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Actually, I'm not allowed to go with the Unisystem rules, or anything that doesn't fall under the Open Gaming License, which is just about everything except d20. I've actually been asked to put into my proposal a completely new rule system, which I think I'm going to base on an idea I had for a computer CYOA a while back (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=23178.0)...

Zor: Yes, I know it's similar, but the way this would go, every [insert set period of time here] would bring about the continuation of a story... Rather than having one week be "pirates" and the next week be "robots," it would be a serial story, written by different people... And also, it would be kind of like a choose-your-own-adventure, in that voters would get to select which page qualifies to be added to the comic, and therefore are contributing to a linear storyline.

Yak's idea would probably be the best, but he's right... it is too restrictive, and with restriction of outlet comes restriction of creativity...

I think my idea is a happy medium, actually, but I agree that this particular competition/activity would need to be "moderated" by a "director."

Thanks for clarifying that, Hotspot. I'm sorry if I jumped on you. If you look at your question from a completely nonbiased point of view it looks a lot like sarcasm. I'm sure you, and everyone else in these forums, understand that an artists work is like his baby, and don't care for too much sarcasm pointed at it.

Thanks also for the interest. The books are The Days of Old: Books one and two, by Callan Souza (me), published by PublishAmerica.

And if you really are interested in looking into publishing, there is a topic a couple pages back called HOW TO, in which I talk about how to go about trying to get published, along with Nikolas talking about how to sign a record deal. Also, I'm not sure of the exact URL, but if you google "Preditors and Editors" (sic), you will find a website that lists alot of agents and publishers to look out for. Silver Lake is listed there, but it doesn't say anything good or bad, just that they came under new management in 2002.

EDIT: http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/pebs.htm

Don't worry about it. Technically, it kind of was what we were supposed to be doing... It's just that the comic has gone in such a direction now that it is completely unrecognizable or unintelligible. You actually did a good job of continuing it, using the same style and format of your direct predecessor, like most people should have done. It's just there wasn't any noticible (or cogent) story going on at the time you got to it.

And Rui, I totally agree with you, even though you no longer are a furry... 

However, if you look at all the other comps, entries that do not match the desired, preset qualifications are disqualified. Since this activity has kind of gotten out of hand, it might be best if it were restarted and then just monitored a bit more tightly.

Or, we could do it this way, effectively turning this from a simple "Activity" to a competition...

One person makes a competition starting entry. Then, everyone makes the next page / frame / nostril / whatnot... and they are voted on. The winner's strip is inserted and the competition begins the following period (be it a week or a month) for the coveted spot of "next page."

This could weed out the MSPaint entries from the people who are trying to contribute, and make for a better read (as nonsensical strips would not be eligible for the win).

So thus, although you are totally right, I still think we should backburner this one, having used it as a way to see where this thing should go (or should have gone) and establish some new rules to make it cleaner and more... ummmm... comical.

Oh, and Nik, it's "improvisation," I think...

That's my point exactly. I've experienced the anti-joys of crappy publishers, and know what I'm looking for... or not looking for. Would YOU want to send off your book to be published by someone if you'd never heard of them or seen anything they've ever done? That would be a bit counterproductive, like giving your baby to a complete stranger while you step into the pub for a moment...

If I were inclined simply to see my books in print, I would just go with PublishAmerica again. It didn't cost me a cent (as a matter of fact, I got about seven dollars and thirty-eight cents total from them) and I got some nice, professional-lookning covers and layouts, but no one outside of people I've spoken to about it have ever read my books, and probably never will, until PA's 7-year contract expires.

Thus, in answer to my question, did you even read this thread, or decide to come in here and hack it? Because I have expressed this very same "sentiment" several times already. Do you work for Silver Lake Publishing or something? If not, I completely see no purpose for you to have taken this in the direction you have.

Master Nipples:


Ã,  Ã, How didst thou get that Ironforgian to ride atop that Level 5 Critter?

Actually, my opinion was based on the quality of things that they publish. Having been around enough to have seen VERY MANY of these small-print publishers, especially with the one I was using (www.publishamerica.com) I can tell from Silver Lake that they are just a smaller PA. From the quality of the covers (they look good, but they also look like some graphic artist read a paragraph of the book and whipped them up, just like at PA) to the fact that a couple of the books seem to be fan-related, which no serious publisher would EVER consider (there was a Mythos book, and another that seemed to be a Rifts fanfic)... Also, the description of their book layout is almost exactly the same as the PA books. All books are roughly the same proportions, which smacks of Print-on-Demand. The only redeeming quality seemed to be that they have an active marketing department... However, I have never heard of any of their authors or books, and would guarantee that, even if I looked in the dark, abandoned corners of the biggest bokstore in america that I would not find a single one of them. I would not publish with them, based on experience. They might be all fine and good, but I wouldn't publish with them. The layout of their site in no way influenced my decision.

Silven. With an N. Like Sylvan elves or the Sylvan Learning company. Silven. I Googled Silver Lake, and I'm not dumb enough to even sniff the air coming from the general direction of that place.

Silven, on the other hand, is deceptively small, but looks somewhat professional.

I have tried bigger, Nik, honestly. I've sent out queries and proposals to magazines, small, medium, and large publishing houses, etc. etc... Stephen King had 60 refusals for Carrie... I'm getting close...

And it would be a pen and paper rules set for a horror setting. For example, I would need a character creation system, core rules, combat rules, skills and abilities and spells and the like... All the while attempting to steer away from making it anything like Chill, Call of Cthulhu, Vampire, Werewolf, or any of the other games of the genre currently available.

It is a modern game based on the paranormal, supernatural, and occult, and will use realistic elements in both story and rules. I was thinking about having a simple and a complicated rules set. Like GURPS Lite, the simple set will explain everything the player needs to know to play the game in under ten pages.

LJUBI has MPS.

I have original sealed copies of ZORK 1, Lurking Horror, and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, all for Commodore 64. The only reason they are still boxed is because my C64 bit the dust shortly after I went on an Infocom shopping spree.

And that scratch-n-sniff from LSL:LFS? It is most likely based off the SnS from Infocom's Leather Godesses of Phobos. That thing was so rancid that my room smelled like old pizza in a funky bathroom for months after I opened it.

I have been trying to break into the world of DOING ANY FRIGGIN' THING for quite some time. Any friggin' thing of actual use or interest. At present, I work in a hotel. The most interesting thing that happened this week was that I found a dead body that had been locked in a room for three days.

Actually, wait, that is kind of interesting.

Anyway, I'm fed up with working just so some rich cracksmoker can get richer. I want to do something with my life besides help people cheat on their wives and have a place to commit suicide. I'm sick of watching drunken morons coming in and making sweet, passionate monkey love to potted plants in my lobby, or possibly just drop a deuce in them... or in my elevator... Or on the hood of a police car in front of the hotel, like what happened three months ago.

Anyway, here is where the topic of this thread comes into play:

I have just been asked by Silven Publishing to submit an extended RPG proposal for a new system of horror pen and paper RPG after having sent them a query letter. Here's my two big questions:

1) Is there anyone that knows anything about Silven Publishing? I have two books published, per exemplis, but I used PublishAmerica, which is a shite publisher, and not even my local McDonalds will advertise my books because of how crappy the publisher is. I certainly could use a publisher that will actually do something with my books besides attempted rectal insertion, and then send me a dollar bill on publishing and a check for two dollars and eighteen cents every six months...

2) Is there anyone that likes Chill or Call of Cthulhu or any other horror RPG's... or just RPG's in general... That would like to help me out? I'm not sure what manner of help I could use right now, but writing an entire rulebook for an RPG is a daunting task, and is normally done by a crew of more than one guy sitting at a desk in a hotel.

Well, danke, everyone that spent time reading this.

Hmmm. I started this thing, and I never even put up a frame...

Here's a better idea. I like Krysis' art. I see he posted a bit that he would like to be a part of it, but it is "too hard to do a comics page." I also very highly esteem Krysis for his work and for the big part he plays in this community.

I started this thread as a complete newbie, just to let people know that I was here and wanted to be a part of the community. However, Kry, would you take it off my hands?

The original idea was that there be one frame comics, 640 x 480, that told the story the way one-frame comics usually do, unless there was some action, in which case the "manga" style of having a couple frames of animation in one single frame of comic would come into play. That would probably work alot better. I eventually renigged and said "just go ahead and make about half a page of a comic" because it seemed no one was interested in that.

So, if someone wants to revamp this... I've been looking at it for a while trying to figure out what to do with it, but to tell you the truth, I don't even know what the hell happened after this went to second page, so... Maybe we could start again, new rules, a new idea... This is, IMHO, a really good idea. It just needs to be done right.

::sigh::

I create because I am creative. I create because I CAN! I create to differentiate myself from a world of "mundanes" that wake up, go to work, go to sleep, wash, rinse, and repeat... I do it to have a legacy. I do it to be heard. I do it to cling to the very thing that makes me human, but the very thing that so many humans have forgotten about.

I create because I want something to be left behind.

I create because I have high aspirations that one day I will be famous, and my father's dying words to me would not have been in vain ("Make something of yourself, boy...").

But then, I remember that you have to be rich and famous already in order to become rich and famous. I see this dichotomy, and wonder why I'm even alive in the first place...

I've been using Anvil Studio for a long time now, and I must say, I can't think of how an easier program exists. I'm not sure how making it into codable C++ routines is any easier than saying "Make the next note a quarter note, and put it here... Make the next note a dotted half, and put it here..." As a matter of fact, if you know enough about music to be writing a song in the first place, it is probably easier to do it by full note, half note, quarter note, sixteenth note, etc. than trying to figure out what the length delay number is, and to know the notes rather than their numerical value. Honestly, when all is said and done, there's no way scripting C++ is easier than looking at the music. If you don't know music, trying to convert music into C++ is an added step, an added difficulty, and includes an added measure of dauntingness.

Or, here's the music routine in QBasic:
PLAY "o2 c1 d4 f4 e4 d4 g2 g2 g4 a4 e4 f4 d2 d2 d4 f4 e4 d4 c4 o3 c4 o2 b4 a4 g4 f4 e4 d4 c1"

Not MIDI, but easy...

Asante sana, squashed banana... Say it out loud while you watch that...

I know you aren't really supposed to post in the comps unless you are in it or voting in it or something, but I had to say this was a great idea. I would take part, but those people who can make a bunch of big dots look like something (at least if you stand ten or so feet away) are much more artistically talented, in my opinion, than someone who tells a computer to make a shape in 3D and then model it... It's all about having less to work with.

rharpe's is my fave so far (because of the song) but Steve's looks like he played alot of Commodore 64... Sprites that bad but that good could only come off that old beauty...

Thanks, rharpe. I think you just saved my butt. I totally wasn't meaning to hijack your thread or sound like a knowitall or anything... I was going to PM you and apologize and make sure I hadn't offended you. I may have... well, heck, I did go overboard a bit.

People, when faced with something that opposes their particular world-view, will normally exhibit a "fight or flight" disassociative tendency. This is why, I believe, so many people have come to be distrustful and distasteful of people flying the flag of religion. When a secular humanist, pagan, evolutionist, complete layman, or what have you, supplies their idea to the religious person, rather than an intelligent, studied answer, the result is angry argument and the shutting out of the offending speaker.

I think everyone here did a good job of not doing that, although I did seem to rile SSH a bit (sorry, man. Like I said before, you were not someone I would have wanted to get into it with, and although both of us are entitled to our opinions, I hope I didn't offend you and that we can move on as fellow community members from here). HOWEVER, rharpe is a god. Pal, you and I might not see eye to eye on a lot of things, but I would rather have someone like you as a friend and an ally than someone who has all of my ideas and beliefs but is a stiff-necked cretin. Even I, who am now lauding this virtue in you, hardly possess it. You're a credit, bro.

He is? He seemed to stick directly to me with little regard for the wind, but I never bothered changing it for two reasons:

1) I thought that was terribly complicated, and with the exception of that little white hamburger, I was doing fine free from wind changing.

2) I felt suddenly afraid that some ancient deity would smite me for entering into control of his or her sphere of influence...

You're not kidding.. that joker is right on you like flies on doodoo. Less rigid folowing by him of the main character might be welcome. Every time I played, he ganked me. Other than that, a fine game...

H.P. Lovecraft: "The Colour Out of Space..."

I haven't actually had anything like that, but in some cases I have had dreams that seemed very real because of motion. One I have frequently when in the grip of a fever is that my bed lifts up and flies through a strange space-like scene. This is accompanied by the feeling of motion and rushing wind.

On the flip side, one of the best dreams I've ever had came a week after my father died. I was always used to him being of sound mind and body, and when he got cancer I shied away from him, not wanting to see him in that condition. I missed his death, and subsequently was absent from the viewing and the funeral.

A week later, I dreamt he came to me and kissed me on the forehead (my father, although loving, never ever hugged or kissed anyone in his life...) The thing was, I felt it, as though it really had hapened.

Sources? Google search it, man. Look up Constantine, the Edict of Milan, the Council of Nicea, the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, "In Hoc Signo Vinces," Eusebius, or the Roman emporer that finalized everything, Theodosius... or do what a lot of Christian people are afraid to do: ask a pagan about the dangerously close comparisons in the festivals. Citing sources is often a very bad idea, since matters of veracity and authenticity come up... Just search for these things using (nonbiased) sources you trust. And by nonbiased, I don't mean Catholic church fathers.

The celebration date of Good Friday and the Ressurection may have been debated by Polycarp and some other guy centuries before Constantine came along (it would only really have been one or two centuries), but not by those names... And if sources say it is by those names, the sources must therefore be of Catholic and therefore biased origin.

The "word for easter" argument makes good sense, and proves that the English speaking and German speaking peoples of the world don't know exactly what they are blathering about. The Hebrew word is "Pechach," and the Koine Greek word is "Pascha." The word "Easter" is used when "pechach" is mentioned in the New Testament. This still doesn't mean anything. Why then is the term stemming from "Easter," "Ishtar," "Eostre," and "Ostara" used in English and German?

On the matter of Good Friday, why is it that Jesus was apparently only in the grave two days?

The answer is simple: He didn't actually die on "Good Friday." The Chaldeans offered cakes (hot cross buns) to Ishtar on the equivalent of the day we know as Good Friday. When the established church wanted to appease the paganistic people in order to "convert" them to Christianity, they moved the dates accordingly. Jesus actually died on the day of Preparation of Passover Week, which that year occurred on Wednesday (John 19:14, 31-42). Thursday was the Sabbath of the Passover. Friday, Christ was still in the tomb. Saturday was the "regular" Sabbath. Jesus arose after the Saturday Sabbath was concluded, which was the first day of the week, the day we know as Sunday (Mark 16:9; John 20:1). 

And about the date of easter itself:
"The practice of those following Rome was to celebrate Easter on the first Sunday after the earliest fourteenth day of a lunar month that occurred on or after March 21. During the Middle Ages this practice was more succinctly phrased as Easter is observed on the Sunday after the first full moon on or after the day of the vernal equinox." (Wikipedia, "Easter")

That's what I mean by astrological. It is not on a set, "static" date, but is rather an ambient holiday based on times and seasons. Passover is on different dates every year, too, because the Hebrew calendar was Lunar whereas the Gregorian calendar is solar. However, Passover is always on 15 Nissan every year (this changes because of the calendar differences). Easter, on the other hand, coincides with the full moon following the vernal equinox

And, for the final blow against any and all holidays:

"Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. (Is 1:13-14)"

But herein lies the thing: who really cares? We've been doing it for ages, and it's harmless. Like I said above, it didn't change the taste of my turkey at all. Paul said in I Corinthians chapter 8 that it shouldn't bother you to eat meat offered to idols. Only the JW's are stiff-necked enough to really give a rip about it. I don't. I was just mentioning the fact. I have a habit of sounding very argumentative... I meant no harm, and didn't want to blow things out of proportion like this. Especially not with you, SSH: you were the first person to (very warmly) greet me to these forums. I've not sat here and made vain religious arguments, but rather spoken on a subject which is historical, literary, hopefully interesting, and of no small discusion value. Just like everyone else, I've tried my best to speak on what I have myself looked into and found interesting, hoping to create worthwhile subject matter here in the forums. I never meant to hijack rharpe's thread, sound like a know-it-all or an annoying ass, or come of as aggressive or argumentative. If I have, it was not my intention. However, since I seem not to be at risk anymore, let me throw one more thing out that is meant to sound obnoxious:

I reckon that, even if a subject is historical, literary, logical, or common sensical, if it even touches on religion (even if it isn't religious apologetics or argument, but simply a discussion about someting that happened at some point in time involving a church), even the most mature of posters can't keep their britches on about it.

And at the risk of sounding like a Bible thumper, which I am not and pray God I never become;

"Great peace have they which love the Lord, and nothing shall offend them."