Dogberry

Xene, I know I've probably said this a thousand times, but it keeps being true, so I keep having to say it. Your line art is some of the best I've ever seen. There are serious, professional artists who do nothing but line art that should be taking lessons from you.

Xene! My sister from another mister! I assume you're here, being awesome as always. OMG, we have to catch up with each other soon! I'm really excited to get the old band back together for this! I will be continuing my usual Nautical Nonsense, but with probably less swagger and flim-flammery than Reinbach. I'll be playing a Sea Wolf Roedagyn who was a harpooner at sea before becoming an adventurer. More Moby Dick than Treasure Island this time around.

Hey. I just found this place again after a friend linked me to it. I posted a bit before 1.0 and figured I'd reactivate my old account in anticipation of 2.0. I didn't get to actually play during 1.0, as I was waiting for the PS3 version. Nowadays I've joined the PC Gaming Master Race, so I don't have to wait anymore. Anways, hi, folks. I know some of my old FFXI RP buddies from Canta Per Me are around here somewhere. This is Reinbach. Oi oi!

I'm told there's a detective who constantly speaks into a tape recorder a la Special Agent Dale Cooper in Persona 2: Eternal Punishment. I wouldn't know as I've only played 1, 3, and 4. It's a homage, and as a big Twin Peaks fan, I like it. But wow, that video... I'm now further convinced that someone on the Persona team is a HUGE fan of David Lynch. This game has Blue Velvet written all over it. It begins with the protagonist being thrown off guard by something unsettling, he meets the female romantic lead and initiates, uh... happy time... All it's missing at this point is Dennis Hopper.

See, the whole Hitler thing doesn't make any sense to me. Hitler's been in tons of games before. He was the final boss of Bionic Commando! I have vivid childhood memories of gunning down Hitler in Wolfenstein 3D! I must have done it a hundred times. I really doubt there was any pearlclutching about it. Atlus had to be self-censoring and I guess to them it seemed like a prudent move, but if nobody had a problem with Hitler going gatling-guns akimbo in a John Woo wet dream, nobody's going to care about Persona 2's portrayal of him. I mean, it's not like they're defending the guy or anything. The second reason only makes sense if you're using moon-logic. If you're worried about pissing off the Christian Right, you've probably already succeeded when you've made a game almost entirely about summoning demons described in The Lesser Key of Solomon to do your bidding. At that point, why not cram as much boy-on-boy action as you can fit? Hey, go all out. Throw in some people loaning out money with interest and a couple of Japanese girls eating lobsters. Get everyone. Pun totally intended on the "cram that boy-on-boy lovin' in there."

Persona is a spin-off of a series called Shin Megami Tensei. It came out during the PS1 era and was basically this JRPG dungeon crawler about high school students who could summon their "Persona" to fight for them. A persona is basically the mask that we wear in our day-to-day interactions with others. It wasn't a very big commercial success in America, but there was a sequel spread across two games. We only got one of those games brought over. The original Persona games were cool because you could bargain with a lot of the monsters you fought so that you could get their "card" (there's a lot of tarot symbolism in the game) and use it to make more personas that you can summon. Persona 3 came out for the PS2 and became a pretty solid hit. It had more of a life-simulator element than the other games, so it became this weird social-interaction game with a dungeon crawl part. That seems to be the formula for the Persona games now, because 4 didn't deviate a whole lot from the formula of 3. The plots of the game are really trippy, usually combining Jungian psychology and a dash of hermetic mysticism. Like, in Persona 4, a serial killer is throwing your friends into another plane of existence inside televisions and forcing them to work through mental hangups until monsters inside work themselves into a frenzy and kill them. You have to go in after them and pull them out. Also, the Persona games have some of the best music ever. I actually got into the series because my wife let me borrow the Persona 3 soundtrack. I had to play the games after listening to it. Persona 1 was re-released for the PSP, and I recommend at least picking up Persona 3.

So apparently the team that made the Persona games has been working on a game called Catherine. While not quite a Persona or SMT game, the main character appeared in the latest version of Persona 3. The game appears to be about a man who keeps having a series of weird dreams and an obsession for a woman named Catherine. Not a lot of details have been released about it. I'm crazy excited! Are there any other Persona/SMT fans? One thing that strikes me, though. Many of the elements in Persona were similar to Twin Peaks, a TV show by David Lynch. The Velvet Room in particular was more or less taken right from the show, but Persona 4 especially had a lot in common with the James/Donna/Maddie arc of Twin Peaks. Being about a man's obsession with a young woman leading him into a psycho bus ride to hell, Catherine seems like it's very evocative of Blue Velvet, a movie by David Lynch. Think we'll ever see an Eraserhead game?

The Warhammer 40K MMO is something I've been looking forward to, but footage I've seen makes it look a little like a WoW clone, which isn't promising. I don't want to do quests, I want to WAAAAAAAAAGH against the 'umies. WFB online had great PVP, but it was sealed off from the rest of the game and you usually had to wait for a match to start. I'd like to be able to spawn on a planet and get involved in a fight.

Well, the important thing is that it's up. Nice going, Castiel. Thanks. Paranoia-Live.net had a calendar just like this one, and it was the most useful thing ever.

Apparently what I have is version 1.5 of the Returners FFRPG. So I suppose I'll be updating to 3rd edition, then. It looks more refined. Zane, thanks for this thread. Good luck with the game!

I have PDFs for an FF RPG that I intend to use. I'm not quite sure it's the Returners system. I found it posted in an LJ community of all places. I'll check it out a bit later and if it's different I'll put it up on rapidshare or something. It looks like a decent system that appears to be built with FF11 in mind.

Awesome! I'm glad you guys liked it. Apple based drinks are my all-time favorite, as well. Anyways, if I come up with anymore concoctions I'll post 'em here.

Noob's Guide to Fermentation To use these recipes, you're going to need some equipment. The first one can be done entirely with things found in your grocery store. The second two will require some stuff you'll either have to buy from a homebrew store or improvise. There are a lot of great guides on the process readily available online, but I'll go over the essential equipment here to help avoid confusion. The first and most important thing is a fermentation vessel. The most common vessels are made of glass, number 1 plastic bottles, or HDPE buckets. Depending on the size you can find them pretty easily. Gallon sized vessels are easy to find. Gallon wine jugs are perfect (and fun to empty). There are homebrew specialty stores that sell pretty large ones (five gallons is the standard size for most brewers), but if you've got access to empty water cooler bottles those will work. If you're using an HDPE bucket make sure it's never been used for any other purpose. Also you're going to need to drill a hole in the lid. The second most important piece is some kind of sanitizing solution. You've got to sanitize your fermentation vessel otherwise all kinds of nasty things can grow in your brew. Oxyclean one-step cleaning solution, star-san, or even a ratio of one part bleach to ten parts hot water will do. Make sure you rinse well. Finally, you're going to need some way to keep air from getting in while letting carbon dioxide out. The most common way is with an airlock, a device that you feel with sterile liquid (personally I use vodka. Water can become contaminated) that bubbles to let CO2 out. Failing that, you can use a balloon with a single hole punched in it. For a good look at what this equipment looks like you can poke around at http://www.northernbrewer.com/. You'll also need some kind of tubing to move the finished product to bottles, and either a capper or corker depending on how you're bottling. I'll cover that later. Now for the recipes. Reinbach's Scurvy-Fighting Scapegoat Yield: 1 gallon This is a short mead favored by an infamous corsair. Not only is it good for keeping scurvy at bay, it's the perfect scapegoat for whatever indiscretions you've got in mind. This is a good test batch to see if the hobby is for you. It's low maintenance and you can find all of the ingredients at any given grocery store. You'll need: 2 lbs. Clover Honey 1 2-inch cinnamon stick 2 limes 1/2 gallon Welch's Grape Juice 25 raisins 1 tsp. bread yeast (not normally reccomended, but for this recipe it's OK.) Quarter the limes and slice the raisins. Pour some of the grape juice into your fermentation vessel, then pour and stir in the honey. Stir extremely well. Top up the rest to a gallon. The honey should displace the half gallon of juice into a full gallon, but top up with water if you need to. Add the limes, raisins, and cinnamon stick. Pitch the yeast, close up the vessel and add the airlock. Let it sit in a dark place. There should be some activity in the airlock or balloon. That's good. It means the yeast is turning the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Don't disturb it for two months. By then all of the honey should be integrated with the mead and all the fermentation should be done. You have mead ready for bottling. It's OK to drink now, but the longer you wait, the better it gets. Jagged-Eared Apple Jack Yield: 5 Gallons 5 gallons Apple Juice - Make sure there are no preservatives aside from absorbic acid. Otherwise this will not ferment. 2 lbs. brown sugar (light or dark) 1 packet beer yeast (I reccomend Nottingham yeast or Danstar US-05. You can buy these from a homebrew shop) Pour a gallon and a half into your fermentation vessel. This should mean you've opened two bottles of apple juice. Pour some brown sugar into the remaining half gallon of the second bottle, cap and shake. Pour the rest into the vessel. Repeat this until the brown sugar is gone and all the apple juice is in the vessel. Pitch the yeast, cap and put the airlock on. Yep, it's that simple. Again, wait two months and you've got some cider. Dogberry's Family Recipe Yield: 5 gallons 10 lbs dark malt extract (dry) 2 oz Galena hops 1 packet beer yeast The following grains (these can be bought from a homebrew store): 12oz Crystal Malt 10oz Chocolate Malt 3oz Roasted Barley 3oz Black Patent Make sure to use at least a 3 gallon stockpot. Heat 2 gallons of water to 155 degrees and steep your grains in a cheesecloth bag for half an hour. Remove the grains and discard them. Remove the pot from heat and add malt extract. Return to heat and bring to a boil. Allow it to boil for 45 minutes and add 1 oz hops. Boil for ten more minutes before adding the second oz of hops. Boil for five more minutes. Take the pot from the heat and immediately chill in an ice bath. Keep dunking it in the ice bath until it's close to room temperature. 80-85 degrees should be good enough, but try to go a little lower. Congratulations, you now have wort! Add it to your vessel, top it up with water. Pitch yeast, cover, and add the airlock. There's going to be a ton of bubbles on this one. Make sure your vessel is larger than five gallons to keep it all in. Otherwise look into making a "blow-off tube." It's basically a large version of an airlock that can handle large amounts of foam. You can make it with tubing, a milk jug, and some water. The fermentation should be done in about a week to 10 days. Keep it in a relatively cool area. Siphon the beer into a second fermentation vessel, this time without leaving any head space. Seal off and add the airlock. Wait a month, then bottle after adding 1 oz corn sugar to the batch (you can use table sugar in a pinch, but it will leave an aftertaste). Keep it in bottles for three weeks while it carbonates. Again, it's one of those things that is better with age. Wait a few months and you'll be happy. I hope that covers everything. If you have any questions I can answer them for you, but you'll probably find better guides on the internet. I learned what I did from reading "How to Brew" by John Palmer. It's more or less THE book for beginners.

Sweetness. I'll write up a general how-to and a couple of recipes for a cider, a mead, and a beer.

I'm a brewer and meadmaker who has been considering making a FFXI/FFXIV themed beer for a while. If there's a place in the book for my recipes, I'd be happy to contribute. Brewing and meadmaking is a little more specialized than stuff you'd find in a normal cookbook since it requires special equipment, but once you get it down it's just like any other recipe. FFXI has a few alcoholic beverages mentioned. You can buy Mulsum, and Rolanberry is mentioned a lot. I don't think mead is ever mentioned, which surprises me since there are so many bees. I guess when designing a world they didn't stop much to think about boozahols. With the prevalence of rolanberry, I've had my eye on a pyment using grape juice and honey. As for beer, I think a Galkan Porter or Ephramadian Red might be nice. I'll consider my options and see what I can work with.

Oh! I'm a movie nut. Wait, there was a Children of Dune movie? I know there was a mini-series, but I don't think I'd have missed a movie. I actually haven't seen the mini-series. Did they wrap Dune Messiah into Children of Dune? Blade Runner Dark City Braindead/Dead Alive The Harder They Come Dawn of the Dead (the original) The Departed Six String Samurai Metropolis Re-Animator The Quick and the Dead (Sam Raimi's version)

I think if anything this thread shows the challenges the community has ahead of it. We've all been arguing over things we agree on.

Well you get a cool HBO mini-series all to yourself. That's pretty cool.

From four pages ago:

So then you can understand my confusion.

Funny how you missed this: Edit to add: and this:

Can I ask you what it is you think I'm advocating? I'm not being a smartass, I genuinely want to know if I come off like I'm saying we should devise ways to punish people. I'm pretty sure that whatever I've said in this thread it isn't that.

Well, my thing is, we're not going to have any authority to do anything to anyone who disagrees with our intervention unless they're outright breaking SE's terms of service. We shouldn't even try to moderate because we don't even have a means of enforcing our own moderation beyond "well you can't play with us anymore so nyah." It makes us look a little too big for our britches. And yeah, you can be Thomas Paine. Who wants to be Jefferson? We got any takers on John Adams?