Although today isn't my last day at my job (that's next Wednesday) it is when my departure was publicly announced. It's nice to feel appreciated and have people walk over to my desk to ask questions and wish me good luck. I'll miss (okay, some) of them, and it's sad knowing I probably won't ever see them again or if I do it'll be extremely sporadically.
C'est la vie.
@Auspice said in Privacy in gaming:
Just like what I am posting, right now, is going to an unsecured site.
Would I be furious if Arkandel used it for nefarious purposes? Yes, of course I would. But I'm not waltzing in expecting the forum equivalent of Fort Knox and that is what I think people need to stop doing.
Hey now, you are posting stuff to a regularly updated platform running on a regularly updated Linux system hosted by a reputable company, and you're doing so over an encrypted https connection. While it's true MSB is no Fort Knox, we're not exactly trivial to breach either.
Conversely there's only one way for me to provide your data to a third party and that's if the police produce a warrant demanding something specific. In Canada laws are fairly sane in that regard so the chance is low. No other requests are going to be honored.
Also although I obviously can't prove it and you shouldn't take my word for it, I'd never pry into the database for your people's disgusting private conversations with each other. I don't want to have to bleach my eyeballs afterwards.
@Meg A story I once read went something like this:
Someone's son walks into the house and goes to his mom. 'Hey' he tells her, 'I'm sorry, I lost my contact lens out in the yard somewhere and I can't find it.
The mother goes out for an hour then she comes in and produces the missing lens.
"Wow", he goes, "how on earth did you find it?"
"Easy" she responded, "you were looking for a piece of plastic and I was looking for $100".
... That's why college kids actually do this.
@Auspice said in Privacy in gaming:
@Arkandel said in Privacy in gaming:
@Auspice said in Privacy in gaming:
Just like what I am posting, right now, is going to an unsecured site.
Would I be furious if Arkandel used it for nefarious purposes? Yes, of course I would. But I'm not waltzing in expecting the forum equivalent of Fort Knox and that is what I think people need to stop doing.
Hey now, you are posting stuff to a regularly updated platform running on a regularly updated Linux system hosted by a reputable company, and you're doing so over an encrypted https connection. While it's true MSB is no Fort Knox, we're not exactly trivial to breach either.
Conversely there's only one way for me to provide your data and that's if the police produce a warrant demanding something specific. In Canada laws are fairly sane in that regard so the chance is low. No other requests are going to be honored.
Also although I obviously can't prove it and you shouldn't take my word for it, I'd never pry into the database for your people's disgusting private conversations with each other. I don't want to have to bleach my eyeballs afterwards.
It's still unsecure in the sense that, save for a few sections, anyone can read what we're saying without having an account. Someone could use a crawler to grab an archive of the entire forum if they wanted with minimal difficulty. Would it include PMs? No.
There's still a level of insecurity.
Oh I see what you mean. I guess I don't consider posting on public forums something that needs to be protected, much in the way scenes in non-private rooms on the grid should be fine to share without asking permission.
@HelloProject said in RL Anger:
So I try to remember the consequences of hitting people, because there is a limit to the pure goodness in one's heart to simply not hit someone when they become grossly racist every time you're alone with them and none of your other friends are around to see it.
Hey, I never said I never wanted to hit someone. And sure enough there are folks who can get under your skin (usually because that's exactly what they're trying to do) and make you do things you'll regret later.
As far as I'm concerned the difference between a staff and player NPC is the reason I don't staff; people act differently around staff and I don't like it.
I like running PrPs without the label (almost stigma 
) of what it usually represents - some sort of official importance that makes it different from RP on the grid. What I like to run, instead, is things that resemble such RP and could in fact often have started as such, but then evolve in a pseudo-organic way into full stories.
In fact I'd be doing that in 'normal' scenes and not as an +event at all but I decided I didn't want to derail the former with my stuff by offering an opt-in instead.
When you are staff it all changes and I'm not a big fan of that.
I don't even know if it belongs in this thread but.
(GoT Spoilers)
...
For those who've watched uhm, an uncertain number of episodes from the newest season of Game of Thrones, holy shit are they diverging from the books considerably now! I didn't see it coming, with a few exceptions they were mostly faithful... now major characters are starting to get waaay off course.
I think the biggest pivotal point was the decision to take Lady Stoneheart out of the equation. Once that happened Brienne 's quest had to be repurposed. Then shit got real.
@mietze I've been on games where I STed more (as a player) than I played my own PC, and it wasn't even close. I was quite happy with that, too.
What bugged me a little though was that in the long term running things for my immediate group left my character a bit detached. How do I explain that he missed out another hunt in the Shadow (again) because I was running it? How do I get him out of signing up for the next one? I'd never play my own PC in a PrP I'm STing which just left a bit of a mess behind.
George Martin himself said that he didn't like how in Lord of the Rings Tolkien tells us Aragorn is a great King but he doesn't tell us how. Like, for example, after Sauron's defeat there are still hundreds of thousands of orcs around in the mountains, does he put them to the sword? Go in and kill those orc babies? What about the humans who sided with the Enemy?
If nothing else the series is always about how getting the Iron Throne is easy (look at how many people have sat it already during the course of the series/books alone!) but staying on it is hard.
@Thenomain said in Staff’s Job?:
@Arkandel said in Staff’s Job?:
Either way I think @Thenomain wanted us to debate more what staff's job is and not what it isn't.
More than that.
What makes someone a "staffer" and not a "player"? Is there anything special? Do players get any advantages staffers do not?
Okay, let me take another stab at this then.
There are several skills I consider essential for staff that are not necessary for a "player". I'll list them again: managerial ability, communication, decision-making, time management. You can get away with not having any or all of them (possibly not communication) and still be a good or even great player.
There are also several skills that aren't needed to be staff but are mandatory for players. Roleplaying ability is almost unimportant (unless they want to be running plot) as I've legitimately worked with great game admins who were very average as players but had a great work ethic, they could build, code, answer questions, create wikis and helpfiles very well and their grasp of theme was excellent; you can have all those things and still not be a creative poser or breathe life into your characters after all.
Above all I think what differentiates staff from players when it comes down to it though is perseverance. There's a little bit of madness in staffing and to do it in the long term you simply can't have a thin skin. You can't let negative comments or criticism get you down. You need to be able to listen and adjust but not be a pushover. And you need to do these things for a long period of time; there's no such thing as a great staff member who gave up a month in.
For bonus points... having your players' respect is such a treasure. Being able to say "guys I know this is weird but trust me..." and have them give it an honest try is fucking gold. It's so easy to lose this yet if you have it you can run My Little Pony By Night and it can turn out to be amazing.
Half of staffing is getting people to buy-in after all.
As for Dany, I think the series (and the books) do a fairly good job of portraying someone who's intelligent and whose heart is in the right place, but she's inexperienced and struggling to keep up while she has very few people to count on. There's no manual for what she's doing, next to everything she does is breaking new ground, from trying to control her dragons to dealing with deeply dividing social/class clashes in kingdoms she doesn't even want to rule (but feels she's responsible for).
I dunno, I like it. She's not supposed to be infallible. Only to be struggling to do a basically impossible job.
So let's talk romance/TS involving canonical characters. Are there boundaries involved and, if so, what are they? To get us started:
Is it okay to create couples out of characters who are canonically with other people? Can (adult) Peter Parker date Captain Marvel?
Is it okay to change sexual orientations in any way?
After any of this happens and a character changes hands is it okay to revert them to the defaults in the same game?
@Three-Eyed-Crow said:
@Coin said:
Tolkien had a huge hard-on for his own characters, which is to be expected, since many authors (and roleplayers) fall in love with their creations in one way or another. G.R.R.M., from what I've been able to gather, doesn't have that "problem". (I use quotes because sometimes it's that very passion that creates such compelling stories.)
From his interviews, I get the feeling that he does have this attachment to Tyrion. And Tyrion's one of the more compelling figures in the story, so that's kind of telling in and of itself.
It's quite likely. But also, there are characters who are probably integral to the plot and without whom it just won't work. Ned Stark had to die for the story to move in the general way Martin wanted, but if (for example) his plan is to have Tyrion eventually ride a dragon and take it to the Wall for the end game then that character is safe until that happens.
As for Daenerys she has to act like Daenerys. She's not perfect but why exactly is she supposed to be? She's making mistakes, learning from them and hoping she survives the experience - the reader/viewer can tell she's making much of it up as she goes along because what choice does she have? Her mentors are biased, many of them are untrustworthy and everyone has their own agenda, no one at all has any clue how the hell you're supposed to train your own dragon(s) and she's yet to as much as step foot on Westeros where she's supposed to be heading off to rule. She's an interesting character.
@Derp said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:
Second, if you come to me as a third party in the matter, my very first question is going to be did the other person say something to you? Because I truly don't believe it's not your place to police them, either.
Yes and no.
There is more nuance to being staff than wielding a rulebook in one hand and the banhammer in the other. Sometimes it can be as easy as paging someone with a simple "hey, it came to my attention Bob has been flirting with your character pretty heavily. I'm just checking if that's okay with you".
That's it. There's no reason to pull people aside or bring out the big guns. Policing doesn't need to be heavy handed 100% of the time.
@Carex Try https://musoapbox.net/groups . Don't say I didn't warn you!
Every other time I read discussion threads about books I liked and encounter people who seem unable/unwilling to spell or use even basic grammar correctly. These people are supposed to be bibliophiles by definition, what the hell? Why is the content indistinguishable from a random WoW thread's? Argh.
@Groth said in What game system would you prefer for a big-tent nWoD project?:
@Arkandel said in What game system would you prefer for a big-tent nWoD project?:
XP is not the problem. It's a paper tiger. It's idleness that kills game after game. This cannot be fixed via systemic changes, it requires active recruitment of STs and promoting those plots aggressively.
I don't think ST run plots are quite that required. As RfK showed while it was around and Arx is demonstrating right now, you can really drive a lot of RP by giving players the feeling they're controlling some aspect of the game world and get to engage in some amount of meaningful politics with eachother over it. It does require you to have people willing to set up a large amount of code for you however.
Do not underestimate the effect regularly having 60+ active players around has on being able to find stuff to do.
That's not the case for most nWoD games which peak in... the 40s range? And usually have 20-30 players on.
See the issue isn't whether there's a ST explicitly tossing plot around. It's the idea that players know in advance plot is available and, more importantly, when it will happen. There's a time and a place involved, so if they show up they are going to participate in... something.
Many nWoD games are caught in a perpetuating trap of mutually assured inactivity when you log on, look around, find nothing to do and go idle (or log off) then I log on, look around... and so on.
Limiting XP doesn't do anything positive and it might even damage their potential by placing the upper half of cool powers out of reach for the first few months on MU* which effectively won't last for that long anyway.
Aspirations don't fix it either because although they are organic they require interesting RP to be happening in the first place whereas PrPs both generate and reward RP at the same time.
@Coin I catch myself wanting to be an elitist asshole a lot of the time. For example I'm on a FB D&D group where people ask questions like "should an $alignment druid do <X>?" and I find myself inclined to go into tirades about how characters aren't just cardboard copies of each other pigeonholed by alignment and... argh, that's not constructive. I mean it could be but not in the semi-dismissive way I'd be phrasing it after years of delving deeper into concepts and themes in MU*-dom.
Worse, this same principle applies to how casually (or not) we delve into our hobbies. The same conversation about WoW is completely different from the perspective of a hardcore raider who's on the cutting, bleeding edge to milk that extra 2% out of his efficiency, and the guy who doesn't remember the name of that instance with the worm boss who sucks you in after it's defeated. Open condescension often ensues, especially if the conversation is online (we're all such badasses when we're not face to face), and that's for fans of the exact same game.
@Miss-Demeanor said:
Maybe I'm just a monster... but I like the D&D based ruleset from that Exodus link Lithium tossed up earlier.
I know this will make @Misadventure want to slit my throat but I like D&D as well. Pathfinder as well I guess. But it's not really due to some nerdy which-ruleset-is-the-best inner debate but, rather, on the basis of recognition and media support in an attempt to have a game's mechanics be as immediately familiar as possible with as many potential players as can be.
Sure, the ultra honed heavily houseruled set of Bob's Fantasy Compedium (Eighth Edition) might be exactly right for... something, I dunno, but if no one's ever heard of that shit next to no one but friends and family is going to play it. The niche will be played by our community's equivalent to hipsters, roleplay will be incestuous at best and impossible to find at worst and all that effort might as well have gone to a Skype-ran campaign in the first place.