Gemini Ascendant Campaign

[solron915]

Hey Nol, you're not the only one that was hit hard by Dale's death and I agree with everybody else that he made an I to impact on our lives that won't be forgotten. I too have made a more concisious effort in watching my diabetes as well .

As far as player testing a FH game , no problem it is one of my favorite games. Though this game is it's equal and I enjoy playing it. I don't want you to stop GMing either. Cause you do a great job. I'll be there tommorrow ready to kick some..........

Oh yeah I have a new draft of the Gemini.

[solron915]

I redesigned the fighter for Sam. tell me what you think of this one . I sent everyone an email of it.

[ghost-angel]

I saw it, I have a few thoughts, I'll have to formulate them overnight though as I'm way too tired to think strait right now.

[Nolgroth]

I've been fiddling with router settings to allow OpenRPG to create an accessible server. My last one was pretty Inaccessible from what I was told. Can one of you try to log on and report your findings back to me?

It is listed as the Gemini Ascendant server in the list. I was able to log in from localhost, but that means nothing to the outside world. Thanks.

Just want to make sure we have a backup plan in action.

[ghost-angel]

I'm in. But I have to run and get dinner at the 7-11 up the street befor the game starts. So any testing you want to test will have to be really quick, or wait 20 minutes.

I'm on both servers now. I can play two games at once!

[Starwolf]

Ok my Team Speak report...



We had some initial problems getting headphones to work properly (there were some mics that appeared dead, and some feedback with echos). but by being patient we all eventually got the adjustments done by tweaking settings in Team Speak, and in the Windows Control Panel Sound Settings, and volume levels. The other issue we had was getting everyone logged into and registered on the teamspeak server that one of the guys in our game runs. He has it locked down to where he has to manually approve you as a user so that you can register in his server. He did this to prevent wandering people from joining the voice chat because as you can imagine that would be much more disruptive than some dropping into a regular chat. Once all of the settings are setup, you can save the configuration so that next time 3 mouse clicks opens Team Speak, and logs you into the server ready to play.

Once we were all logged in and registered, you could minimize Team Speak and then toggle back to ORPG where we actually ran the game. We used voice to dictate our actions or describe things just like in a face to face game, and we used ORPG to send our dice rolls, send whispers, draw the maps and use minis, and some text though most actions were spoken.

The issues Terrie and I had specifically were...

Terrie has a standard PC headset with microphone and speaker plugs, she had great sound but the mic did not want to work. To set it up we had to go into the Team Speak sound/voice configuration and turn on push to talk. The push to talk setting had us press a key to define her mic ptt button. I set this as her Alt key. Once this was done her mic started working, and all was well. One of the other players had the same issue and set his to be the right mouse button. The Team Speak default however is Voice Activated. The PTT had the effect of Terrie a couple of times having to repeat her actions as she forgot to press the "talk" button, her alt key, so no one could hear her.

I have a USB PC gameing headset with inline volume control and mute button. It worked great for audio, but again my mic was dead. I had to go into my windows control panel -> Sounds and Audio Devices, and select the microphone volume advanced setting and turn on AGC (Automatic Gain Control) and the +20db setting, voila my mic started working. The second issue I had was a feedback echo when I spoke, by turning down the volume on the mic some it made it go away.

In game we had to exercise some player self control as everyone can speak at once so if we try this in our SH game it will be important to wait for your action, though some banter is cool, it can get chaotic if everyone tries to speak at once.

Overall it was pretty cool to be able to talk instead of typing everything, and made the game go much faster.

So thats my report... on Team Speak. The Champs game went ok, the only issues we had there was, like us when we first started, everyone needed to learn to use the Hero dice roller, Terrie and I were the only ones that had Hero nodes and dice scripts. And the GM forgot to use the phase tracker till after the combat started. After the game I spent about an hour helping some of the players learn how to setup character nodes and dice scripts.

[solron915]

Hey Nol I need to know if you still have the address to X3. GA mention that tey had some real heavily armed fighters . Which he seems to want for Sam. If you could post the address I would apreciate it.

[ghost-angel]

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/sim/x3reu...reenindex.html

http://www.gamedaily.com/x3-reunion/pc/game-images/4819

[solron915]

i hope you like the latest model. It has a gattling laser on the front, 4 mass driver cannons, 6 missles, and 2 ship killer torps . Your sighting system is a VTASS (visual sighting system ). The gattling gun rotates a 180 degrees and uses a helmet mounted sishting system VTASS and your missle can use the same system. Or this is how I would arm the ship if I were designing it.

[prestidigitator]

I have to apologize guys. My girlfriend is visiting from Austalia. She'll be here Saturday, and will be here for a little over a month. During this time, I probably won't be making games, though I will attempt to stop in and say hello at the beginning or end of sessions.

So, while I can't seem to get the off my face or stop my -ing, I'm really sorry to bail out on you guys like this with so little notice, and for having done so over the holidays as well. Plans have not been made very far in advance. Heh. We thought she'd be visiting in the Spring or Summer, but then an opportune window opened up and we booked plane tickets, less than a week in advance.

I really enjoy our sessions, and I wish I could commit more of myself to the game. I totally understand if I am being flaky enough that my joining (and possibly breaking again?) would be too much. I wil be there the day after tomorrow.

[solron915]

That's cool Presto, I understand the blind relationship of love ( you can't see anything but her). But I still want to play Gemini Campaign . I hope you don't mind. This is just my point of view as I can't speak for the others . But you and your girlfriend go have fun and enjoy each other.

[Starwolf]

Cool beans Presto. Give her a big hug for the whole group

[Nolgroth]

Hey Presto,
First and foremost, we are friends here and what kind of friends would we be if we didn't wish you the best in this new adventure in your life? I certainly would not begrudge you any happiness. So go! Have fun!

Now, where was that recipe for bug souffle.....

So, I know Solron's already weighed in with his choice, but should we try something different after this week's session? Say a good Fantasy HERO type of thing.

Let me know.

[Starwolf]

FH sounds cool, so long as we get back to SH sometime, I am really enjoying the game.

So the obvious question...

1) If we do FH are we going to use TA as a backdrop or do you have a homegrown campaign?

2) Also what are the character creation guidelines...

3) and how do we integrate the Gemini into a FH game

[Nolgroth]

FH sounds cool, so long as we get back to SH sometime, I am really enjoying the game.

Me too. I'm just not sure how many more bumps on head the poor bug could logically take as an explanation why he wasn't there.

So the obvious question...

1) If we do FH are we going to use TA as a backdrop or do you have a homegrown campaign?

The single toughest question ever. The one I will also take the longest time in answering.

If we use the Turakian Age, there are many advantages. It is a pre-built setting with most of the published Fantasy HERO supplements supporting it. That means that we can hypothetically all have the same information available.

It also is the setting that I am really fumbling on getting the first two adventure scenarios on for the Fan Project. Usually you guys (and Terrie) get my mind straight on things.

The downside is that I find Turakian Age dry as a Sahara summer. Steve is great at putting rules to paper, but the Turakian Age just doesn't get me excited to play in. There are some cool ideas present (the test of thieves in Aarn, which I have had some ideas similar to for my own woefully underdeveloped world), but the overall feel of the world makes me stifle a yawn whenever I read the material. (Sorry Steve, I hate to toss a bad review your way, but I can't sugarcoat it.)

Any bets that, if we use the TA setting, Solron will run a Drakine?

I have to admit a certain amount of using my own world impulse. Sadly I don't think that it is anywhere near the point where I would be comfortable that I have enough written to give y'all a reasonable assessment of the setting.

2) Also what are the character creation guidelines...

The more I actually get to play/run HERO, the more I dislike Disadvantages. To an extent, they are nice, but more than a couple gets cumbersome. Just a fancy way for me to say that I would balance the characters with higher starting points and fewer disadvantages. I'm thinking somewhere in the 100 - 125 +50 max Disadvantages range.

3) and how do we integrate the Gemini into a FH game

The Gemini ship? The short answer or the long answer?