Best posts made by Arkandel

Leonard Nimoy - The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins.

@Derp said in What game system would you prefer for a big-tent nWoD project?:

The quoted part, though, I'm not so sure about. That's like saying 'players don't like being in scenes, and shouldn't get advantages over those that do'.

What's to be uncertain about the idea two people can be in the same scene but only one of them likes to file aspirations about it afterwards?

Getting close to a three plate deadlift and a two plate squat. The numbers are still shitty but itfeelsgoodman.

@Auspice said in What game system would you prefer for a big-tent nWoD project?:

Ending up in a plot and finding out you can't do anything of worth because the 'difficulty' has been scaled way too high is really unfun.

That's the actual problem - it's not XP, it's XP gaps. And it's a preventable problem when staff don't get in their own way about solving it.

To create a gap there need to be some generations 'missing' between dinos and newbies. Typically the way this happens is that the game launches under a set of rules which turns most players off. The ones that style is suited for stick around and accumulate XP. Anyone else who joins after is already behind and won't catch up. note most nWoD MU* simply wither away around this point.

As @Ganymede said this isn't really a blocker for advancement if a player is determined and skilled. What it is a blocker for (and the reason it's actually a problem) is cohesive storytelling - suddenly as a ST you are trying to aim your plots at two much different demographics and that's not a trivial challenge to handle, especially given how most plots use physical threats as their villains.

Dogmatically doubling down on systems that don't work is not the answer here.

@Meg said in Forum Factions:

I will not tolerate MISOGYNY in this here thread! Fixed!

BOYS RULE, GIRLS DROOL

<runs>

Just like Letts' Law ("All programs evolve until they can send email") we need a @Jennkryst's Law: All nWoD games evolve until they support Mummy.

@Meg said in RL Anger:

• glance towards thread in which she just started making factions and people didn't argue that she had the authority to decide who was in what. *

There are no authorities around here unless someone really, really screws up. We're in a self-sustaining engine fuelled by whining, memes and kitty pics.

Also we seem to be more about cats than dogs. What's with that?

Nearly all games suffer from inflation of some sort. This seems to be one of the least disruptive kinds.

@Catsmeow said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

As a note, I miss a gym with a Pilates class. I use to be soaked (which is gross to some but makes ME feel I worked out) afterwards. It's a lot of work to use your own body.

Back when I was starting out with weightlifting I had gotten cocky; surely if I could push and pull these iron plates my own bodyweight would feel light as a feather, right...? so I went to a Pilates class thinking I'd find it easy.

Hah. Hah hah. Ahahahah. Hah. No.

@Coin It's only in beta. DUHH.

@2mspris <sobs>

I've had people explicitly take themselves out of plotlines because they couldn't be the stars in it.

As in, even though each individual PrP in the plot had an upper limit of... I forget, 4 or 5 players, I was paged and told that overall there were more than 10 characters engaged, so they'd take their PC out of it.

Sometimes you won't win these things.

@Luna said:

Why would person who makes a lot of money but doesn't make it helping people be encouraged to donate money, but a doctor who makes their money helping people be expected to not be rich at all?

I don't like the use of 'should' when it comes to this sort of thing; the job market is still a market, and as such it's subject to its laws. Supply and demand. That's why semi-talented seven feet tall basketball players are paid a fortune - they don't grow on trees.

Having said there, there are more ways to help people than to operate on them.

Yeah, what the other folks said. Don't try to predict every single thing someone can do, that just leads to rules lawyering and similar silliness.

"Don't be a jerk" should cover it. If anyone has a question about whether something is okay they can ask staff.

Frankly I think it depends on what you're looking for.

For example I don't tend to care about 'quality' restaurants. I look for cleanness, ease of access (street parking in Toronto tends to get adventurous), decent service and that one plate I really like. I don't often go for variety; if I find something I rate 8/10 it's going to be my go-to from that point forward.

Oh, and music. If it exists it has to not get on my nerves; for example there's a pretty decent Indian place near my house that plays this hellish new-age music on repeat and argh.

Other stuff matter, too. For example put a large screen with an NBA game on somewhere in my line of sight and you got my interest.

Very few of those are factors that win awards but the stomach wants what the stomach wants.

@Tinuviel said in MU Things I Love:

If your TS lasts for more than four hours

That's the foreplay.

@magee101 said in I know it's an old topic but to this day....:

@arkandel I thought the whole point of vaccination was to make you immune to the disease and stop it spreading. So either A) lotta people never got vaccinated/followed up with boosters or B) measels is evolving to combat the vaccinations

Yes, both of those things are needed at the same time. You become immune and because everyone else is immune too the disease dies down due to herd immunity.

Measles ain't no joke.

@Ominous said in What is the 'ideal' power range?:

The latter option for me; though, I would have it tied to age. I have for a few years now supported the idea that xp should be awarded as an equal amount to everyone every in-game month. When you roll up a character and decide on an age that determines the starting xp you have to invest in your starting skills. If you want to play a character who has top of the line skills, he/she can't be a smooth-faced youth who just left the farm yesterday to seek adventure. He/she is going to be the grizzled badass, 40-something veteran of two wars, a coup attempt by the royal vizier, the attempted ending of the world by a chaos cult, and that one time a dragon attacked his/her unit, killing all but 10 soldiers.

I agree with that. One of the things that really bugged me on The Reach wasn't that characters were given a lot of XP but that the way the game was set it just didn't make any sense. Neonates had vast powers and Blood Potency a month after their Embrace, fledgling Mages triple-Mastered Arcana in no time, etc.

@alamias said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@arkandel This is why I don't live in a place that gets that white stuff all over the ground during winter.

White is nothing. It's the black stuff you care about - black ice. Black ice is a fucking supervillain.

@eye8urcake That's one of the reasons having detailed policies isn't worth it.

Ultimately if staff is good and involved they are not needed, but if they are themselves part of the problem the policies themselves don't protect the players they're intended to.

Likewise reasonable players are only going to be inconvenienced by draconic rules while the few bad seeds are going to try to go around them anyway.

Policies are good for only one thing: Informing the playerbase of what staff's official intention for the overall tone and culture is. But past that, a MU*'s culture is shaped way, way, way more by what is actually practiced rather than what is written down in some help file.