Best posts made by 2mspris

@faraday said in How do you like things GMed?:

I mean that's fine, but at the same time... players can't go out of their way to avoid the plots handed to them and still expect to be entertained.

"The Starbucks just exploded!"
"OK we leave and call 911."
"Um. OK. Cool. Thanks for coming. Event over."

You're gonna have players who do that. I had a player who did that when I ran the aforementioned scene and exploded the Starbucks. 1 player called 911 and planned to leave. Another player whipped out a phone and proceeded to video as much as they could get. 2 other players jumped in to try to help. And the 1 PC cop that joined immediately after jumped into help. I have found if you involve players who aren't necessarily 1 person and their 4 BFFs you are more likely to get a random selection of responses - not just everyone going along with 1 person.

It helps, I think these days with mushing and running plot (or +events, if you will) that when you set up that +event giving some kind of summary of what is going to happen. If I announce "Come to Starbucks for a memorable time!" and fail to indicate a reasonable # of players to be involved or timeline for it to run - it conveys a very different thing than if I say "Something dangerous will be happening in this block of the city on this day/time - if you have cause to be in that neighborhood, I'll take the first 5 signups and it will last X-amount of time." then I have communicated to them what I am doing/what the risk might be/and that I expect the players to give me that amount of time they have signed up for as well as I am giving that time to them.

People who are taking care of other people's children, who have no business taking care of children... OMFG.

When you are watching 6 kids, and you are incapable of actually controlling/managing the kids yourself, and you are using the 2 oldest children in your charge to dish out the discipline, I suppose it really shouldn't surprise me that you think it would be totally okay to have one of those kids hold down a 5 yr old boy while the other one spanks him in the middle of a public library. And if you want to call me names to those kids after I tell you that it's inappropriate to do that, and that I will get the director to speak to her about appropriate library conduct, you go right ahead.

@Arkandel

Mind you, I have several "ins" for how I can see the books that are upcoming. Mostly book distributors such as Baker & Taylor and Midwest Tapes. But there are a couple of things that we use & give out to the public to see to see a decent number of what books are upcoming:

Book Page

Reading Books like a Boss

Neither of them are perfect, but it's something. Most retail sites also have some kind of "what's upcoming", but it's also not accurate these days. The Covid closings have pushed a lot of publication dates back by months if not a year+.

@faraday said in How do you like things GMed?:

Plus on many games the character concepts have so little reason to interact that it becomes hard to orchestrate something for a random group.

I genuinely think this is a often an issue. I haven't seen a lot of staff on games do "Whatever you are doing, I'm going to drop in on you and something is going to happen." stuff since I was on Denver. Players don't seem to welcome the "random things happens" as widely as they once did, and any more character concepts are so widely spread all over the place that it is a struggle. I adore any kind of "group" over a dozen "lone wolf" concepts apping into a game, but there is not a lot of moderation and direction across the board on staff to make that happen generally.

RL Peeve, I suppose... but I marvel at the complete and utter inability of the average person to apparently write a proper resume and cover letter in order to submit them for a job.

Not a situation of "Can I submit an application?", but for a professional position that specifically wants to see the resume/cover letter written to know in this case that the person is skilled in that area on the chance that it might be arranged for them to begin offering classes about this to high school students in our community. (Because apparently while it is important to the education system in the US to get good "test scores" and qualify for money, it is less important to teach students how to fill out paperwork for a continued education, financial paperwork or writing a resume, etc.) It's both depressing and mind boggling, particularly when the resumes submitted are coming from retired teachers.

Mind you, it's also something of a peeve people who hear there is a job opening and rather than follow the steps requested, they send an email to the director, implying they should just be handed the job based upon who they know in the community.

An unrelated aside? If you are a person who was downsized out of their job 4 months ago and you have 2 months of your unemployment left and there is a job opening that you are qualified for, and due to your age & education that you have you are unlikely to find any other job like that in the place where you are living - I don't understand why you would blow off turning in a resume for a job with stability in favor of just staying on your unemployment which is going to run out in 2 months, because you make slightly more money on unemployment than you would at this position.

Things that make me bang my head on my desk, position-hiring edition.

I'd recommend Kelly Armstrong's Cainsville series (Omens is the first book. Not really much of a "romance", which is her typical but she's veered away from that in her more recent stuff.). Anton Strout's Simon Canderous series (Dead to Me is the first book there) is obscure enough that it might have missed notice and was pretty entertaining.

I'm sort of with @lordbelh there. I'm pretty sure that my attributes if statted would all fall in the "2" range, maybe I could pull off a 3 or 4 in Wits because I'm a smart ass with more than my fair share of common sense. But I've had a very broad range of experiences/skills that would likely make creating stats by a Character Gen system pretty hard to pull off with accuracy.

I like it this way, I'll be honest. (It also looks less questionable up on my work computer because it blends in well with library stuff.)

@Silver It does happen, certainly - it used to be the way that things were done from what I understand, about a decade ago. It's not been the way it was done at all since the new director came in.

@Sunny said:

Someone else having fun does not subtract from the amount of fun left for you to have.

I'd like to repeat that for emphasis. And add, props to people who don't just expect fun to be handed to them but are willing to make fun happen.

Sure, why not! I enjoy "get to know you"s.

• I am also one of those people who would happily eat the exact same things at every meal and in every restaurant, because I have found the things I like and I'm perfectly happy with it. (And there is enough variety in what I eat that you're not going to convince me that is unhealthy.)

• I absolutely hate "sweet tea" and will not consume it. But I live on strong, unsweet black teas (hot and cold).

• I collect "antique handkerchiefs" of the sort that someone has crocheted lace around. I probably have hundreds of them. (I also collect comic books, Fiestaware (but only in the antique medium green and daffodil), Trixie Belden books and Lady of Shalott art.)

• Movie theater "butter" makes me vomit. I also prefer my potato chips plain and the original "nacho" flavor of Doritos. I don't like weird flavors.

• I am terrible at reading a map. Despite loving to hike and travel, and even play games that involve looking at maps - I'm awful at it. I get lost every time.

• I'm the oldest of 6 children, and quite a bit older than some of them. And my childhood could have been an episode of Jerry Springer, including an experience where two of my brothers (at ages 9 and 5 at the time) and one of my sisters (at age 6) and I were kidnapped in the course of a custody dispute and and transported in a 14 hour car trip when I was 12. Some day I may need to write a book about it.

• I used to practically live on roller skates or my bike. I spent years studying ninpo taijutsu and western martial arts, mostly German and Viking swordmanship. It probably helped me adapt around the fact that I'm also a major klutz and am lucky I've survived into adulthood.

• I'm a cat person.

• I clean things when I'm stressed or upset. In a somewhat OCD fashion.

Carol Channing

I do writing. Most of my current writing is work-related news paper articles that I have to send in twice a month. But I've also go a couple short stories (for contests I mean to enter) and more than a few gaming related projects to "write" on. And I'm always up for writing buddy-ness.

We had a pretty great routine down for exercise/eating well/getting enough sleep & then the SO went to 3rd shift which is playing havoc with pretty much everything. All things out the window as we try to figure out a new routine that's going to work. It's frustrating. Especially knowing that this routine is likely only going to last another 5 months, with our luck, and then find him switched to another shift.

I got a completely impractical but lovely to look at wooden book-stand, the sort that sits on a table and holds a book open nicely. It's very nice, and I keep setting books on it and standing back to admire them, but I seriously do not have a house furnished to make it practical to leave out all the time. (My house is a small 1940s Sears kit house that is 950 square feet of living space.)

And a Dana Scully Barbie doll.

And a piece of scrimshaw set into a pendant on a chain. The scrimshaw is a family heirloom, obtained a long-long-long time ago by a grandmother, but being given a piece of it was a surprise.

@Luna I literally handed a few bills to the lady I was waiting to pay to get out of that place, knowing it was probably over what my total was, told her to keep the change but I had to get out of that business and wouldn't be coming back. I got back to my car and my youngest son starts shaking his head and saying how much trouble he & his brother would be if they acted like that.

@Coin That sucks & I'm sorry that happened. (I'd lend you a bike, but I'm pretty sure distance getting it to you would be an issue.)

@Luna said:

And to top it off, everyone knows who I am instantly. I'm the only one with blue (was pink) hair.

I'm "that mom", the one who they've come to know because I put every effort into being on top of whatever my kids are into and doing, especially at school. (Right now I've got one in 2nd grade and one in 8th grade.) When my oldest was in 3rd grade, one of my friends used to make fun of me for being the mom who made her kid do his homework the minute he came home ever afternoon, who wouldn't let him do things unless his grades were decent and who would show up at the school to speak to the teacher or an administrator whenever there was a problem. (And not in an OMG What are you doing to my poor kid - way.) To her mind I shouldn't try so hard & I should be letting the kid figure it out on his own. Then go figure 2 years later when one of her kids was failing his subjects in school (except for Gym) she was calling me for help.

@Miss-Demeanor said:

People like to be cute and/or witty with their Skype stuff but completely forget that maybe not everyone they talk to will recognize its them through their witticisms. I may change the picture every great once in awhile... but the name never changes.

You can manually change/set their name, so it doesn't change for what you see when they do that. I have most people on my Skype set that way, so I know who they are.

@Luna said:

I kind of love being blocked. It's amusing to watch people talk to themselves. Haha

I've been blocked by someone who moderates a FB group that I belong to (Hint: The Reach's FB group). If I was petty I suppose I could start talking shit on the FB group, but mostly it just looks childish.