During what I thought was going to be typical maintainance nodebb decided to go completely belly-up.
... The good news is that, a couple of hours afterwards, I can verify our database backups work as intended! Also that we're now on the latest and greatest branch.
The bad news is that any new posts, chats... anything at all created since this morning (4/14/2018) at 07:00 when the latest backup had been taken are lost in the aether. I do apologize about that.
@wildbaboons I mean I could put a copy of Ares or whatever and run it on a port... but a better step still would probably be to start talking about things a more more seriously outside a thread.
@yyrqun I - personally - prefer cutting the timeline cleanly from the books (which I believe is better achieved at placing the start past the point the books end) than on what-ifs or even the recent past.
The reason for this is that, no matter what, you run into conflicts with the source material. The more agency your PCs have the least likely it is events from the books will play out they way they ought to, which then casts Prophecies into doubt or brings out the Forsaken to play decades before they were supposed to.
Either way it's a problem because you now have to deal with this.
My vote still goes to the Fourth Age. By way who is actually thinking of putting all this into motion past this thread?
@zombiegenesis The usual disclaimer ("don't base it on real history or you'll get purists complaining") seems to be covered by the base premise.
A game based on ancient Greek heroes would be interesting because essentially those were the prototype superheroes. Herakles, Perseus, etc had abilities far beyond that of common people, with their heritage being basically the same plot device to grant them as say, a radioactive spiders in modern day comic books.
So you could capitalize on that with an extra hint of drama for extra effect.
The Gods are cruel and petty, and champions are trying to defend the mortal realm from their games.
There's a war among the Gods with the mortal world in the crossfire.
There's a mortal war about to break (think Troy, or Persials versus the Greeks) with different Gods on each side of the conflict.
and so on. You could spin a legitimate L&L take on it using families instead of medieval Houses, but it'd need to be and feel different than traditional takes as well.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/16/how-far-can-becky-hammon-go-in-the-nba
"Popovich and his general manager, R. C. Buford, insist that they had no intention of making a political statement. “It has nothing to do with her being a woman. She happens to be a woman,” Popovich said."
@yyrqun You could even have Forsaken but as a distant rumor, the boogiemen no one wants to admit are real.
It's also a good way to deescalate the PC power levels; they aren't fighting against Shai'tan - so there's no need for super potent channelers around - but against his servants, and more specifically against his servants' strongest henchmen.
So yeah, if you meet with Aginor you are just fucking toast. But you won't, as far as you are aware he's just a legend, and trying to stay in one piece against some kind of monster Trolloc/Myrdraal hybrid something has unleashed into the world.
@seraphim73 said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):
I think it would be entirely possible to have an NPC Dragon, especially if he was the withdrawn sort--or perhaps Cairhienin, and so liked to work through proxies. They would have to be doing something offscreen to keep them from interfering, but I think that it could certainly be done.
See, this has come up before and I've never liked it... for a simple reason.
Why?
If you have a Dragon as an active character then what difference does it make if it's Rand al'Thor or Bob? His very presence sets wheels in motion - which I'm not saying is a bad thing, by the way. But if you'd use Bob as staff to kick off the plot why not just do it with Rand, who's already known to your players?
Straying off the books should only be done for a fantastic reason, IMHO. The moment you do you alienate readers and you need to explain what happened - which is a price you are paying... so you have to think about what you are buying with it. It needs to be worth it.
I do, however, agree with you that it would be best to start in 1-2 centralized areas. I don't think I would go -quite- so far as requiring that everyone be part of the Tower, but if the two areas are, say, Tar Valon and Cairhien, you'll likely have things tied up relatively well.
Yeah, I agree. Tar Valon is almost a given, there's too much going on there to not use it as a nexus. And Cairhien or Caemlyn would work as well if you wanted a secondary one. I don't actually recall how far these places all are from each other but if it's not too big a stretch, or the setting allows for Gateways, then it'd be a no brainer.
plots in my opinion, to keep them from devolving into marriage simulators.
@arkandel said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):
What about the mechanics?
This is another good point. I'd push Ares, but I think Faraday would smack me, and FS3 really, really isn't well-suited for channeling. You could limp along with it, but it wouldn't be good without a system written up to work alongside FS3. D20 WoT is miserable. Very poorly handled, in my opinion.
I think this one might need to be done from scratch. It's too good to a system to half-ass it and just try to squeeze it more generic code written for something else... which will probably be the most time consuming part of creating a MUSH.
What I'd find cool is a strong metaplot detached from the book characters (whether they exist in the time period or not) to give the game direction and focus.
The cool thing about the WoT is that you can add pretty much so much and it wouldn't even seem out of place. You need an ancient evil? The same way Gholam were created by Aginor you can have other highly dangerous... things slumbering away in crypts waiting for a chance to wreak havoc. Politics are basically spelled out since cultural differences are so strong between nations in the books.
What about the mechanics? There was a WoT game published ages (heh) ago but I don't recall it having gotten great reviews even at the time, and there are so many different subsystems - channeling, forms, angreal, etc - that would probably need to be implemented basically from scratch.
@bobgoblin Nostalgia and fandom are both strong motivators, but that's all they are - a reason to walk through the door.
I will bet you any amount of internet dollars that unless the game itself is actually done well, despite of its setting, it will fare no better or worse than anything else.
@lithium said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):
Why would we want to play out the events of the book @WildBaboons ? We should be creating our own story in that world that is familiar and loved.
I agree with that. I can think of few things worse than a game based on an official canonical plot that needs to happen the same way as it did in that material, because not only do I know as a player how things will play out well in advance, but I also need to make my character do things he might not normally just to maintain the continuity.
Screw that.
@auspice said in Real life versus online behaviors:
But really, I just don't have time to 'be a different person' - that seems exhausting. Keeping up two personas? Shit.
I'm told I intimidate people online. Which is weird since I'm not at all that kind of person iRL, nor is it something that I want to think of myself as.
@faraday said in Real life versus online behaviors:
Peers thinking less of them, social ostracizing, etc. Those boundaries don't naturally exist online, so online communities have to create them. Without them, well... :points to hog pit, or Reddit, or Facebook, or....:
What's still puzzling about it is that on Facebook or Reddit with their millions of active users, you can afford to not think of social ostracism as much; if you decide you despise me there's always somewhere else to take my despicable business to.
On a MUSH or even MSB the pool is so much smaller, and possessing a recognizable identity is super important - your reputation matters, which is one of the reasons being an oldbie often conveys advantages either formally or otherwise. On top of it people deciding you're worth the time of day matters since you can get invited to join groups and factions, get access to inner circles where RP happens and others look out for you to play with... which are all some of the main things we do in this hobby. I can't think of a single major activity that's not affected by how we are known and perceived by others.
It baffles me that anyone would casually put that at risk just so they can get a few textual swear words off their chest for a little momentary satisfaction.
@faraday That's my constant peeve here. Just because we are allowed to be nasty to each other in the Hog Pit does it mean we should?
I hate it because it implies some people are only civil normally for fear of retaliation, which is a dumbass reason to act as a mature adult should.
@bobotron This is fun if you decide it's fun. 
It depends on whether you want to learn something or if you're just doing it because it's in your way.
Basically the error you're getting is telling you that the database user you've configured mediawiki to connect as (wikiadmin) doesn't have sufficient privileges to read the database you've configured it for (testwiki). One thing you could do is try to connect to your mysql from the command line to ensure your credentials work - something like mysql -u wikiadmin -p<password> testwiki .
Having said that if your provider has set up some things automagically for you I can't help much because I've got no way to tell what has been done. But at this point you might as well nuke it and start over. You could try to figure out what has happened in your current installation as well, but to be frank it'll probably be more time consuming and it's not like you're trying to preserve your existing content.
There's a pretty good step-by-step guide set up by Mediawiki itself at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Installation_guide which you could follow, and then you have the advantage that you'll know immediately if something goes belly up.
@thatguythere said in The Basketball Thread:
He will make the same money everywhere except Cleveland he is definitely getting a max contract unless he chooses to take less which he has already said he won't.
Partially untrue. Yes, the max contracts are what they are due to the Collective Bargaining Agreement, but if we're talking money-in-the-pocket there are more factors to consider.
The two Texas-based teams don't pay the same income tax based on their earnings.
Playing in a large market - and there's no larger than LA - gives players opportunities to expand their brand, be in movies and TV shows, etc.
LeBron is an exceptionally good businessman who's aware of all these, but I think at this stage in his career money is a secondary issue to him compared to his legacy. He wants more rings, and he wants to be credited for those rings. It's not enough to pull a KD and go to a favorite - so a young Lakers team might not be a great fit for him unless he can talk Paul George or DMC into joining as well.
That's why I think there's a decent chance he stays in Cleveland. There's no great fit for him in terms of his age, goals and salary cap space out there.
Also, there's no way - zero way - LeBron ever accepts less than the max for whatever contract length he signs.
@bobotron This sounds like an apache config issue.
Make sure the file itself is readable by apache (chown apache:apache index.php) or whatever other files your web server ought to be reading.
Seeing the default apache page instead of your intended files probably means you've not set up a virtual host properly to let the web server know in which directory mediawiki resides in for your domain.
The default location for apache's webroot should be /var/www/html but your configuration might be different. You likely need to alter that configuration, which you will need to do a little bit of reading about - it's not too hard. Start with a link like this one .
If you provide more information about directory structures and errors we can look into it some more. I'd also open a second terminal, run something like tail -f /var/log/apache2/error.log and then try to load your file again in a web browser since logging can be more detailed than the error message itself.
Good luck! This can be fun.
@wildbaboons The last book in the series was published several years ago. It's unreasonable to require spoilers any more, with apologies to anyone who's yet to finish them - guys, you shouldn't be reading this thread in that case.
@coin I kind of stumbled into some secondary tricks first on HM/TR and then on Kushiel's Debut.
The former forced people to justify their XP expenditures which was a chore until I realized I liked it... and that it helped. Sure, my PC improved his Life from 2 to 3 but 'how'? Did he spend time at the hospital experimenting on patients? Maybe on lab rats? Did he do it to his neighbor's cats to change their fur color and see how they react? The more I got to it the better it was - and the more fun.
Then on KD you could make a little extra by summarizing what you did last week, which again... I could have done as a chore (or avoided it) but after it turned out was actually helping me contextualize what I was doing, even if it wasn't intentional. So for example maybe I met that Countess at a bistro because we were both looking for a scene, and we chatted about an upcoming duel because there're no sports on TV in Kushiel-land, but I could place that talk retroactively into a context that made sense - my guy was trying to up the stakes and make sure the duel's expected result was more meaningful, hoping to humiliate the loser of what was meant to be a friendly event.
Tricks!
