The Mask of Norro

As an aside: Webcomic Mafia. We're approaching the one-year anniversary of the start of Webcom Mafia III... and what I want to know from all of you is this: I've an idea on how to continue the franchise, if you all want me to, that won't conflict with the running story of the series and will, in all actuality, help develop it further.

The original Webcomic Mafia series followed a set group of people, and in-particular spanned the distance of two "towns", the Webcom I town that was destroyed (and turned into Memorial hall at the end of Webcom III) and then the town fought in during both II and III. These were the two "main" towns of the industry.

What I want to do, with future potential Webcom games, is to show the "Lost Wars" of the Webcomic Wars. Smaller wars fought throughout the industry that added more fuel to the fire that lit up the industry during the first three games. It would reveal small branches of old mafia groups, new scum groups that never succeeded in getting on the same level as Gamers United and the Sunday Strip Mafia, et all... basically, it would stay true to the story of the Webcomic Mafia franchise, without building onto the ending of it, which was basically the ultimate rise of the industry.

Not only would this fit in with the series, and give a new 'feel' to the next game... but it would include an entirely new cast of characters to build on, and provide new game mechanics to play around with.

This is still in the conceptual stage, especially considering I'm currently doing MythMaf, but I wanted everyone's thoughts on it. I'm very picky about sequels to my Webcom series, they have to be just right for me to go forward with them... but I've a good feeling about this particular idea.

What about Mythology Mafia? Hasn't it been going for like 2 months now?

The difference between MythMaf and ScrubsMaf is that MythMaf actually has a chance in hell of finishing proper, and the people involved are actually willing to remain involved

Anybody who tries a themed mafia after SBTB is just fighting a losing battle anyway.

I'm still considering doing Webcom IV further down the line. If anything, I'd say I'd be dropping a bomb of success and activity on the Game Cube if my rate for both in the series over the past three games has been any indication >_>

Scrubs.

Eh, I'm loving my role. I could imagine there's going to be some that are going to be pretty awful though, it was a last minute decision on my part to join and thus far I've not regretted it.

We'll see though >_>

Anyone remember how I once said that I'd never join a game run by somebody who I wasn't 100% sure would do a good job of it?

I should have listened to me.

Which game?

Ah, fuck it, why not? In if you'll have me.

Off the back of the 30 roles for WWE Mafia, I actually have 55 written out but of course won't get that many. The number of places will depend purely on how many people sign up, and I'll just need to balance it out from there

55 roles?

Really?

HAVE YOU NOT SEEN THE CHAOS THAT IS MYTHOLOGY MAFIA?

I fear even 30 may be too many.

Mythology Mafia COULD have worked fine with its player count in the same way that Webcom III excelled. To be honest? The problem with the game's slowness has fallen on people in the game who have the ability to make things go faster, but have not done so. I won't say much more then that, but should the game ever finish/be forced to end prematurely, trust that I will be ranting up a storm about it when it's all said and done.

In my case, we saw a 10:15PM showing... lots of people there actually. Sure, there were quite a few teenagers, but they were both guys and chicks, and then there were some late teens/young adults there as well as some adults... actually, come to think of it, there weren't many fat people in the theater we were in. It was just a mixed bag of people.

Funnily enough my mother apparently wants to see this flick now, too... looks interesting to her. I'll probably recommend it to her, since when we left for it I was saying that it was probably not going to be that great.

Exactly. The movie wasn't bad. I'm not saying go get the book, the reviews for it that I've heard were universally bad, but the movie wasn't bad at all, and this is coming from a guy and his fiancee who both just plain did not want to go see the damn thing, and wound up enjoying it anyway.

I honestly don't care too much myself about the books, or what happens later in the series... this isn't something I myself will get obsessed over, but when there's a sequel, as Teej said, chances are we'll go see it. The movie was not bad at all, it had it's stupid parts, but many movies do.

And sorry about not marking the spoilers for this, knew I forgot something

When the dude started glittering I could hear Lorina and her friend cracking up and I myself was pretty perplexed. We were expecting something like out of Angel, when the vampire gets all fucked up looking and pissed off. No, instead, the reason why he can't go in sunlight and interact with other humans is because he's super glittery.

It's... it's different, but, it's just... well, it's pretty stupid.

Still though, the movie, as I said, wasn't that bad. The annoying part about it was after al the build-up, when they hit the very end they had the main chick practically begging to be bitten and then out of nowhere change her mind when he suggests they enjoy her life together for awhile or something to the effect, and then the runaway vampire chick just sort-of came in out of nowhere, watched them, then walked off with a smirk while she let down her hair. It was a cliffhanger for the next movie, basically, and while the movie wasn't bad at all... the ending kind-of sucked.

So basically, Lorina and I disliked the beginning, disliked the end, but everything in-between? That was actually fairly entertaining (for the most part, anyway).

In conclusion, Norro is a fat chick.

... the friend of Lorina's that drug us to see it was a tall, skinny, homosexual Filipino guy. Quite the opposite of the short, fat, gothic white chick

And actually, in my area, I was expecting a sea of annoying high school freshman girls and, as you saw, overweight goth chicks. I got neither, the crowd was actually very mixed.

Anyway, I myself have not read the movie but I've heard terrible things about it. If the book is as bad as it sounds, then they must have done a damn good job with this movie, because it wasn't actually all too bad. I wouldn't call it a great movie, but it wasn't all that bad to be honest.

But, once again, Lorina and I went in with really low expectations of what we were going to get out of the flick, so that probably helped.

Oh and it also helped that we never waited in line, her friend purchased the tickets. Chances are we also wouldn't have enjoyed it as much if we paid for our own tickets >_>

Lorina and I weren't interested, at all, in this movie. We heard bad things, we didn't like the sound of the movie, we generally did not plan on seeing this movie whatsoever. That was, at least, until her friend decided that he absolutely had to see it and invite everyone along to come with him. So, we went, convinced a friend of ours (who, like us, she just did NOT want to see this movie) to come with us... and we watched the movie we all expected to be terrible.

Beginning of the movie, slow. Drug and was generally just a bit uninteresting for the most part.

Then the two lead characters met, and hilarity ensued. From the male lead's awkward reactions to everything to the female lead's erratic facial expressions and lower lip quivering, we realized we were watching a movie that may have been poorly judged because of the first thirty minutes or so we each had to suffer through. Once we got past that, the ball got rolling, and made way for a decently enjoyable flick.

There were some cliches, there were many expected things... but they handled them well, and actually mixed in some things to break the stereotype of vampire flicks as well as do a few (read: few) things that I didn't see coming.

Seriously, considering I absolutely hated the sound of this movie? It wasn't bad at all, I actually really enjoyed watching it, and so did Lorina and our friend. That being said, I think we had the benefit of low expectations... we went into this thing expecting something terrible and came out with an actually good, funny and interesting flick instead. I'm sure though that there were those who went in expecting greatness and were vastly disappointed by it all.

I'd recommend watching it, but don't go in expecting a lot. Try to go in not expecting anything and you might actually enjoy it. The scenes are so all-over-the-place and fast that in the beginning you're wondering why everything jumps so fast, but it actually turns out to be pretty humorous and allows the film to get the ball rolling much earlier on the story than it probably would have been able to.

Long story short of it is, apparently, low expectations make for great movie nights. Not a bad night out at all, and we didn't even have to pay for our tickets.

Well for starters, I think that we need to look at who wants to run a game, the desired size they want for the game, and then decide on things from there. Example being:

Let's say I wanted to do Webcomic Mafia IV at some point. First of all, every Webcom Mafia sequel was able to top its predecessor's player list size, so we'd be looking at a game nearing 40 people involved if it kept that tradition. Webcom Mafia has become a staple series of the Game Cube so a lot of people would be interested, chances are we'd see a huge game with a lot of people wanting to play.

Obviously, this is going to be a large game and would also want to get started when everything was ready. Typically, very few people would object to something like that happening.

Now, let's say that a person who hasn't ran a mafia game before comes up with a concept everyone loves, joins in on, and because he gave the option for it he now has a game almost the same size as, say, Webcom IV would (presumably) be. The question is, if we stick to only one large game running at once, what happens then? Does one of the two games get chosen to either A) Run first, or B) Reduce their player size, or C) Do they both get to run anyway because their sign-ups are finished?

We need to have a system, sure, but it needs flexibility. People will have ideas that people love, we need to judge not only the people involved, but the ideas behind the game and the person running it. We need to be able to say "Okay, even though we already have a large game going, it's obvious that this game not only needs to be large, but its game runner is capable of handling it. Since they were given the chance to start sign-ups, they deserve to be given the chance."

I say, basically, we TRY to maintain the system.. but if sign-ups go up for a game and the game gets more players then expected, I honestly don't see the merit in punishing the game runner for having a more popular idea than they expected. It's going to be on them to decide if they want to work with all the people who signed up, or if they're going to make cuts. I think it should stay that way.

But that's just the thing, Triple H is only a big name in wrestling. He hasn't had a break into Hollywood as of yet that was exactly noticeable, and the "superstar problems" wouldn't be as bad, I think, because most wrestlers are incredibly humble when brought on-set for a movie, because it's new to them and it's something they usually enjoy. That's what wound up convincing Rocky to leave wrestling and become an actor instead, I believe... he just wound up enjoying the process more.

Triple H looks the part, I honestly believe with good writing he can play the part well too, and I don't actually see him getting an attitude with the directors and whatnot... he's a very professional worker, as he has proven over time with his time in the WWE (though many would probably argue that, but whatever). In any case, I highly doubt he'd cause any problems going into a series of movies as Thor... he'd probably be up for and excited to do them, really.

I'm running a one person game.

Sign-ups are open now.

In!

Player List

1. Josh

It is now Night 1. You have one second to submit actions.

Josh has been killed. He was Josh-oo-wuh, Only Player In The Game-Aligned Only Player In The Game.

Congratulations to the game's winner, Josh-oo-wuh.

Add it to the rankings, Pesci.

i lol'd

Honestly, with the right writing, I could see Triple H playing a fucking amazing Thor. He already looks the part, the guy can play a serious character really well but in most of the acting he's done that I've seen, the writing has been really cheesy and terrible and it's nearly impossible to deliver some of the lines I've heard him say and take it seriously.

So, basically, if the writing for this movie is spot-on, if they keep it from being campy (which they will, Marvel studios is doing it, they're not going to let it suck I'd hope), then I could see Hunter pulling out a performance that would surprise people, considering the only wrestler to ever play a decent role in a major Hollywood film has been the Rock.

I've always thought that Triple H would make a fucking fantastic Thor, and that in a film the writing would just have to be really good to make it work perfectly. So long as WWE doesn't try and promote it with some storyline in their shows like they did with Kane and See No Evil (That's the movie they promoted with a storyline, right? Can't quite remember, I know they did something like it) and just stick to airing ads of the movie/promoting it as a movie/etc. then it will be taken as seriously as it deserves to be.

To be fair though, even if I had a well-maintained schedule and the game was running smoothly, Mythology Mafia would still take ages due to the player count. That being said, it wouldn't take as long as it's taking now, but you get the idea.

Sucks because I'd had a fairly good idea with how I wanted it to go and it wound up getting a bit torn up thanks to all the crap I've got to get done first. Today being an example, I'm almost out the door to drive up to Tampa for class registration. Probably won't be back home until later tonight, so there's that. I'll get the update when I get home later, but yeah... between all this and then work for classes and whatnot, you get me.

Doesn't make things better or anything, but it at least says why I've not gotten things done like I wanted to

That people have more interest in creating games than playing them?

That people are running games that far, far too big for them?

I hope my mafia's not on that list. Only reason it's going the way it is is because of all the other crap going on for me outside of it. It's still going fairly strong despite it though, I think >_>

Put the trailer alongside of any clips from Batman Forever, or really any of the Batman movies after the original where you start to notice more cartoony color schemes being used, more advanced lighting that actually saps any seriousness to the set away completely, in the both of them.

I don't know why, but when I was watching it, I just got this vibe that they were using the exact same filming style, color scheme, et all that was used in Batman Forever, in this movie. I couldn't take it seriously. Jigsaw, especially in the lighting he was placed in, looks so fucking cartoonic that I honestly laughed when I saw him. It looked terrible.

Normally I'm gracious with movie trailers but Jesus, for some reason this honestly just put me off entirely. The movie looks terrible, it looks cheesy and like a '90s-Batman-Style superhero flick. If we could have had a Punisher that was as dark and gritty as, say, The Dark Knight was allowed to be... it could have probably made the movie look a whole lot better. Capture the actual character of the Punisher, make it dark and serious and completely non-campy, and you're going to get an action-adventure flick out of it that would bring people in by the droves.

The thing about the Punisher is, you can tap into the superhero flick fans without having to make it a superhero styled movie. You can make it dark, make it gritty... make it realistic, and actually adapt off of the stories behind the Punisher to make one hell of a film. I can promise you, people who don't know who the Punisher is would still want to see this movie just because it looked like a killer action flick.

But, no... that's, yeah, that's just the ideal of how the movie would be. What the execs are going for with this one WILL sell, and it probably will sell decently. That being said, I think that The Dark Knight proved that you don't have to cater to the masses to make a massively successful film, as the masses will see it anyway and, if you take the film seriously enough while making it, chances are it'll be good enough that they'll come back to see it a few more times, get the DVD, and spread the word of mouth.

Remember the Batman films from the late '80s and '90s? Remember the special effects they used, the campy-ness of it all despite it trying to take itself seriously? Remember, just... remember how those movies looked, how their environment FELT like a real-life cartoonic style Batman? And remember how, back then, it at least was pretty good (well, sans Batman & Robin anyway)? And know how bad it would suck today if they tried it again?

This is what I feel like that trailer has captured. This is how I feel they are steering the Punisher with a trailer like that.

This is me greatly disappointed.

We've still got a lot of work to do before we scrape the bottom of the barrel, unless you refer to wrestling mafias alone.

Off the top of my head I have a few mafias I could see working if done right off of 90s shows alone:

Rugrats Mafia (a lynch = time out)

Rocko's Modern Life Mafia

Salute Your Shorts Mafia

Pete & Pete Mafia

90s Game Show Mafia (Including Nick Game Shows)

Fuck, you know what? Someone should just do a Nickelodeon Shows Mafia. That would be fucking ace. That could cover all bases, you'd get various shows as roles, you would have a huge amount of choices as far as your mafias go, just a ton of stuff to choose from. Hell, I'd play it >_>

Oh no, zombies! Let us flee! But some of us will not flee and will use shotguns and shit!

*BLAM BLAM BLAM*

Haha, we win! Possibly! Although usually by this stage our lives and/or the world are so fucked that what's the point anyway?

^ The zombie genre summarised in 3 lines.

Hey, there's some good ideas behind the genre, it's just that the ones that get popular are the same crap regurgitated over and over. This is why I like the novel World War Z, at least it shows some new perspective on the whole thing >_>

Highschool of the Dead (manga) is a pretty good zombie genre manga... it's got tons of fan service and some of the character designs are way over the top considering the fact that these are high school students (so it's basically following the design formula of nearly all manga/anime, practically >_> ), but I like the way the story's gone.

Plus, part way through, you get to see an undead Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice, and the hint that George Bush commits suicide on Air Force 1 as it is overtaken by the undead, which is... okay, I'm sorry, but the concept is just fucking hilarious.

Hey Arnold! mafia has so much potential... I mean, seriously, Stoop Kid could be a pseudo-investigator, Harold could be the hitman, I just... wow, someone must do this as a mafia.

What role would the older characters play though? You cannot do Hey Arnold! off of the child cast alone, you MUST include their other plethora of amazing characters. Damn you people for getting me overly excited about a mafia concept when I'm knee-deep in a new series! GAH.

4, the number of aces in a legal deck. But your avatar only has three! I call scum.

Ace Andrews ALWAYS carries the fourth ace up his sleeve, oldskool. ALWAYS.

Actually, even if GoGo HAD targetted me, I still could have gotten away with it - HE ROLLED A TWO, I ROLLED A ONE OUT OF TWENTY.

I was on the verge of tears from laughing when I saw you roll a one. That was, like, one of the worst roles I've ever seen, and you made it at the worst possible time, too. I thought GoGo had shit luck that particular night compared to the nights past, but oh no, apparently he didn't