Best posts made by Arkandel

@macha What gets me aren't even the corporate efforts to reduce safety nets, unemployment benefits, etc in order to force people to take shitty paying jobs just to keep their families housed and fed. I mean it does but I'd expect no more from them.

No, it's people who are themselves low/middle class, struggling, and who are protesting against those same benefits as some sort of communist/socialist agenda. That is just genuinely crazy - folks opposing their own self-interest on behalf of billionaires.

@Pyrephox said in What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?:

Yeah. And that's not good. Not only because it cheats people who try to faithfully describe their character's abilities, but also because it pushes the culture of the game towards physical combat to resolve any and all difficulties. Players, ultimately, want to be effective at SOMETHING - what that thing is will differ by individual (and it might be OOC as much as IC - I know some players who are happiest when their character is making other players laugh), but everyone wants to know that they're having an impact and influence on the game. So whatever is the most effective route for influence is where you're going to get a majority of people focusing their characters.

We should detach what may well be an overall inadequacy of mechanics to interpret something as complex as social nuances into mechanics and consider the idea that it's not necessarily intentional; it's not cheating per se (although it could be) but a failure of dice to bridge player- rather than character-based qualities.

For example let's say you're playing Rick, a Werewolf PC and you're very good at it. Rick is all sorts of flawed; unpleasant to look at, with a terrible fashion sense, burdened with a crippling alcoholism, chronic swearing and he's a liar to boot. However, being very good at it you make that fun! People like hanging out with Rick. They pursue Rick despite his bad social traits or the fact you're honestly, genuinely playing them out.

Now I'm playing Tim. Tim is a Daeva, Tim is awesome! He's wealthy and generous, his social stats are off the charts - and the guy is honorable, dependable... too bad I can't spell well, toss out unimaginative short poses and just can't find something to hook me into those around me. As a result not many people respond well to Tim - he should be a leader of men but no one is giving me the light of day.

Is everyone cheating? No. Can stats fix that? No.

It's not an issue when it comes to physical traits because... you can't screw up punching someone too badly. You can play a pretty kickass ninja without knowing martial arts in real life so all you need is a hefty brawl+weaponry score, but if you're not a decent roleplayer or a socially adept one you might be unable to engage others sufficiently, and no dice pool in the world is gonna fix that.

There's no fix for this.

@goblin For some strange reason the current storyline made him into a more engaging character for me. In the past other than for his relationship with Thor, and other than for Tom Hiddleston's charisma, I just didn't care enough about whether he succeeded or failed.

***=NSFW content***

@ixokai said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

Did A or G have to page?

<snip>

(And should B, C, D, E and F decided to take their scene private? Then A and G wouldn't be able to join them either. Is that a better outcome?)

Obviously neither scenario is optimal at that point. But here is the thing, and now you're probably exposed to a peeve of mine rather than an actual argument:

Group 1 is roleplaying. X+Y+Z want to drop in so they have something to do.

... why on earth won't X+Y+Z, who are idlying and not part of any scene, for whom any scene would do, go off and make a scene of their own? Why does it need to be the one already in progress? Just start something, you have enough people!

@Kestrel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

You MUSHers are looking at me like I'm wearing a kilt.

It's so weird for me to be considered a MUSHer. I'd been playing and coding on CircleMUD for 6 years before I even logged on a MUSH and I was so lost when I did - I barely knew how to move from room to room. All those damn + commands!

It's like when you realize you're getting old, I guess. What do you mean the Matrix came out seventeen years ago?

The other issue here is that we're on pretty uncharted territory. Anyone who says they have a good even mid-term plan is wrong or a liar; we simply don't know how things will turn out.

But look, there are football stadiums packed full of people right now. That isn't going to end well. And the virus doesn't give a damn about politics, opinions or rights, it just spreads.

What I find utterly baffling is how easy it is for people to let their own stubbornness blind them to obvious facts.

Soldiers refusing vaccines? For decades vaccinations were mandatory. You got into just about any military force in the world and got in line to get 5-6 different needles in you, no idea what was in each and no questions asked. Now it's a problem?

Or travel. But mah freedoms! Well for decades if you wanted to get to certain places you needed to get vaccinated. Schools? Same thing.

Or masks. Mask aversion? "Face diapers"? Oxygen deprivation? Doctors and nurses have been wearing them for decades and no one batted an eyelash, now it's an issue?

But you know what? If there was some mastermind behind all this profiting somehow from the campaign against vaccines or masks I'd at least... feel relieved. It'd be intentional. However no, that's not the case - we are just that stupid. We're just doing it to ourselves for no damn reason.

@faraday said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

@Lotherio said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

they don't want to waste on-line time having to fathom some IC excuse for why they were absent.

Yeah, I really don't understand where this became about wanting a favorable outcome or not wanting to fail. I don't care about that. What I care about is being forced to come up with a preposterous explanation (I fell asleep in the crawlspace with noise-canceling headphones on!) for something that is an extremely routine MUSH event (someone not being online at the exact moment you want them).

This was actually a thing on HM from time to time. Did the big scenes where a Covenant's domain was attacked happen at 3 am in the morning for one of the political aspirants in it? "Where were you when we were fighting for our lives, you COWARD?".

Yeah, it's a douche move.

@aria said in Movie / TV / Streaming Peeves or Whatever:

You treat every weapon as if it's loaded with a live round. Period. If someone hands you a weapon, you check it yourself. It doesn't matter if they say it isn't loaded. It doesn't matter if they're your shooting range supervisor or your shooting instructor. You check it yourself. Period. And then you still treat it as if it's loaded with a live round. You do not point the barrel in the direction of anyone or anything you don't want to drop dead.

Real story. An old Master Sergeant (or the equivalent in the Air Force I served in) told me once that when he was younger he took apart a G3A3 rifle. Unlike how basic drafted grunts do it where we disassemble only the bigger parts, actual officers practiced actually dismantling them to their very basic elements.

So he did that, cleaned it meticulously, put it back together and - completely out of drilled habit - pulled the trigger while pointing the rifle into a sandbox.

It fired.

Where did the bullet come from? How was it possible he hadn't seen it? He just shrugged. No idea.

@surreality said in Core Memories Instead of BG?:

The more defined and specific a background is, the harder that can sometimes be to do. Leaving some wiggle room there strikes me as a good thing for people to use to make connections with other characters coming into the game later

I agree. One of the mistakes people make is generate characters who've already done all the cool things in their lives before they ever step foot on the grid - so everything from that point on is bound to be a disappointment. You go from having rescued princesses and led armies to doing bar scenes or looking for a date to go to that birthday party +event on Wednesday.

@atomic

@Auspice You know what gets me? Players who do send each other pages ("hey,let's do a scene"). And then they go and have the most boring scene possible, set at a bar, talking about the weather - sometimes literally! For example they're both different supernatural types but they don't know that IC and neither does something or gives any hook for the other to pick it up so they can do something more fun.

But afterwards... 'this place is boring, ugh'. That grinds my gears.

My (spoiler-free) thoughts on Eternals.

It was... a lot of movie for a movie. It's possible that modern-day TV, as well as the way films had been structured in the past where characters were set up in one then payoffs and arc resolutions were delivered in another, has skewed my expectations.

But there were 10 brand-new characters in one sitting. That meant some got a lot of screen time and some received less, but also that I simply knew - and cared about some more than others. I definitely wanted to know more about some of the 'secondary' Eternals, especially when they portrayed chemistry between them very convincingly or hinted at personal history that we're not exposed to.

I really felt this could/should have been a Disney series. Give us the chance to know these people. Like... I feel I spent more time with Aunt May in Spider-man, and cared about her relationship with Happy, than I did about some of the ones in Eternals.

But otherwise this was a good movie. I liked it. The scope was excellent. It portrayed characters who had depth and agency, and whose - sometimes very difficult, deeply moral - choices put them in a sympathetic light no matter their actions.

Kumail Nanjiani legitimately lifted the movie in several spots when it needed a laugh. The guy is funny. Angelina Jolie is a movie star and it showed whenever she was given a chance to steal a scene. And I'd definitely be interested in watching a sequel.

Also: The film was apparently banned in certain countries because of a kiss between two men. It's still important that Disney did that without blinking though. The movie didn't either glorify or shy away from it; it felt organic, and fit in the flow of its narrative.

I have the following comment to make.

In a thread much like this one someone followed a general "personally I don't like this concept" objection with bukkake. I feel they got frowned at considerably less than Theno did for not liking ANSI/ASCII art.

We're not being fair, and by doing so we're diminishing people whose histories should speak for themselves. No one is doubting Kanye's value to Arx (even though she'd prone to cranking it to eleven on issues that matter to her) and it'd be foolish to doubt Thenomain's character and overall maturity (even though he's prone to assuming his way is the right way).

But take those two quirks away and does either of those people seem bad? I've disagreed strongly with both on a variety of issues in the past, and I don't think so. So why don't we step back a bit - from a topic about ANSI art, are we in the nineties again! - and go back to talking about Arx?

@Pyrephox, @Apos, I don't know which games you jerks have you been playing but where I'm at if you're willing to set then people will adore you for it, not object to your choices of ambience.

I've encountered a hell of a lot of silence following 'hey, anyone else wants to set?' than 'HELL NO you did not just pose it was raining!'.

Fuck you all, I binge-watched the shit out of Cobra Kai and I'm tired of pretending I didn't!

@Nein said in Superhero Games: Quest For Villain PCs:

@Roz I probably run in different mu subcultures, because I've rarely heard of PvP causing drama.

What?

Come on, you don't think a large part of their client base doesn't ever intend to show these messages to anyone else?

I'd be willing to bet there are a lot of lonely people out there subscribing to this service. Hell, or its sexting equivalents.

... Damn, we need to pull our best TSers from these forums and form a sexting corporation. Finally, a niche for such skills! All those years roleplaying hot and steamy but dysfunctional relationships over text are about to pay off.

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

@Arkandel The XP issue is actually one of the things that particularly concerns me, design-wise, moving forward. Especially since with the training thing, people who have more money can open an /even larger/ gap in progression between the haves and have nots. It's definitely a concern, I think. Especially since some of the things that SHOULD matter (conflict of interest, other duties) for those in high places don't really matter - a High Lord doesn't actually have any of their IC time taken up by their duties, so they're free to go out and smash things on the battlefield, hang out in the slums making friends with peasants, join the Faith, research all the magics, etc.

Well, I'm sure the AP system was designed (at least in part) to address the multitasking thing, for sure. In a strange way though it will, at least in some ways, actually impact the have-nots more; for instance if it costs me a ton of AP I am least inclined to share my @clues with newbie #2871 that I just met.

But the thing is, it's really hard to systematize these things because in some ways they are working as intended. You pointed out one way; someone with the relevant Teaching skill can convey massive XP discounts, but only get a limited number of training sessions to use per week, so obviously those with resources or allies can benefit more, which isn't unreasonable. People with cash and favors to call are supposed to have an advantage, right?

There's some gaming the system obviously. For instance folks mass-messaging everyone they've ever met then asking for support with their tasks yields zero RP - it's simply a resources grab. It's nothing new for people to mistake cause and effect (the in-game carrots are supposed to generate roleplay, players aren't supposed to treat roleplaying as the barrier between them and the carrots!) but it's more prominent on Arx due to its size.

Meanwhile, the "I'm too cool for school" crap is ALWAYS an issue, and it's really annoying. I'm not keen on people who have their characters have hysterics or breakdowns and disrupt plots, but damn, wo/man, show some human emotions. I remember being in one plot where the GM was posing some really great, spooky as hell stuff, and I was enjoying my character having some significant reactions to that...but the other character was just like, "Eh." And then I felt silly.

Yes, that's basically it. The ST needs to enjoy themselves too; my character isn't in the scene, the only entertainment is in the interaction between the story and characters participating in it; if they're largely uninterested in engaging then I am not having much fun either. But come on, every PrP can't be about armies trying to obliterate everyone - if we have to one-up the stakes every time then clearly this isn't going to work out... something has to give. Plus it leaves entire thematic tropes completely uninvolved - crime, horror, swashbuckling adventuring, etc.

You know what the curious thing is though? I had a conversation recently with a member of my House who was complaining OOC that he has nothing to do, doesn't know what to do... he's just feeling blah. In the mean time he avoids playing about anything fun; he almost always joins RP, by his own admission, when there are people he can farm @randomscenes from, plays to improve his gear and gather resources to trade and improve his gear, etc. So essentially this guy plays the game in the least entertaining way possible then he's puzzled it's not engaging him. Which is the flipside of this whole situation, and a real head-scratcher for me.