Best posts made by Arkandel

@Bobotron said:

I think the most recent ad I saw for them essentially said ' app for something else, and when we get to a point for that, people who have contributed heavily to RP will be considered for those slots'.

Which is part of why I'm avoiding it. I'd love to play, and I really don't have a lot of interest in a Jedi or Sith myself, but it feels weird. It's the same reason I won't do the GoT MU*, I feel like it actually stagnates RP in general.

Agreed. I don't like competitions of this sort, they encourage resentment between players. Why did Bob get a slot and not me? Wasn't I good enough? How did they quantify the criteria? Fuck Bob.

It's a bad idea.

Guy at the gym is like a lawyer (ugh) or financial advisor (ughh). He's wearing a headset and is on the phone with clients every single time early in the morning. He's talking to them while he works out.

Sample more or less actual conversation before and after he pumps a few reps: "Yeah, we can always...hey, give me a sec okay? ARGH! ARGH! ARRRRGH! ARGH! ARRRRGH! ... Yeah, so what we should do is..."

I don't know whether to be impressed or facepalm.

@bobgoblin said in The best I've ever...:

• Policy

I don't think any in particular stands out. It's usually a case of policies being properly enforced than what they are.

• Game System

Arx. There are many systems they introduced I felt worked really well; giving XP bonuses to people who played with newbies giving them an instant introduction to the game, to encouraging players to interact with new people they hadn't before at random every week, to their @clues system, and I liked the gearing ladder which gave something for crafters to do.

• Setting

Eldritch. For all that he's a dickbutt, @Coin did an outstanding job with it. The wiki was well written and the NPCs felt like they had personalities and lives instead of just being names on a list with positions next to them. It was the small touches that did it, like nicknaming local sports teams which came complete with thematic branding.

• Code

Hard to say. Probably The Reach, not because it still stands out any more but because it gave birth to an entire generation of derivatives who reused @Thenomain's code to run all kinds of different MU*. It was a game-changer which birthed a ton of nWoD games to the point they over-saturated the 'market'.

@Misadventure said:

At this point we're running in circles.

Welcome to MSB.

@thebird I watched the first season and a little bit of the second one... I felt the chemistry between the two stars was excellent, the stories themselves though got really repetitive and predictable - plus the 'man out of time' trope ran its course at some pretty early point for me.

But all that said, let's get back to the thread topic please. Or something somewhat resembling it.

Are three-eyed crows named Sarah more common?

Tonight is the draft lottery (and that pesky Raptors - Cavs game, natch).

Although I'm not a fan I'd love to see something statistically improbable happen... like, say, the Wolves getting another top pick. They already have a very high upside in the next couple of years but with another great young player on the roster... man.

@taika said in #WIDWW pt 2 - ST, Player, or staff?:

The magic of Supernatural is that it doesn't take itself seriously. There's room to have fun and be goofy and go to those crazy, wacky places with it. But then you also have these amazing NPC's, like Pestilence, Death, and Loki. Death's entrance to the series is just... Amazing.

What I like about it is that there are no if's or but's about how the supernatural corrupts all who meddle in it, and not in adorable "sure, I'm wearing the Dire Doom Necklace so I'm kinda grumpy but I just use it to kill bad guys better" but rather in "*I'm going to end up trying to murder everyone I love within the next couple of days" kind of ways.

Also Hunters are badasses and they know shit... but they are facing things way more powerful than they are, and they don't know nearly as much as they need to, other than when they are fighting the most typical monsters. Sometimes they get lucky, else they need to hit the books and hope they find something they can use as a weapon somehow, else they are toast.

That's not because of the settings though, it's because of how we as players have traditionally set up our games. Characters are very often as or even more powerful than the antagonists they face, and they expect to know a lot (in fact, nearly everything) about what's happening through rolls. So what in a plot could have been a full arc of fact finding it's either handled in a random +job (which with Academics 3 and Intellect 3 mean you get 2 successes on average so it's basically a given), and then you just outnumber and outgun the critter to put it down.

TL;DR: It's how we implement games that's been failing us thematically, not the original systems and settings themselves.

@Tinuviel I screw up enough that, on average, we all screw up.

@saosmash said in Let's talk about TS.:

I think public groping in a nightclub is fine but at a Starbucks is eyeroll. Idk. I wish I were more surprised that this is a difficult line to draw in the sand.

I don't want to answer for @surreality who's seen some shit, but I think the typical case is actually rooms like Elysium or 'seedy bars', and basically it becomes an unspoken challenge by people daring others to call their bluff about how edgy they are being.

@Tinuviel said in The Apology Thread:

I proved myself as nothing more than a monsterous individual that was willing to say or do whatever to gain the favour of those that are less than reputable.

Dude, it's just a text game. You weren't monstrous.

Just get better at not being manipulated from now on. You can prove it by giving me $20.

@Ganymede said:

We handle our own finances. Fuck this presumption that couples need to share everything. Some couples are better off not doing so -- especially couples that consist of attorneys.

I'm pretty sure those are referred to as cabals.

@ganymede said in nWorld of Darkness 1E v 2E:

@killer-klown said in nWorld of Darkness 1E v 2E:

Like, traditionally, a vampire with low blood could just choose to not spend it and be otherwise ok. A vamp in 5th would have issues doing something as mundane as driving or studying while hungry - which is far more realistic.

My children have issues with doing mundane things while hungry, so I hear you.

Your kids are 5th Gen vampires?

That explains so much.

@Cupcake I think as long as an apology is given honestly and without an agenda, whatever form it may take, it certainly beats the alternative.

@Vorpal said in Comics Stuff:

No. I've got nothing, really. I don't see how they can pull this off without staining Cap.

The problem isn't (only) staining Cap. It's explaining how come he stopped Hydra from taking over the world the last 3487 times. Oh, and being around telepaths and mind readers for years who didn't pick this nugget up.

@thatonedude said in #WIDWW pt 2 - ST, Player, or staff?:

Do you staff on Reno? This post reminds me a lot of the way they run their game.

I do not.

Woe is me, players are the worst.

I'm unclear why that's what you took from this; players aren't a homogeneous bunch who all act and behave the same way, but certain behaviors aren't great and they should be pointed out, examined and if needed remedied.

Why would this person try to do research or use his / her skills/merits in a game? They should just sit and wait to be spoon fed whatever it is the ST is providing.

On the contrary, PrP participants should be proactive - that's much appreciated (and fairly rare). The problem in this case was in not consulting with the ST first to discuss the scope of the roll, or to accept the range of information they received out of it; that could have served (and even after the fact I tried to nudge it that way) as an introduction to a PrP about finding a different library to do research in, discuss the time it takes to go through the material, and so on.

The expectation to break a plot wide open with one roll of the dice is what was unreasonable. Being unable to do so doesn't take anything away from player agency, it simply allows the ST the ability to pace the story as it transitions through its arcs, and hopefully it makes any achievements more meaningful.

Sure, the entire thing could be unlocked by one person with 1 success on a downtime +job, but it'll probably be more memorable - and fun - if the characters had to sneak into their own boss' headquarters to get access to materials he had explicitly forbidden them to read, find ties to a conspiracy, figure out how to eliminate evidence of their presence and race against the clock to get out before they are discovered.

@Faceless said in The Apology Thread:

Why do people hold grudges?

For myself, I don't think I am. I mean for starters I don't remember slights after a few weeks - if @surreality called me a poop-head and told me my TS sucked I'll be miffed for a bit then I'll eventually forget it happened, or that it was her who said it in the first place. My head-version of the story would be that at that place someone did something that pissed me off.

But for another if you do something memorably bad it's not like I'll be emotionally predisposed against you for long either, I'll just want to avoid getting screwed over twice; there's a difference. If you staffed a sphere I played in and were horrible, or you became too much to handle during an IC relationship/conflict or... anything above and beyond normal everyday online annoyances I will try to avoid you in the future. That's not because I hate your guts or even that you're necessarily a terrible person (for all I know you might be great with others) but well... life's too short sometimes to give people extra chances.

Now to be honest I usually don't cut people off at the second or even third chance unless they fuck up really badly, but you know what I mean. There's a threshold after which drinks are no longer served at Arkandel-bar.