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	<title>That's right for some reason Jim has a blog</title>
	<atom:link href="http://jim.troupeoffate.net/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://jim.troupeoffate.net</link>
	<description>The weblog of ToF's RPing mastermind Jim</description>
	<pubDate>Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:20:44 +0000</pubDate>
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		<title>Gaw&#8217;s Laws of Role Playing</title>
		<link>http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2009/04/15/gaws-laws-of-role-playing/</link>
		<comments>http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2009/04/15/gaws-laws-of-role-playing/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:20:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jim</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jim.troupeoffate.net/?p=19</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Disclaimer: I did not write these laws, as they were written long ago and applied to the GameFAQs RP/FF board. Though I figure that they do apply when Role-Playing and should be used loosely when trying to become a better RPer.
1.) This is something that must be remembered and upheld through all RPG&#8217;s as the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Disclaimer:</strong> I did not write these laws, as they were written long ago and applied to the GameFAQs RP/FF board. Though I figure that they do apply when Role-Playing and should be used loosely when trying to become a better RPer.<br />
1.) This is something that must be remembered and upheld through all RPG&#8217;s as the key to surviving to become a classic like the GameFAQs RPG. NO CHEEZ WIZZING. (Named after the king of overpowered.) Cheese Whizzing is making your character an immortal God who can blow anything away in one hit and have absolutely no limitations. That is Cheese Whizzing. There are 2 classifications, really. Overpowering, and Cheese Whizzing. Avoid Cheese Whizzing at all costs, and try to do the same with overpowering. I&#8217;ve noticed some people in magic schools that are creating a little bit of ice at first, but are creating a glacier in a few hours. Overpowering is making your character stronger than all the others, but not 80,000 times stronger than the other characters like Cheese Wizz. That is law number one!<br />
2.)The biggest RPG killer, in my opinion, is people who don&#8217;t know the difference between what the poster knows, and what the character knows. Just because someone posts something doesn&#8217;t always mean your character learns it. The poster learns it, but not the character. Such as, if someone on the other side of the world were destroying a village, how would your character know? He wouldn&#8217;t. I mean, you never hear this in an RPG.</p>
<p><strong>Main Character:</strong> &#8221;I know who the big bad guy is, what he looks like, and what he&#8217;s planning, because I watched the intro!&#8221; No, the main character has no clue what&#8217;s going to happen, doesn&#8217;t know that their is a big bad guy, and much less knows what he looks like, until the main character sees him. But then he doesn&#8217;t necessarily know what he&#8217;s planning.</p>
<p>A lesser form of this, and a less noticeable one, is irregular behavior. Like making a character go adventuring in an old castle in the middle of nowhere, because it was revealed in an earlier post that it&#8217;s the hideout of some evil person. (Revealed to the poster, not the character, mind you.)</p>
<p>The smallest form of this is coincidence. Coincidence is having your character do something else because of a post, but it not being irregular to what the character would do. A coincidence would be, the person is wandering in a field, and then a post reveals a battle going on somewhere in a field. (Once again, to the poster.) You could have the character coincidentally end up heading towards the battle and seeing it. That is a small coincidence, to me. Not irregular at all, just a chance encounters. A bigger coincidence would be, a person is sneaking through a castle, then a conversation in the castle is revealed by someone else, which has some very big plot revealers. But the character just happened to be in front of the door to the place where the conversation was going, and heard it perfectly. That is a very large coincidence.</p>
<p>Of all of these, I can take a few large coincidences, (Not very large, but large) And a lot of small coincidences. But I&#8217;ve seen too many times now the &#8221;Poster knows, so character knows&#8221; incidents. Please tell me if you agree, disagree, or agree with some of it. My ears are wide open for your comments on my beliefs.<br />
3.)Always seek to improve your RPG playing abilities. This doesn&#8217;t mean get yourself some cool new fire spell. This means improving the quality of your posts. This can be aided by trying to make the post easier to understand, punctuate and capitalize properly, and develop your own style of organizing your posts. I try to make my RPG post style defined, but it seems to go under a few small changes every once and a while.<br />
4.)Your character doesn&#8217;t always have to be special and different from everything else. Though that can be very interesting, if you are careful on how your character is different. Mine, for example, is just a Gaw. An unusually strong Gaw, but just a Gaw. That doesn&#8217;t keep me from doing good posts, though, does it?<br />
5.)Role-play! It makes your posts more interesting to read. I mean, in an RPG in medieval times, you wouldn&#8217;t have a person who talks like this. &#8221;Yo, wassup dude!&#8221; Also, you wouldn&#8217;t be able to get rocket launchers and such in medieval times. That&#8217;s something that should go under realism, though. Well, also try to give your character a personality. A flat, boring personality isn&#8217;t good. Also, try to have the way your character acts affected by his past. That can be a very good thing.<br />
6.)When you want to join an RPG or battle with a story, just don&#8217;t jump in without a clue of what&#8217;s happening. There are normally 2 good ways to get in. 1: Read all the posts to get familiar with the story. 2: Ask someone who&#8217;s been in since the beginning or someone who knows what&#8217;s going on for a summary of the story. Knowing the story will make your posts much better.<br />
7.)Always know the description of your enemy. If you do not know, ask someone who does, preferably the maker of the enemy. Let&#8217;s take Doura for example. If you didn&#8217;t know his description, you might say ‘‘does a horizontal slash to the chest!&#8221; But, Doura was over 10 feet tall. A horizontal slash from a human that&#8217;s a little over five feet tall would not hit its chest. Also, you might be fighting a very mutated enemy. Let&#8217;s say it was a sandworm. Sandworms have no arms or legs, just a long body and its head. So, you could not do a &#8221;Quick jab to the arm!&#8221;</p>
<p>8.)When starting an RPG, make sure you add rules. But not too many. GameFAQs RPG required the posts to be very understandable and nice to look at, with the scene thing on top and the italic post. The GameFAQs RPG has defined my typing style for RPG&#8217;s, actually. I adopted the &lt;&gt;s containing action, such as  And I adopted a very understandable way of talking. Example.</p>
<p><strong>Gaw:</strong> &#8221;What now, John?&#8221;<br />
<strong>John:</strong> &#8221;I&#8217;m not sure what we should do.&#8221;<br />
<strong>Greg:</strong> &#8221;why don&#8217;t we try and find out who that person was?&#8221;<br />
<strong>Gaw:</strong> &#8221;that&#8217;s a good idea. Let&#8217;s go.&#8221;</p>
<p>Bah, but now I&#8217;m getting off subject a little. That should have gone under rule number 3. Well, one thing is this. NEVER limit the player&#8217;s abilities to be creative. in Anwnn&#8217;s RPG, he would not allow the other people to describe enemies. Bad move. That RPG is very dead now. Also, try and make the RPG become deeper. Also, remember that sometimes luck is what the RPG&#8217;s fate is decided by. GameFAQs RPG survived long enough to become interesting.<br />
9.)Do NOT talk for other people, or do actions for them, or describe how they feel for them. There are VERY few people who don&#8217;t mind beings talked for and even less people who like their actions or how they feel described for them. I hate each one. No one else can make Gaw speak the exact way I want him to, or the exact way I want him to act or say the exact way he would feel under certain circumstances. This doesn&#8217;t just apply to a person&#8217;s main character; it can apply to other characters a person has made.<br />
10.)When fighting an enemy, don&#8217;t have the enemy do something inconsistent with its character traits.</p>
<p>(I.e., the aforementioned sandworm casting a spell, or trash talking.) Conversely, Try to stay within your own character&#8217;s personality traits as well. If you&#8217;re character&#8217;s not a friendly person, don&#8217;t all of a sudden throw a party for all of the people that they don&#8217;t like, and start serving food. (Granted, this is perfectly acceptable if you&#8217;re trying to poison the characters&#8230;)<br />
11.)Before posting, make sure you know what type of RPG it is. If it&#8217;s a serious RPG, then don&#8217;t make a post that would make the RPG very unrealistic and odd. Now, if it was an insane RPG, then you could probably do a lot of things without angering other posters. Such as, you wouldn&#8217;t be able to smash through a brick wall in a serious and realistic RPG, but in an unrealistic and silly RPG you could.<br />
12.)Here is one specific way NOT to introduce your character and a related subject as well! I doubt anyone likes the ominous ultra-powerful guy who magically appears and grants everyone strength/healing/etc. One of the most important things in RPG&#8217;s to remember is that you are NOT the main character. I say this meaning that you are NOT supposed to be the strongest person. No one is. All of the characters should have equal powers, but in their own ways. I, for example, have a lot of weak magic. But, because of how diverse they are, the effects of combining the spells can make up for it. Also, I am a little bit weaker than most others in hand to hand combat, but several advantages such as flying, swimming, and a very powerful (But limited) fire breath. My character has weak points, but if I use all his abilities, he&#8217;s as strong as any other person is. Isn&#8217;t that much more fun to play as than Mr. ominous magically appearing guy who is stronger than everyone in every single way? I think so.<br />
13.)Here&#8217;s something I strongly suggest you NOT do. Killing people for basically no reason. (Remember, I said NO reason, so an evil person who benefits from their death somehow wouldn&#8217;t break this rule, and accidentally killing innocent people in the confusion of combat also wouldn&#8217;t break this, etc.) How many times on the street do you hear this?</p>
<p><strong>Character:</strong> &#8221;Hello.&#8221;<br />
<strong>NPC:</strong> &#8221;Leave me alone, I&#8217;ve had a rough day.&#8221;<br />
<strong>Character:</strong> &#8221;DIE!&#8221; &lt; Character kills NPC &gt;</p>
<p><strong>Afterthought:</strong> These laws to Role Playing have been around since I had just started to make an attempt to create sub-decent characters. Despite the age (Probably almost a decade old by now) I still believe that most of them hold true, while some others can be modified. Generally though this is a good basis for rules to follow when Role Playing. Sure it&#8217;s all about having fun and having a good time, but you also have to remember that you want the others around you to have a good time as well. Later on down the road I will probably revise these rules of roleplaying, considering that I do not follow all of them myself. Though you have to give credit to the creator of Gaw&#8217;s Laws as they can still be found on the GameFAQs RP/FF board as rules to follow by.</p>
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		<title>So this is back up and Jim&#8217;s gonna write in it&#8230;</title>
		<link>http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2008/11/17/so-this-is-back-up-and-jims-gonna-write-in-it/</link>
		<comments>http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2008/11/17/so-this-is-back-up-and-jims-gonna-write-in-it/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:01:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jim</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jim.troupeoffate.net/?p=18</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Alright since this site is back up and I feel like typing a little bit while having very little people on the forum. Here Jim is.
First order of business is working on the forum as an administrator. It is kind of funny how I came across this position and it sort of stuck after all [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Alright since this site is back up and I feel like typing a little bit while having very little people on the forum. Here Jim is.</p>
<p>First order of business is working on the forum as an administrator. It is kind of funny how I came across this position and it sort of stuck after all while. The forums seemed to go down for some odd reason and dunkel made both Jim and Brian admins to try and get into the administration tools and try to fix the problem. Fortunately enough Jim was able to see that a squirrel was acting up and he was able to get it repaired. So that&#8217;s how Jim and Brian become part of the administration team. After that we of course had to get a couple of mods together to pick up for the gaping hole that we had left (Considering DL and WM were stepped down back to regular members. Don&#8217;t worry WM Jim still &lt;3&#8217;s you.) We debate for a little bit, though we all seemed to come into a general consense on a couple of members. Jux was always someone who seemed to be very active in the gaming section an untamed wilderness where only admins would tread occassionally. He was the most likely to be promoted and has since done a wonderful job. The next choice was Becky who helped me out a lot during my time as an RP mod by keeping everyone nice and orderly and coming up with some of the most creative posts I have ever seen.  The last mod Silent Echo was someone we considered for the chit-chat cafe and a possible Serious Discussion mod, I think back when I was in consideration he was as well. More to come later Jim needs a nap.</p>
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		<title>Ugh&#8230; How long has it been?</title>
		<link>http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2008/09/07/ugh-how-long-has-it-been/</link>
		<comments>http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2008/09/07/ugh-how-long-has-it-been/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 07 Sep 2008 07:59:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jim</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jim.troupeoffate.net/?p=17</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[With the constant spam showing up in my G-mail account recently I found myself asking the usual question. Why haven&#8217;t I posted on my blog? I mean Brian went through all the trouble to set one up for me and I haven&#8217;t used it in quite some time. Heck, a lot of stuff has changed [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>With the constant spam showing up in my G-mail account recently I found myself asking the usual question. Why haven&#8217;t I posted on my blog? I mean Brian went through all the trouble to set one up for me and I haven&#8217;t used it in quite some time. Heck, a lot of stuff has changed over the past few monthes, not really writing wise but change in general.</p>
<p>The main reason there really isn&#8217;t much to report with any of my writings is because I&#8217;ve been suffering from a prolonged case of writer&#8217;s block. There are occasions when it does leave and I can get a little bit of work done, but it always seems to come back. I know what everyone&#8217;s thinking, Jim, you pure being of awesomeness and win, how is it that you, perfection incarnated, can suffer from prolonged writer&#8217;s block? You also my wonder why I used so many comma&#8217;s in that sentence and the only answer I have is because that how things turn out sometimes. The universe and a strange thing that likes to implode, or explode&#8230; Whatever the scientists say it&#8217;s doing right now.</p>
<p>So I&#8217;m sure the question on everyone&#8217;s mind is this, Jim, just what is it you have been doing? It has been a long time since you told us. The short answer is working, playing Rock Band, other stuff, blah?&#8230; But since I really don&#8217;t like giving short answers get yourself a comfy chair and a nice refreshment because I&#8217;ll tell you all what I have been up to. Just remember that you have been warned.</p>
<p>I know, I know, I usually don&#8217;t go much into my personal life in this blog, but since I&#8217;m not writing I don&#8217;t really have much to do, anyway here goes. Turns out back in May good old Jim quit his job over at a pizza place that he worked at and pretty much lost contact with everyone that worked there until just a few weeks ago. What does Jim do now, you might ask? Well Jim now sells computers at Best Buy. Why? Because I&#8217;ve wanted to work there since I was 16. No seriously, I have literally applied at the exactly same store every single year until up from then until now, which now I actually have the job there. I know what you&#8217;re thinking awesome, right? Well of course we are talking about Jim after all.</p>
<p>Of course Jim doesn&#8217;t work all the time, so what is it he does during his spare time, did he finally decide to get himself in a relationship? No, and shut up. Finding a relationship in my hometown is like mining for coal, dark, oxygen depriving, and canaries dying left and right. Where do canaries come into play in this metaphor? Yea, I don&#8217;t know either, but I still stick by it! Actually I do have a really good idea for that, but I&#8217;ll just let everyone guess. What I&#8217;ve been doing in my spare time is what every other nerd with a love of music is doing, Rock Band. Alright so the only next-gen system I have is a PS2 (That&#8217;s right PS2 not 3), but who cares that game is still badass regardless of what system I have. I actually do drums and a little bit of singing, which are both really fun, plus the make you more cordinated. Other than that well the list of games is rather long, but here goes to the best of my memory: Persona 3 FES, Saga Frontier, Pokemon, Final Fantasy IV (DS), Brain Age 2, FFVII: Crisis Core, Patapon, Gods of War (PSP), Rune Factory, Final Fantasy III (DS), Final Fantasy VI (GBA), Maple Story (Don&#8217;t ask), and others I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;m forgetting. As of right now my friend who is currently in the mountains of our fine state going to college as introduced me to that MMO Perfect World International. It&#8217;s an open beta, free to play game that as my cousin so elegantly put it, looks just like Everquest. I&#8217;ll be the first to tell you, I&#8217;m not a fan of MMOs and what they do to people, but there are occasions when I want to play one. Of course I also like a challenge and nothing seems more challenging to me than to play a healer, so of course I chose a cleric. Now whoever decided that a cleric needed ZOMG high damaging magic from the get go needs to smack themselves in the face, because I haven&#8217;t found this challenging yet. I mean yea occasionally I do get a little overwhelmed, but still. Oh and my friend that told me about it&#8230; Yea I haven&#8217;t seen him in the game yet, go figure.</p>
<p>Anyone else get really annoyed by the freecreditreport commercials or is it just me? Nevermind, off the subject, that&#8217;s what I get for watching television while trying to blog. Anyway that is all that I have been up to as of lately, I still lurk the forums and try to do a little work every now and again. I&#8217;m on aim a lot so if you want to talk feel free, I just normally take a while to reply depending on what I&#8217;m doing. Expect to see a few more of these before the years over, maybe 2 or three I don&#8217;t know. Depends on how productive I&#8217;ll feel, after all Brian&#8217;s leaving for boot camp soon and dunkel and myself get online at sparatic hours, so&#8230; :/</p>
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		<title>A little bit of character work</title>
		<link>http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2008/02/25/a-little-bit-of-character-work/</link>
		<comments>http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2008/02/25/a-little-bit-of-character-work/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 25 Feb 2008 08:31:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jim</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2008/02/25/a-little-bit-of-character-work/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Alright since my internal sleep clock is all screwed to heck and back I decided that I would a least take a few moments to inform all of my readers (Brian and dunkel &#60;_&#60; ) that I have actually been doing a little bit of work with the characters that I&#8217;ve used for RPing over [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Alright since my internal sleep clock is all screwed to heck and back I decided that I would a least take a few moments to inform all of my readers (Brian and dunkel &lt;_&lt; ) that I have actually been doing a little bit of work with the characters that I&#8217;ve used for RPing over the months. Of course the only two that I&#8217;ve worked on are Melayna and Isaac, but that&#8217;s only because I have no intention of changing James, ie myself, anytime soon and working on Wallace Wainwright just isn&#8217;t tickling my fancy at the moment. I mean once you figured out that the old guy is probably going to be done in by some fatal disease working on his last bleating moments of life seems to be rather laborious. Of course that could be because I haven&#8217;t had to deal with any major loss of loved ones since the death of my grandparents when I was in middle school, but there&#8217;s also that fact that I am one of the few statistical anomalies that would rather stand in front of a large crowd in nothing but my birthday suit and tell mediocre jokes than be put in a hole in the ground. Call me crazy though. (Actually chances are when I go I&#8217;ll follow in my families footsteps and get myself cremated, all about the legacy thing&#8230;)</p>
<p>Now of course all of you are thinking to yourselves, James, you dashing and clever fiend you; haven&#8217;t you already planned to kill off Isaac in the first Aurora Chronicles? Well the answer to that is a bit more confusing than what I&#8217;d like to let on. Technically yes he does die, being turned into stone would justify being kill in my humble opinion, but he will be revived later on through other actions. The main reason for this though is because of the way I had Melayna end up developing. She basically turns all emo and goes into the whole crusade about finding a cure to bring him back to live, because somehow she feels that she is the reason for him sacrificing himself. I&#8217;ve taken the whole standpoint of this story and actually visualized it as an RPG for some console, and the results so far seems to make a rather interesting game. Sure it reeks of J-RPGs but who wouldn&#8217;t want to see a short girl wield a giant boomerang and have enough magical abilities to make Hiroshima look like nothing more than a firecracker? That&#8217;s all I plan to say for now, mainly because I&#8217;m tired and I feel like changing subjects again.</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s see the other project is along the lines of a new Zelda RPG that would basically be a new sort of spark to the series that I think it so desperately needs. I got the idea after watching the Zero Punctuation review on The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. This time the game doesn&#8217;t revolve around Link. The main character is a young man who is dragged away from his small village to fight in some war for the sake of Hyrule. This of course sets up for basic training and all that jazz, and you probably know where I&#8217;m going with that. Anyway near the end of the whole controls training you do actually get to meet Link who has become the prince of Hyrule, finally. He is once again the silent protagonist as always and doesn&#8217;t say anything besides his normal grunts and groans, no fanboy would ever want Link to say anything, but they&#8217;ll be pissed off at my idea soon enough. Once all this has occurred you end up getting throw headlong into a massive battle against the invading force and end up losing, that&#8217;s right even though you have control of the character you still loss. It than cuts to a scene showing Link getting throw off of his horse just as the blade in his hand, the master sword, shatters. The new character is able to make his way over to the prince and is given the broken master sword before blacking out. With the intro done I&#8217;ll probably make a full out post on the rest sometime in the near future. Look forward to it.</p>
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		<title>Short story is short</title>
		<link>http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2008/01/31/short-story-is-short/</link>
		<comments>http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2008/01/31/short-story-is-short/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 31 Jan 2008 05:56:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jim</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2008/01/31/short-story-is-short/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The clock reads 2:00 am as I sit down and log onto my computer to find that my sanctuary has once again been attacked by my clever foe. This war has been going on for so long that my ability to track it&#8217;s origin fades away into nothingness along with the rest of my forgotten [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The clock reads 2:00 am as I sit down and log onto my computer to find that my sanctuary has once again been attacked by my clever foe. This war has been going on for so long that my ability to track it&#8217;s origin fades away into nothingness along with the rest of my forgotten memories. Which side retaliated first? Another fact that has been lost to the ever present hourglass. As I sit here and ponder about the origins of this conflict I cannot help but wonder what started this conflict in the first place. Was it something I said? Have I done this person any wrong? The more I think about it the more I get the feeling that this erupted over something trivial and has been blown out of proportion. The only reason I do not concede to my opponent is the fact that my stubborn pride gets in the way every single time. This person who&#8217;s face I have never seen before in my life has tarnished my holiest of places and continues to do so even after I myself have retaliated. I grow tired of this constant game of cat and mouse, wondering why I do not just call a truce and get on with my life. After all the only casualty of this long drawn out war is the many seconds that I have lost because of being distracted by the attacks. I sigh and take a sip of the cup of tea I have sitting next to me, telling myself it has broken down into nothing more than a childish game. Than I hit the poke back button on my facebook page. Let the war rage on.</p>
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		<title>A couple new stories to ponder about</title>
		<link>http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2007/12/04/a-couple-new-stories-to-ponder-about/</link>
		<comments>http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2007/12/04/a-couple-new-stories-to-ponder-about/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Dec 2007 07:52:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jim</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2007/12/04/a-couple-new-stories-to-ponder-about/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[With Christmas right around the corner and finals week approaching (Thus my sanity leaving me.) I have once again started to think up weird and strange stories to write about. So far I have three that I actually think would be rather interesting though one of them would make a better movie than it would [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>With Christmas right around the corner and finals week approaching (Thus my sanity leaving me.) I have once again started to think up weird and strange stories to write about. So far I have three that I actually think would be rather interesting though one of them would make a better movie than it would a book, so I won&#8217;t be talking about it.</p>
<p>The first story I want to talk about is of course one of my personal favorites, &#8220;The Epic Adventures of Wallace Wainwright.&#8221; If you haven&#8217;t already guessed this entire story is about everyone&#8217;s clever and ruthless friends Wallace Wainwright, The Grandpa Bandit. People&#8217;s childhood&#8217;s I find bland and boring so this story is going to take place back before the Grandpa Bandit even existed. I know what you&#8217;re thinking, &#8220;How is it that Wallace Wainwright the best thief to ever live not have been a professional thief for his entire life?&#8221; And sometimes I too ask myself that question until I realize one simple fact, he never gets caught. Now it&#8217;s a common fact that all thieves are about dumb as dirt, but Wallace Wainwright only seems to have harebrained skims, but they are well engineered at the same time.  Turns out that the main reason Wallace never gets caught is the fact that he use to be a cop back when he was younger. That&#8217;s where things start out in the story. Wallace Wainwright, detective and husband. Now the first bit of the story focuses on Wallace and how much of a hero he is, until of course the unthinkable happens, his wife is killed, caught in the crossfire between a police officer and a bank robber. Now if fate was kind the bullet would have belonged to the robber and Wallace would have had a just cause for continuing to be a police officer, but fate tends to take the ironic route. The fact that an officer took the life of his wife (Heh rhyming words) was too much for him to bear. He quit the force and ended up going down the dark road of alcohol, cigarettes, and cheap women. It didn&#8217;t take long for his money to run out and that was when he started to steal things. Only what he needed to get by. Now here&#8217;s the interesting thing, as time goes on Wallace&#8217;s plans go from clever to downright strange, probably because he killed so many brain cells with alcohol, I don&#8217;t know. Of course Aurora, on HMF, will make an appearance as this was the place were some of my favorite crimes took place (I even laughed about the murder of the mime though I still think that was WM&#8217;s fault entirely, mainly because I put could instead of couldn&#8217;t. I mean come on that sentence wouldn&#8217;t even make since like that&#8230; But now I&#8217;m venting and that&#8217;s for Ventrilo <img src='http://jim.troupeoffate.net/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_razz.gif' alt=':P' class='wp-smiley' /> ). I haven&#8217;t really thought of an ending as of right yet, but it should be rather interesting.</p>
<p>The next one actually has a strange story behind it, but if you know me and have Ventrilo I&#8217;ll tell you on there because I figure it&#8217;s funnier word of mouth than through text.(Probably will be able to do that this Sunday, if not later&#8230;) Anyway the story is called &#8220;How Andrew f***&#8217;d up Christmas.&#8221; and is based around on of my co-worker&#8217;s Andrew. This is of course the start of a trilogy of ironic comedy stories the second one is &#8220;How Andrew f***&#8217;d up Christmas again.&#8221; and finally &#8220;How Andrew and Kyle f***&#8217;d up Christmas.&#8221; Now I haven&#8217;t put much thought into these books as I just thought up the title yesterday and the general premise of it, but like I said it <em>should </em>end up being a comedy. Now each story is going to take place at one of my co-workers house&#8217;s and Andrew will basically be invited and completely ruin the holiday from them, but ultimately bring them together in some sort of sappy &#8220;Oh we should be happy&#8221; kind of way. The first victim will be my boss, Mrs. Janet (Who ironically shares the same first name as my mother, go figure.) I decided to have her go first because well, she&#8217;s overly nice and would probably let someone screw up her holiday season, be pissed off about it, but she&#8217;d get over it. The second one is other going to take place at my fellow manager Kyle&#8217;s house (Kyle&#8217;s only 19 and his little brother also works for us. Plus I know his family a little so it wouldn&#8217;t be too hard to visualize.) Or the old man of our little work family a preschool teacher named Paul (I screw with him all the time at work so I figured that would make him an eligible victim for this story.) Now the third one I&#8217;m sure my readers will enjoy the most because both Kyle and Andrew get their final revenge by screwing up Christmas for me. (If I end up choosing Paul for the second one, I&#8217;ll just introduce Kyle in the third one no problem.) I decided to do this only because I figured my co-workers wouldn&#8217;t be too happy about me writing about them so I figured I would have to poke fun at myself, not to say that I don&#8217;t already make fun of myself, I just feel kind of bad about them being the butt of my joke. I&#8217;m still not exactly sure how he&#8217;s going to screw up Christmas three times, but I&#8217;ll figure out a way to pull it off, somehow&#8230;</p>
<p>So, what do ya&#8217;ll (I swear it is not spelled y&#8217;all and I refuse to put it like that) think about these two ideas?</p>
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		<title>Thanksgiving Musings</title>
		<link>http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2007/11/22/thanksgiving-musings/</link>
		<comments>http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2007/11/22/thanksgiving-musings/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 22 Nov 2007 05:32:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jim</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Random Musings]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2007/11/22/thanksgiving-musings/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I figure what with my last post seeming to be a little on the rant / flame side, I need one that is a little more light hearted. Of course having discussed the whole ordeal over with dunkel and Brian I realized that my point of view is different from theirs, but we all do [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I figure what with my last post seeming to be a little on the rant / flame side, I need one that is a little more light hearted. Of course having discussed the whole ordeal over with dunkel and Brian I realized that my point of view is different from theirs, but we all do share the commonality that we dislike one liners.</p>
<p>Our newest project is that of RPing in asterisk style once again to HMF. Now I am not a fan of this method of RPing I&#8217;ll be the first to tell you that, but I kind of figure that this will be a chance for me to unwind after having two RPs fail on me and the fact that it is now impossible for me to finish my Novel project this month. Right now I&#8217;m all wall of text&#8217;d out so the chances of this even getting that long are pretty slim, though it would be nice of course.</p>
<p>Really I started this topic thinking I should state what I&#8217;m thankful for, because that&#8217;s what the holiday is suppose to be about. In a few hours my family will be over at our aunts house gorging ourselves on as much food as humanly possible followed by watching television while my mother and her sisters (We go over to her side of the family for thanksgiving) will look through sales papers trying to figure out what exactly to buy for Christmas. As for me, well I&#8217;ll have to deal with my now teenage cousins and honestly I don&#8217;t really see how all of them became so angst against everything.</p>
<p>Maybe it&#8217;s just me though, I was never really the bad child, I never really had that rebellious phase as a teenager, and I normally walk the straight and narrow. I&#8217;ve just never found anything else rather appeasing, I mean I&#8217;ve heard stories of my cousins going out to parties and getting completely trashed and high. My first thought is always, Now why would you want to do something stupid like that? Of course I did consider it when I was younger, but it never really had gotten past more than a thought.</p>
<p>Back than though I was young, dumb and thought I was in love. My ex-girlfriend was really one of the people that shaped me into the kind of person I am, and I really am grateful for that now that I look at everyone around me. I could have very well ended up like some of my other friends, out in the working world . She wasn&#8217;t the one who made the decision for me, but she did help me figure out where I should go get my education. Of course the reason I did break off that relationship is because she was trying to turn me into something that I am not, but that is a different blog post altogether.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m actually kind of thankful to be single this again, though I&#8217;ve been single for about two years now, and some people think I&#8217;m strange because of that. For me it breaks down into two things, 1.) I don&#8217;t have the money to have a girlfriend, and B.) I don&#8217;t have that much free time (Unless you include these twilight hours, which I don&#8217;t.) Now already I can see people saying, &#8220;But Jim you&#8217;re on an awful lot.&#8221; I am, but normally I&#8217;m doing schoolwork on my computer at the time. I&#8217;m just really good at multitasking while on a PC. The whole money thing is because I work at a dead end job while trying to earn my degree, but hopefully that will change during winter break (Though I love the people I work with&#8230;Sometimes).</p>
<p>The people I really need to thank though, are the fellow forum members I spent some of my free time with. Sure a few of them act like complete jerks and nublets sometimes, but in the end watching those people and having to enforce rules upon them make me a better person (I think). The others, my fellow RPers, and my fellow staff members are really a lot of fun, though I&#8217;ve only talked to a few people outside of the community the ones that I have seem like rather good people&#8230; Maybe not Brian and dunkel. (I kind, Brian is a good kid. As for dunkel well the sad thing is that dunkel and Jim think far too much alike. Sometimes I think dunkel has cameras in my room and is watching me&#8230; Does anyone else get that creepy vibe from dunkel? )</p>
<p>Of course I probably won&#8217;t be on much at all over the next few weeks, what with finals sneaking around the computer and the whole fact that my laptop is busted so I won&#8217;t be able to get online unless I go to the engineering building (AKA the military bunker.) Don&#8217;t worry though I&#8217;ll be back as soon as I get a new computer with walls of text galore. You all behave yourself otherwise, if Jim gets any bad reports from Brian or dunkel (Two people he keeps contact with), well let&#8217;s just say that you thought your grandparents could rant D:&lt;</p>
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		<title>Of Muses and Moderators</title>
		<link>http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2007/11/12/of-muses-and-moderators/</link>
		<comments>http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2007/11/12/of-muses-and-moderators/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 12 Nov 2007 07:10:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jim</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Random Musings]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2007/11/12/of-muses-and-moderators/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Well as of lately I&#8217;ve been feeling rather nostalgic, I don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;s the increasing cold weather, or my recent promotion to moderator on Harvest Moon Farm Forums. When I first signed up I figured that I wouldn&#8217;t actually change all that much about the RP because heck, it hadn&#8217;t changed for so long. [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Well as of lately I&#8217;ve been feeling rather nostalgic, I don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;s the increasing cold weather, or my recent promotion to moderator on Harvest Moon Farm Forums. When I first signed up I figured that I wouldn&#8217;t actually change all that much about the RP because heck, it hadn&#8217;t changed for so long. I&#8217;ve actually been considering creating another character to actively RP with, or using one of my old ones to RP with on their forum which is about, you guessed it Harvest Moon.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s been so long since I&#8217;ve made any decent RPing posts and it seems to be showing now. I suppose I have no one to blame but myself. I should find myself another community to RP at, but I don&#8217;t see myself doing that anytime soon. I&#8217;m going to continue to try new projects every once in a while, starting with Neverath here soon and maybe a try Aurora Chronicles once again during the summertime for a greater member turn out. Of course even the thought of that does not sound too grand, but it&#8217;s better than doing nothing at all. I hate that my RPs are dying because of inactivity, all the hard work I put into them are basically for nothing. It&#8217;s too frustrating, which is why I suppose I&#8217;m still here, RPing my little almost mary sue character trying my best to train the upcoming generation of RPers. Sometimes I&#8217;m beginning to think that the ways I was taught are becoming obsolete. Taking their place are the shunned methods of old, asterisks and one liners.</p>
<p>I can&#8217;t help but wonder what happened to the old days, back when RPing was about telling a story of a character in a foreign world doing things that you yourself cannot possibly accomplish. There is no quality in the work that I see a lot of the time nor is there any quantity to it. It&#8217;s dribble plain and simple, but I did have moments where I to was like that for a short while. I don&#8217;t now, I&#8217;ve always been a fan of descriptive posts, but finding people who can accomplish them these days are few and far between. I just wish that I could find one person on the forum who could actually surpass my abilities, but so far the only people who have come close still aren&#8217;t quite there. They have some length to their posts yes, but some of them just get lazy and don&#8217;t feel the urge to be descriptive. Maybe I should take a vacation back to the home board, though I doubt that would bring me comfort, that place has been dying for years, becoming infested with people who think that short one sentence posts are the only way to go. You know what I think at the bottom of the section I&#8217;ll show the three different types of RPing, though two of them are very similar.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s starting to become apparent that even now, with two new moderators the staff is still spinning it&#8217;s wheels. The last festival we had completely failed and now both dunkel and myself are probably feeling similar to how Brian did when his festivals started to have no one show up. We&#8217;re trying to pick ourselves back up, but what with everyone looking to us for answers instead of using some common sense, well it&#8217;s hard. Soon enough we&#8217;ll be giving even more power to a few of the members on the forum, now I&#8217;m not sure how well this is going to turn out, but I have a bad feeling about it.</p>
<p>RPing Methods- Character: Melayna Wainhart (Because I &lt;3 her)</p>
<ol>
<li>Asterisk Method</li>
</ol>
<p>*Melayna enters the library and sits down*</p>
<p>&#8220;I think I&#8217;ll read a book while I&#8217;m here.&#8221;</p>
<p>*Melayna reads a book*</p>
<p>&#8220;Oh I was suppose to go meet someone.&#8221;</p>
<p>*Melayna leaves*</p>
<blockquote><p>2.  Short description method</p></blockquote>
<p>Melayna enters the library and takes a seat. &#8220;I think I&#8217;ll read something.&#8221; She takes a book from the shelf and reads it. &#8220;Oh I was suppose to go meet someone.&#8221; Melayna stands up and leaves.</p>
<blockquote><p>3. Long description method</p></blockquote>
<p>Melayna pushes open the large oak door leading in the gigantic library a whirlwind of dust greeting her as soon as the first cracks in the two doors appear. This place was like a home to her as she came here quite often to partake in the wealth of knowledge within the building, though no one else ever seemed to. &#8220;I think I&#8217;ll read something.&#8221; Melayna searches the bookshelf for something that she had not already read. Her chestnut eyes scanned spine after spine, each book varying in color until she found one that caught her eye. She took out a dust old gray tomb which had no title to it and began to flip through a few pages scanning the printed words within to see exactly what the book was about. Before she could get a grasp on it a realization entered her mind causing her to quickly shut the book and head towards the exit. &#8220;Oh, I was suppose to go meet someone.&#8221;  Melayna hurried herself over to the exit until to have herself fall on her face just a few feet before the door. Taking a moment to pick herself up off the ground and dust herself off Melayna headed towards the exit, closing the large oak doors behind her. The library once again fell into the all too common darkness.</p>
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		<title>NaNoWriMo</title>
		<link>http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2007/11/01/nanowrimo/</link>
		<comments>http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2007/11/01/nanowrimo/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 01 Nov 2007 08:16:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jim</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2007/11/01/nanowrimo/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[November, time for getting ready for winter, turkey day, and of course writing. National Novel Writing Month officially started a few hours ago and so far I&#8217;m already over my 1667 words per day limit. The great thing about it is that I already have a pretty good attack plan for this novel, so hopefully [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>November, time for getting ready for winter, turkey day, and of course writing. National Novel Writing Month officially started a few hours ago and so far I&#8217;m already over my 1667 words per day limit. The great thing about it is that I already have a pretty good attack plan for this novel, so hopefully I&#8217;ll be able to get the whole 50,000 word limit done.</p>
<p>The story I chose was one that I&#8217;ve had with me from all my years of Role Playing on the various forums. It&#8217;s about the life of my character Isaac, the beginning of it is set just before the RP Aurora Chronicles and describes a different character than the familiar dark and demented  Isaac we all know and love. It is basically a recap of his life, the prologue shows him at the grave of his comrade Laura and explains briefly how she died. Clearly this is actually both the beginning and the ending of the story, since if I go past that whole incident than I&#8217;m getting into my project for next year&#8217;s NaNoWriMo, which I don&#8217;t even want to begin thinking about yet. Actually I take that back I did want to at least get the titles done for my projects and basically I&#8217;m doing a trilogy:</p>
<ul>
<li>Aurora Chronicles: The Crusades</li>
<li>Aurora Chronicles: The Celtrean Wars</li>
<li>Aurora Chronicles: The Eternal Peace</li>
</ul>
<p>Clever titles? I don&#8217;t think so either, but they get the point across. Anyway I&#8217;m rambling the point is it focuses completely on Isaac&#8217;s life and after the present it goes back to the past where he lives in an orphan in the kingdom of Silvercrest, he&#8217;s only five when that start I believe. So far it kind of starts slow though there is a little bit of action to start out with, but not much. The first couple of chapters focus on how he develops into a divine knight followed by him getting involved in the Crusades. That&#8217;s all I&#8217;m willing to give away now, but stay tuned same Jim time, same Jim channel.</p>
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		<title>Another day another project</title>
		<link>http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2007/10/05/another-day-another-project/</link>
		<comments>http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2007/10/05/another-day-another-project/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Oct 2007 06:04:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jim</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Random Musings]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jim.troupeoffate.net/2007/10/05/another-day-another-project/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[So I was lurking the HMF survivor board, something I find myself doing less and less and came across a small RP forum run by one of the members on the site. Now I know must would not look at something like that but the lurker within me decided that I needed another board to [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>So I was lurking the HMF survivor board, something I find myself doing less and less and came across a small RP forum run by one of the members on the site. Now I know must would not look at something like that but the lurker within me decided that I needed another board to lurk on.</p>
<p>The RP itself seems rather flawed in it&#8217;s execution, mainly because it is a medieval RP sort of like my Aurora Chronicles, but it is run like an Harvest Moon RP, IE Static places where events occur. Now I&#8217;m all for it when there your character does not stand the chance of being chased down by a band of brigands through so many places in a town.</p>
<p>So I stopped lurking for the night and signed off, when I signed on the next day I noticed that I had been upgraded to a global moderator and was able to access their secret forum. Now I did not ask for the position, but I am not going to downright object to such a change, even if my first intent was to lurk. Of course I did state my problems with the way they planned on running things and all of a sudden I&#8217;m in charge of the RP all together, maybe. The lurker within me was of course not happy about this, but as a writer I decided to go ahead and take up the offer, though I do not want to have all the say in the fun. I asked for a council to be made so that ideas could be discussed at length with other moderators to get an idea of what the higher ups are looking for.</p>
<p>In the mean time it&#8217;s time to play one of Jim&#8217;s favorite games, choose his character. Now medieval takes my options down to five, and with the way it&#8217;s set up Isaac would not suit the place which eliminates two of them. An older version of Melayna (My channeling priestess) and Ivan (My perverted sorcerer) are the only real two that I can possibly consider using . I do have one last card up my sleeve though. I&#8217;ve been running the idea of using a descendant of Isaac through my head, and so far it does seem all that bad. How far back am I going to go in time? Well I think I&#8217;ll go as far back as to use a great grandfather (perhaps just grandfather) of Isaac (My divine knight), considering looks tend to skip generations at a time he probably will look almost exactly like Isaac. The only trouble with that idea is having to think up a new personality for an old character as well as a new set of weapons, though I might do the lazy thing and make him a swordsman especially considering that Isaac has very limited magical potential.</p>
<p>All and all it&#8217;s just one more thing do add to my to do list, though I have to admit this is keeping my skill at it&#8217;s peak. I hope soon to even overcome my current level, which is a possibility, but I feel that if I do reach the next level I may have to return to the old boards to RP with those that I considered better than I could ever become.</p>
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