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Darth Walrus posted:Sounds like a cue for me to get on that list of giant robot suggestions. This might take a little while, but then again, I've got a lot of material to work with. One of those things that should happen is that any mecha should not be described just by name. It's probably the biggest issue I have with the book. Unless a character blurts out "It's a Gundam" Gundam Wing style, I think there should be at least given a description whenever introduced.
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Apr 5, 2018 13:57
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chitoryu12 posted:I think I have a good compromise for letting people stretch their creative muscles at writing while still maintaining a coherent narrative and tone. This sounds good. Other question. Do we want to hew as close as we can to the POV of the book or are we going to move into 3rd person territory? If we keep 1st person, do we want to use present tense to remove the certainty of the narrator surviving? Or am I wandering too far into the weeds? Ultimately, I can't wait. I've already roughed out a couple vignettes reworking a couple scenes in the book.
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Apr 5, 2018 14:02
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I get that a custom questline is maybe a little much for simple griefing, but I really like the idea of the Star Wars prequels being kind of an "inside joke" among anyone who likes to give gunters poo poo, since they absolutely would hate those movies more than anything on Earth. I think in general it's important to project the idea that not everybody in this entire dystopia lives in the gunter bubble where 1980s pop culture is Very Serious Business and the golden age of civilization. There are probably tons of people out there who think gunters are all dumb nerds wasting away in their parents' basement pretending to be explorers and scholars.
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Apr 5, 2018 14:11
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Proteus Jones posted:This sounds good. I'd like to stick to first person, but you can always play with that perspective to do shifts. One idea I had was to show the capture of the Vonnegut in third person, then in the next chapter show that it was Wade watching a recording of the captain's stream and laughing to himself after watching him headshot the guy.
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Apr 5, 2018 14:14
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Heres a quick rewite of the finales build up, this is pretty easy to fix actually.quote:
Heres the original
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Apr 5, 2018 15:25
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I'm writing up the OP for the fix thread right now, including a preliminary plot outline. The starting outline, characters, and canon bible are not immutable and the thread will be open for discussion on how they can be changed (within reason, since we're trying to improve the book and not just burn it). These are just my starting ideas based on my own thoughts and the suggestions from this thread.
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Apr 5, 2018 15:28
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I know, it was just there in front of me and I couldn't leave it alone.
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Apr 5, 2018 15:40
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Here we go.
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Apr 5, 2018 15:49
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You could include multiple authors by doing it as an epistolary novel. chitoryu12 would still write all the first-person Wade's-perspective stuff, but others could contribute chapters that were in-world 'documents'. Just off the top of my head, you could have:
Moving all the exposition to the 'document' chapters would also make the main story flow better since you wouldn't need Wade's constant infodumps.
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Apr 5, 2018 16:06
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Clipperton posted:You could include multiple authors by doing it as an epistolary novel. chitoryu12 would still write all the first-person Wade's-perspective stuff, but others could contribute chapters that were in-world 'documents'. Just off the top of my head, you could have: Hey, this is actually a cool idea. Let's do it.
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Apr 5, 2018 16:55
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Somewhere along the line somebody (possibly even me? if not I at least internally agreed) said that things would be more interesting/the relationships in the book would feel more real if we were given more than just Wade’s perspective. The idea of interspersing “found”/supplementary documents could really help with that. I, for one, would like to read some excerpts from Arty’s Missives (or whatever it was called.) Maybe throw some personal blog entries in there too to give a reader some perspective on her actual character and private feelings re:Parzival, the hunt, etc. I’m sure a similar thing could be done for the other main characters too, but I feel like there has to be a way to make the delivery methods/segments distinct from one another. Maybe Aech journaled in a bunch of classic (heh) composition notebooks from the offline comfort of her battle RV! Is the plan still to make Daito and Shoto some midwestern weebs? burial fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Apr 5, 2018 |
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Apr 5, 2018 20:13
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Quoted myself. Oops.
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Apr 5, 2018 20:15
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burial posted:Is the plan still to make Daito and Shoto some midwestern weebs? I still say Daito is a wholly unnecessary character. He adds nothing to the story that couldn't be done by Shoto alone, apart from dying
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Apr 5, 2018 20:17
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I feel like what this really needs is Gunter S. Thompson.
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Apr 5, 2018 20:27
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StonecutterJoe posted:
Scrambling to make the connection between this thing called "fun" and anything pertinent to the 80s, I consulted the Almanac. The first hit I got was a mention of the fictional band Big Fun, featured in the 1988 movie Heathers. I used my limitless bitcoins and went to the nearest virtual shop selling only the finest neon fabrics and ordered a bespoke Martha Dumptruck-sized shirt with the band's name on it. Then I walked into traffic, just like everyone wearing VR sets while ambling through the crowded streets of Columbus. Unlike Martha, however, I actually died when JacquelineDempsey's 1986 Volvo came careening around the corner and turned me into Nickelodeon Gak. THE END
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Apr 5, 2018 21:21
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So a friend of mine also really didn't like the book, and she found it bizarre and unrealistic that Wade could have done so much of Anorak's Almanac in such a short timespan. She counted up every reference Wade makes and put down how many times he watched, played, or listened to it (in order to be charitable, she didn't include any random references that you could pick up through osmosis or Wikipedia and something like "over a dozen" was put down as 13 times instead of arbitrarily adding more). There's I think 113 references in the book. Wade was a gunter for 5 years at the time the book began, so assuming 5 years and 1 month that's about 22,000 hours. She's only counted up about 39 of the references and is already at 13,000 hours, even with the most charitable math possible.
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Apr 5, 2018 21:33
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chitoryu12 posted:So a friend of mine also really didn't like the book, and she found it bizarre and unrealistic that Wade could have done so much of Anorak's Almanac in such a short timespan. She counted up every reference Wade makes and put down how many times he watched, played, or listened to it (in order to be charitable, she didn't include any random references that you could pick up through osmosis or Wikipedia and something like "over a dozen" was put down as 13 times instead of arbitrarily adding more).
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Apr 5, 2018 21:52
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chitoryu12 posted:So a friend of mine also really didn't like the book, and she found it bizarre and unrealistic that Wade could have done so much of Anorak's Almanac in such a short timespan. I was wondering the same thing and I only skimmed the actual quotes part of this thread.
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Apr 5, 2018 22:16
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OK, let's run down dem robutts. First off, though, we should talk about the narrative purpose of giant robots, which is something that cheaper, lazier fiction can ignore or gloss over (Cline does show a small measure of awareness in RPO, but not much). Piloted mecha were actually a relatively late development - the earliest giant robots, like Tetsujin 28 and Ambassador Magma, were either remote-controlled or fully sapient in their own right. They were outsized characters in the same vein as superheroes, living gods whose drama derived from their interactions with us puny mortals. Or, to look at this from another perspective (since these were pretty much universally kids' shows) they were your super-cool big buddy in a world where you were very small. Their wild appearances were all about making them seem superhuman and unearthly. The more intimate relationship created by a robot's master piloting it, though, introduced a host of intriguing possibilities. It's not a coincidence that the mecha in Gundam, one of the genre's most famous and successful franchises, are called 'mobile suits' - piloted mecha are costumes, and any good creator knows that there are few better ways to convey a character's personality than their clothes. Mecha shows let you take that to a whole new level, creating truly titanic clashes of personality, ideals, and aesthetics. They also open up exciting possibilities when you look at them from the other direction - a fight with the weight and power of a tank battle or battleship duel that now has the fluid interplay and body language of hand-to-hand combat. A particularly famous example of this is the Macross series, which brings the wild adrenaline of Top Gun-style aerial dogfights while letting those ginormous fighter pilot egos beat the poo poo out of each other with giant metal fists. They're incredibly versatile storytelling tools. With that in mind, let's talk RPO. Parzival Current ride: Leopardon from Japanese Spider-Man.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1PePr8hAsc The more I read up on Leopardon, the more genuinely fascinating it is. From one perspective, it's emblematic of all that's weird and dumb about geekery. It looks kind of lame standing still and really lame in motion, it's born out of a memetically bizarre fusion between Western superhero comics and Japanese 'tokusatsu' (a term literally meaning 'special filming', effects-heavy live-action TV, that, in common parlance, is generally used to refer to dudes in rubber suits beating the poo poo out of each other), it was obviously just shoehorned in at the last minute to broaden the show's appeal (a spider-leopard? The gently caress?), and it's got a hilarious backstory to it. The costume they used for its action scenes - such as they were - was so clunky that it was widely hated by the cast, and was stolen halfway through the show, requiring them to rely entirely on stock footage for its appearances and finishing moves. That's not the whole story, though, because the big dumb spider-leopard was actually a pivotal player in the history of giant robots. It was only the second live-action giant robot with a mechanically-viable transformation in history, after Daitetsujin-1-7, and the first one to be piloted (I'll get round to why that's a big deal in the Raideen section) and both it and the show itself were critical and commercial successes - the die-cast Leopardon toy broke sale records, and the TV show was well-received for its mixture of goofy action and surprisingly affecting drama (ironically, the problems the Leopardon suit gave the staff meant that they had to invest much more in characterisation and plotting in order to cut down on the amount of time that damned robot was on-screen). All this gave the execs at Toei a brainwave for how they'd make their new home-brewed tokusatsu franchise, Super Sentai, stand out from its commercial rival, Kamen Rider - by giving the heroes a giant robot. It worked like a charm, and now Super Sentai is a juggernaut of a franchise (41 series and counting - yes, you read that right) and the single biggest mecha show on live-action TV. You folks probably recognise it better as the franchise Power Rangers took all its action scenes from. So Leopardon isn't just a hilarious piece of crap - it's a hilarious piece of crap that was nevertheless good enough for its day to single-handedly revitalise an entire genre. It's a genuinely great pick for a character who's wavering between ironic detachment from and sincere appreciation of all the ancient, nerdy crap that's been shovelled into his mouth. You don't really need to change much here. If, on the other hand, you want to go for straight-up 'oh my god this is poo poo and I want to bathe in it', though, then I do have an alternative suggestion. Alternative ride: Jet Jaguar, Godzilla vs. Megalon.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOMzdWllsEM The thing about Leopardon is that, if you want to embrace all that is crummy about nerd stuff, it's honestly slightly too cool. Its show was a commercial success, its design was well-received, it set an important historical precedent, and it was presented as an unstoppable avatar of destruction within its own story. No, if we want something poo poo that everyone hated, we need to go deeper. Jet Jaguar is not, technically, a piloted robot - he's a size-shifting android superhero, and if you think that and his appearance make him seem like a blatant rip-off of Ultraman, you're absolutely right. He was originally intended to helm his own movie, but the execs decided he couldn't carry a franchise (gee, I wonder why?), and instead made him Godzilla's sidekick in an effort to shake up a flagging franchise. Yep, he was Godzilla's Poochie, and was about as well-received - GVM was the first significant flop in the history of the franchise, and Jet Jaguar only reappeared twenty-four years later as a prominent character in the Monster Island TV show. Now, to be totally fair, there were plenty of other reasons why GVM got panned - it relied heavily on stock footage, had a widely-despised child character, and marked the endpoint of Zilla's evolution from a walking nuclear bomb metaphor into a cuddly, child-friendly superhero - but Jet Jaguar did not help. The only question is whether someone who saw him in the reward tables would stop laughing long enough to push the button. Daito Current ride: Ultraman, from Ultraman.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqRKLS-hl98 Yeah, this is a lazy pick. Ultraman is... adequate for his narrative role, in that he's a big, famous, and powerful Japanese character used by a Japanese guy, but he's no more than that. He doesn't tell us anything about Daito's personality, because Daito doesn't have one, and there's nothing about him that indicates why he is the baddest motherfucker in the OASIS, able to chump even Sorrento's hellbeast with ease. He certainly wasn't a force of nature like Leopardon in his own show (yes, that is a phrase I just typed) - he was often evenly-matched with his foes, and had a serious, exploitable weakness in he form of his time limit. I mean, I guess he was the first and most famous fusion of the superhero and kaiju (giant monster) genres, so he should be good for punching big stuff, but that's still pretty weak. Plus, I'd been contemplating giving Wade Jet Jaguar when I thought about this, and thought there might be a bit too much overlap. If you're wondering why I'm focusing on power, it's because I like the idea of Daito stumbling across some unholy superweapon in an obscure sidequest. There's a reason why game designers make sidequest loot better than main quest loot - it's to incentivise exploration, and Halliday's egg quest is all about encouraging players to live his life in as much detail as they can. It makes perfect sense for there to be little bits and pieces scattered about that aren't explicitly linked to the keys and gates, but make proceeding through them far easier if found. Wade's spare quarter is one, so why shouldn't Daito's special super-artefact be one as well? If that's the case, we're going to have to scale up. Like, way up. Alternative ride: Ideon, from Space Runaway Ideon.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0MAY-8oo5U When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfucker in the galaxy, accept no substitutes. The Ideon is one of the most infamous mecha of the Eighties, star of a show (and sequel movie) that went a big way to earning maverick director Yoshiyuki Tomino his nickname of 'Kill 'em All'. The core premise is that human colonists travel to a far-flung planet and discover the three parts of a giant, combining robot as well as a hostile alien race who are just as curious about said robot as they are. The colonists load up the Ideon, as it's called, with weapons, and begin the long trip back to earth, pursued by the alien empire, only to eventually discover (after an escalating cycle of violence with appalling war crimes on both sides) that their new toy is in fact inhabited by a possibly-divine force called the Ide, which manipulated humanity and the aliens of the Buff Clan into making contact, and is none too happy about their choice to fight each other. This causes the Ideon to manifest ever-more-devastating weaponry until eventually, the Ide has enough and either wipes out the Buff Clan and humanity (TV version) or drives both sides into an apocalyptic endgame that leads to them wiping each other out, finishing off with the Ideon itself being destroyed and generating an explosion that scours all life from the galaxy to be reborn anew (film version). It's a walking, hundred-metre-tall fortress bristling with guns and missiles that also has superweapons like the Ideon Swords (laser blades extending from the emitters on its wrists that can cut a planet in half), the Black Hole Gun (a weapon mounted in its chest that can rip apart entire fleets with gravitational anomalies) and the Ideon Gun (its only hand-held weapon, which amplifies and focuses the Black Hole Gun and can take bites out of solar systems). Giving Daito the Ideon would completely explain why IOI had to kill him - an experienced gunter with intimate knowledge of the show it was based on would be as near to unstoppable in-game as makes no difference, and now that he knew how to get it, they simply could not risk him sharing that information with anyone else. Distracting him in-game with a zerg rush so they can break into his high-security apartment without scaring him off would be pretty much the only way to bring him down. I considered the other heavy hitter of the Eighties, the Gunbuster, but that's all about the bond between its two pilots. The Ideon is a multi-seater, but that's a little less narratively important - it's plausible that someone could use it solo with a crew of NPCs. There are other reasons for picking the Ideon, too, but we'll get to those. Shoto Current ride: Raideen, from Brave Raideen  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SloHs5O4S48 The Raideen is an OK pick. It's a solid mix of goofy and awe-inspiring for the gunters' ultimate weapon, a literal ancient god-machine with a whole host of weird-but-impressive gadgets. It also has the kind of historical significance that would appeal to any mecha nerd worth their salt - it's the first ever mechanically-viable transforming robot. That meant that it could be accurately rendered as a toy, which was a really big deal because kids' cartoons make their money through toys. In other words, you could now make lots of money by including transforming robots in your stories. No Raideen, no Transformers, no Power Rangers, no Robotech. My only gripe is that it doesn't really say much specific about Shoto as a character - at least one of our Japanese nerds should have a glimmer of personality. Alternative ride: RahXephon  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t1_35xiub4 One interesting thing that I think Cline was trying to do with Shoto after Daito's death (but failing at because racism) was having him drop his LARPer persona and be his normal self because gently caress playing around, his friend's dead and he wants revenge. With that in mind, I can see him ignoring the Eighties theme and just whipping out the most powerful weapon in his arsenal to melt some Sixer faces with and claim the Third Gate. RahXephon is a 2001-2002 reimagining of Brave Raideen that also took heavy inspiration from the smash hit Neon Genesis Evangelion, an eerie, mystical show centring around quasi-mechanical clay statues called Dolems that have the power to reshape reality with their songs. The RahXephon itself is the Raideen with all the goofiness stripped away, a sleek, terrifying avatar of divine wrath that can liquefy entire fleets by yelling at them. It's not quite Ideon-powerful, but it's up there. Daito's death is consistently treated as one of the darkest, most serious parts of the story, so I think it'd be OK to let his best buddy's reaction to it be similarly serious. Art3mis Current ride: Minerva-X, from Mazinger Z.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR7xA2JbNCQ Another lazy one. Minerva-X is mainly significant for being the budget female knockoff of Mazinger Z, the first piloted giant robot (although she's not piloted herself, which makes things awkward when she develops a crush on Mazinger). Cline appears to have picked this entirely because Art3mis is a girl with a username from classical mythology. We can do way better. You want a girl robot, Cline? Then let's do the single coolest girl robot of the Eighties. Alternative ride: AMX-004 Qubeley, from Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam/Mobile Suit ZZ Gundam  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqsDKGQ0HoE To me, Art3mis tends to come across as the most together of the gang (give or take that awkward body image issue). She's not just a gifted player - she's a businesswoman who knows how to manage and use her image to maximum effect, she's politically aware, and she has the broadest education of any of the protagonists. It's actually why giving her a secret weakness to bring her down to Wade's level so they can be together is so disturbing. The Qubeley fits that. It's the personal machine of Haman Karn, a strong contender for the most memorable and badass villain in the Gundam franchise. She uses it to waltz in and kick the asses of the hero, the villain, and recurring series cool dude Char Aznable at the end of Zeta Gundam, before taking over the solar system once they all kill/incapacitate each other, and only gets defeated in the sequel, ZZ Gundam, after an absolutely astounding fight against one of the most powerful machines in the show because she deliberately held back out of fondness and respect for her enemy. It's stylish, elegant, and utterly deadly, especially if the pilot gets Haman's considerable psychic powers when piloting (and there are items that turn players into cyborgs and aliens, so why wouldn't they?). At eighteen metres, it's one of the smaller giant robots in play, but its hard-hitting beam weapons and swarm of attack drones make it useful against enemies of any size, and it even fits with the whole classical-mythology thing - it's named after Cybele, the Phrygian goddess of nature, who later became part of the Greek pantheon. Aech Current ride: RX-78-2 Gundam. from Mobile Suit Gundam.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFaUaCrbFLM I see what Cline was going for here. The Gundam was the pioneer of a genre that fans eventually dubbed 'real robot' - mecha as weapons of war rather than superheroes. It fits with Aech's butch aesthetic for her to be toting a big loving laser-gun while everyone else is lugging around swords, energy bows, and... uhh... microwave-boobs, but it's kind of basic and shallow. Aech is Wade's turbonerd buddy, the experienced gunter who loves the world she's immersed in. She'd go for a deeper cut, and that opens up some interesting storytelling possibilities. Alternative ride: 040 RX-79 [G] Gundam Ground Type (Karen Joshua Custom), from Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTFXpDtgg2M The 08th MS Team is an OVA series (original video animation - typically a direct-to-video series with quality somewhere between a TV show and a film) from the mid-nineties that serves as a side-story to the original Mobile Suit Gundam. It's most notable for bringing a gritty, realistic aesthetic to a franchise that has always had one foot in the fantastical - it's less Star Wars, more Platoon (plus a little Romeo and Juliet, but that's Gundam for you). Karen is the hero's tough-as-nails second-in-command and close (platonic) friend, and spends quite a bit of time clearing up his messes. I can see Aech identifying with her a lot, and she seems like the sort who'd recognise the inherent appeal of Gundam gone Rambo. It'd also be quite sweetly fitting if she decides to do an avatar-switch at the end and fight the final battle as herself, on the grounds that if they win, she can tell her parents and IOI to gently caress off, and if they lose, they'll all be too dead to care. Bringing along a mech that's big, tough, battle-scarred, and specifically piloted by a woman would work well with that. I do recognise that this gives her the least powerful mech in the lineup, but somebody's got to run anti-personnel work so the big boys don't get swarmed, and she seems practically-minded enough to volunteer for that. I assume that she spends most of the final battle kicking DeLoreans into Space Marine Terminators while giggling. Nolan Sorrento Current ride: MFS-3 Mechagodzilla (Kiryu), from Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkJ_n9ygZRw Not an awful choice. It's big, scary, powerful, and responsible for repeatedly handing the King of Monsters his scaly rear end, and carries the additional subtext of being piloted by someone who believes himself to be the hero despite doing monstrous things. In the movies it appeared in, Kiryu is an undead cyborg abomination that's technically the hero because it's (reluctantly and unreliably) protecting humanity against Godzilla, and successfully drives him off twice. I do think, though, that with the firepower getting thrown around, it's maybe a bit weedy - the Evangelions alone would rip it a new one. Plus, we can maybe double down on using it to reveal Sorrento's character. I considered a couple of options here, like the Big Fau from The Big O and an Imperator-class Titan from Warhammer 40,000, but none of them fitted. Both are a bit short to be properly intimidating (the Big Fau only tops out at thirty metres), the Imperator is a barely-mobile artillery emplacement that wouldn't provide an interesting fight scene, and both indicate an appreciation for storytelling and going into character that Sorrento lacks. So I thought we needed something huge and immensely destructive (but still mobile enough to provide an entertaining fight) that fits Sorrento's character, but not to the point where he would have chosen it because it fits his character. Then I realised the obvious answer. Alternative ride: Ideon, from Space Runaway Ideon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0MAY-8oo5U Of course Sorrento would take the Ideon after killing Daito. How could he not? It's exactly the kind of destructive power he needs as his ultimate trump card, and despite his lack of interest in Halliday's fantasyland, I can see him taking some grim enjoyment in using a weapon with a theme of rebirth and cleansing through destruction and bloodshed. Plus, it makes the final battle incredibly personal for our heroes, especially after the ghastly irony of their most powerful fighter getting taken out by his dead friend's machine. Its walking-fortress nature also works well with the military might of IOI - there aren't NPCs manning its turrets any more, but trained human gunners. It also has huge, obvious weaknesses that make it actually fightable despite its immense power, unlike, say, the Gunbuster. Its most powerful attacks drain enormous amounts of energy (likely represented in-game by glacial cooldowns), and it takes many episodes of the TV series for the Ide to unlock its full strength, which might be represented by a meter system that requires specific inputs in specific circumstance. It would turn the battle into a race against time as the unenthusiastic, inexperienced Sorrento tries to figure out how to bring out his weapon's true power, and our heroes have to get determined and creative to bring the titan down before he does. Bringing in the Ideon would also provide an obvious setup for the spare quarter coming into play - a defeated Sorrento simply blows up his own mech, killing everyone in a vast swathe of the OASIS. He knows that IOI's vast resources mean they can gear up for another run at the Gate far faster than even the most elite gunters can, and he knows that the massive disruption will mask any unfortunate revelations during the battle until he reaches the Gate and they no longer become relevant. So, hope that was interesting. Anyone else got any other thoughts and suggestions?
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Apr 5, 2018 22:29
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Since we're on the subject of giant robots: Cline, you have to pick a Romanization scheme. Either Toei's show is Spider-Man (not Supaidaman), or Spidey's giant robot is "Reoparudon" (not "Leopardon").Darth Walrus posted:OK, let's run down dem robutts. This was cool, thanks!
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Apr 6, 2018 00:01
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  And once again, goons put more effort into one post than Cline did for an entire novel. I don't know poo poo about gundams and other big rear end robots, but you made it interesting to someone new to the subject, and your write ups on both Godzilla v Megalon and G v Mechagodzilla get an A+ from this kaiju sperglord. Nicely done, Lord Walrus.
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Apr 6, 2018 00:02
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That was a drat good post.
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Apr 6, 2018 00:05
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As a Gundam fan, I am all about that Karen Joshua Custom. It may not be a super robot, but I can see Aech not giving a single gently caress as she pulls a "Get some!" on a bunch of IOI foot soldiers and tanks with a beam rifle and the chest Gatling. What should we have the IOI goons use? EVA units are too huge and overpowered if the game treats the robots like their fictional counterparts. Since the Sixers just use whatever's generic, maybe a bunch of them have Zakus and Leos from Gundam?
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Apr 6, 2018 00:08
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I could also see Aech in a Gundam Heavyarms (EW, obviously) for maximum dakka.
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Apr 6, 2018 00:57
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So this MIGHT be a crazy suggestion, but... Someone needs to bring a Martian Tripod from War of the Worlds so that people are totally loving confused about what it is. "What the hell is that? That's not from the 80s! Anyone know what it does?"
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Apr 6, 2018 01:02
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chitoryu12 posted:As a Gundam fan, I am all about that Karen Joshua Custom. It may not be a super robot, but I can see Aech not giving a single gently caress as she pulls a "Get some!" on a bunch of IOI foot soldiers and tanks with a beam rifle and the chest Gatling. An army of Mocks would be funny as hell. Annoyingly inappropriate to Halliday’s Eighties wonderland, too. That would require someone at IOI to have a sense of humour, though, so they probably use a generic grab-bag of basic mooks from Gundam, Macross, BattleTech, whatever, plus some heavy hitter line-breakers like Psyco Gundams (or worse, Queen Mansas) and Evangelions.
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Apr 6, 2018 01:07
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:So this MIGHT be a crazy suggestion, but... I'm really excited to see what mashup of stuff we can use. A clan of level 1 War Boys witnessing each other as they kamikaze hovertanks?
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Apr 6, 2018 01:12
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Echoing that that was a good effortpost about giant robots!
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Apr 6, 2018 01:24
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Just out of curiosity, and since someone else mentioned how tacky as gently caress it is: Can any book barn folks who know more about this discuss the legitimacy of referencing people who are alive? There was some James Cameron chat there for a bit, and it got me thinking. During the editing process, does anyone check in with people and get their okay on being mentioned? Like no doubt Cory Doctorow was jerking himself off silly being name checked in this pile of fan wanking, but what about the other people? I guess my question is: do living people have any say in being name checked in a book?
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Apr 6, 2018 01:28
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JacquelineDempsey posted:Just out of curiosity, and since someone else mentioned how tacky as gently caress it is: On the surface, I'd say no, but usually publishers have entire rooms full of lawyers whose job it is to just get even vocal clearance from a public figure, brand, or estate or the agent or agency representing them when a Real Life person or thing is namechecked in a fictional book. And even then that's usually covered already under the First Amendment or equivalent rights in other countries. Like literally Stephen Hawking, Neil DeGrass Tyson and Michio Kaku all have speaking bit parts in Armada and I would be legit shocked if any of them know about it (or in Hawking's case knew about it  ) unless someone pointed it out "hey, you're in this lovely SciFi book I'm reading" on like Twitter or wherever.
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Apr 6, 2018 01:56
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At least we have the advantage of our rewrite being non-profit "fan" fiction, so we're in the clear!
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Apr 6, 2018 02:08
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Just make the only celebrity cameo be Weird Al Yankovic, it's not like he'd sue even if he wanted to.
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Apr 6, 2018 02:44
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chitoryu12 posted:As a Gundam fan, I am all about that Karen Joshua Custom. It may not be a super robot, but I can see Aech not giving a single gently caress as she pulls a "Get some!" on a bunch of IOI foot soldiers and tanks with a beam rifle and the chest Gatling. Given both the grunt nature and the eliteness of getting the Keys, I would give them something like elite variations on grunt mechs, like the Mobile Suit Variations custom mobile suits (Johnny Ridden-, Shin Matsunaga-, etc.), one-offs like the Kampfer or the Norris Custom Gouf, or maybe include the EVAs but not the hero ones, more like the Mass Production Model or the EVA-03. For Super Robot mechs, I'd think about the Big O bad guys, like Big Duo or Big Fau.
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Apr 6, 2018 03:11
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chitoryu12 posted:I’ve seen most of the Twilight films, but never read more than excerpts from the books. Much like RPO, it’s easy to make fun of but a lot of the mockery comes from people who have never actually sat down and tried to read the series. I feel like I can make more nuanced criticisms if I bite the bullet and do it. This was several pages ago but: a few people spent about six years (!) doing this on a LJ called Das Sporking. I think the content was brought over to Dreamwidth last year. There’s a metric assload of content, including commentary on forum posts Meyer made on contemporary fansites that when coupled with her books make for some supremely hosed up ideas. It’s also a fascinating study on how she killed her career. And much like this thread, it brought about a lot of rewrites and “spitefic” that were often far better than the original, or at least cathartic to experience after the awfulness I’d the source material. Thanks for entertaining us, chitoryu. Twilight is a whole different world of deep hurting and wish fulfillment, and I think it’s in a different direction than most people realize. I look forward to your take on it! If there’s a way to make four empty posts for the relevant chapters those will likely still be more tolerable than the original. Clipperton posted:There would be no SA or any other gunter clan because Urban Smurf would have cracked it on day 1 Also many pages ago, but this made me smile.
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Apr 6, 2018 03:41
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chitoryu12 posted:What should we have the IOI goons use? Cheap Inner Sphere mechs. 
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Apr 6, 2018 03:47
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Sperglord Actual posted:Cheap Inner Sphere mechs. Although it would mean they square off with some try hard Clanners... 'The walking tanks formed up into a loose formation, two sets of five, while an eleventh Battlemech stood a hundred metres out front. The squat chicken-legged war machine glistened in bright crimson, with a snarling wolfs head painted on each of the boxy missile launchers mounted above its dropping gun arms. "I am Vladimir Adamska Kerensky, Khan of Clan Wolf. I bid my Timberwolf and command binary to this Trial. With what forces do you wish" His transmission cut off as a flying pink tavern slammed into his Battlemech, crushing it totally.' I lost track, were there any H2G2 references at all? I swear 'Don't Panic' showed up somewhere.
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Apr 6, 2018 04:10
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Darth Walrus posted:Nolan Sorrento Darth Walrus posted:So, hope that was interesting. Anyone else got any other thoughts and suggestions?  Instead of Kiryu, Kiryu.chitoryu12 posted:What should we have the IOI goons use? EVA units are too huge and overpowered if the game treats the robots like their fictional counterparts. Since the Sixers just use whatever's generic, maybe a bunch of them have Zakus and Leos from Gundam? However, this also runs into the giant robot selection being unique choices. Mass production models might show up, but only once. No point in taking those, they literally can't go for quantity-has-a-quality-of-its-own there. But if you've got a few more personalities among the Sixers, and people who aren't completely 80s-consumed among the Egg Hunters, you have an opening for a smattering of things like TheGreatEvilKing's suggestion of a Martian Tripod, or other extremely weird and/or bullshit motherfuckers. Then some gigantic goonswarm superfreighter flies in low on an indiscriminate linebombing run, emptying its buttbot-filled holds in sequence. Fish Noise fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Apr 6, 2018 |
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Apr 6, 2018 04:27
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For the Tomb of Horrors segment, make it so that there was no walk-through FAQ for it. It wasn't on Planet Gygax so it had sort of fallen into obscurity. Instead of just playing Joust at the end, the challenge is that Wade has to get through the dungeon on his own. The one thing he has on his side is that he is low level, so if he dies he can just come back and try again, and nobody else knows about it so he can take as much time as he needs. So he figures it out by trial and error over time. I'd have to re-read the module, but I think it was mostly insta-death traps and a level one character could get through if they knew every correct thing to do. I think this would make it more intersting, especially to people who have no idea what Tomb of Horrors is or what challenges there are. Cline barely even addresses the actual content of the dungeon and just sort of assumes everyone reading knows what's up. I'm not a writer, but I'd be willing to go through the module and try to throw together a rough outline of what actions he would take to get through it for someone else to punch up.
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Apr 6, 2018 04:38
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Fish Noise posted:Basically perfect. How about the Sixer army includes those mass produced mooks not as challenge rewards, but as regular vehicles in their inventory just like their tanks and dropships? They just used their resources to build a dozen or so and brought them out for the finale. Then Sorrento’s personal squad has a few super robots like Voltron that don’t just get blasted by random nerds in the background.
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Apr 6, 2018 05:28
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Section 9 posted:For the Tomb of Horrors segment, make it so that there was no walk-through FAQ for it. It wasn't on Planet Gygax so it had sort of fallen into obscurity. Instead of just playing Joust at the end, the challenge is that Wade has to get through the dungeon on his own. The one thing he has on his side is that he is low level, so if he dies he can just come back and try again, and nobody else knows about it so he can take as much time as he needs. So he figures it out by trial and error over time. I'd have to re-read the module, but I think it was mostly insta-death traps and a level one character could get through if they knew every correct thing to do. That's the obvious take, yeah. Honestly, maybe just run the module with someone who hasn't played or read it, with instant respawns, and see how they actually play it. ~authenticity~
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Apr 6, 2018 05:29
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