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Posted by: CanRay Nov 30 2012, 06:27 PM

However, he's an NPC and Adventure Hook for the new Deadlands: Noir! Coming soon to a fine PDF-Store near you!!!

Posted by: Stahlseele Nov 30 2012, 06:36 PM

O.o

Posted by: _Pax._ Nov 30 2012, 06:37 PM

^^^ That. Very much.

Posted by: Critias Nov 30 2012, 08:26 PM

I'm assuming it's a kickstarter reward or something.

Posted by: CanRay Dec 1 2012, 03:36 AM

You're right.

"we'll work with you to put your likeness (or a likeness of your choice) in the game as an NPC!"

I found a pic of Dad in his night watchman's cap that made him look like a character from the 1930s-era, and sent it in with a bit of a biography (unedited) of his life in point form. He's become part of an adventure hook now.

Posted by: pbangarth Dec 1 2012, 04:57 AM

Notwithstanding the info in the topic title, but rather taking into account the special nature of this forum and the participants thereof... does he know?

Posted by: X-Kalibur Dec 1 2012, 05:02 AM

I think he mentioned him being deceased.

Posted by: Halinn Dec 1 2012, 02:49 PM

Given that we are discussing Deadlands, I believe that the question stands.

Posted by: _Pax._ Dec 1 2012, 03:10 PM

LOL @ Halinn



On a more serious note: CanRay, I think that's awesome, both of you, and of them. Even if your dad wasn't a gamer himself, it's sort of a memorial to him, in a way. A really neat one!

Posted by: Stahlseele Dec 1 2012, 04:36 PM

Given who's father we are talking about, i would not put it past him anyway . .

Posted by: CanRay Dec 1 2012, 06:56 PM

No.I did. He is. And isn't "getting better" even by Deadlands standards, as he's ashes in an urn.He wasn't, but he supported my gaming through my life. He very much was like a character out of a Noir book, maybe even a non-PI Protagonist, but more likely one of the cast of badasses that the protagonist runs into, or even needs help from. (The adventure hook he's connected to mentions a refusal to pay Mobster Protection Money, and the fact that he's still alive and has his business after a decade or so speaks for itself.).

To be fair, I had the choice of who to put into the game, but as soon as I talked to the author about the person and why I chose him, well... Yeah. They did a damned good job.My Stepfather, but he helped raise me. I very much am the son of my fathers in a lot of ways, while still being myself.

But, no, he's not coming back from the dead. Crematoriums are good to prevent that sort of thing.

Posted by: Stahlseele Dec 1 2012, 07:25 PM

As long as nobody can prove to me that there is no Valhalla from which the dead can watch the earth like some bad sitcom, i don't have to believe you! ^^

Posted by: CanRay Dec 1 2012, 10:55 PM

Odin hasn't been thrown to Midgard looking for a new job in this economy after Dad got there, so that's proof enough for me.

Posted by: Neraph Dec 2 2012, 11:02 PM

You can't really prove a non-existence - you have to prove the existence of something. Especially considering that what you're talking about concerns the afterlife, the only way to know for sure is to die or to hear from someone who's come back from the dead. I can make some speculations or suggestions, but I don't think that was your point.

Posted by: Stahlseele Dec 2 2012, 11:18 PM

No it wasn't.

Posted by: Gamer6432 Jan 25 2013, 08:55 AM

That's awesome. It reminds me of what Gearbox did for http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuroFpcFq-c.

Posted by: StealthSigma Jan 25 2013, 12:07 PM

So.... you made your dad potentially killable by players?

Posted by: CanRay Jan 25 2013, 06:51 PM

Yeah, only not as awesome. Just met the guy in-game. He gave me a rifle and an achievement. I'm going to use that rifle to kill the antagonist in his honor.No stats, so he can't be killed.

Technically, this makes him as badass as Stone.

Posted by: StealthSigma Jan 25 2013, 07:09 PM

So... because he doesn't have stats, you think he's immune to the http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LordBritishPostulate?

Posted by: CanRay Jan 25 2013, 07:26 PM

I'd like to think so. But the urn in the next room says otherwise.

Posted by: X-Kalibur Jan 25 2013, 07:41 PM

I always loved dropping the sign on him to kill him in Ultima... 7?

Posted by: CanRay Feb 25 2013, 10:33 PM

Dad is in the game a second time as an optional character portrait in the Deluxe Character Journal! Class act, these Pinnacle Entertainment Group guys!!!

Posted by: pbangarth Feb 26 2013, 01:35 AM

So, you gonna use it for a character of yours?

Posted by: CanRay Feb 26 2013, 01:39 AM

*Snort* I'd have to be able to PLAY for that to happen.

Posted by: pbangarth Feb 26 2013, 05:27 AM

...oh yeah.... sorry.

Posted by: Stahlseele Feb 26 2013, 01:27 PM

Poor CanRay *pat pat*
Well, there's always SRR and SRO ^^

Posted by: CanRay Feb 26 2013, 06:24 PM

Yeah, I can get Dad into SRR as an NPC as well when I write some missions for that.

And I'll be playing those games. All alone. In the dark.

Posted by: StealthSigma Feb 26 2013, 08:32 PM

You've played that Noir game at that one convention.

Posted by: CanRay Feb 26 2013, 10:30 PM

You mean the only game I got to play at GenCon? The one I paid $300 to get in on?

Posted by: Halinn Feb 27 2013, 02:31 AM

I also seem to remember a few posts about you being a player in an SR3 game.

Posted by: CanRay Feb 27 2013, 06:49 AM

Fell completely apart.

Posted by: Halinn Feb 27 2013, 05:10 PM

Posted by: StealthSigma Feb 27 2013, 06:36 PM

Yep. That one!

Posted by: CanRay Feb 27 2013, 06:37 PM

Yeah, I don't have another $300, and can't get to GenCon this year.

Posted by: StealthSigma Feb 27 2013, 07:15 PM

Well, you can take a page out of the crazy cat lady handbook and GM and play your own game. Just get some cats, dress them up as the players and pretend.

Posted by: Stahlseele Feb 27 2013, 07:16 PM

Hmm, wonder if i'll be able to spot people from Dumpshock in SRO . .

Posted by: CanRay Feb 27 2013, 07:40 PM

Cat allergies.

Posted by: StealthSigma Feb 27 2013, 07:52 PM

Fine. Fine. Get a couple of pet toy dogs and put them in clothes. Dogs are usually a bit better behaved and have less problem with people embarrassing them that way.

If that fails, get some birds of varying species. No need to dress them up and with their wild array of coloration you can pretend they're a group of pink mohawk runners.

Posted by: Stahlseele Feb 27 2013, 08:05 PM

there is no end to how much i pity you right now . .

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Feb 27 2013, 08:46 PM

I am deeply moved by this story. It almost makes me want to cry.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Feb 27 2013, 08:47 PM

I'm in the Federated States of Micronesia, and time zones and locations prevent me from participating in any RPGs!

Posted by: Stahlseele Feb 27 2013, 10:39 PM

surprising enough that you get internet over there at all O.o

Posted by: CanRay Feb 27 2013, 11:11 PM

Thanks Wounded Ronin, that's a response I've gotten from a lot of folks.

Posted by: StealthSigma Feb 28 2013, 12:33 PM

Hey! I'm offering ideas, man! Ideas that you can do and then record video of and post it on YouTube. Then you become a 'net sensation and people will throw money and sex at you.

Posted by: ChromeZephyr Feb 28 2013, 05:34 PM

I'll get the mop. And the bleach. And the hazmat suits.

Fuck it. I'll just go get the flamethrower.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Mar 1 2013, 09:13 PM

Lucky I'm on the right island to have a workable connection!

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Mar 1 2013, 09:24 PM

You ever notice how people from a few generations back were so badass? There are incredible stories of toughness, self-reliance, and being principled in the face of adversity.


Maybe as we fall on long-term hard economic times again and things fall apart hard, we'll recover some of that strength of character as individuals and as a society.

Posted by: Stahlseele Mar 1 2013, 10:21 PM

sure, because there will be more wars to be fought then.

Posted by: CanRay Mar 1 2013, 10:26 PM

I won't go into the reasons Dad had to be badass, but he was a Truck Driver and a Biker in the '70s and '80s, which, in Canada, meant you had to be badass.

Scary enough, he was proud of my own variety of toughness for some reason. But I'm hardly even a speck on the Badass Scale.

Posted by: Stahlseele Mar 1 2013, 11:09 PM

/me suspects him to have been an ice road trucker

Posted by: CanRay Mar 1 2013, 11:19 PM

On more than one occasion, yes.

Posted by: _Pax._ Mar 1 2013, 11:28 PM

Badass is more about character and courage, than a propensity (or capacity) for violence.

Posted by: CanRay Mar 2 2013, 02:37 AM

Who said anything about violence?

Posted by: _Pax._ Mar 2 2013, 03:00 AM

Noone, really. It's just that I've seen so many people equate "badass" with "tough guy" / "machismo", and not count the guy who's just quietly brave as being "badass" of a different sort.

Posted by: CanRay Mar 2 2013, 04:56 AM

Dad, yeah, he could be all types of badass. Only fools tried anything with him just by being who he was. And most of them needed liquid courage.

Posted by: Critias Mar 2 2013, 02:04 PM

What on earth makes you think we're not badass today? I personally know more than one guy freshly home from the sandbox that's done some amazing stuff, two firefighters (who didn't leave their home town), etc, etc.

Give folks a little more credit, Ronin.

Posted by: CanRay Mar 2 2013, 08:25 PM

Before "The Sandbox", we were getting pretty fat and happy...

But, yes, there are folks that have had their mettle tested, and not found themselves wanting, returning to The World tempered in the flames of adversity.

And, yes, firefighters, police, paramedics... Just getting up in the morning knowing what they'll have to do and see will do that to almost anyone that sticks with it.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Mar 3 2013, 11:14 AM

Military veterans and firefighters represent an overwhelmingly small percentage of the whole population.

My current feeling is that most people drift through life in an experiental bubble never understanding any real aspect of reality. Only a tiny, tiny percentage are so priveleged.

And by reality I don't mean some mystical or advanced Buddhist concept. I mean just understanding how the world works. How government agencies work. How the legal system works. Exactly what is happening in various conflict zones around the world. How the economy works! Peoples noses are jammed into entertainment and television where they seek out a self-validating feedback loop that reinforces the mental overlay they project on their self-referential, meaningless, consumerist lives.

People go to Wal Mart and reach for the cheapest item on the shelf without thinking how their action affects their fellow citizen. People go to the grocery store and gobble down the strange deliverables of the industrial farming system, but have no experiential basis to understand slaughtering a pig, or retrieving some bananas from a jungle. People go to the hospital and are shocked and want to sue when they dad dies instead of totally getting better. Everyone has an opinion about Iraq and Afghanistan, but what tiny percentage of people have any real basis for an opinion in experience, independent research, or firsthand knowledge?

Knowledge of life, death, and truth has vanished, and instead we have gibbering madmen with extremely marginal strength of character driving Western civilization into the pit of degradation and downfall guided by consumerist illusions.

It's like something from H. P. Lovercraft, except that the gibbering madness and illusions are caused not by some horrific cosmic insight that invokes the ultimate nihilsm, but rather, it is caused by the horrors of the entertainment news, marketing, and consumerism. It's from chasing the illusions of prestiege and security. The result is the same, only more dumb and somehow less dignified in its execution.


This is why I say...perhaps a return to the economic hardship conditions of the 1930s or before, and a total collapse of the abstraction-fueled financial sector will have the silver lining where perhaps more people will re-discover stoicism, courage, integrity, and good citizenship.


This is why I'm enjoying and trying to make the most of my time out here in the jungle, in a society that I feel can correctly be described as still being pre-industrial and relationship-based. I hope to strengthen my character so that no matter what happens to myself or my world I can be one who helps people to find their courage, instead of one who infantilizes and dominates. But I also feel that the only way to do this is to escape from consumerism as much as possible, escape from any illusion of security as much as possible, escape from the isolation caused by the illusion of false social relations over electronic media, escape from the illusion that you need anything not directly essential to life even including electricity and runnin water, and come to the point where you can look anyone in the eye, no matter what he threatens or offers, and be willing to let go of anything in order to uphold the most important chosen principles.

Once enough people do this, then, we will be able to save our society and economy for the long term, and face whatever ultimate fate awaits us with true dignity and honor.

Until then, as a generation and as a society, we're lost.

Posted by: StealthSigma Mar 4 2013, 08:32 PM

Moose?

Posted by: CanRay Mar 4 2013, 09:26 PM

Sometimes.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Mar 4 2013, 09:40 PM

Hmm. Rereading that post, no wonder I like reading Robert E. Howard.

I wonder if there's a good way I can work those themes into a story, or role playing game...

Posted by: CanRay Mar 4 2013, 09:55 PM

Yeah, Deadlands: Noir. Play up the soup kitchen lines that go around the block. The war veteran that's shining shoes for nickles. The listless kids who just stare at you with dead eyes and no hope.

...

Considering how dark I get, I'm not surprised my group would rather the 1927 Chicago suggestion of an area to play in. Speaking of, the Deadlands: Noir Companion came out, with new cities and eras!

The Roaring Twenties (Chicago), Just Before WWII (Shan Fan), Just After WWII (Lost Angels! Pull out your LA Noire disks again for ideas!!!), and the Nuclear Fifties (The City O'Gloom, Salt Lake City, and Hellstromme's first metal body!!!).

Posted by: Critias Mar 5 2013, 01:53 AM

You seem to feel really strongly about it, Ronin, and I can understand and respect that. But I don't think it requires that kind of obvious, physical, adversity and hardship for people to shine, and I certainly don't agree with the subtext -- and maybe I'm mistaken in reading into it -- that some sort of terrible economic crisis or plague would be a good thing. A return of the economic hardships of the 1930s sounds great if you imagine everyone will just toughen up, pull through it, and learn the value of the dollar...but they won't. They didn't, the first time around. Plenty of folks died, and I won't particularly wish that on us again.

More than that, though, I think there are different types of dignity and honor, and they don't all necessarily get the credit they deserve. Someone that just does a good job at work, shows up on time, works hard, and puts food on his family's table is, in my book, every bit as good for the human race as someone who engages in paramilitary heroics or what-have-you. I wouldn't be a military historian by trade and a pulp fiction writer as a side gig if I didn't dig my fair share of paramilitary heroics, mind you, but in real life? I don't hold it against people who are content to just coast through life however they want to, never dreaming of doing anything particularly badass. There's still plenty of "dignity" and "honor" to be found in just being good at whatever you do to contribute to society, being a good parent, and keeping the world turning.

ETA: All of which, at any rate, is also rather off-topic for Ray's discussion of the man who raised him. So if he wants us to drop it, consider it dropped.

Posted by: CanRay Mar 5 2013, 03:56 AM

Yeah, and then you got me.

Posted by: StealthSigma Mar 5 2013, 01:22 PM

Canadians?

Posted by: CanRay Mar 5 2013, 03:03 PM

No, me.

Posted by: Stahlseele Mar 5 2013, 04:41 PM

A Cranky Canadian?

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Mar 5 2013, 11:39 PM

If you want to talk about it, I'm very much okay with that.