Posts made by Arkandel

@roz said in Staff and ethics:

I actually find your expansion on this a little odd. When I think of staff professionalism, I don't equate that with whether or not staff chats with their players.

Other than my pre-edit wording which... ugh, it's not that odd if you consider I've been on games (mind you, early in my MU* 'career') where we were warned to not 'fraternize with the players' a lot since it might paint us a certain way, and also to maintain the illusion of... I dunno, authority I guess.

I'm just saying, it's a thing for some MU* so I included it.

@kanye-qwest I've rarely seen a show where both the cast and directors are obviously trying to make something special have so many issues with pacing.

The pacing is terrible; sometimes it's just so slow (the entire season so far, like 4-5 episodes, are all taking place over the course of a single day, single battle), and there's no tradeoff. It's not like we get a lot of character work in, or they're resolving old plotlines, engaging in a lot of world building or... anything.

I mean maybe they're going to pull a rabbit out of a hat, but I was expecting/hoping for the same thing thing last season and in the end they just never delivered. What are they doing?

We often discuss staff ethics here in their most negative interpretation - some might even say we discuss the absence of staff ethics more than what they actually are. So let's do that, maybe.

So... putting aside gross violations of trust - harboring abuse, cheating for themselves or on behalf of personal friends, etc - what would you consider to be the foundation of a somewhat universal good staff code?

Just to get us started (this list is not supposed to be exhaustive or even correct) some potential items:

• 'Professional' behavior; this can include language, tone, spelling, etc. Is it better for staff to be aloof or to be on the same level with/chat with their players?

• Activity levels. Is a staff member doing what they are supposed to do? What are they supposed to do and how well/frequently? What's a good standard?

• Communication, following up on promises. How much transparency is a good thing? In discipline cases how much should be revealed about what happened (or the reasons nothing did)?

• Playing their own game; staff not playing alts or revealing their names, or not permitting those PCs to attain important positions.

• Protecting 'appearances' by not ruling on issues close to them (friends are involved, etc); what happens in small games, or if the staff is small and everyone is involved with everyone else? What are the limits?

Discuss. And by all that is holy remember this is a constructive thread.

@cupcake said in Good or New Movies Review:

@bobotron said in Good or New Movies Review:

@arkandel
Wonder Woman's sequel is pretty assured; they even got rid of Brett Ratner because of the sexual harassment stuff going on.

And because Gal Gadot flat out said she won't do it if he's involved.

I read somewhere she never actually said it, but the rumor broke out and she never denied it either. In a way it painted her into a corner since she can't refute it either - since (again, based on Internet People's takes on it, which lawyers among us can correct me on) she could be sued for by Ratner.

I don't know why I continue to watch The Walking Dead. At some point I need to admit I have a problem.

@auspice Although there are some fight scenes in there (and they are pretty good) it's really not about that. It's not like Daredevil where the violence is spectacular and fun to watch.

The Punisher series is about characters who are pushed past their point of breaking, and who sometimes engage in brutal violence, but it's almost... rare. It's not about that. It's not even about guns, which would have been so easy to fetishize in a show like this.

I'm only about 2/3rds done but the Punisher TV series is so good. Yes, it's violent but it's not about the violence; it has some pretty convincing performances, the plot is largely about veterans trying to transition into real lives and the hardships they follow, and... basically this could have been a kickass show on its own right placed outside of the Marvel universe. There were a couple of recurring characters from the MU but overall they weren't crucial or anything.

So far at least I place it at the Jessica Jones/Daredevil season 1 level. It's pretty impressive.

Also wtf complains because the Punisher is a violent show? What did they think it would be?

@deadculture said in Good or New Movies Review:

@arkandel Funny, I can see Jake Gylenhaal in an American Psycho reboot, but I don't know that he makes for an appealing Bruce Wayne.

My only real question is whether he can pull off the age gap. In the movie DCU Bruce is older (not that they dared go the DKR route and make him actually old).

Plus I'm willing to ship me some Bats+WW.

@scar said in Reasons why you quit a game...:

• PvP can be fun ...with people capable of separating OOC from IC.

Yeah but that's a truism. It's like saying "roleplaying with good players can be fun", because that's one of the primary qualifications for someone being a good player.

I've quit games for all kinds of reasons. Usually it's for some justification that led to "I'm not having fun there" but that's the symptom and not the cause per se.

It would be a fallacy though to say it's always had something to do with the game itself. For example I've left a game because I couldn't get into Changeling; I just didn't like the system, there was nothing I felt I wanted to work towards. I wanted to run plot but not to play my own character, and that eventually drove me away.

I've also left games because my friends did. It's as simple as that sometimes... I went there because folks I liked played there, and when they didn't either my character was left without a purpose or I just lost my appetite.

Oh, and life. Sometimes RL hits me, or for whatever reason I'm in no mood to play so I don't.

@jaded There's a rumor Ben Affleck is no longer interested in playing the character.

I mean I can sort of get it since he, unlike most of the superhero casting choices we've seen in the last few years, didn't start out being a big star (even RDJ wasn't at the time, it was in the beginning of his comeback). As such he wants to be doing different things, explore his creative options and... well, let's face it, he doesn't need the paychecks as much as say, Chris Evans or Gal Gadot did when they were about to get their solo films.

Rumor has it Jake Gyllenhaal may succeed him. Dunno if it's just something a random journalist came up with and it just caught on though.

@ganymede I do hope though there's room for something falling in the range between light-hearted and edgelord-dark. I really liked Thor but I'd like a more serious take for the next JLA movie (assuming there is one, of course).

They really need to borrow a page from Marvel's movies if need be. Civil War did it as right as it can get; it was epic, lots of characters on screen, and yet the narrative worked and nothing really felt out of place.

(Spoiler free) For me, Justice League succeeded on the character bits but failed big time on the story itself. I never understood the urgency or just what the bad guy's plan or timeline was. And so much CGI, too... nearly none of the fights had any meaning for me. Is this nameless CGI monster among thousands of its kind going to kill Batman? GEE I DON'T KNOW IT JUST MIGHT.

@vorpal said in Good or New Movies Review:

Now we just need to hope that they line a good director for the sequel so it's not a mishmash of two different visions trying to push each other off a cliff. Maybe they should just give it to Patty. Patty knows what she's doing.

There may not be a sequel. Justice League is doing pretty badly/average in the box office, and since the company itself is undergoing a change of ownership... no one really knows where the chips will fall when it's all said and done.

Wonder Woman will definitely get a sequel and I think Aquaman is already decided so it'll happen, but anything else - from The Batman to all the other spinoffs are probably a much harder call.

@thenomain said in An Apology to BSO and BSU.:

I'm not defending anyone here (I don't know enough to have an opinion), but questioning the idea that others can behave poorly and punish everyone in a thread regardless of the civility of others. I fear the chilling effect this would have, or the power this would give to those who want to drag any thread that they personally want into the Hog Pit.

That's sort of where I'm at. I don't want to give any person or small group, merely on the basis of how pissed off they are, to drag threads into the Hog Pit as well; while this isn't what's happening here, it would be an easy way to make posts less public at will.

My rule of thumb is that if there is a question of whether something needs to be moved, it probably shouldn't.

I will warn people to not try this either. The way it works isn't that if a thread in the Constructive section simply gets moved to the Hog Pit if it becomes bad, but that people are accountable for their own posts, and are kindly requested to not push the limits of civility.

This thread stays - as does the warning.

@bobotron said in [Original Supernatural/Vampire MUSH] Houses of the Blood MUSH:

And you're so right; I haven't put down to paper everything that's in my head, and there are things that, when I put them down I'm like 'Ugh, why did I write that?' But I'm hoping to have a good layout.

Yep, writing it down also helps you remember what the vision was a few weeks/months down the line. Basically we all have our own ideas of what a game should be like, and especially on MSB even in the most well meaning of ways we'll bombard the fuck out of you telling you what we would want to see; give us enough time and we'll dilute your ideas . Having them all in a document helps you keep things a bit more pure.

I remember arguing with @Coin when Eldritch launched about everything having to be his way or the highway because I was - and still am, naturally - sure what I was suggesting was better. But here's a funny thing - even if it was he was still right (and it hurts me to type it) because that's what makes a game stand out more than anything else; a creator excited to be doing their own thing.

Too many games, IMHO, are missing that spark and just settle for the generic brand name instead.

I just came back from Justice League. It was actually good - much better than I expected. It could have used a better villain but the character work was convincing, and I can't tell how I feel about the Whedon-dialogue parts being as distinctive as they were.

Aaand updated.

@ganymede Hey, it's disappointing. I wanted a JLA movie to be awesome, if for no other reason than that to ensure there are more made.

From the previews and scores I'm reading online, it really sounds like Justice League will be disappointing, or at least average.

@bobotron Not to derail your thread but the problem I've seen has to do with staff politics and diluting the vision.

If you have ten people staffing someone will not be getting along with someone else as well as you'd hope, and you'll need to mediate; that's more work generated from something you hoped would take work away from you.

And in a game like yours where there's no pre-written material the hard part to find the creative balance where you still end up running what's locked in your head right now but also allow creative input to add finishing touches that enrich it. If you have ten voices in your ear it's easy to end up running TR before you realize it, with people rolling werewolf PCs and PrPs of UFOs landing in your town square at noon.