And here are the meme answers. (uh, if you want to ask something, feel free to do so here) Generally in no particular order, other than how it came to me.
havocthecat asked about
Top 5 roleplaying games:
1. Dungeons and Dragons, 3.5 ed. If we want to be purely technical, the d20 system that's derived from it, because the most games I've played have been in this system. My first long-running campaign was an Eberron campaign, wherein I played a True-Neutral mercenary fighter/ranger type who eventually turned Lawful-Evil for a sword. Did I mention this was an evil campaign? But while it's not perfect and has a lot of flaws, I know it well enough now that I can bend it to my purposes. Combined with the number of supplemental splatbooks, if you're willing to tweak it a bit, you can get a lot of milage out of it.
2. Shadowrun, 3rd Ed. My initial impression of Shadowrun is that it's built around combat and if you're not carving a swath of destruction so wide you have every government and corporate agency armed with weaponry after you, you're doin' it wrong. So imagine my surprise when a friend of mine took the system and generated a campaign that feels a lot more like Leverage than Die Hard (I think it took almost a year before we got our first kill). So I like it for what you're able to pull off if you think hard enough.
3. Call of Cthulhu. My introduction to tabletop roleplaying, based on the d100. It's not perfect, but I have a softspot for it. And it's honestly my default system if I'm thinking about something in modern-day that's low magic. I saw someone use this system for something entirely not pertaining to Lovecraft AT ALL and later on, also for a freaking Star Wars game (set when the Jedi Order was dead, therefore, no one could use the Force).
4. Final Fantasy: Yielding Stone/Revanant Storm, Assassins' Guild homebrew. It's a LARP system. High-combat oriented that nevertheless retains the feel of FF'verse magic, tech, and flavor. It's a level of complexity mixed with playability that I set as my high bar to match up against when I write mechanics. Because the system never sacrifices fun for schtick.
5. Persona, homebrew. One of my friends' homebrew tabletop system, based off of the Persona games by Atlus. He set out to write a tabletop that retained the flavor of the games but used something besides dice for entropy and random chance. It uses Tarot cards. Combat is practically gin rummy and you make poker hands out of Tarot cards to cast spells. The basic mechanics "book" is less than 30 pages. And the amazing thing is that just by laying a simple foundation, the roleplaying itself just leaped organically from it. This is the system that inspires me, more than anything, to write my own systems, and that taught me, if it doesn't exist for your purpose, write it yourself.
aurora_novarum asked for
Top five SG-1 team banter moments
1. Off the Grid
Cam: Well, like my grandma used to say, "if at first you don't succeed…"
Sam: [wryly] "…try a larger thermonuclear reaction?"
I have actually used this as a signature in zephyr.
2. Tangent
Daniel [Over Goa'uld radio]: Maktal shree! Loktak mekta satak...Oz!
Goa'uld: Maktal Oz?
Daniel [Over Goa'uld radio]: Maktal Oz, kree!
Goa'uld: Kaltak shree, tal manak!
Jacob: Alright, we're almost finished, Sam's just finishing up.
Daniel: Uh...that's good 'cause I don't think they bought my act.
Jacob: Why? Who'd you say you were?
Daniel: The uh...Great and Powerful Oz.
Jacob:...SAM!
3. The Serpent's Venom
Sam: Uh, it's flashing green. Green is good?
Daniel: No.
Sam: Bad?
Daniel: Bad.
Sam: How bad?
Daniel: Very, very bad.
Sam: DAD!
4. Lost City, Part 1
Jack: You are so shallow.
Daniel: Oh, Please! Teal'c's like one of the deepest people I know. He's so deep. Come-come on, tell 'em how deep you are. You'll be lucky if you understand this.
Teal'c: My depth is immaterial to this conversation.
Daniel: Oooo! Y'see!
Jack: No more beer for you.
5. Off the Grid
Cam: I have no intention of taking anyone on. I'm just going to pose as a buyer.
Daniel: You?
Cam: Well, no offense, Jackson, but you do not strike me as the drug dealer type. In fact, you're not even close.
Daniel: I think I'm as close as you are!
Sam: Come on! You're miles away.
Cam: Teal'c, which one of us is closer?
Teal'c: I believe the three of you to be equidistant.
Cam: Oh, please! Mary Poppins is not even in the running.
Sam: Hey!
holdouttrout asked for
I split this and did two interpretations.
Top 5 crossovers I will for serious never write
1. Sandman/Leverage. Because Parker and Delirium would probably destroy the universe.
2. Gate'verse/Evangelion. Just...no. Gate'verse can have it's own apocalypse without having to borrow Eva's bleak future.
3. Persona 3/Leverage. Although Nate getting angry about kids feeling like they have to shoot themselves in the head to achieve ultimate power to defeat an enemy threatening reality has potential.
4. Final Fantasy (any)/Shin Megami Tensei (any). The universes are too disparate. (Bahamut vs. Lucifer or Yahweh? WTF?)
5. SGA/Wild ARMs. I'm pretty sure my brain is breaking just how to process this. Despite Holmcross = human-form Replicator and thus Elw = Alteran.
Top 5 crossovers I say I will never write, but could possibly be lying about
1. Leverage/Doctor Who/Torchwood. Despite the hilarity and hijinks of what happens when someone steals the TARDIS.
2. Lunar/SG-1. Despite the inherient crackiness of Dragonmaster Cam, White Knight Teal'c, Black Wizard Vala, Red Priest Daniel, and Blue Master Sam, along with Thor the flying-cat-who-is-actually-young-fuzzy-dragon. Mostly because it lacks anything resembling a plot and the two universes don't mesh well enough. (Unless Althena or Lucia are pulling some seriously wacky antics because the Blue Star and Lunar (Earth and the moon) are threatened by something worse than an actual Dark God.)
3. FFXII/SG-1. Cam, Sam, Vala, and Teal'c are sky pirates. Daniel is a Dalmascan scholar. Elizabeth Weir is a newly promoted Judge Magister (since her cousin Drace got killed). Jack is a grumpy semi-retired Archadian general whom Larsa coerces to come back. Hijinks ensue.
4. Leverage/The Dark Is Rising Sequence. Bran Davies is Sophie's real father (possibly adoption somewhere in there). He gave up his birthright as the son of Pendragon. Problem: there are unforseen problems with a loophole the Dark can exploit to come back because of this. Solution: steal Avalon.
5. FFT/FFXII timetravel fic. In which Baltheir accidentally drags Meliadoul Tengille back with him through space and time (since he shows up in FFT: War of the Lions). Not technically a crossover, since Square-Enix has declared all games that take place in Ivalice do, in fact, take place in the same universe. Unlikely to be written mostly because after that starting plot point, I have no idea what to DO with a poor, temporally-displaced ex-paladin (uh, if she's an ex-paladin who's turned away from her Church, but the Church was actually evil/a lie, is she still a Blackguard? Hm).
Top 5 roleplaying games:
1. Dungeons and Dragons, 3.5 ed. If we want to be purely technical, the d20 system that's derived from it, because the most games I've played have been in this system. My first long-running campaign was an Eberron campaign, wherein I played a True-Neutral mercenary fighter/ranger type who eventually turned Lawful-Evil for a sword. Did I mention this was an evil campaign? But while it's not perfect and has a lot of flaws, I know it well enough now that I can bend it to my purposes. Combined with the number of supplemental splatbooks, if you're willing to tweak it a bit, you can get a lot of milage out of it.
2. Shadowrun, 3rd Ed. My initial impression of Shadowrun is that it's built around combat and if you're not carving a swath of destruction so wide you have every government and corporate agency armed with weaponry after you, you're doin' it wrong. So imagine my surprise when a friend of mine took the system and generated a campaign that feels a lot more like Leverage than Die Hard (I think it took almost a year before we got our first kill). So I like it for what you're able to pull off if you think hard enough.
3. Call of Cthulhu. My introduction to tabletop roleplaying, based on the d100. It's not perfect, but I have a softspot for it. And it's honestly my default system if I'm thinking about something in modern-day that's low magic. I saw someone use this system for something entirely not pertaining to Lovecraft AT ALL and later on, also for a freaking Star Wars game (set when the Jedi Order was dead, therefore, no one could use the Force).
4. Final Fantasy: Yielding Stone/Revanant Storm, Assassins' Guild homebrew. It's a LARP system. High-combat oriented that nevertheless retains the feel of FF'verse magic, tech, and flavor. It's a level of complexity mixed with playability that I set as my high bar to match up against when I write mechanics. Because the system never sacrifices fun for schtick.
5. Persona, homebrew. One of my friends' homebrew tabletop system, based off of the Persona games by Atlus. He set out to write a tabletop that retained the flavor of the games but used something besides dice for entropy and random chance. It uses Tarot cards. Combat is practically gin rummy and you make poker hands out of Tarot cards to cast spells. The basic mechanics "book" is less than 30 pages. And the amazing thing is that just by laying a simple foundation, the roleplaying itself just leaped organically from it. This is the system that inspires me, more than anything, to write my own systems, and that taught me, if it doesn't exist for your purpose, write it yourself.
Top five SG-1 team banter moments
1. Off the Grid
Cam: Well, like my grandma used to say, "if at first you don't succeed…"
Sam: [wryly] "…try a larger thermonuclear reaction?"
I have actually used this as a signature in zephyr.
2. Tangent
Daniel [Over Goa'uld radio]: Maktal shree! Loktak mekta satak...Oz!
Goa'uld: Maktal Oz?
Daniel [Over Goa'uld radio]: Maktal Oz, kree!
Goa'uld: Kaltak shree, tal manak!
Jacob: Alright, we're almost finished, Sam's just finishing up.
Daniel: Uh...that's good 'cause I don't think they bought my act.
Jacob: Why? Who'd you say you were?
Daniel: The uh...Great and Powerful Oz.
Jacob:...SAM!
3. The Serpent's Venom
Sam: Uh, it's flashing green. Green is good?
Daniel: No.
Sam: Bad?
Daniel: Bad.
Sam: How bad?
Daniel: Very, very bad.
Sam: DAD!
4. Lost City, Part 1
Jack: You are so shallow.
Daniel: Oh, Please! Teal'c's like one of the deepest people I know. He's so deep. Come-come on, tell 'em how deep you are. You'll be lucky if you understand this.
Teal'c: My depth is immaterial to this conversation.
Daniel: Oooo! Y'see!
Jack: No more beer for you.
5. Off the Grid
Cam: I have no intention of taking anyone on. I'm just going to pose as a buyer.
Daniel: You?
Cam: Well, no offense, Jackson, but you do not strike me as the drug dealer type. In fact, you're not even close.
Daniel: I think I'm as close as you are!
Sam: Come on! You're miles away.
Cam: Teal'c, which one of us is closer?
Teal'c: I believe the three of you to be equidistant.
Cam: Oh, please! Mary Poppins is not even in the running.
Sam: Hey!
I split this and did two interpretations.
Top 5 crossovers I will for serious never write
1. Sandman/Leverage. Because Parker and Delirium would probably destroy the universe.
2. Gate'verse/Evangelion. Just...no. Gate'verse can have it's own apocalypse without having to borrow Eva's bleak future.
3. Persona 3/Leverage. Although Nate getting angry about kids feeling like they have to shoot themselves in the head to achieve ultimate power to defeat an enemy threatening reality has potential.
4. Final Fantasy (any)/Shin Megami Tensei (any). The universes are too disparate. (Bahamut vs. Lucifer or Yahweh? WTF?)
5. SGA/Wild ARMs. I'm pretty sure my brain is breaking just how to process this. Despite Holmcross = human-form Replicator and thus Elw = Alteran.
Top 5 crossovers I say I will never write, but could possibly be lying about
1. Leverage/Doctor Who/Torchwood. Despite the hilarity and hijinks of what happens when someone steals the TARDIS.
2. Lunar/SG-1. Despite the inherient crackiness of Dragonmaster Cam, White Knight Teal'c, Black Wizard Vala, Red Priest Daniel, and Blue Master Sam, along with Thor the flying-cat-who-is-actually-young-fuzzy-dragon. Mostly because it lacks anything resembling a plot and the two universes don't mesh well enough. (Unless Althena or Lucia are pulling some seriously wacky antics because the Blue Star and Lunar (Earth and the moon) are threatened by something worse than an actual Dark God.)
3. FFXII/SG-1. Cam, Sam, Vala, and Teal'c are sky pirates. Daniel is a Dalmascan scholar. Elizabeth Weir is a newly promoted Judge Magister (since her cousin Drace got killed). Jack is a grumpy semi-retired Archadian general whom Larsa coerces to come back. Hijinks ensue.
4. Leverage/The Dark Is Rising Sequence. Bran Davies is Sophie's real father (possibly adoption somewhere in there). He gave up his birthright as the son of Pendragon. Problem: there are unforseen problems with a loophole the Dark can exploit to come back because of this. Solution: steal Avalon.
5. FFT/FFXII timetravel fic. In which Baltheir accidentally drags Meliadoul Tengille back with him through space and time (since he shows up in FFT: War of the Lions). Not technically a crossover, since Square-Enix has declared all games that take place in Ivalice do, in fact, take place in the same universe. Unlikely to be written mostly because after that starting plot point, I have no idea what to DO with a poor, temporally-displaced ex-paladin (uh, if she's an ex-paladin who's turned away from her Church, but the Church was actually evil/a lie, is she still a Blackguard? Hm).
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