Eldritch - A World of Darkness MUX

[Wretched]

My loins are girded!

[Thenomain]

My first Changeling character will be named Arev. She will be an angry Jewish lesbian who will be the late-night DJ and shock-jock, but by day she will go around pissing off everyone she can one-on-one, because it's the personal touch that matters. Her parents will be from whatever the Israeli nationalized army is called, and have passed down their love of expensive automatic firearms. She will end up in Eldritch after escaping Arcadia because blah blah blah who cares time to shoot things.

[Miss Demeanor]

I have logs loaded and ready for posting!

[Wretched]

@Thenomain said:

My first Changeling character will be named Arev. She will be an angry Jewish lesbian who will be the late-night DJ and shock-jock, but by day she will go around pissing off everyone she can one-on-one, because it's the personal touch that matters. Her parents will be from whatever the Israeli nationalized army is called, and have passed down their love of expensive automatic firearms. She will end up in Eldritch after escaping Arcadia because blah blah blah who cares time to shoot things.

Mine will be named Big Bird, he will follow Arev around like a lost puppy, leaking the darkest darqueness from every pore, as if he were sweating crude oil. He will propose to her every week, but be turned down for his unwillingness to become a woman for her, thus proving he does not love her enough. He will be a generic white dude who claims 1/64 Navajo heritage and calls people brah.

[Misadventure]

You people cause SAN loss.

[Thenomain]

@Wretched said:

Mine will be named Big Bird

His stereotypical outfit should be a t-shirt with the alphabet on it, but done in a Hot Topic Goth style.

Better yet, tattooed on his body in a Jared Leto's Joker style, because that's just fucking sad.

[The Tree of Woe]

I won't be sorry, Thenomain. Merely pained by how awful it will make everything it touches.

[Wretched]

Show me on the doll where the bad changeling touched you.

[The Tree of Woe]

Okay. drops the doll, stomps on it

There.

Which is to say, the doll is the game and my worn-out sneaker is Changeling.

[Miss Demeanor]

@The-Tree-of-Woe said:

Okay. drops the doll, stomps on it

There.

Must've been an ogre...

[Thenomain]

@The-Tree-of-Woe said:

I won't be sorry, Thenomain. Merely pained by how awful it will make everything it touches.

I feel the same about Mage, except it's Mage as a game that does this, while with Changeling it's the players. Clearly you've never run into Changeling players who were interested in playing Changeling. Both of these are easy fixes for everyone.

For me, it's just voting to not allow Mage on a game I'm helping to run and agreeing with my cohorts in taking a no-bullshit philosophy when it comes to What Susan Did To George's Character Via Harvey's Alt Which Is Totally A Conflict Of Interest Violation.

For you, the fix may be getting someone to implement this, or helping these people. (edit: dear god, help those people! make that happen!)

note: I will be coding Mage, or getting @Cobaltasaurus to help/do it herself, but Eldritch will not be implementing it. It's not really that I dislike Mage players (I mean, I do, but I don't let that ruin my professional view), it's that the game itself tends to lead to overwhelming all the other games (that the Mage players who think this is part of Mage are vocal is why I tend to shy away from them).

Except you, Dart. Or D...something. The cool Mysterium mage from The Reach. You were awesome and including and helped build the buffer to protect us Changelings from possible Mage Political Shenanigans. I know there are more out there.

[HelloRaptor]

@Wretched

He will be a generic white dude who claims 1/64 Navajo heritage and calls people brah.

I'm picturing Trent from Undateable.

[ThatOneDude]

@Thenomain Mage is the best, I don't get everyone's dislike. FURTHERMORE, with nWoD 2e, I'd bet everything is much more in line sphere/splat wise. It always feels like people that dislike mage usually don't understand it or dislike "that one type of mage player" which is a kind of player you find in EVERY sphere/game/insert some shit here.

[The Tree of Woe]

I learned a lot from my mistakes at HM. I learned to watch how I behave when I don't get my way. I learned being quiet when I'm pissed is nowhere near as constructive as being loud, even when it makes me feel like a wanker.

But I also learned to keep my eyes peeled for how other people behave when they don't get their way. And Changeling @ HM was ruled by a fistful of the most two-faced, venomous fuckfaces I've ever seen. I think the only prominent Changeling player from there that I can remember who I still like is Zepherine -- which I spelled wrong.

I'm sure there are others, there always are. But it's been so long that picking out the individual specks of goodness from the congealed pixie-dust glittery bowel obstruction is impossible for me.

To quote Dorothy Parker, my memory of Changeling is not merely that it was awful, it was fancy awful. It was awful with raisins in it.

[Thenomain]

@ThatOneDude said:

@Thenomain Mage is the best, I don't get everyone's dislike.

You don't have to get it. Everything I said was true, and I tend to make more subtle comments elsewhere about the same thing. If people get enough traction to make the sphere about <fill-in-blank>, then it will be about <fill-in-blank>.

Without staff involvement, Mage becomes a game about backstabbing academics and Changeling becomes a game about abuse victims. With staff involvement, this these are merely hurdles to be overcome in a word we have termed "drama". The good kind.

FURTHERMORE, with nWoD 2e, I'd bet everything is much more in line sphere/splat wise.

I can only hope.

@The-Tree-of-Woe said:

I think the only prominent Changeling player from there that I can remember who I still like is Zepherine

'Zephirine'. It's a kind of thornless rose. And you didn't like Vera? I'm touched. After getting talked down by Czcibor's player (), and a little by Konrad's player (same), I tried to keep the IC stuff IC, but I wasn't afraid to make an OOC scene, which did not make me friends.

edit: Also, Baron's player. And Sparky's player. Reverie had her problems, but she looked out for the sphere as a whole and I adored her for it. Surprising, isn't it, now that she's Troy.

Actually, it did. Mostly from people who were too afraid of staff to speak up.

It was awful with raisins in it.

How big were those raisins? That might've been Mr. Stag trying to keep your life interesting.

[Miss Demeanor]

I miss Vera. She was one of the few female Changelings that wasn't completely goddamn useless in a fight.

[Wretched]

I forgot about Mr Stag!

I and hated Vera, but she and Ernst got along like... two people who didnt get on well. But their fights were epic and she was fun and consistent. Cheech and Konnie were great too.

[The Tree of Woe]

I know Czcibor and Konrad RL, but haven't spoken to either in a very long time. Interests took us in different directions. Life's like that.

I have no idea what you're talking about, by and large. Except that I provoked you into burning down your own house. Beyond that, awful with raisins in it.

Also, don't ever use "make your life interesting" as a euphemism for shitting on people. It makes you look like a cockpunch.

[Thenomain]

@Miss-Demeanor said:

I miss Vera. She was one of the few female Changelings that wasn't completely goddamn useless in a fight.

As Shaft's (Mr. VASpider's) female swordbunny character was made at the far limit of minmaxing, I don't know how you could say that. Loki also had a gunbunny who was literally a bunny.

I hated HM's Changeling combat scenes, because I didn't get 3 attacks per round and it was risky to fire into the melee crowd and I had to fight tooth and nail for every advantage of Firearms over Archery that I simply gave up and got Archery with the 150 xp that I always had hanging around, and then had Leka abuse the hell out of the magic-item crafting rules to make a bow that was horribly overpowered.

It was, actually, quite fun.

@Wretched said:

I and hated Vera

Because you understood her. She started as Tank Girl and evolved into a human being.

I'll admit, there was a huge swath of the HM Changeling sphere who were painful for me to deal with, but I could at least feel relatively confident that if I had to deal with them IC, that it would be IC, that their players had a passing interest in playing Changeling, and when they got too high and mighty there were enough of us players to put some pressure on them so they would shut up.

Not so The Reach's Changeling sphere. Maybe nowadays, but that sphere was broken so many times by this whiny person or that crazy staffer that I don't know if the remaining players have enough spirit to make it work, and you need the players to buy in or there's little that can be done. A sphere needs a spirit or it's just a bunch of characters sharing the same template.

@The-Tree-of-Woe said:

I provoked you into burning down your own house.

Provoked Ernst into it. Vera was insanely pissed for months.

Also, don't ever use "make your life interesting" as a euphemism for shitting on people.

That your voice is reading to me as agitated all throughout this, I'm tempted to not correct you and let you agitate yourself further. But no, I can't do that to someone I don't know, even if my personal reading of this makes me lightly amused.

Correction: The raisins are in your pudding, not on your head. You were eating them.

It makes you look like a cockpunch.

Om nom nom nom deer raisins. Imagine eating them, rolling around in your mouth in your tapioca. Mmmmmm.

edit: After talking a bit with @Wretched, I think that Tree-Of-Woe may have played a Mage, which explains a lot. Most cross-sphere interactions on Haunted Memories were treated with the expectation that nuclear weapons were going to level an entire sphere at any given time. The Motley home was burnt down because someone dropped a high-power Death spirit in our living room, probably because people were overreacting again. You really can't judge a sphere well in that situation.

It's situations like this that have informed my not-playing-a-Mage attitude of: The best way to deal with a Mage is to avoid it at all costs. Even the HM Vampire sphere was more reasonable than the Mages, but I'll note that I'm talking about HM only and not "Vampire Players" or "Mage Players" in this case. I can't immediately recall a case where the HM Mages stopped by to say "please stop doing that" and instead, e.g., disintegrated doors or dropped in uber-powerful spirits or the like.

Not to say that the HM Vampires weren't fucked up, either, they were simply more willing to deal with problems via talking. Even that one time where it was obviously a trap, and the Vampire who set up the trap was out-smarted, and his player complained to staff about how unfair it was. Or that one time I and someone else had an RP scene lied about what it was going to be about, complained we didn't RP right, then had the entire situation retconned when we did something about it that was going to put them in deep shit.

---

You know, I have strayed from my original point. So, Tree o' Woe, what about Changeling ruins everything it touches? The more level-headed staffer in me does want to know.

[Miss Demeanor]

@Thenomain Largely because I say 'one of the few' and not 'the only'? ^_^ I realize there WERE others that weren't useless, just not nearly so many as were.