Posts made by Arkandel

Star Trek: Discovery casts Captain Pike.

@streetwitch said in Mage: The Ascension:

@arkandel

The game has graphics. When you look at anything in the game you see a picture as well as text, Combat doesn't fly by automatically. It has a turn based combat system that follows the rules set in the original RPG. The magic system also duplicates the effects of the spheres in Mage. You can also build your character through a web interface that makes it very easy to create the complex mage characters.

That does sound interesting. I'll need to look at it - is it a roleplaying MUD? How central is the roleplaying element compared to the other stuff?

@nemesis said in Real life versus online behaviors:

It doesn't actually detail any bad behavior on MSB's part

I don't know either. I wasn't even bothering banning him again even though his accounts were very obvious because I didn't really care, until Auschwitz. Then I cared again.

@yyrqun I envy you. The first four (arguably 5-6) books kicked ass, and I'd love to read them for the first time again.

But it did jump the shark afterwards.

@nemesis said in Real life versus online behaviors:

Now you know (and knowing is half the battle)!

What do I know now?

@thatguythere said in The Basketball Thread:

Depending on where LeBron goes they could be contenders next year, after all someone from the East has to be in the Finals and as Detroit showed us in 2004 sometimes the inferior team and pull of the Finals upset. If he goes west the east is Boston, Toronto and Philly and a bunch of not much else.
That alone is the reason I think Bron Bron stays in the East, with even a semi decent supporting cast he has a puncher's change at a ring every year. (See 2016 for reference)

LeBron is 100% not going to a contender or champion. I can't say I know where he'll go (my money is on staying in Cleveland) but his legacy would gain nothing for example if he just went to join Houston. On the East Philly and the Bucks are similarly a poor match for him since they already have tall, ball-dominant PGs who can't shoot - and I don't have to explain why he isn't going to Boston, do I? As for the West, OKC would be an interesting place but they don't have a whiff of salary cap left, and unless the Spurs get a full commitment from Kawhi I don't see that happening either.

IMHO he'll go to the Lakers if anywhere.

@surreality said in RL things I love:

...how many hours Zuckerberg is likely to get grilled by the senate today. This is the real popcorn for me, y'all.

Look, the guy is a billionaire at 33.

Think of how many times the rest of us have been grilled by bosses, pissed off aunts, inept managers, civil servant bureaucrats, etc... over nearly nothing.

When this guy is done getting bitched at - if it happens, given the campaign contributions many of those same politicians hope to continue getting in the future - he'll go back to his super mansion. He'll be a'ight.

My policy in general is to try and not think of what someone might be like in real life at all. I mean... unless I'm going to be meeting them (and I won't) it just doesn't matter. What I perceive online is, for all intents and purposes, that person.

Take the guy we re-banned this week. Do I know he's not trolling us for the lols? That he's actually a racist? Of course not, for all I know he's a nice person iRL.

But on the other hand would I want to meet someone who creates accounts called AuspiceForAuschwitz? Probably not, even if it's supposed to be funny or something, you know?

This came up on a different thread and I'd much rather discuss it than beat on that dead horse any more, so...

Do you think there is a correlation between online and offline behavior? Are jerks online necessarily the same in real life, or at least are they considerably more likely to be the same there? What about the opposite, if someone is a great person online does it suggest they are probably the same in person?

My anecdotal submission to this thread is one of my old roommates from the university days. He's happily married, he's a solid professional, I would (and have) trusted him with money and never had a single issue... he's built an extensive real life social network of board games that's ran regularly and fairly, he owns Facebook groups where amateurs trade and buy/sell games where he's gone well out of his way to make sure no one gets scammed... basically I don't have any bad marks against the guy, and I've known him for a very, very long time.

Online he's an asshole! He trolled the shit out of another guild on WoW trying to incite a PvP war with them for the lols, and on one notable episode on Arctic MUSH back in the day he and another guy lured someone to a basement promising him rare loot, closed and locked the door, and PKed him. He trolls with wild abandon every chance he gets because to him online just... isn't real, it doesn't have real consequences I guess? He just separates it completely, and treats what happens there as he wants for his own amusement.

I have other friends who aren't as good examples of this, but that's the one I wanted to bring up since it's relevant. On the other hand I won't pretend there are people I've 'met' only online who just... let's say I wouldn't make a bet aren't assholes iRL as well. I certainly wouldn't risk them having any ability to damage my life, even if they barely know me, just because they can.

What do you think?

@streetwitch said in Mage: The Ascension:

The game is very feature rich, and we are doing things no other MUD has done.

Can you elaborate on that?

The Lakers are very well positioned to take advantage of the new NBA economy; other than Deng they have no bad contracts, and with enough room in the salary cap to max two more players, three promising young stars on rookie contracts (Ingram, Ball, Kuzma, with Randle needing to either get paid or let go this summer) and a huge market to attract free agents... they'll be just fine.

Otherwise I'd put my money in either Philly or Boston to emerge as a defacto contender over the next five years. Golden State is starting to get older (which doesn't mean they can't squeeze a couple of more rings) and Houston isn't sustainable, so it's their turn.

I'm just sorry for Giannis, the Bucks just don't have the flexibility to give him the strong supporting cast he needs - shooters and defenders, basically - to do anything with his generational talent.

Man, I'm not feelin' it.

The official Solo trailer.

@auspice It's just that I try to not get involved since it's none of my business what other people eat or how/if they work out. On top of that it takes wanting to do it in the first place, which is usually the cultivation of a lot of other stuff getting them there. I don't know how to get someone to that mental place, and since I'm not a professional... you get what you pay for if you ask me.

The least you can do is not debate it a week afterwards... if I had the cure for obesity in seven days or less I'd be bottling it up instead of working for a living.

I'd never go to someone and offer unsolicited advice about their health or diet, but I'm happy to help when I'm asked. I'm now starting to reconsider the latter part of this policy.

A friend of mine at work has been getting progressively heavier so he came over to ask for help. I gave him some pointers (basically the URL to the /r/loseit FAQ and a TL;DR explanation of what a caloric deficit is and what getting there generally entails), then went over as an example what I include in my diet, including protein shakes.

For some reason whenever I go over this part people's ears perk up (this isn't my first rodeo). Something about protein shakes seems to be looked at as the secret to controlling one's weight, as if they are magic potions instead of food. That's what they fucking are, which I stressed out as well - it's a convenient way to meet a higher daily protein requirement at a cheap caloric 'price'... and if done right, a cheap real price as well. But no, magic.

So he comes back a couple of days later and starts telling me the shakes contain a lot of cholesterol, man. And isn't the sodium high? Because he spoke to another guy in the company about it too who pointed out these things. Also isn't intermittent fasting better?

<sigh>

Dude, until last week 80% of your diet came in McDonalds and Tim Horton's bags. Do we seriously need to have that conversation? Stay the course for a couple of months, see if it works, and then decide. Or don't!

@surreality said in Game Restarts:

Yes, which is why it is not a minor effort or something that takes less time than code as you claimed in the section I quoted. Code can take months, sure. A good setting and world? Can very easily take years. The most time-consuming part of setup really isn't the code.

Hey, I never said it was a minor effort. If I implied it I apologize, as it wasn't my intention.

But for most games creating custom code does take considerably longer than writing theme. That's not as obvious these days since we have the option of using big chunks of existing code thanks to the efforts of coders like @Thenomain, @faraday, @Griatch etc, which trims down that time very considerably, but at the same time it's the very rare exception that a game-runner will take multiple months to do writeups of their setups and create the wiki assuming they are actively working on doing so.

@surreality said in Game Restarts:

...yeahhhhhhno. As others have mentioned, there is a huge amount of work in writing up a good setting and concept with any meat on its bones at all. Using an existing property (like WoD or Firefly/etc.) essentially imports a lot of information that otherwise someone has to write up in some detail.

That work in writing up a good setting and concept with any meat on its bones?

That's the game. That's the whole point!

This is obviously just my opinion, but if staff wants to avoid setting up their own game then I'm typically uninterested, unless they also put in something else that makes it clear they are in fact investing in their own MUSH.

So for example when The Descent was relaunched they added a ton of theme, new Bloodlines, and there were plans in motion to add a resource system as well. Use, the basic idea coming from a previous game was reused but I was pretty confident it wasn't done to cut corners and avoid doing work, but staff taking an idea they liked and giving it another shot. That's great.

But if - again, for example - Coin gave me permission to relaunch Eldritch and for the sake of saving myself the effort I just took the code, grid, wiki... everything about it and started it on a new server then I don't know what good that does anyone.

@wildbaboons said in Game Restarts:

@arkandel Nostalgia certainly would play a part too.. but also people that would rather focus their time with the effort of running a game in stead of spending months trying to get a game to run.

The most time consuming part of any game is the code - that's what actually can actually take months depending on how much you want to customize... and there is no need to bring an existing game back verbatim in order to reuse its code. A game-runner can run a completely different nWoD Vampire+Werewolf game reusing another's setup with the exact same code, as long as they come up with a new theme and populate the wiki with it.

If they don't because it's too much work then I personally wouldn't play there. That's the fun part, the portion of the exercise that stretches their creative muscles and shows me as a potential player where the heart of their theme is; skimping on it doesn't simply tell me they are lazy, which from a certain point of view I wish more staff were, it informs me they are uncreative, which is a fatal condition since it will infect the playerbase immediately.

@wildbaboons said in Game Restarts:

@arkandel From a practical stand point I would think restarting is a lot less effort if you've got the code, grid, etc already built and ready to go.

If that's the case then I definitely think it's a bad reason to pick this approach over any other.

Basically I can at least understand nostalgia; you had fun playing a certain theme or in a specific setting and you're trying to recreate it. It's not perfect but it can come from a good place.

Any major decisions based on "what's the least effort I can make and still have a port up?" are misguided at best. Hint: Running games takes a lot of effort! They are huge timesinks, and cutting corners is a big red flag that staff don't want to invest in their own MU*.... and if they don't care enough to then why would we?

What's the advantage of restarting a game over starting a new game?

Is it just nostalgia? Can it be something else?

This is weird guys. I just tried both Firefox and Chrome on the desktop, opened a bunch of threads and never had an issue.

What theme are you all using? Have you tried a different one, does it do the same thing?