Best posts made by Arkandel

Up until Ep9 some relatively spoiler-less comments from me (but just in case I'M DISCUSSING CHARACTERS IN VERY GENERIC TERMS HERE SO DON'T READ IF YOU WANT TO BE SURE).

Elektra's actress had to grow on me. Her accent is ... inscrutable (and certainly not Greek, it sounds like french/british) and she didn't look the way I expected it. But she grew on me, especially later in the season. Her custome needs work (it's basically a jogging outfit with a scarf!) but then again so was Daredevil's in most of season 1, so maybe they're just waiting to upgrade it.

The Punisher casting was excellent. Instead of going with a Garth Ennis unrelenting, unstoppable stone-cold death machine they went with a more human version of the character at this stage, and the guy is pulling it off.

Foggy is getting annoying. Come on, man, stop with the damn whining. He's Daredevil. He does vigilante stuff. You knew this by now, come on!

And wait, after 13 episodes we gotta wait a year again for season 3? What bullshit is this? <fistshake>

@mietze I like limited consent systems for that alone; you can go after people but it specifically means you are vulnerable as well.

In fact I've seen more PC deaths on at least partially consensual systems than non-consensual ones, possibly because the shock factor is limited; you have more control over your character's fate, and somehow that translates to being more willing to relinquish it.

I've two rescued mutts. I like to think of their breeds as unique.

@Ghost said in Tips on Güd TS:

@lordbelh said in Tips on Güd TS:

@Arkandel I have to admit I just hate the you, and slap that on to a TS scene and it will make me run for the hills.

Agreed, I respectfully agree to disagree with @Arkandel on this one.

It's a... I guess a habit. Perhaps it's because that's what I'm used to ever since I started to roleplay, when emotes on MUDs substituted the proper word in (you saw 'Bob grins at you' but others in the room saw 'Bob grins at Jim') but as I said, I harbor no strong preference either way and have no issues switching if the other person asks. If anyone knows anything about me it's how clear I like to separate IC from OOC so believe me, it's not (necessarily) a sign of any confusion about it.

However the point I wanted to make is how non-universal it is; I've been in plenty of scenes where the other player set and used 'you' without us having to discuss anything first. It happens!

Anyway, to get back into TS, what I honestly never understood is why folks who are only after it, and certain rather specific kinks at that, come looking for partners on non-sex MU*. Why not do it on a sexually themed game? It just seems weird, like going to a Harry Potter game to look for horror RP - it's possible but certainly not the best place for it.

@Vorpal Other people's beliefs are irrelevant until they get in the way of my own, and I don't really see how that's possible. No one speaks on my behalf whether they wear clerical robes, hold office, or live next door - Christians aren't a hive mind.

I accept no responsibility of the atrocities that have been committed in the name of my religion - some people just want a cause to put on their banner and march under, so they'll pick whatever is most convenient for their moral peace and recruitment purposes. We've been killing each other for millennia for Zeus, Thor, Christ or Allah; that's on us.

Likewise I have no problem with doubt, debate or wholesale rejection of religious grounds. I wouldn't try to change anyone's mind but I don't worry whether someone might challenge my own; that's what minds are for, and conversely that's what faith is for. Being offended because other people's beliefs don't match my own exactly is kind of silly considering there's billions of those buggers around, I'd need to be butthurt 24/7. I have more important things to worry about.

All I ask is that you don't go around blowing shit up.

Source: Am Christian.

@lordbelh said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

I disagree!

Its okay to disagree!

How civil! It makes me feel dirty inside.

It is fairly common. I do it myself some times. But there are alternatives, including leaving together with some other original characters and taking your scene to go. We're on a game together. Things happening you can't control, a scene taking a sudden left turn, doesn't have to be a problem unless you're unable or unwilling to turn it into more fodder for rp.

My typical scenario goes like this (and I might be wrong but I think it's fairly common): I see a friend online and page to ask for RP, we pick a room and meet there. At this point we would probably both love an extra character or two to keep things from becoming too predictable and maybe pick up some additional RP hooks - so if asked we'd love to see newcomers. Picking a private room for it won't work since it's quite likely people might assume we're not open for them and won't even ask to join.

I don't think a quick page is too big a barrier to entry. It literally takes under a minute and gets rid of the entire issue right there - as opposed to people joining a scene that's already pretty busy/spammy and having to see folks leaving it for that reason. It's easy then to think they are jerks and/or take it personally because... why wouldn't you? After all you posed in and suddenly half the characters are leaving? Elitists!

Yeah, we basically live in the golden age of TV. Enjoy it, folks.

You know what amuses me though? The Hollywood 'analysts' who keep predicting superhero fatigue. People are tired of superheroes! They've been at it for a while. Any day now!

What simply doesn't seem to sink in is people don't go to watch 'superheroes' or 'westerns', they go to watch good movies. No, your crapfest buddy cop remake/sequel didn't bomb at the box office because audiences didn't want to see cops any more, it bombed because it was crap. And while talented people make good films in any genre people will show up to watch them.

They seriously think it's the idea that matters. "Audiences want to watch volcanoes this year".

@acceleration I just re-read the original post on this thread and it mentions nothing about RPIs. I was discussing the spectrum because it seems relevant when we're examining cultural differences between two kinds of games which, on occasion, are pretty similar to each other in function if not terminology. The point doesn't seem to be straying from the thread's topic.

@Bug-In-A-Jar Oh, unless it's hilarious (and few are) I never bother watching video reviews of anything. Words or bust.

Any implementation of places must be:

1. Accepted by the community. This has to be mentioned separately since it's the hardest part; you can make perfect code and it'd still fail if people don't use it because they've never used it before so it's not part of their established habits.

2. Its primal function MUST be to reduce spam for EVERYONE, not just those using it. That's half the point of this entire operation - if having 8 people in a room is spammy as hell you've lost me. If the scene has 8 people and me and two friends are in a +place but we get the spam total of 8 (3 for our own poses, 5 for the 'unplaced' players) then who cares?

3. Easy to use. If it requires more than two commands total - the equivalent of @emit and say, for instance, and/or perhaps lacking a convenient easily memorable alias it can still fail.

4. Allow for easy switching between addressing the room at large and your +place. You might want to leak some things or maybe not, but you should be able to at will. Notice how this can easily conflict with (2); such is the way of things.

@thebird said in Good or New Movies Review:

Also, Captain Amercia: Civil War was a bit of a train wreck, too....somehow I think I'm in the minority there.

Heathen! Leave your nerd card at the door until you are ready to repent for your sin.

@faraday Of course. My point was that it shouldn't be considered universal that someone unable to be OOC present for an IC event should get to pick the justification for it.

Generally they should, but it shouldn't convey any particular advantage - my rule of thumb is to handwave it completely. If it's something we just don't mention IC then that's for the best.

@thebird That's what Matt Murdock said, too.

@Kanye-Qwest said in Pretendy Fun Time Games:

If you want to have a life as stress-free as is possible, do not EVER assume that people are doing things out of spite, or because they don't like you, or because they are trying to make you question yourself and your personality and your choices. This is a foolproof plan to happiness.

Yeah, basically. The safest assumption one can probably make is that other people won't even think of you at all, either way.

Haters. Am I chatting with a friend about how great Sunday's Game of Thrones was? I HATE THAT SHOW. Is someone talking about how they love Arkham Knight? UGH I HATE THOSE GAMES. Hey, I like Diablo 3, it's an awesome game. I HATE THAT. Okay, fine, why? I HATE ROLEPLAYING GAMES UGH.

Then they go on and on about how there's a wide world out there and it's the summer! Just go out and have some fun!

My favorite (?) line when I brought up reading fiction - not just a book or even a genre but fiction in general: "Well, I think the real world is interesting enough."

@Thenomain said in New Player Onboarding:

@Arkandel

Okay, I'm going to rant. Not at you this time, just in general because this keeps coming up.

What in hell is the difference between typing in a Mu* client and typing in a web client?

A lot. The entire interface, including the client itself you're using to access the game. The presence of graphics and enriched text. The sense of familiarity and continuity from stuff you're already used to doing.

For example the very first part of doing anything on a game...CGen. Anyone who's played an RPG could fill out a character sheet and over the web you can actually show them a character sheet then have them click on the dots or whatever they're increasing and it's all visual right there on a page. On a MU* they need a collection of arcane-looking commands, sifting through help files and asking on channels, right at a time when they might (and most likely) never have used either a command-line interface, know how to look at help files or know how to use channels.

That's fairly effortless for seasoned players and not that hard to figure out for someone already hooked. But at that point they are not hooked; they heard from a friend or read something about these games and we probably have like 10 minutes' worth of their attention (I pulled that number out of my ass ) before they give up and go use a web chat or whatever kids do these days.

The typing you are referring to, the typing we can't and don't want to be rid of, comes later - once they're on the grid and they need to pose, or when they are chatting with other players. And even that can be vastly improved - consider the difference between a modern PM Hangouts-like interface with a multi-recipient page command, people logging on/off who need to be taken off or added, names with spaces in them, etc. The simplest things are what we can't improve.

Oh, and graphics. Making things actually pretty to look at. I don't need to tell you why that's important to gaining new users for a service. Have you seen some of the wikis folks like @surreality have been making? They look pretty damn neat - but they can't do much to improve the black screens with un-enriched text on them.

This stuff matters.

@Coin said in RL things I love:

Fridays.

Graffiti on a wall near my bus stop a few years ago I always liked: For every Monday morning there is a Friday night.

@Songtress said in CoD - Victorian - Penny Dreadful-ish.:

But something to consider. As someone said: Women's Lib was farther along in this alternative timeline? Did they pull a (was it Finland?) basically al lthe women just stopped working, stopped boning and said: We'd like our rights now, no sex, no work is done until we have them. And the men gave in REALLY quickly.)

It's a tough balancing act but yes, it should be made very clear what's thematically acceptable, tolerated, frowned-upon and all-but-illegal - or actually illegal. Exceptions can still be made since IC these lines are blurry at any era but the broad strokes have to be well defined so players know where they stand.

I think it's crucial to draw these line somewhere that's not too liberal - nowhere near modern standards - but allows female and foreign character concepts to be successfully pulled off. If women can't be in public without a chaperone for example, even if it was thematic, it'd be pretty damn annoying so for gameplay reasons if nothing else. However make it too comfortable and it might as well be a modern setting with slightly different clothes and technology which is probably not the desired state either.

Things Jean-Claude van Damme said.

@mietze This is also our version of popular media culture. Sure, posing torture, decapitation, spilling intestines and smashing brains is fiiine but did we just describe a penis entering a vagina? SHAME!