Sandy

Thanks. In my thinking the secret of making good characters lies in challenging yourself to get out of your comfort zone. You should steer away from making the character too much like yourself or your ideal person, give the character flaws to counter out the strengths, and experiment with different background stories (a loner orphan is one of the most overused backgrounds, for an example). This is not to say your character would not be good, I actually find him quite interesting. Despite being a bit pathetic, socially awkward guy, he has an air of mystery in him. I'm looking forward to play with you and the others. Let's make this a game everyone wants to take part in.

Sounds interesting. I participated and created loads of games that worked similar to this in another forum years ago, so it'd be nice to return to them. Here's my character: Name: Samantha Vonne Group: Chings Gender: Female Age: 27 Occupation: Human resources manager at Solar-Com The daughter of a renown family, Samantha Vonne started working for Solar-Com as an intern five years ago. She quickly rose ranks inside the company, and was assigned to Terrel Island. She had the N.E.R.V.A. chip installed to her, but it had to be removed since it caused a severe migrene to her. Currently she handles recruiting new workers for Solar-Com, thus she has access to all personal files within the company. After several workers on the island go missing without a trace, she senses something's rotten in the company, she sets out to find out just what exactly is going on. Samantha is a very polite and amicable person who gets along with just about anybody, and can talk her way out of trouble in most cases. However, she isn't hesitant of using her inherited wealth to get what she needs either. She knows well that money talks, and money coming from a pretty young woman talks even louder. However, Samantha has no experience in combat or self-defense, so if she cannot talk or buy her way out of a situation, she knows she is screwed. Thus she seeks the aid of a bodyguard as she delves deeper into the secrets of her workplace. Hope this is okay! Just tell me if you want something changed.

Oh, I forgot to note that the wife's part is obviously played by Wicwa, my character in Quarryman's Infection-Mafia. Glad to see she's continuing her career in show biz. ;D

Oooh, gory! You seem to have really captured the essence of what the tv-series is about (I've only seen ads of it, though). I like the cellofane-thingy you've put to pose as plastic covers. What I don't like is the big red "PARENTAL ADVISORY", since we practically are the parents in this forum (or at least old enough to be ones, in most cases). Remember that this is an adult-oriented site, so you should probably use more neutral warning texts, like "CAUTION: not for the faint-hearted" or something. Anyway, the whole warning text comes a bit too late to prevent anyone from seeing the gory pics. But it's refreshing to see this type of creations here after a long while, even though I'm not exactly a fan of the genre. Another proof of the limitless possibilities that LEGO bricks have.

Hehee, so funny! I always love these type of "twisted fairytales". And the MOC is very lovely, too, far from something quickly put together.

Beats me. The text is written for ten-year olds, so I guess they just don't care about taking stuff like that into consideration.

I was approached by a member to translate other bits of new information found in the Finnish Atlantis website. So here they are:

I have a Word-file for my wishlist, as well as a list of wanted sets in Brickset. Easy breezy!

When did you get appointed as a moderator? The poster is about LEGO Prince of Persia, and - lo and behold - this is the LEGO Prince of Persia topic! So how is that off-topic in anyway? Besides, if it was an ad for a videogame, it would've most probably said so somewhere in it, eh?

I'm going to have to step up and defend my fellow Finn from those who are mocking him. It's damn easy for you to say "just quit whining and pay up a little extra", since you're not the ones who are getting leeched here. You don't have to pay 61% more because you happen to live in a specific country. It's a salvation to us Finnish AFOLs that online shopping is possible nowadays, but there are still lots of people who aren't accustomed to use those services, and thus unknowingly pay more than is fair. Yes, Finland might be one of the economically richest countries in the world, but that doesn't mean we're all millionaires here. Our salaries are higher than average, but all of our prices are even higher because we have such a low population. TLG is just one of the companies milking off of us. So instead of just asking us to "suck it up", why don't you try to think this from our point of view. Besides, when have the Americans ever had to pay more than us Europeans for anything?

No, it's a fishman, officially called the Gatekeeper. Read my translation from the official Atlantis site just a few posts above.

Don't worry, we've already seen what the sets and minifigs look for real (there's boxart and everything, you know), that poster is just from an older design of the theme.

Ooh, pretty! And "AFOL Times" at the end made me laugh! I find it very funny how there's more stuff in the official Finnish Atlantis website than in the UK site. It must've been a mishap of some sort. But for translations, look no further than your own Finnish member. The site says this about the green guy: Hehe, it's evident who the target group of this "info page" is. If you want more translations, just ask away.

I was being tongue-in-cheek about it, if you didn't notice. Hence the smilies. But here's a little something I found while browsing Brickshelf, that might give you something else to talk about. I do not know if this has been discussed here before (I personally haven't seen it at least) so pardon me if it is. Yep, it's an ad for the theme from the early stages of development, I gather. There's certainly some recognizable parts in it, like the gate, but it's obvious that a lot of things have changed since the time this poster was made. Interesting nevertheless, eh?

Like OMG, are you going to fill this whole topic with back-and-forth arguing about a color that may or may not be new? I'm just saying, you can theorize all you want and squint your eyes and adjust the saturation, but the truth still remains that you will not know until someone gets their hands on the actual sets and gets to compare. So what's the point of arguing about it? And if it's that important to you guys, why not start a whole new topic for discussing just the color?

Um, yes there is. The Knights' Showdown is the smallest set aside from the impulses, and it has two knights from the opposing factions with some war-gear for both of them.

My favorite Castle set (and thus the most magnificent set for me) is actually the Dwarven Mine. It's unique among all LEGO sets, it introduced a whole bunch of all-new minifigs at the time, the design is beautiful, it has a whole plethora of play-elements and the building process has zero repetition. A close second is the wonderful Medieval Market Village, which also brings alive a new idea for a LEGO set, and also has many unique minifigs, play-elements and a superb design. The big castles are great as well, but none of them has been able to capture me like the Dwarven Mine and the Medieval Market Village yet.

I'm always excited to see fresh ideas for MOCs. At least I have never seen an orphanage MOC, let alone one with a pirate theme. The figs are all great, you obviously have a wide selection of parts to choose from. The baby girl is adorable, I never thought to use the witch's one-toothed face in that context! I love how gloomy and gritty the whole ambience of the MOC is, starting from the more than dubious people running it to the rusty chains holding the gate shut. I can't wait to see what kind of an interior you'll make for the poor children! I can foretell, however, that you'll have a bit of trouble to place all those figs into that tiny house. So why not make a bigger one?

Another Lego HP-fan here! You've done great with modding the official sets into this huge castle! It looks very intriguing and busy, and at least the exterior is quite cohesive, you've filled the holes in the official sets well. The interior could be more refined and polished, but that's alright. I myself took the hard route and built my own Hogwarts from scratch about a year ago (you can find it in this forum). Yours is bigger, though. You seem to have a few more sets than I do, as well. Well done, again!

Ooh, pretty! It looks like a lot of thought has been put into this set. The design as a whole is very elegant and realistic. There are magnificent details there as well, with more to be seen once we get a higher-resolution pictures. The minifigs are a bit odd, though, and nothing we haven't seen elsewhere before, but figs haven't been the strongest side of these modular houses to begin with. But your window washer doesn't have a window to wash!

I don't really prefer one over the other. I build every set I buy, but on the other hand I also dismantle them all into pieces to be used in MOCs (I don't buy duplicates, I don't have neither money nor space for that). Building official sets is actually worthwhile, since they teach you a lot about how the special pieces can be used and how a specific detail (like a drawbridge for a castle, for example) can be built. You can then advance from there on much better. After all, the sets are designed by professionals who build LEGO for a living, so there's much to learn from them.

Ha, if you feel sorry for the Brits, check this out: Lego.com has the Finnish price for this set at 31,95€, which converts into 46,30$! Yep, that's almost twice as much as the price in the US. And only because we're supposed to have more money than the average American (which is kinda true, but still). I think I'm going to get this set anyway. I have always wanted a 3-CPO and an R2-D2 of my own.

Comparing the pictures, to my eyes the King's Castle Siege still looks both sturdier and more filled than the old King's Castle. Those two castles are actually quite alike in their basic structure - they're both square-shaped, built on flat plates and use the same wall panels in the base. However, the new castle has more structural diversity (with the BURPs and rounded corners and different towers), more height, more colors, more details, more play features and more of just about everything except nostalgic value. I'm not saying that you can't love the old castles for what they are, I personally just can't feel that same love for them as so many of you do. It might be because I never owned a large castle in my childhood (the Wolfpack tower was my largest castle set back then), but I firmly believe the new sets are a major improvement over the sets of the yonder years, no matter how many people call them "<insert that tiresome argument>" or "ugly". That's why I'm so bothered when people declare how great these ancient sets are without even a hint of criticism, like it's somehow wrong to say a bad word about an old classic.

I almost always build minifigs prior to the MOC, because to me they're the funnest part of the building process. I just love to mix-and-match my heads, torsos, headpieces and legs to really dig up the best combination for that specific character. I don't agree with the crew of a ship having to actually wear the same colors as the spaceship is, because that only causes them to get lost into the MOC instead of popping out. Think of Star Trek, for instance, where the Enterprise was mostly white, but the crew had blue, yellow and red uniforms. Don't be afraid to use a variety of colors, because that only makes your MOC more interesting (although don't overdo it, either). If the problem is that the minifigs won't fit physically into the ship, you can either modify the MOC or put the figs on a baseplate in front of the ship for a complimentary scene.

I have to be the one swimming upstream again, but I find this set nothing but boring. It has great nostalgic value to many, I get that, but I see nothing special in the castle that wouldn't have been done better in other sets. Apart from the portcullis, it looks like a beginner's MOC castle, actually. Okay, I admit the amount of minifigs is great, but not the quality, since there's very little diversity in them. These are just my opinions, of course, but I appreciate newer sets much more than these ancient ones. Not only are they more aesthetically pleasing, they also have tons more play features, more details, more pieces, and more imagination put into them.