Best posts made by Arkandel

I've been enjoying The Titans - their casting choices were really on point although their budget and pacing is a bit concerning - so I thought, hey, I'll watch Titans Go! To The Movies which would surely be on the same level of dark, introspective broodiness.

Spoiler alert: It was not on the same level of dark, introspective broodiness. But it was damn fun - whoever wrote this shit must have been ridiculously, outrageously high the whole time, and it showed. Daaaamn! It didn't for one second try to take itself seriously, and the whole thing paid off big time.

@Admiral Well, sure, and you don't have to volunteer PC-identifying information, it's just that "we're banning you because you didn't overreact enough" is a new one. And I thought we had seen it all around here.

Is anyone planning on playing WoW in Shadowlands?

I've finally found a guild I quite like and got back into raiding... only to stop raiding since it's the end of an expansion and interest is waning across the board.

So, folks... let's bring it out here since the holidays are approaching and many of us are looking to buy (or ask for) some cool things that won't end up in a bottom drawer somewhere.

What's on your list? Let's keep it reasonably affordable so no cars or anything, even though you can include higher end stuff like laptops if something stands out. Don't hesitate to mention fillers, little knickknacks or anything just plain neat.

And do us all a favor - if there's a link for your item or a sale, drop it in the thread.

Yay consumerism!

@saosmash said in FCs on Comic MUs:

@arkandel I dunno, if you have an established rule that says no character squatting I think it's a lot easier to go "Hi there, you are barely meeting this FC's activity requirements. Please review our policy on character squatting.

Tell me if this scenario looks plausible to you.

Staff are conflict-averse; they don't want to get into the unpleasantness of reaching out to tell someone they can't have a character any more, explain why, dealing with arguments, etc. To dodge that bullet they make a rule ("you need to post at least one log every three weeks") to reduce this overhead on them since after that look guys, it's not us firing you, it's the rule! Only, of course, rules are way easier to trick than people as it's been shown very clearly in this and similar threads lately.

At that point staff have replaced a small problem with a larger one, but they still pick the easiest road for themselves - by not having to argue with people, rather than spare harm done to their game. That specific bit, this particular part is what makes them bad at their jobs. Anything before it is a mistake, and everyone makes those... ask any game runner. But at that point it's on them.

Does that make sense?

@Wretched said in General Video Game Thread:

@Arkandel I was planning on playing a bit, as for raiding, I'd need like a casual vibe. Because i've gone heavy raiding and its taken over my life, twice. Also, Horde or Alliance?

Horde, for me. I like it, but also it's much easier due to the demographics to find groups since there are simply more players on that faction (which, of course, means the imbalance only worsens over time - they really need to allow cross-grouping).

I only raid under very specific conditions. My guild had one night a week for three hours (which allowed us to clear Heroic and 1-2 bosses from Mythic). Then we had an optional second night for some Mythic pushing - we ended up going to the 5th boss, but the pre-expansion burnout ended that.

I can't imagine raiding more than that ever again. Frankly even if I had the time, which I don't, I wouldn't.

Can someone snap @coin to oblivion?

@wolfs said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):

You guys can have your male channelers and all that. I just want a wolfkin.

Username checks out!

@tempest said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):

I'd just remove Black Ajah on account of the fact that staff will probably pick the wrong people to play it and it'll be a disaster, and because almost everybody will want to be one

In the game I was playing it wasn't that popular. I mean... there were some, but definitely a minority.

Also I'd definitely not want staff hand-picking anyone other than book characters, if there were any, and I'd advise against that.

@seraphim73 said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):

As far as Black Ajah goes... it would be really nice if recruitment into it could happen ICly, but I know that would draw all sorts of claims of (and likely actual examples of too) favoritism and clique-ism.

Oh for sure. The risk that over time some people would stop playing and the remaining oldbies would get to hand pick all other generations of Black Ajah from then on is scary. And not in a darkfriend way!

@Jeshin said in Foundry Virtual Tabletop (FVTT):

https://foundryvtt.com/purchase/

Black Friday sale 25% off Foundry!

Snatched it.

After two months of having my finger immobilized 24/7 I got to take the splint off at the surgeon's office and it's now healed. The next step is rehab, which will last another month.

I've been worried about how it was doing since there's no feedback - there was never any pain or disconfort, it's just that the top knuckly just... wouldn't stay straight with a torn extendor tendon, it'd just droop, and I was only taking the splint off for a minute at a time, manually supporting it with my other fingers once a day to keep the skin clean. I've been of course cheating like crazy by double-splinting it to play basketball but hey.

The funny thing is bending it even at the perfectly healthy joint is pretty hard now since neither joint has been used in weeks. I just want that damn finger back so I can type - I type for a living, more or less, and it turns out your middle finger is pretty handy (haaaah hah) for that.

@coin I kind of stumbled into some secondary tricks first on HM/TR and then on Kushiel's Debut.

The former forced people to justify their XP expenditures which was a chore until I realized I liked it... and that it helped. Sure, my PC improved his Life from 2 to 3 but 'how'? Did he spend time at the hospital experimenting on patients? Maybe on lab rats? Did he do it to his neighbor's cats to change their fur color and see how they react? The more I got to it the better it was - and the more fun.

Then on KD you could make a little extra by summarizing what you did last week, which again... I could have done as a chore (or avoided it) but after it turned out was actually helping me contextualize what I was doing, even if it wasn't intentional. So for example maybe I met that Countess at a bistro because we were both looking for a scene, and we chatted about an upcoming duel because there're no sports on TV in Kushiel-land, but I could place that talk retroactively into a context that made sense - my guy was trying to up the stakes and make sure the duel's expected result was more meaningful, hoping to humiliate the loser of what was meant to be a friendly event.

Tricks!

@ominous said in How is there not a Gloomhaven thread here?:

Because D&D exists and an expensive ass board game that does D&D worse than D&D is a waste of money.

Why have more than one RPG!

USA challenges Japan to giant robot duel

Japan responds to giant robot duel challenge

@auspice said in Real life versus online behaviors:

But really, I just don't have time to 'be a different person' - that seems exhausting. Keeping up two personas? Shit.

I'm told I intimidate people online. Which is weird since I'm not at all that kind of person iRL, nor is it something that I want to think of myself as.

@faraday said in Real life versus online behaviors:

Peers thinking less of them, social ostracizing, etc. Those boundaries don't naturally exist online, so online communities have to create them. Without them, well... :points to hog pit, or Reddit, or Facebook, or....:

What's still puzzling about it is that on Facebook or Reddit with their millions of active users, you can afford to not think of social ostracism as much; if you decide you despise me there's always somewhere else to take my despicable business to.

On a MUSH or even MSB the pool is so much smaller, and possessing a recognizable identity is super important - your reputation matters, which is one of the reasons being an oldbie often conveys advantages either formally or otherwise. On top of it people deciding you're worth the time of day matters since you can get invited to join groups and factions, get access to inner circles where RP happens and others look out for you to play with... which are all some of the main things we do in this hobby. I can't think of a single major activity that's not affected by how we are known and perceived by others.

It baffles me that anyone would casually put that at risk just so they can get a few textual swear words off their chest for a little momentary satisfaction.

@coin Hell, one of the relatively large companies in the hobby should at try out a more modern approach to RPGs, instead of merely adopting table-top ones to sorta-kinda make it playable online.

For example why not try a subscription model? The GM pays $XX/month for access and their party (up to say, 5 people) get access to the rulebooks. So $5 gets you Mage: the Awakening or $20 gets you the full gamut of nWoD.

This would also lock people into a platform since they don't own the books, they just rent them out. In the long run it ought to be more profitable - and the fact they're digital means no need for distribution channels, printers, storage, etc.

Macaulay Culkin reprises ‘Home Alone’ role.

What I'd find cool is a strong metaplot detached from the book characters (whether they exist in the time period or not) to give the game direction and focus.

The cool thing about the WoT is that you can add pretty much so much and it wouldn't even seem out of place. You need an ancient evil? The same way Gholam were created by Aginor you can have other highly dangerous... things slumbering away in crypts waiting for a chance to wreak havoc. Politics are basically spelled out since cultural differences are so strong between nations in the books.

What about the mechanics? There was a WoT game published ages (heh) ago but I don't recall it having gotten great reviews even at the time, and there are so many different subsystems - channeling, forms, angreal, etc - that would probably need to be implemented basically from scratch.

It's not a game, but http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/9/10940046/google-drive-free-2gb-space-security-checkup .

Basically complete the Google security audit and grab 2 free GB for your Google account.

@zombiegenesis I wish I could lock this thread

@yyrqun You could even have Forsaken but as a distant rumor, the boogiemen no one wants to admit are real.

It's also a good way to deescalate the PC power levels; they aren't fighting against Shai'tan - so there's no need for super potent channelers around - but against his servants, and more specifically against his servants' strongest henchmen.

So yeah, if you meet with Aginor you are just fucking toast. But you won't, as far as you are aware he's just a legend, and trying to stay in one piece against some kind of monster Trolloc/Myrdraal hybrid something has unleashed into the world.