or as elves or members of alien races. You might be a Klingon. Even stranger, you might be a Canadian. It might be that the voice you hear is not your mother, but that your mother is a cat and you're hearing your mother's owner.

So the mystery in almost every Zygote Experience I run isn't whether you're an unborn child--most of my players figure that out a lot faster than the character in the novel who went through it--but who or what unborn child you are. And that is the real secret, and the real reason why I zygoted you. Sure, death by vacuum is justification for a zygote experience, but it doesn't require it. I wanted you to be not John Cross, or more specifically I wanted you to be someone or something in particular that is not John Cross, and this was the way to do it.

I don't know whether you'll love it or hate it, but you're stuck with it now--and I asked someone if he was willing to take over the job, and he said he'd rather take over someone else and not have to deal with the very convoluted world into which you are being born.

Which is already more than I should say, but it's not unfun to taunt you a bit about it. So before I get to you, I see that I have threads from Michael, Brock, Maxx, Kurt, Harry, and then you, John 2.

Michael tries again to activate the forcefield lifter rod, 58 still well above his chance of success. He's got all day, though, so he'll try again later. 46 is closer, but with a 2@1 BRA and 1@7 bias the chance to learn to operate a 1@8 force generative is 20%. His next roll is 61. We'll give him four tries today, the fourth roll being 55, so nothing.

Brock gets a bit of feedback on his plan from the captain. That will give him some opportunity to make revisions to his ideas before we get to the meeting.

I think it's time finally to roll for Maxx' out-of-body effort; I'm assuming he will accept the terms as outlined. The roll is 37, which is 1@1 Spirit Travel P5@10 with 30:00 preparatory concentration in which body is placed on sleep-like autonomic process time measured by mental countdown, allows spirit to sever all connection with body and travel independently for RS minutes or until terminated, +59SM. Now let's see what he does with it.

Interestingly, Kurt has a skill that provides strength for his next psionic skill check, but he has no psionic skills other than awakening himself. I'll roll it anyway, 12 is a success first try. There's no sense to a second attempt, so I'll flag him on that.

Harry and I still haven't finalized the form of the bracelets, but we can start the service, I think.

John 2 wants to continue listening, but at present everything is in a language he does not know, so he's going to be disappointed for a while. More significantly, though, he will continue growing--we'll move forward to day 50. He wants a GE roll for whether the Architect happened to mention the zygote experience to him years ago. I don't think it likely, but if he gets a three on a GE roll, I'll give him a GE roll for the chance that this was mentioned, which would have happened had he gotten a three on that second roll. The first roll is 15, so we're nowhere near a second roll.

--M. J. Young

Maxx harassed me into letting him play as a zygote without revealing his true identity (which I will admit still annoys me)

I apologize for that but there may be some hidden reasons behind my actions. The annoyance may stem from anxiety or curiosity. I wonder if you prefer someone lying about their identity (in convincing manner thus avoiding the annoyance) or just concealing their identity (but you feel annoyed about them because of this).

Ya know Maxx (is it one x or two?) I was considering doing exactly what you're doing. I figured it would only take MJ about 3 or 4 days to determine that it was me though, so I decided it was a bad idea. If you don't know why, you've obviously never read any of my postings. Congratulations I guess.

(Doing Therapy)

Rant mode. It's not one or two x's, John; his name is not Max. That's a screen handle he used in concealing his identity. I objected that we already have Max Saltonstall playing here, so that would make him Max 2, and he suggested that since it was just a screen name it could be Maxx to save the trouble of using the number.

And yes, Maxx, it also annoys me when people use false names, although I do try to understand their reasoning behind it. What it comes to, really, is that you've asked me to devote a significant chunk of my time to facilitating an opportunity for you to play a game but you wish to remain a complete stranger to me. I don't even know the reason. It might be that in your circumstance it would be detrimental in some way for someone to discover that you were involved in an online role playing game, or that the revelation of details about your life would compromise details about your life. That could be because your employer would find such participation dubious, or because your students would pry into your personal life via Internet search, or your girlfriend would discover that you have a wife on the side. It might be that you think I would be prejudiced against you. I had a player in a D&D game decades back who before who had prank called us a number of times and thought that we wouldn't let him play the game with his friends if we knew who he was. He used an assumed name, which is still confusing around here. (The ironies are first that the police never told us who they arrested in the matter and second that I probably would have let him play anyway. I certainly didn't throw him out when I learned the truth, and I've worked with him since.) It might be that you really don't like yourself or don't think you would be a good character in a role playing scenario, but you don't want to argue with me about it. There was a paraplegic who played D&D with us back then, and I often wondered how he would do in Multiverser--but really, it doesn't matter who you are when you begin because you can become whoever you want to be. John Walker's character for quite some time introduced himself as Kaiser Sohdze, because it reminded him that the people he met could not know anything about him but what he pretended, and he could pretend pretty much anything. And maybe your reason is completely different. But I come here six days a week and run games for people who are becoming my friends--Graeme Comyn, who took the time to have lunch with me in Elkton when he was at a conference in Baltimore; Eric Ashley, who has given me books to expand my familiarity with the fantasy and science fiction literature; John Cross, who paid for my trip to visit him in Columbus a few years back; Shawn Kelley, who stopped to meet me at a demo I was running in Newark when he was on vacation; Harry Smith, who has debated theology with me in off-time at Ubercon; Kelly Tessena Keck, who edited the text of my second novel; John Oakmaster, who despite using a translation of his name has told me much about himself, his background, his identity. And in the middle of all these people there's you, the complete stranger who does everything in his power to remain a complete stranger. If you don't want to be my friend, I get it; just don't expect me to feel so beneficent about spending several hours a week running a game for someone who does not want to be my friend.

Does that clarify the matter?

/Rant mode.

We begin today's game with Maxx, Kurt, Harry, Nikolaj, and John 2.

Maxx has a limited amount of time in which to experiment, and although he indeed can chain his skill, if he interrupts his concentration to chain the spirit travel he has to restart the concentration. That means I need to know how much of the time he is using initially to experiment with movement so I know whether he has enough time left (the roll was 37) to complete the other skill.

Kurt has the opportunity to meet Augustus Steranko; we'll see what he does with that.

Harry's wedding is unfolding. I'm inclined to roll a GE roll for whether anything goes wrong, but we'll let a bit of this move forward first.

Nikolaj has come to the end of a big day, but he has also prayed something that is going to impact tomorrow, so I'll not rush into it.

If I'm reading him aright, John 2 does get a new use credit to 1@3 Intensify Senses P5@1 by shifting sensory resources in the brain.

--M. J. Young

You know, if I really wanted to play the game but didn't want to play AS myself, I would have done exactly as I did in the beginning, introducing myself, and then asked if I could play as someone other than myself, perhaps spend a lot of time developing the alternate persona befre ever even pitching the idea. Were I refused, I would have kept the character and used it elsewhere.

If it were a matter of not wanting to reveal my identity, I would simply request to use a pseudonym, and still reveal quite a bit about my personality. I think it's really quite rude to try to play a roleplaying game, an inherently social game, without disclosing any part of yourself to the other players. Especially to the referee, when you're trying to play a game that is tailored to a person individually.

/end somewhat incoherent rant of my own.

If you don't want to be my friend, I get it; just don't expect me to feel so beneficent about spending several hours a week running a game for someone who does not want to be my friend.

Well, the thing is MJ, since you don't know his identity, he could be anyone. You have no idea what he may have done for you. For all you know, he could be your best friend who has done nothing but bail you out of trouble since you were in the 4th grade. On the other hand, he could be that kid who made you eat dirt in the 4th grade. Give him the benefit of the doubt. Personally, I think it's kind of cool.

I sympathize with both sides.

I hear what MJ is saying, but I myself am more guarded about letting the entire world find such personal information about me, and connect it with my real name.

Since the site is public, anyone knowing my actual last name could use a search engine to find my character's information here, and my character is me. There is a lot of personal stuff I post regarding my character. And being a real-life Professor by vocation, I'm not at all certain that I want just anyone being able to easily find it.

However, I don't have a problem with you folks knowing this stuff. For example, Nikolaj managed to track me down and friend me via Facebook, so he knows my last name. However, I prefer keeping that name detached from the personal information publicly available here, so that it doesn't become search engine fodder.

(BTW, since I also interact with students via Facebook, my policy is to only friend folks who request it, so that I don't pressure anyone to accept a friend request from me. If anyone here wants my contact info on Facebook, PM me, and I'll be happy to share it with you. :)

Max is actually my real life nick name because sometimes my friends call me that. The reason for choosing Max for the handle name was so that it will be harder to search for who I really am on the Internet. The reason for Maxx is to make searching for my threads (in this forum) on the Internet much easier.

I wonder what is the definition of a friend since I even try to befriend a butterfly as Morach even if it does not care what my name is. Some superhero such as Spiderman or Superman also conceal their identity but they still have friends in that form. To sum it up, I consider all people here as my friends even if they do not consider me as one.

Since the site is public, anyone knowing my actual last name could use a search engine to find my character's information here, and my character is me.

That is a point of concern so what I am doing is actually experimenting on a way the game could be played anonymously. This could lead to an increase of female players who do not want to reveal their private information.

Nikolaj managed to track me down and friend me via Facebook, so he knows my last name.

I can also search for your last name by using a simple connection (which might not be obvious to casual observer). Do you want to guess what that connection is?

I did leave hints of myself in the game thread (and all over the forum) if you look at it carefully. Think of why I responded in such a way and you will eventually figure out my personality.

MJ, I was wondering if it's too late to change the way my damage riders work on the 9mm carbine? Since firing in single mode is so much more effective than triburst, the triburst is at a disadvantage. Could it be that I can hit more than one target simultaneously whilst in triburst? Is it too late to change that? That's actually what the Uzi was developed for. Trench warfare. Multiple targets at close range. You hold it sideways, and the recoil would drive it sideways automatically, to sweep a trench clear of enemy soldiers. Could the triburst be reconfigured to do that? Maybe first shot aimed, the other two throw lead GE roll shots base dangerous? Just a thought.

I could develop a skill to do that, but I'm talking more like multiple really close together targets. Two guys standing side by side, for instance. First shot aimed for lethal, good GE roll the other two base dangerous shots nail the other guy squarely as well. A 3 I hit three targets on completely opposite sides of the room. Something like that? That would be well within the capabilities and design of that weapon. Not even a skill really, just move the gun sideways whilst shooting in triburst. I could even miss on the skill roll and still deal the target two base dangerous shots if the GE roll was good.

If there's no advantage, and only a disadvantage to shooting in triburst, it kind of defeats the purpose of having it, ya know? Also makes the game that much less fun. Give it some thought, anyway. It would turn the triburst back into a new use too. First time I hit multiple targets.

(Doing Therapy)

(BTW, since I also interact with students via Facebook, my policy is to only friend folks who request it, so that I don't pressure anyone to accept a friend request from me. If anyone here wants my contact info on Facebook, PM me, and I'll be happy to share it with you. :)

Well, I invited folks to PM me, and then realized that I don't seem to know how to do PMs on this "new" version of GO. Do we have PM capabilities here now, and if so, how do we access them?

BTW, in case you haven't noticed, I have even pulled back the curtain to let y'all see my actual smiling face, by successfully wrestling with gravatar.com yesterday... :D

Wow. O.K., let me sort this out.

No, we don't have private messaging on the board at present; but since Nikolaj is connected to me through Facebook I can probably find you that way (and my Facebook profile is as public as it can be, so anyone looking for Nikolaj should be able to find him through me). I don't often have time to "play" with Facebook, and only send friend requests a few times a year (most often if I wind up with a new friend I'll check his friends for common friends that aren't on my list). But I'll make a note of it. Of course, I could be wrong about messaging--I didn't realize we had pictures in our profiles, as I don't think I'd ever looked at them.

For all you know, he could be your best friend who has done nothing but bail you out of trouble since you were in the 4th grade.

John, I have a re-e-e-ally really really bad track record with best friends. And the only ones who have bailed me out of trouble consistently over the years have been my parents. Now, if he's Flibbage or Wicker T. Bunglepoo, I can understand why he might not want me to know that, as they have both been thorns in my flesh. On the other hand,

1. I do not know with any certainty the actual identity of either of them, so identifying himself as who he really is would not give it away;
2. Wicker, at least, and perhaps Flibbage, also, has done a fair amount to promote Multiverser, and I recognize that there has been this positive side, which tends to mitigate the negatives.

I apologize for missing Friday; I'll try to explain in the Blogless Lepolt tomorrow. The threads here have already chewed up a lot of my time tonight, but I'm going to make every effort to fairly address every thread from Michael, Brock, Maxx, Kurt, Harry, John 3, Nikolaj, John 2, and Graeme.

Michael is still trying to teach himself the use of the forcefield lifter, what might be called a "capture rod", and he rolls 24, which I'm going to have to double-check but am pretty sure is good. I'm wrong: 20% is the ceiling. We'll give him a couple tries today, 36, 52, 30, 43, 40, we'll call them one per hour.

Brock rolls 12, good enough on a GE roll, for finding someone in the lounge; we'll give him two people.

I am fairly confident that with a +58 sit-mod Maxx will succeed in learning a history of person. His roll is 65, and since he's already got an 11@2 bias and this skill is 11@5 I don't think the rest of the math is necessary, 1@2 History of Person P11@5 30:00 preparatory concentration while in contact with person required +58SM.

He had thirty-seven minutes of time in this form, and since he spent thirty in concentration and perhaps two beforehand experimenting with motion, he's only got five left before he loses the projection. I roll 55 on the chaining, but since he's got a +59 SM on that it's going to be successful for the present.

Kurt might have a skill not already on his sheet, or we might be adding one; we'll have to see.

Harry's wedding continues.

I think it's a good time for another persuasion-versus-will power between John 3 and Friar Tuck. I've got numbers for those, I think. John 3 has a very good 2@3 persuasion; Friar Tuck as a 2@6 Will Power (well, these guys are legends, aren't they?). It's d30+10 for each, the better successful roll wins, and a tie is status quo. Player character first, the rolls are 8+10=18, 11+10=21, we're not there yet. It's a difficult argument altogether ("It's a difficult argument"), and I think he's not going to succeed at this point.

It is for Nikolaj tomorrow, and there will have been an answer to his prayer concerning Mr. Kucher. Let's take it slow, since I don't want to use the same tropes again--God is not known for repeating Himself that much.

We're moving past day 50 for John 2, so we'll advance to week 13. He needs a GE roll for hearing things: 18 is still not to his advantage.

Graeme is shaping the interior of a tree that he is growing at an accelerated rate; I'm envisioning what effect I think his described movements would have on that interior shape, so we'll find out whether that's satisfactory for him.

--M. J. Young

John, I have a re-e-e-ally really really bad track record with best friends

Yeah MJ, I know exactly what you mean. For me it has always been my older brother.

(Doing Therapy)

Let's see what we can do with posts from Michael, Maxx, Kurt, Harry, Nikolaj, and John 2.

I'm not going to roll for whether Michael can make lumps of hardened plastic steel. Even under these biases, that's pretty obvious. I am going to roll for the forcefield generator, 05 finally works. That gives him 1@1 Operate Force Generative Psionic Device P1@8 (capture rod).

Maxx tries to push his retrocognition back to a previous life; but prior to the life he had as a human there is no previous life, so he can't get there. He asks whether surveying his own past tells him where the metal needle might be, and it occurs to me that this might be possible if at some moment in his past he was present when it was put away. However, a GE of 20 says that if such a moment exists in his past, he didn't find it.

I really hope that Kurt manages to persuade this guard, because I think the ten million euros thing is just over the top--no one would believe it. But he's got two chances, one that he manages to succeed in his persuasion check, the other that he manages to develop this persuasion skill. I'm modeling it on P1@0 Hypnosis, and setting it as a 0@1 skill (like teaching and training). The target gets a will power check, of course, RS=S/D/N works, so first we roll to see whether Kurt can learn the skill, 96 might just be a botch--it's a 0@1 skill and he's got a 0@0 bias (because his @0 skills do not confer bias), but he also has +12 from the earlier meditation, a 1@10 BRA, and what we'll call an above amateur 1@8 example from his friend, 50-1=49% chance of success, 5% chance to botch, that's a botch. The obvious botch is he has persuaded the guard otherwise, and thus eliminated the persuasion check option.

I promised that Harry would get a GE roll for how the wedding goes, and he just did: 11, good but below expectations, you can breathe again, Harry, that's a good one. Yes, I'm stretching the event a bit, but I want it to be memorable--he only gets to do this once, I expect.

Nikolaj gets the results of his prayer starting to unfold now.

John 2 is getting a bit more information, but not a lot.

--M. J. Young

We may have a new player joining us, but for the moment we have Michael, Maxx, Harry, Nikolaj, and John 2.

Michael is going to shift to the psionic drill. Since that is also a force generative, it is a new use of the same skill, and his chance of success is his 2@1 BRA+1@1 SAL=32%. He rolls 02, so he gets the new use raising his SAL to 1@2 and his chance of success to 33%.

Maxx is pushing into a new skill area.

Harry's wedding is coming to a close--with just a couple more posts.

Nikolaj is headed for the lunch meeting.

We need to move John 2 forward a bit. He is beginning isometric exercises around day 80, in week 13, and we'll move forward to week 20. He needs another GE roll for what he hears, but 18 is not going to give him much that he does not already know.

--M. J. Young

I've addressed the new player's post, but now I have to look at game posts from Michael, Maxx, Kurt, Harry, Nikolaj, and John 2.

Michael is back to the light panel, for which he rolls 08, an easy success for a 1@1 Operate Energy Creation Device P1@10 (light panel). He'll also get answers to his questions.

Maxx is still designing a new skill.

Kurt said he wants to engage the guard in conversation, so I guess I have to delay the dinner to give him a chance to do so. I don't see the guard refusing to talk, so we'll see where it takes us.

Harry's wedding is ending.

Nikolaj has the opportunity to explain his equal rights for orcs Christianity to the ranch boss; this could become very interesting.

I'm taking John 2 to week 24, and he still wants to know what he hears. That means I need another GE roll, 13 is Barely Good Enough. He'll probably be pretty sure he knows who he is by now.

--M. J. Young

He'll probably be pretty sure he knows who he is by now.

I'm John Connor. I knew it.

Two

He'll probably be pretty sure he knows who he is by now.

Now that I reread it, this kind of makes it sound like it's a trick question. It's designed to make me think I'm John Connor, but I'm really some nobody from nowhere. That would be mean.

MJ, have you ever run a Terminator scenario before? I'm your go-to guy for all things Terminator. I've read comic books, seen movies, read the novelizations, read all kinds of cannon fan fiction.

(Doing Therapy)

Three

Oh and ya know what MJ? This is going to prove my theory. You just dropped a player with a history of non-involvement into a world which requires player involvement. You're damn right you're going to get it. It CAN work, just depends on which scenario it is.

(Doing Therapy)

John, I thought you'd like it.

I'm going by the movies, though; don't expect that the comics, novelizations, television episodes, or fan fiction are in any way accurate presentations. Also, I'm going by my temporal analysis reconstructions of the movies. I'm aware that you have read the Terminator and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines analyses, and you have permission to re-read those and rely on your memory of them; however, Terminator Salvation, which is part of the corpus I'm using, did not exist when you versed out, so you can't use that. (Also, there were special "official" releases for the AT&T/Apple I-Phone and for the Verizon system; these are also excluded both from my timelines and from your knowledge base.)

Which is to say, yes, you are John Conner. I'm thinking that your name is probably John Reese Conner, but I don't know whether your mother would give you a middle name or not--John Reese Conner would be a lot easier to identify positively than John Conner, of which there are (as I discovered in my researches for Terminator Salvation) one thousand one hundred seventy United States residents currently with that name. But you are indeed that John Conner.

Now, having satisfied my perhaps now overly eager player (and perhaps also clued him as to why Scott was reluctant to take over this scenario), I'm going to deal with current active threads from Michael, Maxx, Kurt, John 2, and Graeme.

Michael is turning his attention to the disintegrator, which is actually a telekinetic (it performs a P9@10 manipulate chemistry: disintegrate skill), and thus falls under the same category as the telekinetic lifter. That means he already has a 1@1 SAL with this, but even with his 2@1 BRA a roll of 83 is not going to work. We'll give him another shot at it, though, since this is not really learning a new skill but learning that an old skill operates a new device, and the roll is 74.

I guess that Maxx has given me everything I need to roll for his P12@1 precognitive danger sense, with a 30:00 preparatory concentration. A roll of 33 gives him 1@1 Precognitive Danger Sense P12@1 30:00 preparatory concentration negates surprise for RS minutes duration by creating anticipatory sense of danger +59SM. There's no question as to whether it's successful, but there is a question of whether he knows it's successful or has a sense that it's "working". The skill itself should only give him an impression when there is danger; thus when there is no danger he should feel nothing, which is also what he would feel if it were not working. That significantly limits the skill. The fix is to include a detect psionics subskill that tells him that it is working, but that raises the bias out of the flatlined category, which is a different significant limitation on the skill.

The question exists as to whether the guard Kurt is questioning knows anything about Blade, or indeed whether he knows anything about the fact that Ilsa has already killed the Kurt Wright whose ticket he inherited back at the airport. I think a GE roll will determine these details nicely, and 12 is Good Enough to get the info on Blade but not to get there info on Kurt.

Most of the stuff for John 2 is behind the screens type chatter, but we'll cover it anyway--I don't want this gestational period to feel like it flew by too fast.

I'm concerned about what Graeme is doing and why he expects results that differ from my expectations. We'll get it clarified, though.

--M. J. Young

I'm thinking that your name is probably John Reese Conner

It was in the book. John's middle name was Kyle, and Kyle's middle name was John. John and Sarah became very common baby names in the future, for obvious reasons.

Two

What am I talking about? You're Sarah. You can name me anything you want. Reese would be acceptable. The cool thing is, I still have the same initials.

(Doing Therapy)