Best posts made by Arkandel

I swear I never click on random web page ads. I just don't.

But the other day there was a sale for Marvel Unlimited. It was like $50 for a year with a free week before I had to pay, so even though I hadn't read comics in ages I was bored enough to try it. Reading comics on my phone? That didn't seem like fun.

... I've been consuming entire series of New Avengers and Avengers. Damn best money I've spent in a while and it hasn't even been ten days yet. The Incursion series was so damn good! And there's a whole shitload of content there left.

The best part is the app itself. Instead of just lazily displaying one page at a time (and good luck reading that on a small screen) the interface is actually amazing - it auto-focuses on different parts each time I flip forward, making it really good to read. It'd probably be much better on a tablet but mine is ancient and slow as hell.

@faraday said in Historical settings:

But what would a regular old 1866 human even be like if racism or sexism didn't exist? Would females have been allowed to be regular soldiers in the Civil War? Would there even have been a Civil War without slavery and all its evils? It feels like going down a rabbit hole of dominoes hitting dominoes, and I no longer feel like I have a solid foundation on which to base my character. It's no longer historical; it's an uncanny valley of similar-but-not-quite-the-same parallels that I have a hard time wrapping my brain around.

That's a valid point. It's tricky to tackle because, like any other domino effect, any answers provided by staff would open the way for more questions.

Perhaps a catch-all statement made in advance if staff don't want to deal with certain themes? "We want to explore the Wild West era without focusing on racial tensions". Then the onus is on players to not be jerks and derail what the MU*'s goals are.

Obviously if staff do want a fully immersive environment then they absolutely can allow all that to be explored without artificial limitations in its scope or tropes.

I live in a bubble during Covid-19. My work circumstances haven't been negatively affected (in fact they've been improved in some ways) during the pandemic, yet at the same time I became much more cut off from others who do not share that good fortune. I no longer hang out with offline-only friends or chat with strangers nearly as often, so it's hard sometimes to appreciate the damage that has been done.

And there's been damage. People have lost their jobs and their networks - former coworkers, bosses - have scattered; businesses they could have counted on to find another job after the lockdowns are over are no longer there. Folks are facing grim futures with evictions looming over their heads, mortgages that will need to be picked up again and professional growth that has stalled.

The uncertainty of what the post-Covid19 world looks like (if there's such a thing, assuming some kind of herd immunity and no dangerous new variants) probably means entire lines of work are in jeopardy. It's chilling to think about. This could have been me; who'd have known the travel, dining or entertainment industry would be - could be - in such dire straits all of a sudden?

@juke said in Unlikeable, incompetent, and inactive: Can these characters work in an MU?:

Ultimately I agree with @Arkandel and a couple of other people in this thread -- a character's success almost always boils down to execution and audience, and I think the common thread isn't so much what the character is like, as it is the OOC perception/feeling that the person who's playing them is interested in other people's characters and stories, and will invest the time and effort in raising other people's characters up, as much as they do their own.

Possibly not for this thread's scope but it's also why attributes like Charisma or Status don't work very well for MU*. A great player might be playing some baseborne peon yet that's gonna be a baseborne peon with a goddamn following before long, just because it's fun being around them... while Leaderman McStatus might struggle to find anyone to come to his party.

My dogs are already experiencing separation anxiety even when I go out to grocery shop. A year ago they were human-less for 8 hours in a row most days in the week and it didn't seem like a big deal.

I suspect my slippers will pay the price for this eventually.

@surreality said in Learning how to apply appropriate boundaries:

In part, it's because they are think of it as a fight or a contest instead of a conversation. Any time someone makes the mental transition from 'conversation/communication' to 'fight/contest', the whole frame of reference changes dramatically.

It might not be the worst thing about this, but it also doesn't change the conversation only for that person but it can for everyone participating in it.

Take this somewhat harmless example. I'm in a scene with you and Gany. My character says something confrontational IC and yours comes with a great snappy comeback... then Gany says, OOC, "hahah, she put you in your place Arkandel!".

The moment that happens it ruins a lot of that scene for me, as it's reframed from an IC encounter we can all enjoy into an OOC zero-sum game where one person can emerge as the winner as long as the other loses.

When it happens and I start looking at the same RP from this meta-perspective I can very rarely get back into the groove afterwards. I just don't know of a good way to come back from that.

Look, I'm not saying we'd be wrong to send a ragtag team of scientists, adventurers, mercenaries and soldiers down this ancient hellpit to unveil its many secrets because what could possibly go wrong?

Let's do it!

@roz On the other hand it's also fun to talk about design. I quite like discussing that kind of thing even when it's not meant to become a game when it grows up, or even if the genre/theme itself doesn't even interest me.

So... what if this Arx thread's pitches aren't actively watched over by Arx stuff? If you wanna brainstorm, storm your brain out. Hell, you might inspire someone to do something cool.

This fucker keeps making shit up.

I was reading the Wheel of Time books at the time and my roommate noticed. He told he there was a MUD about the setting, which I had assumed was similar to Medievia IV - mobs, levels, etc.

Then I got on there and Ororo Sedai (white haired, she controlled the weather - it was a simpler time...) asked me to go become a Warder. I was like... sure, those are badass! But I had to find a guy who recruited them? Whaaat?

And so it began.

@mietze said in What drew you to MU*?:

We have SO FUCKING MUCH of that in MUSHing. I really don't think we need to encourage more. Enjoy what is, give your input once and constructively or at least respectfully, if it doesn't change in a way you can abide, move on.

I think it's a combination of entitlement but also painting with a wide brush.

On one hand it's 100% entitlement. We're getting services which would cost a lot of money in the real world; Theno could have make bank as a developer for the number of hours he's put into coding. Similarly staff are doing a lot of work on maintenance and support we usually expect from experienced personnel - and we demand more of that, for nothing, else we get upset. That's crazy, and wrong.

On the othe hand staff in many games have failed so much, so often that it's almost comical how we label all game runners the same, like they should be collectively burdened (or punished!) by what happened on other games they had nothing to do with or didn't even know existed. Are you trying to run a single-sphere Vampire MUSH? You can - in fact, you will - get saddled with criticism over how those MU* failed which might not even apply to you, yet you're expected to answer for.

It's all a bit crazy, but as @Tinuviel just pointed out, to run a MU* you need to be at least a little insane to begin with.

Look, screw you all cynical burned out nerds.

Ted Lasso is where it's at. Every episode is wholesome as fuck. It reeks with good will, especially for being as dirty mouthed as its dialogue often gets.

What a fun show!

@meg said in Spirit Lake: An Original Modern Fantasy Game:

(I love it. You should absolutely do a lawyer and RP with them as much as possible.)

I have every intention of using TV tropes exclusively for this. Everything I know about law I learned from Matlock, L.A. Law and The Good Wife. That should do the trick.

I OBJECT YOUR HONOR.

@derp It sucks, but it's also great. You have a friend who has spent his entire life with you; there is history there.

Yes, you will outlive him and there are no words to soften that blow when it comes, but he's here now - so you can treasure your friendship - and he will be there after, too, with you for as long as you exist to remember him.

@derp You misspelled Sam.

@rinel said in Good TV:

@groth said in Good TV:

It's a bit of a shame and almost weird how as copied as all the other aspects of Tolkiens work are, almost all of them abandon the communal heroism in favor of more straight chosen one narratives.

That aspect of Tolkien's work (along with Frodo failing at the end and Sam--who also would have failed had he been in Frodo's position--rescuing him) requires a very deeply rooted sense of humility that runs counter to modern popular sensibilities. It's rare to find it outside of very serious humanist, philosophical or religious adherents.

It's for the same reason that people continue to draw unsuccessful parallels between Tolkien's characters and other 'similar' ones in fiction.

No, Gandalf wasn't a powerful Wizard because he cast fireballs. Aragorn or Legolas were no one-man armies, either, despite their movie feats.

Hell, the Ring itself didn't have impressive feats on its own - not the catchy type; it couldn't make its wearer invulnerable, give them flight or shoot laser beams. Same as Saruman's 'voice' it made the wielder extremely manipulative, and even that not in a direct 'mind control' kind of way.

Does that mean they were less impressive than their average D&D equivalents? I laugh at the notion.

@Testament Sturm Brightblade's end... man. That was harsh.