Zhym

I just ran this one. Fun time. My fully-slotted Inv/SS tanker ("Splendidman") didn't have much trouble with Despoticus. The violations of the Ocelot Rule bothered me more in this arc than those in Allegedly, Your Death. "My" dialog seemed more extensive in this one, and it didn't seem much like Superman's voice. FWIW, I think you could remove a lot of the PC's dialog without losing anything. There seems to be a convention in CoX to have contacts react to things your character never actually said. The PC's words and reactions are more or less implied, which lets the player fill in their own character's voice. Taking the contact intro dialog as an example: I'd say that the PC's lines could be removed entirely, and the rest of the text would only need minor edits (e.g., with pauses and reactions). Maybe something like this: I guess the idea is that the contact can treat the PC as an upright, goody-goody, stand-up superhero without having to insert the PC's dialog to do it. And in most cases, the PC's side of the dialog isn't necessary to move the conversation along.

I've run a couple of them, and plan to run the others. They're fun stories. But I'm going to stick to indexing only the arcs @TerroirNoir3 has posted—I can barely keep up with those right now. But if (okay, who am I kidding? When) @TerroirNoir3 runs those as well, I'll add them!

I've updated the program guide. I think I managed to get everything since the last update, but if I missed anything, please let me know.

@TerroirNoir3 (3 now??) has been awfully prolific lately, and I'm away on vacation. I'll catch up when I get back sometime next week.

Even if it's a small community, it's still a community. If there are far fewer of us than those who prefer to powerlevel through fire farming—well, so what? They have their fun, we have ours. I'm just glad people are writing SFMA AE arcs. I've always been a fan of level editors and other toolkits that transform a "mere" game into a toolkit for building more stories than the developers can (or want to) tell. So I'm also glad that @TerroirNoir2 is writing about them, even if the Nielsen ratings on the Cable Chaanel of AE aren't exactly drawing in big advertiser dollars. Although, now that I think of it: @TerroirNoir2, your posts should totally have sponsors. I mean, Drenched Donuts is famous, but the place is always locked when I try to go in, so they must need more business. And Chris Jenkins has got to be a big advertiser, right?

Incidentally, Lt. Harris's arc is near the top of my list of arcs where I wish I had options other than those given. Specifically, I'd like to kick his ass and not kill the woman he's creepily stalking.

Oh, look who's posting so much all of a sudden that I can't keep up!

Boy, those were the days. They weren't necessarily good days. But they were days.

Timed missions. (Hi, @cranebump!)

I was running Belladonna Vetrano's arc today, where Pendragon is dead set on claiming Excalibur as his destiny, because he's owed it, and for other reasons that scream, "This is not going to turn out well." And the PC just sort of goes along with it, including fighting the Black Knights, when it's kind of clear that Pendragon is completely off his Arthurian rocker. Which got me thinking: what other arcs kind of force your character into acting like a complete idiot? The first one I thought of was Kelly Uqua, where—spoiler alert—it turns out she's really a Rikti! Who knew?? Except anyone who is paying attention, of course. It's been a while since I ran that arc, but IIRC the arc has you working with her long after it should be obvious she's an agent for an alien invader. What other arcs force characters into acting like they have no sense at all?

Because then I'd have to make her Pipi LePew-Pew-Pew, and that's just over the top.

I enjoy BR. It's maybe not my all-time favorite offensive set, but I enjoy it. Yes, it's kind of fiddly with effective damage relying on tagging an enemy with the Disintegrate effect and trying to get it to spread, but that's part of the fun for me—it's kind of a metagame that's more interesting than just pointing and blasting. Plus, I enjoy the pew pew. So of course I named my BR/Devices blaster "Pippi LePew": She's a lot of fun to play, but I admit that a lot of the fun is in the /Devices part of the character. I could lay mines all day long and not get tired of it. The pew pew is just a nice add-on that works with the theme and isn't half bad to play.

I kid you not, when I first read that I thought it was going to end in, ". . . on a date." Which would have been a very different adventure (but probably involving less slavery). Look, if you got summoned every hour just to get beaten up, you'd be a little glum too.

Yay, @TerroirNoir2 is posting in cable Cable Channel of AE again! And so I'm updating the TV Guide again. (And not so subtly bumping this.)

Woo hoo! Welcome back, @TerroirNoir2! Also, @cranebump: Nixon, Agnew, and Haldeman? ISWYDT...