Posts made by Arkandel

Iron Fist is cancelled.

I wish I liked it more myself but very little about either season worked for me - there were just too many weak points, and unexpected at that. The protagonist's acting was piss poor, which did no favors to the show, but I can excuse that since maybe he had good reads and they hoped he'd develop with time.

However the story and pacing itself didn't work well either, which had a major impact, as secondary arcs and support characters irrelevant to the main story were given too much focus and screen time. The poor choreography - for a martin arts show of all things - really put the nail in that coffin; Daredevil's in its first season blew this series' right out of the water in comparison.

They also never portrayed Dany as someone... well, powerful. We never saw it. Every other Netflix character was a badass in different ways, but all he seemed to do is struggle to beat second stringers - he wasn't even given the chance to fight the main villain in either of the show's two seasons' finales! Come on.

RIP, but deservedly so. A shame.

@wildbaboons I just hope they have the budget for this. I'd love a great WoT show so much.

Every time I think people can't get stupider...

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/bloody-zombie-princess-costume-sold-kate-middletons-family-sparks-outrage-183748823.html

Now and then I re-read a pose I just sent out and sigh because I repeated a certain word too much. The obvious fix for it is to re-read them before I hit enter; after editing and rephrasing things a few too many times it happens.

Other than that I don't worry about it too much. I roleplay a certain way, I write a certain way, and there are those who enjoy it yet not everyone necessarily will. I'm okay with that.

@testament said in Help a kitty out.:

The moment it's a cat or dog or any other pet like animal, and I get irrationally emotional about it and with the overwhelming desire to do SOMETHING.

I find it unsettling that I feel the same way, yet I eat the meat of animals just like these who are reportedly not always treated very well during their lifetimes or die in a nice manner, and support the practice by paying the people involved.

@thatonedude said in Do we need staff?:

SF bans Spider in an attempt to keep her crazy from spiraling out into the game. Then we see "staffer rants", the type that make most people uncomfortable as players. This is followed by banning situations where people come on here and claim innocence and it was their past bad behavior that made them banned.

That's why I dislike people focusing on VS as much as we do here. It carries the implication Spider is the WORST and since I'm not Spider how bad can I be, really?

The answer is: Pretty fucking bad.

@taika said in Do we need staff?:

@Ganymede - Except I know for a fact Rex/Ashur/Sovereign was on Eldritch playing as a demon.

How much did he get away with?

That's what matters. No one can guarantee bad people won't even be able to log on - especially before anyone knows who they are.

@bored said in Do we need staff?:

@ganymede said in Do we need staff?:

The big problem is the player base the games attract, and how the handful of foul, power-gaming, goal-oriented, fun-sucking, must-be-dominating players really take the piss out of the fun that others have.

I don't buy that at all. Where are the magical positive, happy games where no one is a dick? Which genres are those? What systems attract that unicorn of a playerbase, rather than the eeeevil terrible one WoD draws in?

I don't see why protesting there is usually a handful (as quoted above) of bad apples in certain kinds of games making a mess of them for everyone else if left unchecked suggests every other game is a happy-go-lucky paradise of unbridled positivity.

The WoD gaming culture isn't great. It's not a secret, but no one's claiming it to be a unique trait either.

@thenomain said in Do we need staff?:

Nor should there be. "Let's systemize a social system" is a good way to fail at social systems.

Staff is not necessarily part of a social system - but I'd like your thoughts on why it must be if you disagree.

It's simply that so far it has had to be, to a smaller or larger degree. In traditional MU* some things just have to done by hand or rely on someone's judgment, thus the social element was mandatory.

This thread discusses whether that's still true. It's fine to argue that it does, but it's not self-evident.

@thenomain said in Do we need staff?:

Do games need staff? Yes.

Do they need a lot of staff? Up to them.

They need the right staff.

True, but there's no way to systematize right.

That's one of the reasons the idea of games with little or no staff is attractive; if feasible it would take the factor of tracking down those (let's face it, rare) people at the right time in their lives that they happen to be active and available to do the job out of the equation.

@zombiegenesis Not that I want a game to be delayed but come on man, if you have the option of launching this right on Halloween then g'dammit, you take it.

@tyche said in Forum suggestion:

@arkandel said in White Wolf CEO steps down.:

@magee101 Announcements are for the forum. And I don't know, it didn't clearly seem to belong anywhere really. I thought to just put it in as a random link at first.

You ought to have an "Other Games" forum for posts on video games, tabletop rpgs, wargames, board games, etc. Posts discussing them can be found all over the place.

Done! Thanks for the suggestion.

We're running the current nodeBB version (v1.10.1) now and Ubuntu is happier about its upgrade cycle. Sorry about any interruptions.

I'm taking MSB down in a few minutes for maintenance and an upgrade. Hopefully we won't be down for long.

https://www.today.com/popculture/kristen-bell-confirms-veronica-mars-revival-coming-hulu-t137932

@shincashay said in WoD - Storytellers Playground in Evennia:

Why not have one giant fucking sandbox for people?

Allow me to play devil's advocate.

What's the main difference between your approach and any of the sandbox WoD which spawned over time the last couple of years? Why will this succeed where the others did not?

@ganymede How was @mietze's concern about thematic cohesion addressed by those games?

For example what (if anything) prevented me from doing completely irrelevant things, going after other players just to be a dick, cause OOC drama or any of the other issues staff typically take care of in 'traditional' MU*?

@ganymede said in San Francisco.:

Staff are players, and players can be staff. If you are entrusting staff with power, why not entrust players with the same?

Well, you heard the lawbot.

For the sake of this thread let's give up on trying to define what a "MUD" or a "MUSH" or whatever is and drill down to the essential question; can a roleplaying game be designed with little or even no staff necessary to run it?

I don't want to limit the thread too much by explaining how this is to be done - if it's via advanced automation, if the answer is 'code' or 'people' or 'systems', etc - but I'm curious to see what you all think.

And even if some parts of traditional staff powers do need to be in place (perhaps booting bad players out?) you can also mention that. But let's try to think outside the box here.

One final request: Let's not romanticize the past. Yes, I'm sure we've all been in that special, unique moment in time where that one game achieved nirvana and barely needed staff at all. That's great - but how can that feat be replicated? How can we make it happen again? What lessons, mechanics, in-game functions can we reuse with a different crowd of people but expect similar results?