Posts made by Arkandel

@auspice Aww, too bad, so sad.

@sockmonkey Just wait until someone bitches you out for using their PB.

Here's a question for y'all.

How does your process change if you're part of a 'group' application? Say you're going to T8S to be crewmates... what do you do differently?

How do you (or do you?) coordinate backgrounds? How much of your pre-existing relationships do you explicitly set down before you hit the grid? How much should you?

And for stats, do you try to compliment each other or just do justice to your individual character concept? Do you try to pick different niches or double dip? How important is it to not step on each other's specialties?

@packrat Almost all the time figuring out a PB is the very last part of the character generation process for me... and where I find myself regretting the most I didn't factor it in earlier, since now all of a sudden no picture seems quite right for the look-and-feel I'm going for.

I used to think this was unimportant, but in this day and age (get off my lawn!) where people don't read descriptions but just take a quick glance at your wiki page that sort of thing does play a certain role. If the only initial visual impression someone will have of my PC is in that one glance then I want it to sink in before I can adjust and amend through poses.

@sg That makes way more sense now.

<blank wondering stare>

@sg said in How do you construct your characters?:

@arkandel said in How do you construct your characters?:

"oh, no, that plot twist wouldn't work for a MUSH"

But really, what twists do work for a MUSH? I'm trying to think of one that I've encountered that turned out well or was interesting for the players rather than the staff running it having just a laugh. More often than not, it has months of planning and RP being thrown down the drain.

From that point of view twists means something like... say there is a power that's very unique but also very important to theme, and it's limited to a specific character or tiny group of them. That won't work on a MUSH because who gets it?

Some authors are really meticulous about the way 'special abilities' work in their settings, and those can usually be turned into amazing MUSH settings. Sanderson's Mistborn for instance where the same set of rules works for everyone, and major characters are simply better at using whatever subset they possess than others. Robert Jordan, for all he kept introducing ever-more-powerful characters as he wrote new books also provided an excellent framework for the One Power. The Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks is the same way; just make sure PCs can't be polychromes and you are done.

But with other books that's not possible. If there are only a handful (or one) special character in the books then you could still base a game on that, but you might miss out on all the cool stuff. Similarly if the group itself is more numerous but their background isn't ("all characters must be members of the Assassins Guild trained there from birth") then you might be shoehorning everyone into a very uniform niche; it'd be fun for table-top, but you might not want every single character to be a cardboard copy of each other.

What makes a table-top system not good to use for a MUSH?

@aria said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Today, I hit the snooze button on my alarm -- accidentally. With my face.

So, universe. It's going to be that kind of day, huh?

@thenomain said in Muxify Bug:

So it appears that Muxify on Chrome and Edge on Windows is not compressing correctly.

Works fine on Safari on the Mac.

Pinging @Glitch and @Arkandel as possible people who know what to do next. I wouldn't know where to start.

I literally know nothing about Muxify. All I did was create an A record and configure apache to point requests at the directory its files are in.

I'll be happy to help with this, but I've never even used it for anything.

@macha said in How do you construct your characters?:

Sometimes I will be randomly watching a movie or a show, and something sparks, then builds from there into a concept, etc.

I do that with books. Sometimes it ruins the book a bit for me ("oh, no, that plot twist wouldn't work for a MUSH", as if it was the writer's duty to ensure it could).

I dislike change. Even when it's a good thing, I am naturally averse to it.

I got promoted internally at work. All it means (for now, before discussing salaries and hours) is that I'd be moved from my current team, with whom I've been for about five months, to a different team whose desks are about twenty feet away. There isn't even a door between us.

I had to say yes - when your boss' boss offers you what he calls a career opportunity for upwards movement it's hard to say no, or next time there'll be no reason to do it again - but I like the people I'm working with. I know and get along with the other team's members, but they are not the same.

Meh.

There was a recent Reddit thread called "what is a rules system dealbreaker for you?" referring to table-top games.

What is a dealbreaker for you as it comes to systems used on MU*? Not code or staff or policies, but actual systems and mechanics.

What can you simply not tolerate, if something, and why?

Quentin Tarantino is considering a Star Trek movie and I need this in my life.

@faraday said in How much Code is too much Code?:

@sg said in How much Code is too much Code?:

Yeah, it's stupid. It's not you, it's me. I think I have this sticky idea of awesome temp rooms being for plots, hangout/casual scenes are for grid that I can't shake for some reason. I'm sure I'll get over it one of these days.

You're not the only one who's mentioned it though, so I really don't think it's just you! It's all good - wasn't a criticism just an observation of how the changes you think are most innocuous can sometimes mess with peoples' fun.

What I've noticed in similar situations in the past is that RP tends to 'spill out of' temp rooms once you incentivize the practice.

At the moment what reasons do characters have to go outside their usual circles? What are you giving 'me' in return for taking the 'risk' of meeting up with people I don't already know I like?

Suggestions: XP, useful IC secrets, item crafting options, political advantages (recruiting help for votes, etc), faster skill progression.

After conferring with my colleagues... well, you know the drill.

@tat The +event code. @Cobaltasaurus did it right. It changed how plots are ran, and how easy it is for runners to schedule things then for players to sign up for and be alerted when they're about to start.

@faraday said in How much Code is too much Code?:

Oh yeah, I should have clarified. My "I hate code" sentiment was in regards to code that butts up against actual RP.

In a way and from a certain point of view a lot of code butts up against actual RP in ways that can't always be predicted.

For instance on HM they changed the way the XP code worked at some point and made it +vote based. Suddenly every other scene was huge since people flocked to public RP to milk them for easy RP. When that system changed those kinds of scenes died almost overnight, proving there was an effect to how people RP and what type of RP they are prone to doing.

Similarly after I manually ran a nWoD scene with 18 people in it I never did it again. I've ran large scenes before but it affected how many characters I accept due to the logistics involved; so that sort of thing affects plots as well.

And so on. But you are 100% right in that games (in more ways than just code) absolutely need to pick their poison, and weigh their choices in terms of what they gain versus what it costs them.

For me code serves three purposes:

1. Allow for better record-keeping. Why remember things (such as when PrPs will be ran) when computers are so much better at remembering stuff for me?

2. Expedite menial tasks. The worst thing about combat scenes done manually for 3+ players is how long they take; some nWoD battles took 2-3 hours to resolve, and that's with minimal posing.

3. Keep coders busy, otherwise who knows what they'll end up doing with their free time.