Best posts made by Arkandel

@thebird said:

I'm also terrible at Googling for some reason. b ) Why the hell is the charge on my Charge not lasting much more than a day...? Did you find a fix for your issues @Arkandel ?

It's on a thread here somewhere - basically I contacted Fitbit's support, they have the charging data from when it syncs so they could tell something was off, and they're sending me a complimentary replacement (so I didn't even have to use the warranty). Which was rather nice of them.

But yeah, I think Fitbit's got an issue with their batteries. And man they're pumping out model after model - they'll cannibalize their own stuff very soon if they haven't already. Apparently their newest model is "focused on fashion".

@faraday said in Innovations to the form (Crowdsourcing?):

What makes it an improvement is having a better user experience. You don't have to learn a set of command-line commands and remember obscure syntax (is it bbpost title/message or title=message?). You can have images to prompt the story appear seamlessly in poses. You can use hyperlinks and bold text and other formatting things that telnet MU*s don't let you do. You don't have the game over here and the wiki over there and have to worry about integrating the two (often times manually). You don't have to clean logs. Etc. Etc. Etc.

That's exactly it. Not relying on text-only. Being able to offer a decent user interface - hell being able to provide visual, point-and-click one. We're all stuck on command-line stuff for so long but that's not what people expect; a black screen with walls of text and +command stuff is too much.

The way I like to think of it as an example is this: Imagine CGen where you see a character sheet not much unlike (or even identical) to the one at the back of the RPG book, and you fill it up in exactly the same way.

The barrier to entry would be significantly lower and I think there would be a lot less friction in many day-to-day MU* tasks. But that's just me. I freely admit to being in the minority here.

I'd like to think once the paradigm is shifted - and to do that we'll need a working prototype - things will take their course. It won't be easy for us (and I'm including myself in that list - no one gets to use a specific way to play for 20 years and then suddenly switch completely overnight without some regret) but I don't see another way for the hobby to actually start getting new players in any decent numbers. At the moment we only get those motivated enough to fight through it.

@Paris said in Innovations to the form (Crowdsourcing?):

And yes, so far it's been working fine. Players have been responsible about following the guidelines, and offering leadership and mentoring without stomping on folks. We've been monitoring things as well, and have only rarely needed to suggest and clarify things to Guest Stars to help keep folks on track.

I'm glad to hear it. It's good to experiment and try new things then have people prove you right for trusting them.

As of episode 6, the Shannara Chronicles are a mixed bag.

The special effects are pretty good but the story is a bit more cliche than I like (plus characters' competence fluctuates so much based on what the plot needs at any given time) and some of the acting is very unconvincing.

But it's not boring. If you like a bunch of attractive long-eared people fighting demons it's got potential.

@SG At that point I'd just walk out or at least stop posing. If a scene isn't fun what's the point?

@hedgehog I love it. Atm it's my favorite show on TV.

Also when you respond to a player (character? sometimes the distinction is unclear) doing something stupid by introducing consequences for it, you often enrich the plot. Not everything that's IC bad is a bad thing.

Also also, What STs - especially new ones - should probably avoid is introducing situations where the entire plot is destroyed if the PCs don't do a specific thing; keeping things flexible in that regard, or having backup options to deliver critical information can be a very good idea.

A classic example is very important but thinly detailed NPCs - maybe the guy your entire story is based around is supposed to be this cool, shady guy for whose development you have so many amazing plans about, but whom the party decides to murder in cold blood when they first see him because he's all shady and stuff. Plot armor can be frustrating but there are ways to introduce contigencies without being heavy handed about it.

@tragedyjones As long as you don't PM it'll all be okay. Eventually you'll run out of cares.

Just don't PM.

Don't do it.

Yeah, if you are killing a PC then give them something to remember. You can totally brag about a well eviscerated character.

@Three-Eyed-Crow FNL falls into this weird category for me where I don't like the sport it's about at all but some of my favorite TV shows or movies are in it. Same thing as baseball; I hate the actual sport but The Natural is one of my favorite films of all time.

@Thisnameistaken

This would work or fail based on two major factors:

1. If resource deprivation leads to a dynamic environment where one group's gain is another's loss - with all the friction, politics, backstabbing and brutality that could entail - or if playing kumbaya with each other leads to a quick happily ever after. This includes dealing with a tilted demographic (why won't every new character go join the winning side until they take over through numbers alone) without adding too much micromanagement to people's gameplay.

2. Whether players will have something to roleplay about outside PrPs, since STs will always be scarse. Also consider fracturing the playerbase too much might be an issue, especially if it's broken down into X IC sub-communities with little or no IC contact with each other.

I'd focus on those two factors and design game mechanics based on those, especially (1).

My sports movies/TV shows peeve FOREVER is how hard it is to pull off a basketball one.

The reason it's so hard is that for some sports like (say, football or hockey) they get to hide athletes behind helmets, and for other sports you can fake playing well since there are specific but generic enough moves involved (baseball, golf) so they can teach someone to execute them convincingly.

Basketball? There's no way in hell someone can just pick up decent enough dribbling skills for one movie enough to do even a crossover halfway convincingly. That guy who can't dribble and shoot a jumper like a pro - and we've seen pros' shots thousands of times so the difference would be noticeable immediately - will stick out like a sore thumb.

@wanderer said:

Also, zombies are lame and so overdone. Come up with your own apocalyptic bad guy. Alien infestation. Triffids. Monsters from a secret government laboratory... well, okay, the horror of zombies is that they were once human, so you have to kill a decayed former-person. That's pretty cool. But the way they've been overplayed, especially in computer games like L4D, it's just gratuitous slaying of hordes. Zombies work best when it's not strangers, when the zombies are humanized. When they are family and close friends that the protagonist has to confront/kill. I guess ease of infection is a significant factor in this regard.

I think you may be missing the point in turning something like this into the game.

With a few exceptions - if you want to dangle the apocalypse's resolution in front of your characters as a potential goal, for example - it doesn't really matter what manner of creature has caused the breakdown. Whether it's brain-eating zombies or aliens craving human flesh, everyday roleplay will be between normal people thrust into abnormal circumstances, which means the threat works as just one of many environmental variables; that's what's interesting here, how the PCs' respond to these things.

With the caveat that there are more than one ways to make a game the focus should be on those interactions. Do you see the other person - or group - as a potential ally? As a joiner? As a competitor? As an enemy? Other human beings are your greatest potential asset and biggest threat, far more so than mindless hordes of whatever it is that's out there. Dealing with resource deprivation, psychological trauma and the knowledge all it takes is one bad day for it all to end.

In that context it doesn't matter what it is that's out there. You won't interact with it outside PrPs, it's just a point of reference.

IMHO one of the benchmarks to see if your game might be going the wrong way is if you have Flintstones-minded people trying to fix the apocalypse on channels, purely OOC. Let's build a steel wall, surrounded by an acid-filled moat leading into corridors with zombie-killing grinders powered by zombies on treadmills who're also providing infinite electricity, woohoo. If that gets traction it's all going into a different direction.

@tragedyjones Your core muscles must be iron hard, hauling that thing around your neck all day long.

@Coin

Obviously no solution will please everyone but the hybrid one seems best.

There is a very nasty problem you are likely to run into in that people will preemptively sign up for spheres. I.e. since they know Demon (or whatever) has a queue of 10+ which can take weeks or months to go through they'll sign up with no immediate intention of playing there, or will simply be in the sphere and just hog a spot by logging on but not actually playing.

Two potential solutions:

1. Allow just one (supernatural? overall?) alt. This way at least you are discouraging people who intend to play in your game at all from parking characters in its spheres.

2. Define then hardcode an activity requirement. It's not so hard, it's just that everyone will define it in a way that makes sense for them, so you'll need to pick one. My personal pitch is something that goes kinda like this (more refinement is needed but just to get an idea):

• When you pose in an IC room someone else has posed in in the last <X> minutes, increment the weekly RP counter by one.
• At the end of the week reset all counters.
• Anyone whose RP counters is under <Z> for <Y> weeks in a row is considered inactive.

Yes, people can trick it but especially if you combine it with (1) you're still fine. Doing it on a weekly (rather than daily) basis makes it easier with people who for whatever reason can't play every single day from idlying out, and you can even offer warning @mails to people near the limit so they're aware they're near the limit.

There's no need to make activity requirements high or draconian, only that you make them fair and universal. Hell, you can even set vacation flags for players who warn about it in advance so their counters aren't checked.

Just some thoughts.

@ArmedCarp Their batteries holding a charge is an issue, that's about it. To give you an idea, I had a replacement tracker sent which itself had battery issues so now they're sending me a second replacement for the first placement.

There's a suspicion it could be because I was charging from a wall socket instead of a computer's USB port (!) which is silly since I've been using the same one to charge a bunch of different devices, but...

(Also, open Geist )

Gym wildlife, an important documentary.

So is it fair to say from this (admittedly small) sample relatively few people are perusing the wiki for this? Only two seem to have mentioned checking there at all.

Or is it that using the wiki for that is a more mid/long term thing as opposed to simply logging on to look for scenes?

@silentsophia said:

Edit: Or those damnable resume builders on websites. I HAVE ONE. JUST TAKE IT.

Although I know exactly what you mean, from the web sites' perspective it's better if they can present employers with a single format for every resume submitted than pretty much a different one per applicant.

@EmmahSue said in Finding roleplay:

But in the end, I'm not a fan of being the center of a story.

Does a PrP ran for you need to have a story revolving around your PC?

Also, you are a monster. You probably don't even like Tolkien.