@lordbelh I have no issues with nudity whatsoever, less so when it comes to the usually quite attractive PBs people pick.
But if I'm sitting at a subway station and decide to take a peek at people's characters to pass the time I'd rather know in advance what the likelihood of boobs is. It's not a big deal either way, but you did say you failed to see how it hurts anyone at all - this could, potentially. I guess.
@Thenomain said in Dragon Age: Smoke & Shadows:
Morbid, hell, I think it should be required information. Knowing the perks of staffing is one of the checks against staff taking more advantages than players, or getting in the way of players having fun.
Yes, but in my experience - which admittedly might be anecdotal - the problem is less staff alts (staff tend to be pretty busy and can't play their own games very consistently) and more staff friends, which is a different issue altogether. Because then what is a 'staff friend' defined by? A good reliable player? Their buddy? RL bf/gf? To some extent any player trusted to play an important feature character has to be at least known by staff.
And that's without even factoring the subjectivity and petty jealousy some players are naturally inclined to demonstrate in MU*. Did Theno get given Hawke which I wanted? That fucker is obviously TSing/sucking up to staff.
@tempest Yeah, that was a great series too.
Have you tried the Traitor Son Cycle by Miles Cameron? Another favorite of mine - fantasy once again, humanity is fighting a losing war with nature - and they're losing, badly. The forests are reclaiming the world, creatures of the Wild are pushing civilisation back into their castles... very cool, occasionally grimdark stuff. Excellent depictions of battles, too.
Oh also! The Broken Empire series is currently in its third trilogy - but they can be read mostly in any order since they're about different characters. That's the most underrated stuff most people should know about since the author is crazy creative - there are so many ideas and wacky notions in there, from characters whose minds are getting read locking the memories of their own plans into boxes so they can't be stolen by their enemies, a reality cracked by nuclear explosions in the past besieged by horrors trying to break in, super-intelligent rogue AIs attempting to hijack control of the world... and it's fantasy. The protagonists are fighting back with swords and bows.
@thenomain said in What's out there now and what has been attempted? A codebase discussion.:
Edit: And another thing, this “telnet is antiquated” talk should stop. People use SSH daily. Obscuring it is not a bad idea, but throwing out a common protocol just because it’s old is shooting yourself in the foot.
Just to make it clear, the telnet protocol's age isn't why I object to it - hell, most of what's needed to make a perfectly viable web-only game is easily 10-15 years old by now.
It's that it was never made to support what we're asking it to do. When I type "ls" I never want the output to be changed afterwards (I need to know exactly what I typed, even if it was incorrect), but when I pose "Arkandel slowly picks up his bag slowly" and don't see it until after I hit enter... too bad. It'd sure be nice if I could fix it for more than just the wiki.
Even if someone doesn't want a specific feature it'd be nice if it was possible to even consider it.
I suppose the idea is that the character is hypersexualized but their player doesn't want to TS. I mean you're right, it's a bit weird, but it's not incomprehensible. Also, some people who proclaim they never TS don't really mean never.
My own question is why people who don't play sexual concepts have bikini-clad models as their PBs. If you're playing a tough sniper-slash-car-mechanic chick then what's with the boobs?
@Ominous said in A new game?:
Kushiels Debut has been mentioned already, but I play there. Yes, it has lots of sex, which should be unsurprising considering the source material.
I have never been on a game where there wasn't a lot of sex, or where people weren't more or less openly rolling characters whose main goal was to find a romantic/TS partner, or pairs weren't locked up in private rooms forever.
I think the narrative about 'sex games' is fundamentally flawed. Yes, on a game like KD there are going to be fewer plots about say... killing things (although there are still some) than a Werewolf game, but there'd be just as much of a focus on politics as anything involving the Kindred. All they are doing is making it more public that it's the theme's focus as opposed to horror or whatever.
@ghost What's genuinely shocking is that in at least two cases so far (Spacey and Hoffman's) they didn't even try to deny it. It was sort of... really lukewarm. Wtf.
As for Ratner, apparently he whipped it out and started masturbating in front of them? Also, wtf, who does that?
I never felt the screen was there to allow the ST to cheat - that's not the point. It's for the anticipation, not knowing what that asshole just rolled (or even if he did it to mess with our heads), so it's not about trust in the first place.
On a MU* I couldn't care less how these things are calculated. If I know the ST whether he tells me my character has some crippling Condition because he just pulled it out of his ass or because he rolled something, whether I can see it or not, is irrelevant. It happened - move on.
@Coin said:
Do we really think snipe-slash-car-mechanic chick can't be a sexual being?
And if this isn't what was meant, then maybe a rephrasing or clarification is in order.
Of course they can be. But the selection of PBs for a wiki - as far as I can possibly tell, someone can correct me if I'm wrong - is supposed to be roughly representative of what the PC looks or feels like by default. So if I'm playing a savvy high-end corporate lawyer and chose Matthew McConaughey as his likeness I wouldn't post the cowboy hat-wearing shirtless scenes from him in Magic Mike. I'd pick ones where he's wearing an expensive suit and tie to convey an idea of what I'm going for there.
It's got nothing to do with whether he gets busy in the bedroom after a big win at the courthouse and more with the impression I want to project for what the character is about. If I was playing him as a bar owner or showman? That would be a fit.
@Cupcake Well, on one hand I can't quite agree there was something wrong with a rumor you started OOC yourself being believed by any PCs; after all the fact it became a rumor IC means someone believed it, right? It caught on, by definition and your own hand. So I can sort of kind of see a player feeling slighted if he's confronted about taking something that's on the board at face value, especially if - if they're extended the benefit of a doubt - they genuinely though you were asking for that kind of roleplay in the first place since you were the one who came up with it.
On the other hand though the gap between staff and characters, even NPCs, should be considerably wider than what's demonstrated. "Don't argue with staffers" is a dumb expectation - let alone game rule - to have as not only does the staffbit not convey infallibility but also because arguing with the DM is an honored RPG trope. 
Sure, doing so in the middle of the scene is frustrating since it interrupts its flow, and if someone's a chronic whiner it legitimises the intervention a bit but there's no evidence of that here.
In fact the rule probably does more harm than good, especially for a game whose runner just posted right on this thread that he didn't hear about a problem until it was too late. If you discourage your players from talking to you it shouldn't be a surprise that they don't.
@kanye-qwest Are your doctors/physiotherapists at least trying to figure something out? Sometimes they are just shrugging their shoulders and pushing painkillers/anti-inflammatories over like they're going out of fashion.
@Sunny said:
It's not. But it could very easily be used to cheat. Easily.
Well, sure it could, but so what? If I'm surrounded by friends having fun, is it really important if the ST faked a botch to add drama to the scene?
What's important is for me to have fun, not my character. In fact most of the time those two goals are mutually exclusive.
My process starts with figuring out what the character will be doing. The most interesting PC in my head is useless if there's no way to utilize them in the actual game; how will he interact with others? What makes him interesting for them to play with? What can he do in a group, why would other people go to him? What would his preferred role be in plots?
If the game supports distinctive factions and/or templates (Bloodlines, Legacies, etc) I definitely look at that at this stage as well. While it can be fun occasionally to shoehorn the 'wrong' personality into an archetype they're not a good fit for, it takes some special circumstances to make it happen. If that's the path I'll choose then it needs to be part of his progression (starting with a peace-loving bookworm who's shaped by in-game tragedy to slowly become something else), but since that can take a while I'd reserve it for games I expect to be playing long-termly.
I have some idea of those things before I enter CGen since it's then that I figure he's functional. A bookish loner is no good though, even if his stats could make him useful for others, so that's when I start gearing his background in my head - the guy needs to either want or be compelled to be social to some degree. At this point I know about what his skills and attributes should be geared towards, so I pick them and move on as soon as possible to the next stage; the background.
I don't like making characters with a very wealthy history. It can easily lead to a too-cool-for-school IC outlook which I abhor; the guy should never look at in-game events and go 'meh, I've seen worse' just based on his past unless that's somehow interesting on its own (and it rarely is). I prefer thinking of those as foundations for the future, stuff to build on - maybe he's seen some shit but he's not prepared for this. Or he has seen even worse yet now he needs to re-interpret his role and carve a new place in the world (which may not let him)... but there should be a wealth of options in there I can use to propel him forward. The worst case scenario here would be a stagnant character whose potential is capped by his own background story.
I freely admit I don't have any idea who a new character is during the first few sessions with him; I know what he is but his personality is under development. It's taken me anywhere from one to... many scenes before I went hah! and found a PC's voice when he allowed me under his skin. I sometimes read my own logs weeks or months later and I laughed because it was basically all wrong, but that's just a byproduct of this process. I start generic, try things out, probably make him more irritating or know-it-all than he tends to become later on, but it's never right off the bat.
I also hate redoing things I've already played. It feels like a failure if I have a 'type' that I like. I'm already prone to making characters who talk a lot because that's just my style (I know, stop gasping) so the last thing I need is to also play the same personality over and over again. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with it, but I'd like to think I can pull different things off.
Finally... I don't like making characters who're too... in-your-face with their weirdness. I do like them being strange but not when it's anywhere near Fishmalk levels; there need to be subtleties, intricancies, stuff you don't see at a first glance. The character can be flawed as hell but I don't like that being in your face. I also enjoy playing them the less likable types sometimes; the idea everyone I play needs to be super liberal, free-thinking and fair doesn't sit well with me. They don't need to be assholes - people should still like them - but not perfect.
As for the appearance... I can't say I work on it too hard. I used to like artwork, but it's fallen out of fashion so I just pick someone who looks appropriate, but it's an afterthought at best for me.
It's one of the 2-3 MU* I'm waiting to see how/if it turns up so keep us posted please.
@faceless You're gonna love that series. Bonus points: It's going to be a Hollywood movie (because of course it is), so you might as well read it before everyone else does, then you can be a hipster about how you were into it before it was cool.
@skew said in Is there a game about...:
@arkandel I actually was working on this, first converting ThenoCode to Rhost, then converting from CofD to Vampire V5. I got the first part done, and before the second came, I jumped on Chontio. Thusly, my game is no more!
But I do have Thenocode converted to Rhost, if that is any more appealing to anyone than Thenocode on Mux.
When you're done being in a galaxy far, far away maybe you'll feel like helping people drink blood again! It'd be great to have the option of V5... I miss Vampire: the Masquerade dammit.
@Ganymede said:
I hope you can admit that appearances are not always indicative of behavior. If so, I think you'll see why some of us are struggling with what you originally wrote.
I suppose I do. Perhaps I assumed my reasoning for picking PBs is more universal - pick them to emphasize some aspect of the PCs' demeanor rather than 'this is what he'd look like without clothes' if being unclothed wasn't an important part of the overall character - but I'm certainly not offended by what people pick. Perhaps puzzled, though.
@skew It's so dangerous you risk not closing your parentheses!
@faraday Oh, sure, if staff went ahead and made Manhattan (or Zonix 6) a viable place to play away from their 'home' then they can't complain the playerbase is spread out.
But although I think that's a bad choice to make, it's still a choice for game makers.