and me waiting for the other two newbies to post

In reply to Nivran (msg # 100):

Welcome to the funny farm ;)
Shi looks like an amazing character concept

Shione and Nivran will have a lot in common

Looking forward to the RP

Merry Christmas (or whatever winter solstice holiday you may celebrate) everyone!

Happy Holidays folks :-)

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

In reply to Argent Merawdr (msg # 104):

And to you, Argent! As well to everyone else, too!

In reply to Relic GM (msg # 105):

Did something happen to the site?

I had to log back in.

  Anyone else have that problem?

I did I think it's just something that happens now and then as if you look when you log on and select to stay logged on you can see that there's a comment about a cookie and an expiration.

So I think what it is is that the site puts a cookie on your computer to automatically log you in when you come to the site but after awhile that cookie expires and has to be renewed which is when you end up having to log back in on your own.

waiting for response in character discussion setup

In reply to Nivran (msg # 108):

The Master Skills List is at http://www.coldnorth.com/owen/.../universe/master.htm

All Skills, Specialisations and Traits are listed under their categories, in alphabetical order.

Apologies for my absence. Mom's been in the hospital twice now in the past month. 5 days before Christmas, had to call the ambulance to take her to the ER at 6am. A week in the hospital, two weeks in rehab, came home, and two days later back to the hospital in the ambulance at 4:30am. 4 days in hospital; should have gone to rehab, but she's home and still recovering.

Yadda-yadda-yadda. Meant to post but just never got a round to it. I asked Santa for a round tuit for Christmas, but all I got were square ones.

In reply to Argent Merawdr (msg # 110):

I hope she's doing OK now, Argent.

Well, that didn't last. She came home Thursday, was mostly fine Friday when a home nurse evaluated her, but she went downhill after that and we had to send her back to the hospital Saturday night.

Any hospital visit is 'serious', but it's not like she had a stroke or heart attack... those we could understand. Nope, as far as I know at the moment, she just got another infection, needs to be put on antibiotics and monitored.

Not sure now if she can come home any more; that maybe there's something in the house affecting her. The doctors just don't seem to have an answer.

Thanks for the well-wishes.

I know how it can be, something like that happened to my grandpa about 8 yeasr ago, but that was valley fever, though now my grandma has been having problems and later this week me and the rest of the family are going to be helping her move into an assisted living facility, it's kind of sad as we're moving her out of the house she helped build with my grandpa back in the early 60's

I think I'm going to step away from this game. I feel like we've been railroaded from the beginning of the campaign; I wanted to give it time to make sure it wasn't just my own perception, but, at this point, I feel like we have no opportunity to actually affect the direction of the story.

Thanks for the opportunity to play.

In reply to Gian Seingalt (msg # 114):

I'm sorry you feel that way. No Railroading was intended, but between Shione's insistence on exploring every single room and Cassy's attempting to bully the computer over and over, it's been getting bogged down. I introduced Olivaw in an attempt to actually get Cassy to actually negotiate, but she's done nothing. Please reconsider. You don't actually have to wait for Cassy's orders to take any independent action.

Unfortunately we have considered and I'll sadly be joining Gian in departure.   A story evolves around the players as much as the players around the story.   If Shione wanted to explore the rooms, then the story should have has something interesting to find, to battle, to 'deal with'.  If I wanted to outsmart the computer and find that it had been corrupted...   Then why shouldn't I be able to do that?  The difficulty was there, I rolled the dice and won... why should I not be able to outsmart it?  Why should I negotiate with someone who is clearly overpowering us.   My immediate reaction (and I assume Shione's too) would be to use Psyche but that doubtlessly would fail too despite the dice. And so, as I've said privately recently in several posts, I'm not happy with the forced direction of the story.

I do however commend you on the massive effort you've put into the game and its assets.  More so than I've seen done in ages on RPoL and I really hope you can find the right players for your game.  I'm just sadly the 'wrong' player.   So I'll bow out without posting in the hope that you can have Cassy negotiate whereas I'd go out 'guns blazing' the way Kirk would the moment the 'evil villain' chose to force himself on the crew....

Thanks again for an interesting story.
Cassy

In reply to Cassiadora (msg # 116) and Gian Seingalt (msg # 114):

I'd really rather you stayed, both of you. I'm sorry we got off to a bad start, but I'm new to running a game on line, much more used to gaming face-to-face where one can read tones of voice and facial expressions/body language, as well as chat with each other brfore and after sessions.

If you do stay on, please let me know when you're getting frustrated with a line of plot or anything else. Go into details, though, so I know just what's bugging you. I know you both feel I've been railroading you, but that was far from my intention. I was attempting to give you a sandbox to explore, but perhaps with too sharply defined (though unfortunately unstated) limits. What do you say you give it another month and see if we can turn this rig around in less that 40 acres (song reference)?

Argent, I'm hoping you will also stick around as well. I like your character and Caitians in general.

I just spent some time on the phone with Shione and her player, Brian, gave me some excellent suggestions and more insight from a player's point of view. He's much more experienced at on-line gaming than I am, so it was a big help.

If you do stick around to try to salvage the game, please let me know what it is that you are personally looking for in a game, what I've done right and what I'm screwing up; what your characters' personal goals are and what you would like to see happen.

I've rethought R Olivaw's reactions to you and am making him more conciliatory. Fast Tony's
player is going through some family troubles, so for the next while I'll semi-NPC him. Mac will continue on as an NPC.

Peace?

In reply to Relic GM (msg # 117):

I am remaining with the game and I join the referee in hoping that all players will stick around and see if we can't work together to make this the game we all want it to be

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.

For those who may not have heard, eight days ago on Sunday night just after dinner, I suddenly developed a severe stomach pain--level 7. While I struggled with it for half an hour, figured it was probably food poisoning. It wasn't like any other stomach pain I'd ever experienced before. Then I wound up throwing up 4-5 times, though afterwards the pain level was only 5. An hour later, I threw up 2-3 more times and the pain level dropped to 3. And there it stayed. No more throwing up, and it didn't go away. I couldn't find any position where the pain was lesser, and it was too high to let me sleep. Finally called the EMTs about 1 a.m. and off to the ER I went.

A dose of femital (or something) dropped the pain to 1, and eventually it went completely away. However, the hospital continued to run its test to try and determine the cause. I'm not convinced that they ever did. One doctor concurred that it might have been food poisoning, but the other doctor concluded that it was a problem with my gallbladder and recommended I have it removed. He scheduled laposcopy surgery for Wednesday. If it went well, I'd be hope by Friday. Turned out it was in bad shape and required full abdominal surgery to remove it.

Let me tell you... in all those movies/shows when they talk about a painful wound to you abdomen, they aren't kidding! Every muscle in your chest and abdomen, and a few in your arms and legs, are all tied in together. So every deep breath, every burp, every hiccup, every yawn, every laugh, every cough causes excruciating pain! This is on top of the pain meds!

Every movement... sitting up, standing up, sitting down, laying down, stretching, reaching, bending... causes pain. One such movement at a time is usually okay, but then requires an hour of sitting still and getting over it.

Alas, the hospital's discharge procedure was rather inept on Sunday, and I wound up having to make a dozen such movements so that I could get my meds from the pharmacy before it closed. So after I got home and settled in, it took around 8 hours for the pain to subside.

It's slowly getting better, but will probably take 5-6 weeks for the surgery to completely heal and the pain to completely go away.

But, I'm back! Not sure how much I'll get to in the next two days... have to reorganize the house a bit as I'm mostly fending for myself.

Anyway, I apologize for the absence and lack of word.


I'm still around, though, and still interested. I GM a lot of games myself, so I know how it goes. Never tried to GM a Star Trek game.

In reply to Argent Merawdr (msg # 119):

I know just what you're talking about, man. A few years ago, I had my gall bladder removed. They did it via laparoscopic surgery so there was no big incision, just four small slits where they put in the tubes. Afterward, I was bedridden for a week with abdominal pain that made my heart attack seem like a walk in the park, and was only fractionally less intense that the time I had a kidney stone. It was NOT fun in the slightest. So, therefore I feel for you. Take it easy for as long as you need to, take some of those marvey drugs (I was on Oxycoset, which is a blend of oxycodone and acetaminophen) and try not to move around. I'm glad you decided to stick around. I haven't heard from Prashanthi since her move last fall, but I'm keeping her place open, and Fast Tony is still dealing with an ailing mother-in-law, so he's not available for the foreseeable future but intends to return when all is dealt with and they get a place for her in a nursing home.

In the meantime, take care of yourself.

UPDATE: Still here. Pain is mostly gone, but so is my energy. Minor effort requires an hour of recovery. Yesterday, for example, I spent 3 hours running errands and doing a few chores... completely wiped me out for the rest of the day.

Sitting in the chair at the desk to type posts is also tiring.

So, getting back to normal but just very slowly.

In reply to Argent Merawdr (msg # 121):

As I have said to players before
Real life is important
This is just a game

No apologies are needed,but very glad to see you when you can post

Be Gentle with yourself my friend

sorry about disappearing like that had a ton of stuff come up in RL including my Chrones flaring up, but I should be back regularly now.

Well, the Shione Story seems to be going well!


So are there any other PCs still around?