Best posts made by Arkandel

@lordbelh said in Dead Celebrity Thread:

I always found Star Trek horribly campy, and I never watched a single episode from start to finish. I did like the new Star Trek movies, though, and the only reason is probably because they weren't very Star Trek.

What bugs me about the current Star Trek movies compared to former incarnation is that they're not as... cerebral. And I don't mean the series were always highly thoughtful or whatever - there were plenty of cringe-worthy moments, Kirk bagging green alien chicks and whatnot in there.

But when the good guys prevailed in the past it was typically because they out-thought their opposition. They did something clever, they found a loophole, exploited a vulnerability they arrived at through logical analysis or technology, there was something smart involved.

The new series favors acrobatics, superior fighting skills and pewpew'ing their way out of tough situations. While spectacular and on its own still enjoyable, that's not what Star Trek is about for me.

As usual YMMV though.

@surreality Oh, absolutely. People are complicated, sometimes we like or dislike each other based on the most arbitrary criteria and that's just the way it is.

I think it's good to know our limitations. For example I can come off as pretty condescending when I'm trying to make a point - perhaps in this very post - which is something I'm trying to regulate. Now and then I even ask a few trusted friends if a post of mine is coming off in a way I didn't mean to. Either way though and as a result of that (or other personality quirks, flaws or just characteristics) I'm pretty sure even some people right here aren't huge fans of mine (but they are misguided fools) even among those I do hold in high esteem.

It's not an exchange. They don't need to like me first and if they do I don't have to return the favor. And that doesn't mean they're right or wrong about me either - in fact I don't even know that it means anything at all.

@Cupcake Lyanna and Arya need to get together and fight crime.

@Tyche I am not suggesting we should listen to any particular party's politicians more than to politicians from other parties.

I am suggesting we should listen to the scientists who are studying the matter based on, well, science.

Two guys in their 20s on the subday on Saturday morning around 10 am. One of them was blasting - and I mean blasting as hard as his Android phone's tiny mono speaker could manage - Russian rap while they were trying to talk loudly enough to be overheard over their own music while ignoring the bewildered dirty looks from everyone else.

Then to add insult to injury they started singing along to the Russian rap for a few minutes.

Bro...

@tragedyjones said in An open letter to Fallcoast:

Guys I didn't expect @Sonder to be all "yasss throw out all the old and change everything".

1. Your mom is funny.

2. Even if you are right, and I think you have a point, it'd be really inappropriate for a game's direction to be influenced by people, many of whom aren't even playing there, on a separate forum. I'd hope FC's people are talking about new, interesting directions to take their MU* in but this isn't the place for it.

@Jaded I dunno. I live/work in a major city and the image of pedestrians walking around glued to their phones, oblivious to the world at large, is hardly new to me. I guess P:Go might have made more of that happen but it's not new, you know?

If I was a parent of a young child though I'd absolutely want to supervise where they get to play and limit it to pedestrian-only areas, yes.

@surreality I think for me it's more about what I'm not looking for, it's more of a blacklist than anything. For example anything with furries in it, or just robots/androids/transformers, if it has the word 'pony' in its description, anything like that I wouldn't go near. Nothing against people who do, they're just not my thing.

The other thing is... I'm skeptical about 'school' games - probably including Potterverse but I'm not sure - but that's because I know TS happens and would much rather I wasn't around when it does involving underage characters. So a game must have mature ratings in that way - and not just a warning in some text file as those just get ignored.

So favorite themes... I prefer cynical, political settings that focus on interactions between characters. GMs/Storytellers are usually a luxury so the more I know I can rely on simply getting to the grid and getting roleplaying done will sate my hunger for roleplaying the better it is. In that way I prefer faction versus faction games instead of every-man-for-himself ones; group affiliations are more promising than individualism in the way that they generate scenes.

Conversely I don't like heavily edited home grown themes. My idea of fun does not entail reading through the amateur rumblings of someone who took their plan for a novella/D&D campaign/fanfic spread out over ten pages on a wiki just to set the basics of their metaplot. A cohesive take based on real-world mythologies, a book actually written by an author people pay money to read, recognisable supernatural tropes... those are quite fine. Keep it simple, don't rumble and we'll get along juuust fine, Mr. Game-Runner.

Romance is great! But it needs to not be the point of the whole thing because then RP only lasts until I find a partner. Sure, the story's evolution can be fun and go through twists and changes but it's not enough meat to keep things going on its own - in my experience it serves better against a backdrop of a wider tale than its meat and bones.

Mmm, that's about it for now. Not sure if that's what you were looking for.

@VulgarKitten said in RL Anger:

Well. I met him through my cousin two weeks ago. We chatted about possibly going out on a date. He texted me 'hi' last week, to which I responded 'hey'. And then yesterday he sent me a clip of him masturbating.

And they say romance is dead.

I don't care about alt policies either way personally since I never could pull off having more than one active alt at any given time. But I never found restrictive policies to serve the purpose they were supposed to on paper.

@Vorpal What kind of person makes that post and neglects to mention the word?

@Lisse24 said in Fallen World MUX!:

@Arkandel

I've also never been able to mentally support more than one active PC on a game, and though I have PCs on many games

A fellow one-alter! We should have a club (and only allow one account per person in it).

I'm usually only focused on one at a time, and letting my others idle. So here is why I like a restrictive alt-policy: It means that the players I see on the grid are as invested in their characters as I am in mine. I think it cuts down on having alts idle away in bedrooms and apartments because people who want RP only have one char to do it in. It cuts down on conflicts where a PC with one char is ducking me because they want to play with me on another alt. It stops PC-churn, because people are less likely to create a neat concept just because when they know they'll have to give up on their other concept.

But that's what I meant before - I'm not convinced mandates on the number of alts achieve the goal of people investing in their characters like we do simply because that's not how other people necessarily like to do it. Not everyone is enlightened like we are.

I mean I know people who want to try a couple of different things - they like say, Demon but they also like Werewolf. They have friends in one sphere but they also have buddies in another who're looking for a packmate. So either way they'd need to give something up or they'll scratch the extra itch somewhere else as well; does it truly matter to you if the awesome RP partner you ran into is distracted because they're playing another character on the same MU* or on a different one? Hell, the character you ran into might be their second alt - meaning if the game didn't allow for it you wouldn't have met them in the first place.

Like Theno, I've seen games start with a restrictive alt policy and then have players start to ask for more alts. In my experience and perception, this happens when there are other, underlying reasons causing a games player base to flag and increasing alt limits is often seen as a panacea, under the reasoning if there are more charbits on grid then surely, RP must follow. It's also an easy fix to make, and typically much easier than finding underlying causes of disengagement and directing a fix at them.

That's also true - spheres stagnate, important people stop logging on causing momentum to die, folks roll characters into a different faction and suddenly there're exciting things happening there... but artificially restricting people from playing what they want doesn't solve these issues, it compounds them. You can't force life into a sphere if their roster is tired and their players want something new over the summer when things are slow or whatever, so letting some new stories to be told somewhere else in the mean time is a good thing. It sure beats people walking off to find a different MU* - that sure as hell won't help activity on the first MU*, you know?

For the record, when I speak of a restrictive alt limit, I don't necessarily mean a 1-alt limit. I would count this as any game with a limit of three or under.

Oh, three alts should be fine. People who need more are monsters.

@tragedyjones said:

@Cobaltasaurus said:

We still like you.

Why would anyone upvote that post of yours? I am history's greatest monster.

So you haven't met my cat, then.

@Pyrephox See, I guess I don't quite see things this way - that in order to enjoy playing one must fill a niche, as such roles tend to be relatively few and on any semi-popular MUSH they are inevitably going to be filled early on. Plus the mindset itself of requiring uniqueness leads to exclusionary tactics - I remember (and I've often used it as a cautionary tale) that Family faction on TR who rejected a newbie because she wanted to play a chef and they 'already had a chef'. I get where you're coming from, no one wants to be Clawy Savage Gangrel #4, but in practice it turns ugly real fast too.

I think distinction comes through ability and activity - the first can be present for an alt, of course, but the second can't. The last character I sank a lot of time on Eldritch in was rather formulaic on paper - he was a fighty werewolf. But I got pretty good scenes out of him and interacted with PCs from different walks of life because, other than what's on his +sheet - that very finite number of things that can be on there - what matters is how the concept is played, how it's angled to engage others and ultimately how it's received. I was active, too, which stood on its own out way more than someone who only showed up once in a blue moon; that's the alt edge right there.

As usual people's mileage may vary though.

Screw you, Rotten Tomatoes. I really liked Suicide Squad.

I mean it wasn't the perfect movie but it was thoroughly enjoyable... if only Cara Delevingne could act at all.

@Pyrephox said in Fallen World MUX!:

No, I get it. I just think it's wrong. "Something you will enjoy playing," is not a useful answer. ANY character I create is going to be something I enjoy playing. I don't make a policy of playing characters I don't find fun. It's like me asking, "Hey, is it better to take a right turn or a left at this street to get to this address?" and someone answering, "You should really drive to that address." It is not an answer that in any way addresses my concern!

Ah, but now we're getting into the 'a good player won't have a problem with that' argument. You know better than to create a character you're not excited about but others would, and have; I've had people come to me in the past a few short weeks into a PC going 'well, I was told/promised by that pack/coterie they needed this but I never see them and now there's no point in it, I just wanted to play it for them'. This is a thing that happens!

To get back to the matter of alts though, my one issue with them (past the ever-existent one where people in my scene are taking forever to pose because they're playing three of them at once and argh) is that more or less the same group, rather than just one player, can monopolise +events. By showing up for them (which isn't difficult, especially if they are being ran by the same ST) they take up 'spots' that could have gone to legitimately disconnected, idle players looking for something to do, which is a tricky thing to fix without extensive hardcoding or strict policies. That's because it's far easier to +event/signup and be online at 20:30ET than to show up on the grid with your third alt consistently enough to have a strong presence.

@surreality said in RL Anger:

@GangOfDolls This is a lot like my mother's entirely psychosomatic 'allergy' to smoke.

My mom spent most of her life thinking dogs and cats are inherently dirty and trying to convince me I was allergic to them - it didn't take, I loved pets from when I was a toddler and never stopped.

Anyway, while I was staying with them for a year right after graduation I brought home a stray cat. She was grumbling about that and kept asking me not to but the cat stayed... and eventually she became her cat. To the effect of 'buying and cooking fish for Sasha (which she cleaned of course) because she looked bored of dry food lately".

The cat adored her. She hated 99% of humankind and was a living weapon to all other animals but she loved us, and my mom most of all. When my mom passed away Sasha was in the room with her, as she had been for the majority of the months leading up to it.

@Kanye-Qwest said in How Many Alts Would An Alt User Alt If An Alt User Could Use Alts:

It might be difficult to avoid someone with 15 alts, especially if they are prone to making/dropping them with no notice.

On the other hand 15 alts will not have either the social capital or XP to matter as much as someone who plays 1. It's just a matter of activity.

It's just a random group but it made me feel good.

@Thenomain It's hard though to play in a game you're very highly ranked as staff in. At least for certain kinds of things - if you earn a position, rank or special place, even if you did everything by the book you'll still get shit for it.