You may have noticed our discussion thread was locked by the dark forces, and since we seem to do an inordinate amount of trash talking, verbal fencing, an just plain having fun, I thought perhaps we needed a thread that was just for that purpose. Here it is.

Now, as I recall, the the discussion had something to do with round 6 and "hair down there"...

I don't remember much talk of round 6 in the past day or so.

Has anyone actually heard from Mr BA??

Hey now... it's just a girl's gotta have good hygiene ya know. I suppose you get a dagger sharp enough and it will work... Sam Elliot shaved off a dude's mustache in Conagar with an Arkansas Toothpick... so maybe a dagger would work on the face. I can see the face burn though.

I am just going to say it outloud. I am against merkins in movies, TV shows and video games.

Why We Love Thieves

The smoke from the fire pit drifted lazily in the dim light of the ancient pub, weaving vaporous wreathes around the innkeeper as he polished a dirty glass with a dirty rag. The only sound in the room was the crackle of the fire and the sound of scrabbling claws from somewhere in the cellar below, and the innkeeper sighed with appreciation of the unusual peace and quiet.

Short, fat, and balding reddish hair, he appeared to be a jovial sort, but in reality, he was not so pleasant. A greedy man, with never the nerve to seek wealth out in the world himself, he settled for watering down drinks, short counting change, and using "alternate meats" to cut down on food costs. The rats in the cellar came in handy, and he wouldn't have dreamed of letting anyone exterminate them.

Suddenly, the door flew open, and in walked four strangers, stamping their feet shrugging their way out of their bulky fur cloaks. Using his experienced eye for such things, the innkeeper judged from their various attire that the four were, respectively, an assassin, a warrior, a thief, and a mage and no doubt on some adventure or other seeking wealth.

As the four stepped up to the bar, the smiling innkeeper greeted them politely. Aloud he said "Greetings good sirs, I have food for the hungry, and drink for the thirsty." To himself he said silently "Ya never know, the survivors of this crowd might come back rich, eh? Best treat them well..."

The assassin, the warrior, and the mage quickly ordered a variety of reasonably priced (but not expensive, no, not expensive at all to the innkeepers disappointment) drinks. The thief, however looked in his shriveled coin purse, and ordered the cheapest mead in the house. At this, the thief's companions roared with laughter, and the thief scowled and snarled in reply. "You fellows all know the damnable guards took almost everything I had to cover my bounty. It's no laughing matter!"

Just then the door again flew open, and in walked six heavily armed and armored men. Three appeared to be hired thugs, and three wore Imperial armor, but didn't actually look like real soldiers. The six arranged themselves in a ragged line facing the four at the bar, and the largest of the thugs spoke. "We're here to teach you a lesson!"

For their part, the four at the bar were unsure of exactly who the thug was taking to, so their response was swift. The assassin with his incredible skill and poisons took out two thugs before the third dealt him a smashing blow to the back with a steel warhammer, and he sank lifeless to the floor.

In the meantime, the warrior had waded forward into the fray and two swings of his steel greatsword took the life of the thug who had killed his companion, and slew the "soldier" who was wearing studded Imperial armor. At this, the orc in heavy Imperial Steel turned and, shouting a great warcry, decapitated the warrior with a single blow of his orcish battleaxe.

The mage had summoned a frost atronach, who attacked the remaining "soldier" with a thunderously crashing blow of his tremendous fist... but just as the blow struck home, the "soldier" loosed a lightning bolt that fried the mage to ash on the spot, and both fell dead to the floor as the atronach faded to nothingness.

Looking about the dim room, seeing that he and the innkeeper were the only survivors, the orc muttered "That's the last of them!" With that, he turned and walked out of the Inn and into the snowy dusk of early evening.

The innkeeper, leaned forward on the bar, surveiling the carnage that decorated his floor. Corpses, bloody weapons, and body parts were scattered about everywhere, and pools of blood formed while rivulets of blood seeped between the cracks of the floorboards seeking their way to the dark cellar below. His knees were wobbly, he discovered he was in need of a fresh loincloth, and he almost had a heart attack when the thief stepped out of a shadowy far corner. Thief and innkeeper exchanged stares for a moment, then the thief (stepping gingerly between the pools of blood) calmly wandered around the room gathering valuables from the fallen, friend and foe alike.

When he was done, he stepped up to the bar and threw a pile of gold septims on the counter. With a huge grin, he looked the innkeeper squarely in the eye, saying "I believe I'll have a shot or two of your finest Colovian Brandy, my good man..."

Danged if I didn't have to google that...

Awesome read Neil!

so the new debate is what we can & cant post in this thread?

this one recons we should have a VOTE or a Referendum..........or toss of a septim

The question on every ones mind..............where is MrbattleAxe, this one has a Idea heard about this man called Olson................he is very good at finding people

Olson had been trapped at home by a snow storm, which gave him time to spare. He used that time to derive the method for finding Wally fastest using a data set mapping out all of Wally’s positions across all 68 of Handford’s books published since 1987. The co-ordinates where plugged into a genetic algorithm – a search process that mimics the process of natural selection used in artificial intelligence as part of machine learning. The result was a trial and error search that optimized the fastest route to take across the page to find Wally................

maybe we can ask Mr Olson to search for MrBattleAxe..............we can write a book or two ...............& name them ..............Where's MrBattleAxe?

+1 enjoyed the colourful read Neil.......carry on like this and you'll soon be writing up screenplays for movies

That was a great read Neil!

Thanks for the kind words regarding my little story. I do appreciate it, eh?

Sah, as to what we can or can't post in this thread, that is highly speculative, but I doubt it will become a controversial topic though. Something much more controversial would perhaps be speculation regarding any comprehensive search for Wally. I remember the Mrs was once rolling around under the covers, and when I asked what she was doing she said she was hunting for Wally.

I don't know any guy named Olson, but I do remember his wife. Mrs Olson used to try to sell me coffee, (although I never heard that she was hunting for Wally) until she was kidnapped and replaced by Jaun Valdez. I sometimes I used to think that maybe Juan's burro was Mrs Olson in disguise...

It's kinda like the musical coffee perking for Hills Bros coffee, back before somebody turned it into https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=youtube+popcorn&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-004... Coffee as popcorn, and Mrs Olson is a burro... What's the world coming to, anyway?

Hey Rick! I saw your post over in the Dead is Dead thread about how Ulda is the good player and all and much better than you at playing Skyrim. I'd have responded over there, but it's getting very close to the magic 200, so I thought I'd try not to anger Vatrou. Anyway, I thought I'd give it a try, so I put Briya in charge for an hour. We did absolutely nothing. Just stood there watching the grass not grow.

It occurred to me that maybe it was just the wrong character or something,so I had Briya follow Meeko around Windstad for an hour and do what he did. Well, it was all going okay until he sniffed Erik's butt... You shoulda seen the look on Erik's face though!

*applause* *applause* *applause* *applause* *applause*?

Ha ha ha yeah Neil.....see Meeko can do that is he's got AI.....Briya hasn't.....she's got you.

If I don't use the controller, Ulda does not sneak off for coffee and a smoke ( maybe there's a mod for that)

But what makes her, is a little pocket within me where her um personality resides. Kinda like schizo but not in some crazy uncontrolled way. It's how I know what she wants to do or where to go.......that's why I say together we are Ulda.

It's also why it is so important to feel and believe the connection between the on screen char and her personality.

Growing that kind of entity within is what takes hundreds of gamer hours with just one char. If you change chars regularly you might never feel that. In which case all you get on screen is....well.....you!

You probably get that anyways Neil.....but y'know....I fleshed it out for onlookers

Welp, I think I am out of the next DiD competition, my 360 bit the dust. I'm into an RP that has a couple mods that would have to be removed for competition, 1 I am 100% sure of as it was on the list the last time, but I had just finished a RP, so it wasn't an issue. This time it is an issue and I'm sure their are more that might be.

Yeah, I get what you're saying, but I truly don't really understand it. You and I approach it from 180 degrees out of synch. We've talked about it before, I know. My characters are ALWAYS me. They all are me as I think I might have been had I been born in a different world with different values and perception. It doesn't matter if they are a different six or species, good or evil, they all represent a facet of me and they provide me with an opportunity to explore myself as much or perhaps more than Skyrim.

I often hear some people say that they are not their character, but then if that is true, just who IS their character? Being many different characters I can discover what it would be like to be me but born as an evil female mage or an anti-social Nord male with a bent for violence, or a crusading paladin.

Have you ever had a friend you just couldn't figure out? I've had several, but one in particular sticks in my mind. Let's call him Danny, eh? Danny and I were neighbors for a time as kids, but even then he couldn't be trusted. In the course of his life he betrayed everyone he ever came into contact with. His family, his friends, his employers, people who he could count on... he betrayed us all (yes, including me) at one time or another trying to further his own best interest.

What did he gain by it all? When he died he was I think 25 years old or a little more, and he had nothing. No money, no wealth or property, no friends, no family who would allow him in the door. He died just another junkie stabbed to death in the city park by a drug dealer in a drug buy gone wrong. Nobody outside of his family cared at all, and they only cared because of the unconditional aspect of love within a family.

I've tried to create characters similar to Danny, but none of them have truly given me much insight into what made the original tick. I suppose that's because no matter how I look at it, my characters are me - in a different set of clothes and different circumstances with different motivations, but still me underneath it all.

Dang! Hey have you tried using Mod Organizer? It allows you to have different profiles set up in your load order, so you can go to a game that has literally no mods if you want (or any number of mods you want in or out), and pick your RP game up right where you left off afterwards.

That's my solution to the problem, and it's working well for me. It's a pain in some ways to set up, but I did what the guy did NOT recommend, and kept NMM and use it alongside Mod Organizer, so it was much easier to set up.

Something you can do for the competition without a ton of hassle.

1. Rename you Saves folder to SavesMyChracterNameLevel.

2. If you need to make a little text file with reminders of where you were and what you were doing and save it to the folder. (optional)

3. Also, if you need to, save a copy of your plugins.txt file so you know which mods you had loaded. (recommended, but optional)

Now fire up Skyrim for the competition with only the mods that would be allowed.

A. Once you're done with the competition rename or delete that save folder.

B. Change the name of your Save folder back to what it was for the character you're RPing which would be Saves.

C. Select all the appropriate mods.

You're back in biz!

P.S. I've done this and there do not appear to be any scripts left over etc. because they were never baked into a save game.

Took me a while but I got MO downloaded and now I have to figure out how to get it to work. I can't download all the mods again, I don't have the data to do that... I am trying to do it from disk, but it keep's saying some of them need to be reset on a tree ( which I am sure mean's something and I will have to watch/ read all the tutorials)

I think that would get a bit confusing, because I would be playing both at the same time. I would forget and mess up my game, I'm not comfortable messing with the files yet. I'm still in the learning process as far as mods and such are concerned. Most of the things that I download are NMM and don't need tweeks to files.

Edit: got MO to work, not it's a matter of getting two different game's... the "competition" folder will probably just have the basic's in it to start. I'll add things as I go I guess.

Edit 2: Ok got a second file in MO and it works except it says I have a load order problem, which might be the bashed patch as it won't work with all the things taken out. I've tried loot... doesn't change the order, but it still runs so I'll fly with it from now.

Areial, I use a different bashed patch for each profile. My contest patch is called Bashed patch, Contest.esp, for example.

Well folks, here are my suggested changes for competition 6. ATM these are just suggestions, and ideas are welcome!

GENERAL RULES
(specific to this competition)
alteration..................can not use perks................you can NOT use magic & spells

restoration...............can not use perks.................you can NOT use magic & spells

destruction...............can not use perks.................you can NOT use magic & spells

conjuring..................can not use perks.................you can NOT use magic & spells

illusion......................can not use perks.................you can NOT use magic & spells

Enchanting...............can not use perks.................you can NOT Enchant or destroy weapons & armors...........can not recharge weapons

EXCEPTION: You CAN use any powers, abilities, or spells given you at the time of character creation such as flames, nighteye, summon familiar and so forth based on your race.



heavy armor ...............................can not use perks

blocking ......................................can not use perks............Shields are not allowed

2 x handed .................................can not use perks

1 x handed.............allowed .........can not use perks............But you can use dagger / sword / axe / mace

smithing ........................................can not use perks.............you can NOT make or upgrade weapons & armors



archery........................allowed

sneaking......................allowed

light armor ...................allowed

lock-picking .................allowed

pickpocket ...................allowed

speech.........................allowed

alchemy........................allowed
(all these CAN be perked)

Legendary multiply total points by 1.25

Master multiply total points by 1.00

Expert multiple total points by .5

Adept multiply total points by .25

Apprentice and lower, multiply total points by 0 (basically you are auditing the competition, rather than really playing, but

you can still be part of the fun and post character updates and such)


SCORING:
TG Quests Completed x 1000
Side Quests Completed x 500
Misc. Objectives Completed x 50
Locations discovered x 50
Gold Found x 0.2
Chests Looted x 20
Sneak attacks x 20
Backstabs x 10
Locks Picked x 1
Pockets Picked x 20
Times Jailed x -5
Jail Escapes x 500
Items Stolen x 1
Trespasses x 25
Horses Stolen x 20
Skill Increases x 20
Training sessions x -20

Thanks to Sah for kindly creating that list of allowed/disallowed and Turija for his lists on difficulty settings

Feel free to comment on these things, because if you don't, they will likely be official rules tomorrow.

Looks good to me. And forgot to mention it earlier but nice story!

I’d suggest that recharging weapons be allowed, since it makes no sense for a thief to steal a special TG-questline blade and then not use it. Yes, it levels Enchanting slightly, but it does not lead to OP double-enchanted gear since self-enchanting is disallowed.

Also I would give points only for skill increases in the seven perkable skills. That keeps the focus on stealth.

Thanks for taking this on, neil!

I would agree with the skill increases in the seven being the only ones to count, but... the game does not sort out the actual skills involve, so it would be something of a pain to try to keep track of them, or add them when all is done. However, if a lot of you want it that way, speak up!

Same for the idea of recharging weapons. If most everybody wants it, say so, eh?

Oh, right. I wasn't thinking of all the different racial bonuses. Oops! Folks, that means math. (But only seven numbers.) Just a thought!

It does not really matter to me either way. Probably rather not do extra math. Kind of ambivalent about recharging weapons. I guess it is okay, as long as we're not using conjuration to fill soul gems.

Thanks, I'll try that when I get home tonight.

Rules sound fine to me, I'd do the math if that's the way it's done. I think recharging weapons would be ok, as long as the soul gems are found or bought.

Sah has expressed the opinion that a two week competition might be better than three weeks, and considering that most of us haven't lasted more than two or three days, I'm inclined to agree. Thoughts?