Best posts made by Arkandel

@Monogram Then eat my dust on The Defenders, too!

@WildBaboons said in TS - Danger zone:

@Derp said in TS - Danger zone:

@WildBaboons said in TS - Danger zone:

But is TSing the prince more viable than FTB with the prince?

Probably not? I mean, I'd take it to FTB, but if people wanna play it out then is there any practical difference?

Practical difference, no. But realistically based on historical behavior that has been anecdotally witnessed by many there will be a difference.

Let's rephrase it then.

What's the difference between sleeping (whether it's FTB or TS) with a ranked NPC and a ranked PC from a a thematic or an ethical standpoint?

@ArmedCarp said in State of Things:

@kitteh My opinion, racism is kind of a joke these days. Has been for years. Sure it still exists, but wolf has been cried so many times, that there's a certain numbness to it now.

I dare you to read youtube comment sections on any kind of popular link. Holy shit the unfiltered, raw racism there.

Now if we only define racism as actions rather than words written on the internet, I'd say it depends on geography.

@bored said in TS - Danger zone:

In the TS case, Player A was willing to cybersex with Staffer B for several hours. Player C does not TS.

Sure, but the problem isn't TS. @Auspice already put it well so I'll just quote her here:

Because staff will RP with the people they enjoy RP with more. They'll give favor to the people they enjoy more. This isn't about TS. It's about bias.

The staff member in question might have ran a special scene without any sex at all, FTB or otherwise, as long as they were having fun. Do I agree that dice or some more 'fair selection' process should be involved? Yeah, probably. Is it true that people who're fun to play with often get advantages others don't? For sure.

About online racism, something I ran into:

Pepe is considered a hate symbol because if you go over to 4chan's /pol board right this very moment you will find a huge number of anti-Semitic, racist and and hate-mongering memes featuring him. 4chan users use Pepe as an image macro, a short-hand for far right political views that are mainly defined by a hatred of almost anyone non-white. In fact, a common question on /pol, so common in fact that the pinned first post warns about asking it, is if a certain group is "white", since all non-whites are degenerate in their eyes.

Remember kids, if you think any place on the internet is bad... there's always 4chan.

@Tinuviel said in TS - Danger zone:

I do care that the player in question gets extra time with an NPC that others don't for no reason other than the staffer wants to boink using that glove.

ETA: By "NPCs time" I mean available RL time to interact with the NPC. I don't care that the NPC's IC time is mostly oriented towards chasing tail, or whatever, but if it's impossible to get a chance to interact with the NPC because their RL time being taken up with the arduous task of TSing for hours, that's my issue.

I'm up early so I'll use my extra time wisely by coming up with a TS plot that involves NPCs.

Let's say I'm running a PrP series for a character stranded in the Hedge. She runs across a stranger (NPC) who helps her fight off some critters, he takes her to his home where they strike up a conversation, she picks up some local lore that could perhaps justify an XP expenditure. They also boink.

After the boinking (he was very good, not to brag) he betrays her! Ohnoes, he was working for a True Fae all along but she barely manages to get out of there before things get super awkward.

At this point what has happened? I didn't use any precious NPC's time - I made this guy up after first talking to staff to made sure it was okay to use a Loyalist - and the roleplay was thematic. Furthermore I now have an NPC in my pocket I can reuse in the future; he can be a recurring antagonist who can come back to haunt the girl, and her player can use the experience to drive her character's growth. Also hey, she can justify the pillow talk to buy something with XP.

Who's the victim here?

@SunnyJ What is dead may never die but rises again from its ashes.

@Pandora said in TS - Danger zone:

I can't believe that actually got a response. I win this thread, InB4 @Arkandel shows up and ruins my fun as usual.

I've been here for a while watching you people ruin this classy thread with your memes.

I hate to laugh at someone else's worst moments but it's hard to feel sympathetic for this guy given how it all ended.

@magee101 said in TS - Danger zone:

@Rinel @Tinuviel Just doesn't like TS, is what I get from most of their quoted answers I see in this thread.

Whether that's true or not there isn't anything wrong with that. It's already been pointed out different people like different things, and that paints our responses.

Wonder Woman's first reviews are good!

Let's go back to discussing forbidden topics.

How much do your TS habits change based on the MU*'s themes? That is, do you find your characters are more promiscuous on say, a Kushiel game than a World of Darkness one? Do you TS considerably more often? Is it easier (or harder) to find partners - and are they actually better at TS on average?

Not anger... but a bunch of mixed feelings.

I've decided to take an offer for a different job, and it's not something I'm good at doing. It feels disloyal somehow to jump ship even if rationally I realize it's just business, or that I've seen my boss lay people off without any warning several times over the last few years.

It feels awkward, and the excitement of being at a new place with cool new things to do is mixed with the knowledge I'm not going to be seeing some of the people I've been interacting with everyday and have come to quite like.

I just hope all that - and a nice salary bump - make all this worth it.

@Pandora said in The ethics of IC romance, TS, etc:

Much like the actors in a television series are not given advance warning of their characters being betrayed or killed, in order to keep their portrayals authentic, I believe that there is a watering-down of authenticity when secrets are discovered OOC rather than IC.

I'll need to disagree with that specific part. Actors are professionals being paid to do a job and thus there's less need to consider their feelings. Communication with fellow players who're there to be entertained is a different matter.

I'm not saying there should be a warning given, mind you. Just that the comparison here isn't sound.

@Ganymede Yeah, Netflix's advantage in storytelling is massive. They have no need to account for filler episodes, villain-of-the-week stuff, dealing with 'new viewers' by planting constant exposition to narrate the whole arc up to then, account for commercial breaks...

But even so, I really have to give it to them that they put good quality stuff out there. The fight coordinators they had on Daredevil (especially season 1) blew me away for example. And they haven't fallen into the romantic cliche trap so many series get trapped in - there's no Oliver+Felicity shit or Barry+Iris endless, endless storylines until I just hope they'd kill someone just to stop watching the same predictable, tired dialogues over and over again.

I haven't watched the new Sense8 season yet either. Saving it for a plane ride.

Oh, oh! And Stranger Things. Goddamn Stranger Things.

@Pandora Privacy is a right. It doesn't require justification, but taking it away does.

@ThugHeaven I loved the book. I didn't love episode 1, but #2-3 won me over big time.

@L-B-Heuschkel said in The ethics of IC romance, TS, etc:

That's... not acceptable. I've staffed on various online games, and that's never been acceptable anywhere I've been.

Unfortunately acceptable is a funny word when it comes to this hobby. The truth is people have historically tolerated truly abusive behavior from staff and continued to play there - and that's pretty much the definition of having accepted it.

The list of justifications for it is pretty long. Players will claim they've invested too much time to give up, their friends are still playing there, "but other than this the game can be fun", whatever it is... what it comes down is they'll complain and shake their fists at things they claim are important but then they'll go back to playing there anyway, proving that really... such things really aren't that important after all.

What's a little personal dignity when it comes to playing Lady McGuffin on a text-based game who's about to unlock a new secret if her player doesn't rock the boat too much?

Also read The Sandman, dammit. Do it before you do anything else. It starts a bit slow but it grows to be awesome and then it gets another level in awesomeness, and then another.

This came up in the TS thread (because of course it did) but it definitely deserves its own space.

How much - if at all - do you value your privacy online in the context of gaming?

The following is just a prompt where I was going to respond to Pandora. Feel free to expand and add your thoughts.

@Pandora said in The ethics of IC romance, TS, etc:

I think we've gotten so entrenched in 'PROTECTIN' MAH RIGHTS!' that people aren't really giving any thought to how (not)useful this so-called right is in the context of a GAME as opposed to real life.

I don't protect my privacy because it's useful to me. I value it because it's important.

Or to quote Snowden: Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.