TCQ News 12.10.09



Line Up Changes:



* Mister Amazing - will move to the status of an NPC Hudson City Hero

* Orion - Raphael DiSantiago will be adopted by JShowell

* Saint - will step back to NPC status (unlikely to make an appearance), until Robin returns

* Triage /Renaldo - Will not be joining the team, the player is having a hard time keeping up with the pace. He will be retained as a family NPC, and HoboJuice will be welcome for scenarios that are planned to include Renaldo.

* Stone - John Scalara will be joining our cast, playing a brick named Stone.

* Mason Willoughby - Robb, has been on our waiting list for a while. He will be joining the cast as a Hudson City Hero, more of a dark Vigilante type, for now. His Hero Identity is still w/o a name.

Please, make our new contributors feel welcome, and give our them as much support as you can going forward.

Moves: I have the next move pretty much written. It's a passing of 4 months, that will allow the players to know when the Staff Meeting will be set. Might give some ideas for solo pieces that they want to do for their characters in the mean time.



Created TCQ GM Resource - Private resource for JShowell, Chairman and other contributors.

TCQ News 1.05.09

Opening day at our new site!

We're working to port over the old stuff. I'm eager to see your new fiction pieces, but hold off on them for a wee bit, so they don't get bumped down. When we're ready for new pieces, I'll also want those of you who posted any recently to repost them.

I hope to have all the old stuff ported over by tomorrow sometime.

January 11, 2009

Finished moving over the following blogs.
Saint
Ardent
Renaldo DiSantiago

Players that have finished moving their blogs.
Avatar
Epoch
Nemesis
Ophilia

I added Stone to the list.  John, I checked your work.  :)

It was perfect.  Great job considering I still haven't written any 'how to' on it.

----in other news---

Also, two things of note.

1.  You guys can add relavent NPCs and Villain tags to your pieces.  Just type them in.  It does auto-fill, but until someone has entered it the first time it won't have it in the database.

2.  Bunty figured out a way to give our files actual names, instead of generic node/#s.  Your file name will be your subject title.  Which I personally find very cool.  More so for things like our FAQ and static help pages than for books and blogs, but still...  I'm psyched.  :)

Richard moved over his blog for Soldier Boy

I moved over Celeste Frazier aka Phase & JACE

I'll move over Raphael's stuff soon and Mister Amazing. KL will be porting over Heatwave. That leaves Raven, which I'll tackle when I'm done if she's not moved.

Please check your blogs to make sure you got all of your pieces.

Good news all of the game content/fiction/games have been moved over to the new site.

Now I just need to move over the wiki for easy access. 

Please check your blogs and make sure that everything is in there.

I still need to move over the ex wives, some art, then I think I'm done with all that business.

Just let me know if you need any help. 

Right now we're kind of begging for art.    So, if you have a talent with drawing and wanna help us out, let us know.  Or if you know someone else that might be interested in helping out - that would be great, but all we can offer right now is a gallery for their efforts.  We're also looking into some other ideas, but nothing 'share ready' yet.

Right now, my brother in law, is contributing a few things, but it's like pulling teeth to get him to draw anything but manga.  :)  Regardless, he's working on a (non manga) piece for Ophilia and has intentions of doing some thumbnails that we can use for the banner, to represent other genres, like fantasy, sci-fi, horror, etc.

Okay - on to the site!  There are a few more things that you may have noticed lately, or might have missed.  Regardless, I wanted to touch on some of them.

1.  New Posts Block at the top of the forum, when you click into the forum.  This will only be seen if there are unread messages that you haven't seen yet.  This is not the perfect solution, but it's a big help.

• Click on the post under the New Post block
• This will take you to the thread where the update is located
• Look at the top right of the forum thread, you will see # Replies (# new)
• Click on the (# new)
• This will take you to the new content

2.  As you begin creating blog entries and book pages, you're going to see at the top a section called 'Vocabularies'.  This section creates a way for us to tag our pieces and allow for some additional functions.  I'm not trying to give you guys a big headache.  These fields are NOT required, so if they frustrate you, it's okay to skip them.  You'll likely see me hopping in and out adding to them, for my own purposes, but I don't want them to be a frustration to any of you.

I'm going to take a bit of time to explain each 'vocabulary'.  In most cases, the fields will autofill if it is an item in our database, but if it isn't, all you have to do is manually type it in and it will be added.

1. Rating - Only visit this if it is an adult piece.  I'm hoping to put this in a less prominent spot, to the right of story, but for now, that's where she is.
2. Story - The Game that the piece is for
3. Characters - PCs - This is meant for the active playing characters
4. NPCs - Feel free to tag any NPCs that make a contribution in the piece
5. Villains - Add any villains that make an appearance in the piece
6. Author - This is an author tag field.  It won't cross post in more than one blog (yet), but it will give credit to multiple authors.  You can use your screen name or real name.  Using your real name or pen name, across all of your games and characters will allow you a place to see all of your contributions.  IF you chose to use this field, it will use the information in this field to place in the preview that is see on the front page.  --  I just need to make you're aware that this is different from the official author field, located in a book setting.  Those are assigned automatically and use the user names so that they go to the correct blog.  If you don't fill in this vocabulary, the author information in that field will show by default.

I can see some areas where 'vocabularies' (taxonomies) might overlap our 'book outline' structure.  As we move forward and I get a better feel for what handles subscriptions, sign-ups and searching better, I will remove as many duplicated areas as I can. 

If you want to play around with the functionality that these taxonomies give us, you can go to your 'Control Pane' and click on the 'Subscriptions' Tab, Note all of the tabs available there, and sign up for any content that interests you.  Another way to play with it, is to click on any tag, and it will show you a list of every piece that has a similar tag.

3.  In case anyone missed it, if you use the rich text editor, there is now a working spell checker.  Just click on the 'ABC' button with the checkmark, and it will perfom a spell check.  If you don't like the editor, you can turn this feature off in your 'control panel' under the edit tab.

4.  The 'control panel' will also allow you to turn off any of the other data boxes that you don't need or want.

China wrote:

Right now we're kind of begging for art. So, if you have a talent with drawing and wanna help us out, let us know. Or if you know someone else that might be interested in helping out - that would be great, but all we can offer right now is a gallery for their efforts. We're also looking into some other ideas, but nothing 'share ready' yet.

I wouldn't mind helping out here. I've done a few characters for people in the past. I'm a bit slow and there are people out there a lot better but I'm cheap.

This isn't quite the case. The author information from the official author field is there but it will not show on the piece. Where it used to say "Submitted by - author's name" is now blank using the module to allow multiple authors.

Much to my regret, I have been unable to get in touch with Obsidian Jaguar.  I'm still hopeful that she'll contact me, but in keeping with my 'GM Expecations Post', I'm exercising the option to allow another player to play her.  Christen83, will be posting to help fill in some of the story gaps that OJ's absense has left.

Please take a look at the older posts if you see them updated, in case her actions give you an open tag.

Welcome aboard the insane train that started it all, Christen.

Please make sure that anything that you want to salvage from LCG, is taken care of.  Your Blogs, as long as you're an active member, will be fine.  ...but if there was anything that wasn't in your blog, like a game move, forum thread or a wiki page, that you want, please be sure to get those. 

Song sent me a PM today.  They're tying up some loose ends on the site and such and she needs to know what to do with our old Game stuffs.  I plan on asking her to give us until Monday of next week, February 16th, and then she can archive it or delete it...however they handle lost, dead and abandoned games.

So.  I think I have all wiki stuffs and game move stuffs...  but just in case, if you want something!  Get it.

I was just at LCG and there's no longer a link to TCQ on the wiki home page but the content is still there for now. I managed to find it through the old forum posts. Here's a direct link for those who need it.

http://www.lostcoastgaming.com/wiki/index.php?title=TCQ:The_Conquistadors

Thanks for the link, KL.

Yeah, that was my doing. I removed the links to the dead games (or in TCQ's case, the games moving offsite) just so they don't give the site that "littered with dead games" look. But all the wiki pages are still there. You'd just have to type the names into the URL box directly.

And she's doing a darn good job of it. 

Thanks! 

China seems to have type cast me with a bit of a witchy personality
 

christen83 wrote:

Thanks! 

China seems to have type cast me with a bit of a witchy personality
 

Well, if it ever bothers you, you can think about the character she's playing in Tabula Rasa.

Makes complete sense! 

Okay, folks...before we uprooted from LCG and came here, there was a poll that ran for a couple of days regarding moving the game back to it's true location in New Jersery.

This was my preference, because it allowed me to use all of the resource material as written, and it had the bonus of being closer to New York for possible crossovers with Thrak's old game.

Of course, now the crossover element isn't an option...but, I would still like to move the setting back to it's original location.  The results of the poll that I ran from back then, seemed to show that the players didn't have strong feelings in either direction.  

SOooo, unless a couple of you srenuously object, I'd like to move forward with the four season feel of new Jersey.  I am COMPLETELY willing to accomodate background changes and even power changes, anything of that nature that you feel would be necessary to slide your character back into the original Hudson City setting.  

The only one that I know will be an issue, is Heatwave, cuz she's not going to get along well with winter.  :)  ...KL, I can give you some free points to indicate her costume being made out of some special material that helps her retain heat...or we can revisit your disads regarding her vulnerability to cold.  However you want to handle it, I'll be completely at your whim in remedying this issue.

A few of the blog posts recently have indicated weather more like New Jersey than California...but I wasn't sure if we were all on the same page or not.  The entire discussion got de-railed when we began working on finding a new home.

Moving is fine by me, I don't have a preference.

I think having the special material fits my character concept better than changing the disads. I already tweaked them to be more in line with how I envisioned her.

Works for me!  We'll just call it a perk of being hired by a very wealthy family.

Feel free to write it up if you'd like, or we can just remember it.  Either way is fine by me.

Yay!  We can have snow!

I'd like to welcome back Bunty in the role of Avatar.  You can start posting as him immediately. 

Nestor is going to help me preserve the scenario, by playing Mason for me.  Thank you Nestor.  He and I have some behind the scenes work to do on getting up to speed on the character, but after that he'll run with it.

And, Lem is regretfully taking his leave from the game.  He will be missed!  I really enjoyed having him as a lurker and then a player, but real life comes first, as always!

Well, I certainly understand Lem's need to take time off. We've all been there before. Hopefully he'll be able to come back in the future.

And that Bunty guy...I don't know about him. Maybe we ought to put him on probation or something.

Kidding! Welcome back, B-man.

Nestor, as a personal aside, I wanna say 'thanks' for stepping into TWO characters not your own thus far. You've really helped us out with the transitions. Most folks (myself included) are usually reluctant to step into a pre-existing character role, but you've done it twice now...and in the same game! Thanks for the help.

Tis true, Nestor rocks!

Aw, shucks, guys, you're gonna give me a swelled head!

Bunty, I figure we can do some PM'ing if you have any questions on where I was going with Avatar. I'm also in the middle of a JP with Richard (sorry for spoiling the surprise). Could someone with the know-how give Bunty editor-permissions to it?

I can tag in, but -- you really don't want to finish it?

Yeah, Nestor, if you want to finish that boot camp post - you're welcome to do so.

...but for the actual game move purposes, one player per character.

OK, just wasn't sure on the protocol for that. I'll finish up the JP as soon as Richard has time.

Woo hoo! 5 out of 4 schizophrenics say sanity is overrated.