Best posts made by Arkandel

@golgoth said in Alternative Formats to MU:

Instead of replacing a MU-client, the players generally have a choice to connect using the medium that they want.

I just wanted to isolate this part if you don't mind so I could point out this is not at all what's wanted here.

Ditching the dedicated telnet client (Potato, SimpleMU, etc) for what comes down to a web-based telnet client isn't an upgrade - in fact it's probably the opposite, since instead of gaining something you are actually losing features such as triggers, custom word highlighting, spawns, etc. I mean there may be browser extensions which can be substituted to provide some of these but it would still not constitute the paradigm shift wanted here.

None of the complexity - the arcane CGen plus-commands, the long stream of arguments needed just to send a page or construct a bboard post - is gone, all you are spared (and that's a maybe) is to download and install a separate program

A good marker for a true web based client would be that it's impossible to carry its features over telnet. A point and click interface for instance from CGen to combat or a non-scrolling terrain grid, or a forum with threads you can expand/contract, stuff like that. Aside from the input complexity, everything you do using telnet produces so much scrolling.

@Seraphim73 Since we're on a Game of Thrones thread here's a general wish: May the casting directors for all these new high-end shows luck out as much as GoT's did in finding the perfect actors for each role.

Because GoT knocked it out of the fucking park.

Barring specific and isolated circumstances, anything that means players who are online at the time and willing to roleplay with each other can't do so is a bad idea.

***=When it comes to this season now that it's all said and done the thing I disliked the most, and perhaps primarily,***

@tempest said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:

Why haven't @ghost and @The-Tree-of-Woe delivered our X-Men only MU yet?

It takes a special kind of crazy to read the comic book threads as of late and think "gee, what I really need in my life is to make a comic book MU".

Well, the lady in question just crushed the phone part of the interview so.

@tempest said in Regarding administration on MSB:

Faraday appears to be super mega invested in turning this into rainbow unicorn times. Way more invested than anybody willing to argue with her about why she's wrong, anyways. It's not worth the time.

Let's not reduce this argument on either side into a strawman. It's not a "people who just want to see the world burn" versus "people who want rainbows and unicorns".

There's more nuance than that, so let's find a compromise instead of demonizing each other.

@kestrel said in Heroic Sacrifice:

So the question becomes, as a game creator, how do you tackle this? How do you encourage your playerbase to step back a little from their need to play heroes? From their need to avoid obstacles, reject risks/stakes, and inhibit progression or complexity in a story?

Start with rewarding failure. Not many games do this; in fact nearly none do.

Almost all games reward success; you get XP, recognition, ranks, status, resources, all for winning... but then you are also told you shouldn't care whether you win or not. That's a very steep hill to climb afterwards as a player, especially since every other non-MU* game does the same thing. WoW doesn't give you loot for not killing the boss!

And yet books do exactly that, very often. Heroes don't sit there basking in one victory after the other, they suffer setbacks and then if they win in the end it's brief - they need to face the next adversity, then the one after that. How boring would it be if you read about the adventures of Harry Dresden, the guy who never lost a fight in his life? Yet that's exactly what most MU* players think they want.

So reverse that. Make having adversaries the way everything is earned; you are judged by your political enemies, you grow by losing social encounters as much as you do by winning them. The more powerful your major opponents grow the more you do in a symbiotic way.

... Or something along these lines. Mechanically the choice would be yours, but we need - as a hobby - to ensure what we reward in a game is what we actually want. That is not the default. By default we blindly reward what the last game did, going all the way back to various table-top RPGs most are ultimately derived from, but which were never developed to be used in MU*.

This didn't happen too long ago but it's pretty cringe-worthy so here's it is - my story.

After many years' worth of staring at screens and sitting in awkward positions my lower back is pretty sensitive. It can take a lot of punishment in some ways but very little in others - for example I can't stand up and still for a long time, although I can run, play sports, etc just fine. As a result I sometimes need to visit an RMT to loosen it up. Thankfully there is a very good massage/physical therapy clinic near my workplace, so I can always pop over my lunch hour or after work.

One December, not that many Decembers ago, I needed a visit again... but as it was near the end of year many people were taking their leftover 'freebie' insurance company-paid massage appointments then, so the clinic's RMTs were all booked up every day.

I figured it was okay, I could just try a different massage place - and you can probably already see where this is going. It's going there.

I Googled for places and reviews and simply picked the highest rated one, since I could really use a massage. However I neglected to do two things: Include the actual "RMT" term as part of my search criteria and I did not actually read the reviews themselves. I just went by the grade - a solid 4.6! Hey, these people must be good, right? So I called, got an appointment and went over.

In my defense it just looked like a regular place, but perhaps I should have been tipped by the receptionist's... shall we say... unusually tight clothing. And yet I am not one to judge! If that's what the lady wanted to wear so be it, right? Right? So she lead me to this room where some things did seem off, and alarms started (too late) to go off in my head, so I started thinking maybe this is a terrible mistake, but I'd committed to the course at that point. Why was there a shower in the room? Why did she quote a number for the full hour half of what the RMT clinic charged? And why was she really, really surprised I wanted to use my card to pay instead of cash? Like... she had to run back to her desk and figure out how the card reader worked.

Yeeeah at this point it looked like mistakes had been made but this was all at noon in a mall between a bunch of corporate buildings. Surely business people did not... like, no way. Surely. I was being paranoid.

So when the massage person finally came she was also dressed in a really, really liberal fashion. So far nothing had gone truly awry, yet in my emerging panic I had no real way of asking - politely - if this is what I signed up for or not. Dammit, how do you even start that conversation?

And then finally (thanks, lady) she asked if I wanted the regular massage or 'the enhanced one'.

Okay, look, at this point I had to ask. I had practically left myself no choice - so I did. "... What's the enhanced one?", which she told me (for the uninformed, the reduced cost was because the tip wasn't included.... please, no puns).

Long story short I came clean, which I'm sure she probably knew as well well before I did. Things stopped there, but I did leave a tip for her time anyway since I was taking her time away from properly paying customers.

Following all this I did need to call my S.O. since, well, that charge on my card might not have looked great in retrospect. She couldn't stop laughing about it then and to this day she's been repeating the story with coworkers and friends with wild impunity.

This is my story. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

@kay said in Let's talk about TS.:

However, that's also why (I think) superhero games put in rules to limit sexual things. Because if you don't, you don't have a superhero game anymore, you have Shang with capes. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's a wholly different genre and flavor. I remember on the first Crucible City game we had to implement rules for that very reason, because we had people app in TS concepts, not superheroes.

That's my own peeve. I don't mind TS at all in any OOC consenting form unless it takes over the game, and too much becomes about who is fucking whom and how. Wonder Woman and Batman can engage in all the BDSM acrobatics their players want behind closed doors... but when it's time to fight Amazo it needs to be about the JLA beating up a crazy robot.

My youngest one, a dignified lady of dignity during her beauty rest.

That tennis ball has been... everywhere. Mostly in her face.

@alzie I wonder why some people think Mage is complicated. I don't get it.

It makes me unreasonably content to have the means to exercise again in my garage.

It's not about being strong; I don't play sports during the pandemic. It's not about looking good; I barely go out during the pandemic. It's not even about being healthy, or not entirely.

I've realized I need the incentive to look after myself properly though and without goals and structure I cannot do this. Or, rather, I haven't; in the last year and a half I've taken terrible care of myself. I ate badly, dressed the bare minimum needed to sit in front of a web camera for meetings every morning, and I didn't have a reason to care.

For whatever reason having some iron to lift up and put down again works for me. It gives me a reason to look after the rest of my life. And it makes me feel good about it in ways I didn't realize I was missing until they came back.

@surreality It's also a reminder that fade to black isn't a solution for anything (and I say that since it's often heralded this way - 'just tell them to FTB and move on').

The worst kinds of players aren't even after TS, so they won't be deterred just because there won't be poses involved. They are after power over other players.

Naturally when I saw this I thought of @Ganymede

@tinuviel said in MU Things I Love:

@botulism said in MU Things I Love:

Running a game where things have an expiration date

I definitely wish more games did this. In a way that people were definitely aware of such an expiration, of course.

What's interesting is that the most game probably want to run indefinitely but they have a short shelf life anyway due to dwindling activity levels, which might have been improved if they had introduced the urgency of doing a limited run.

Loki was great!

***=NSFW content***

In my opinion and experience a good player can make just about any character type highly appealing.

@kestrel This is my favorite topic. Let's debate it more!

An underlying theme in all of Lord of the Rings - to the point of it being explicitly brought up on multiple occasions by Gandalf and Galadriel - is that the fight between good and evil isn't really determined by mighty warriors but by everyday people stepping up in whatever capacity they have to defend their friends and communities.

It's for that reason that Sauron isn't defeated in some final showdown against Aragorn or Gandalf. In fact in the movies they debated that (and shot the scene, it's on youtube!) but then - correctly - realized it was unthematic. The hobbits are the true heroes; it was these complete nobodies' journey, hardships and sacrifice that brought down the Enemy.

Sam embodies all of this. He was no prophesized figure. He didn't come from a storied lineage. He didn't inherit a Ring of Power. The dude was into landscaping, he dug holes in the dirt for a living in a backwater village his whole life.

Sam, also, by the end of the story carried the fate of Middle Earth solely on his shoulders. He fended off the most corruptive power in existence that brought down Numenorian Kings and was feared by Maia and Noldor Elf Queens for its seductive properties to help his friend. He fought ancient spidery horrors in freakin' Mordor. The dude was hardcore. He was also a fucking gardener.

And at the end of it all he went back to gardening. What a madlad. Like... Grey Havens? Going to Valinor? Living like a goddamn hero in Gondor? Nah, he just planted trees, raised a family and, you know, had a good life until he passed away from old age.

I don't think it's even close who the hero in this tale was.