Best posts made by Arkandel

@greenflashlight said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

It's not that the material there isn't sexy to me. I never expected it to be. It's that it's so unsexy to me I sincerely can't tell whom it's meant to be sexy for. Do straight women really like videos of shirtless men flexing their abs while pretending to receive a beejer, or is this what straight men think straight women find sexy?

A lot of this isn't really about what's sexy regardless of one's sexual preferences.

For example many straight guys like the idea of getting really jacked. That is, the Arnold-style muscles, having big biceps, ripped shoulders, all that stuff.

But that's not necessarily what women want. It's what guys want for themselves. Or think they do, until they realize it takes a lot of very hard work to get there, they won't be able to scratch their own backs again, and they won't find regular clothes that fit them - or even fit in most car seats.

@Ganymede said in Politics etc.:

Still, I sit on my point. Intelligent people figure out politics. Brutes resort to brute tactics.

That is true. However we shouldn't underestimate other factors, such as OOC politics.

It's a well documented fact that people rolling together, being part of a clique or even knowing each other as players can convey in-game political advantages. That's a leg up, and it can be really hard to beat where it's part of the culture, independent of how shrewd or good they are at the game. If I'm negatively predisposed toward your character because FUCK GANY and so are all my entrenched buddies because we're a hivemind, even if you play your heart out you can only make so much leeway.

Just as an example.

I watched the first three episodes of the Wheel of Time series. Some comments about it in spoiler

tags:***=WoT Spoilers***

@Ganymede said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

You never owed me an explanation or answer or opinion. If @lordbelh's still watching, though, I think he appreciates the support. As do I.

I think it goes even beyond that. Yes, I would hope people who believe @lordbelh was treated unfairly should speak up because today is probably not very pleasant for him and showing some support can go a long way. But it's not not just about that.

If people have no opinion of these things then absolutely they shouldn't feel compelled to contribute. But if they do, even if it's to disagree then shutting up for fear of retaliation - either on a game or a forum - is pretty weak.

When the price of our opinions is this low - basically nothing, at the very worst case scenario you might get rebuked (on MSB we don't even have downvotes!) or lose out on some staff favors in the future in a game - and we still don't say anything, then when do we do so?

It's not that different from people who shit on VASpider, years later and without the slightest fear of reprisal, but happily went along with it when it suited them.

In fact it's the exact same thing.

@betternow Yeah, that is true. It may be that like other things about Amazon, it depends on which team is responsible for a project. Or it could be that WoT is just a scale of budget higher than those other productions so they're more strategically careful about it. It could also be other projects were ran by people who stood their ground better.

It could also all be bullshit. Ultimately all of these things are judged by their results. I feel so far, being just in episode 3, it's hard to tell if it'll end up closer to The Shannara Chronicles or Game of Thrones.

***NSFW content***

@Bobotron If a system can't scale up it shouldn't be there, IMHO. Code can help but... if it leads to either burnout, delays or subpar responses (because eventually even the best staffers will need to pay less attention to each +job) there has to be some trimming.

I find myself really enjoying Agents of S.H....fuck it, SHIELD lately. The writing is excellent, both the dialogue and character development are pretty much spot on.

Flash is always great, especially if you're into the DCU since they're having a blast referencing anything from recreated classic covers (The Flash of Two Worlds) to obscure third-rate villains. Even the costumes sort-of work - I chuckled a bit at Jay Garrick's goofy helmet but it has its charm, oddly enough.

I've yet to see a game in which non-physical stats were somehow as needed as physical ones. It tends to go completely one way or the other.

If your system has mental/social stats aren't filled with fluff that's at best circumstantial or basically just XP sinks you'd already be ahead. If it was handy to use in actual on-grid RP without a huge cheat sheet it'd be great.

@ghost Waitwhat? You are shitting me.

@Miss-Demeanor said in Where's your RP at?:

If the world is post-apoc, it really needs to have actual danger of death, dismemberment, getting your shit jacked, etc. or it just turns into sci-fi L&L.

I can't prove this, but my impression is that games with high turnover rates (i.e. lots of character deaths) don't draw that many players.

And the fewer players you have the less RP opportunities you can get.

@ghost Well, clearly the art of cinematography is about to hit its absolute peak.

@Ganymede said in Where's your RP at?:

I don't particularly like any alts, but I do not shy away from death if it comes. Like @Sunny, it just matters how death comes. I don't mind if it is a consequence to an action, but I sort of get pissed off if it is solely the result of a poor roll or random.

Two examples I dislike:

• Telenuke. Especially the dreaded +job version; I despise it - especially when it happens between characters who've never interacted. It just takes the whole fun of playing out a nice, dramatic, gritty or whatever else kind of death.
• The ST who thinks it's cool to kill PCs. I remember when I brought my 3-week old Gangrel on HM to this PrP someone ran (for which there was no setup beforehand, it was literally just a 'hey, I wanna run something, come play!') and he threw like 6 NPCs at the 3 us - like dude, that's not a 'hardcore plot'. Any GM can just toss hard mobs at characters, that doesn't make it cooler. It just means you're about to kill my character over nothing.

@greenflashlight

@Sparks said in Where's your RP at?:

What I did on Lost Stars (a private invite-only PennMUSH-based science fiction game ages ago) was a system I called DICE, where you had 100 units of 'time' per week. The system was then made of blocks, that would take an input, operate on it with a function, and then output something.

You could literally set up a block that said, "I have Skill X / Career Y, I will spend 40 units of my time this week making money at that." The input was time, the function was your skill/career, the output was money.

But if you wanted to train a skill up, that also cost time. (As opposed to XP; there was no XP to buy up skills, you just had to spend the time training them. It was level * 150 time, so level 1 of a skill took 150 time units, level 2 took 300, etc.) That was another block you could place in the system. The input was time, the output was progression towards a skill. (Basically, learning a skill had a 'meter' that had to fill.)

I like this. It's straight-forward and gives the player agency to make interesting choices.

How do you treat dinos? What happens to the newcomer six months after the game opens compared to them?

Not for the first time.

<notices the toothpaste tube is pretty thin>

<buys a new one, puts it next to the current one until that runs out>

... Three months later...

<the current tube still looks pretty thin... but lots of paste comes out when I squeeze anyway>

What the actual fuck, does it regenerate in there?!

@Ghost said in Where's your RP at?:

I have heard (and seen first hand) some cases of the argument being made that a character has been rendered unplayable because an element the player demands be made available to them is not available. More or less, I've seen this leveraged as an argument for the people that do this to ultimately get their way.

I don't think it's unreasonable to want to play something specific, not in terms of goals but roles; for instance you might want to play Q as a Wolfblooded character for a Werewolf pack. That's what you rolled for, the reason you bought the skills you did, the idea of a character you had in mind - it's not about winning or losing, it's about the concept itself.

If something happens which makes the role unreachable - say, you're playing that pack's Alpha and you claim IC only full Uratha can handle gear - I might feel justified to page you and try and see if that's negotiable.

... Unless I know you OOC I probably won't say anything, but bear with me.

In contacting you it wouldn't be about pressure or guilt-tripping - perhaps you didn't think it through, or didn't consider the ramifications for my character. Or we can come up with a cool subplot where my PC tries to earn enough respect to be included anyway. Or at least you won't hear six months down the line that some arbitrary thing you said cost your pack a member but you had no idea anything was at stake. Wolfblooded what? Someone wanted to play what? You had no idea!

Yes, people can use all sorts of arguments to get what they want in games. But it's not necessarily the case. Some amount of OOC communication can lead to useful compromises, and the absence of it can do a lot of harm for no reason at all.

Lord of the Rings is the number one trilly.

@Misadventure said in Where's your RP at?:

An alternate example that has been brushed upon before is the idea of professional criminals, and the risks they take of exposure and capture.

How would that be handled, along with the attendant culture paranoia vs stupidity and greed and of snitching vs loyalty when the authorities are involved. Do you just say the masterful careful criminal is considered valuable, and the loud destructive idiot is not, even though neither is ever going to be caught?

The only viable approach is to allow them to be caught, but also to make it part of theme - in whatever way - that they won't be incarcerated.This isn't a new trope; in fact it's cliche in comics. The villain robs a bank, gets punched in the face by Spider-Man and is sent to jail from where he escapes, only to try it again.

There can be a multitude of ways to allow this to happen in-game - make the authorities easy to bribe, for instance, so that your IC freedom is assured but it gets taken out of your bottom of line, which means you have to make sure to have something saved up (as opposed to spending the cash on those wonderful toys) or be forced to borrow from the Thieves' Guild which leads to owning favors.

Other methods and themes can impact the character accordingly without taking them out of play, as long as the game is designed around it. Loss of face and owed boons for Vampire, for instance (the Elder made sure you're not staked for a year, but now you owe her), etc.

The important thing though is that the game is designed so there is a cost. Without that there is no risk either. "Sure, I'll owe the Elder!" means nothing if you're OOC fully aware you'll never be impacted by it.

... Hawkeye episode 5 was very good!

***=Spoilericious.***

@Ghost said in Where's your RP at?:

While it's not entirely lethal, a good IP for a MU might be "Into the Badlands", which is a mix of post apocalyptic setting and wandering Kung Fu badasses. Plenty of non-lethal is utilized in that setting, and your character getting their ass kicked in isn't so lethal.

Into The Badlands was fantastic. I'd play that shit out any day.