At the buffet my father in law likes, eating some Chinese food when the woman in the booth right in front of mine ducks under the table, throws up right on the carpet, gets up and joins the line of her tourist bus to leave the premises. She didn't even tell anyone.
What the fuck, lady.
@ThatGuyThere In my heart of hearts what I want to see is LeBron somehow going to San Antonio, and pulling CP3 and PG over.
That defensive juggernaut led by the best coach in history would decimate the Warriors. But...
@ThatGuyThere I think any team at the moment who are not:
are deluding themselves. I mean it's okay since Houston or OKC will still put up a decent fight, there's nothing wrong with it, but the ones bailing their future at all to win 'now' are just... not thinking straight.
Boston is the one possible exception if they can use what's left of their picks and young roster to trade for Anthony Davis. Now that guy is a legitimate weapon against the Dubs.
@ThatGuyThere Do you think the Rockets are a better team than the Thunder this year?
@Ganymede said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:
@Arkandel said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:
I don't mean to sound condescending, but welcome to the wonderful world of gender inequity in North America.
I don't think you sound condescending, that sounds accurate. It's part of my peeve here, this shit is easy to miss because it's happening to someone else... but damn.
It kind of sucks.
See, my greatest issue with that is that in promoting the body fat percentage so much it actually hurts people's health. Squats aren't good because they make your ass more round (although they do that, too), they are great because they strengthen your posterior chain so in your sixties you can get off the toilet without needing help and keep you from requiring hip replacement surgery.
That, and promoting body self issues through this crap. You don't need to be 11% body fat to be strong or healthy.
The mismatch between good, informative, positive material between workout content created for men and women is outstanding. It was really unsettling when I realised the disparity recently.
As a guy when I want to refine my form for exercises there is no end to the articles and videos I can find catering specifically to me. Trainers with credentials and competitions under their belts will break this shit down in terms of mechanics, explain leverages, show how to lift to prevent injury, how to stretch and increase mobility... all of that is easily accessible and free. Better yet they look like... everything - some are musclebound slabs of muscle, others look like middle aged men who take care of themselves. Some are just plain overweight (but still brutally strong). Some care about their looks, some obviously don't, but they all care about the movements, progression and health.
I was looking into the same stuff for women lately and holy shit what is this crap? The first screens worth of search matches, unless they are carefully refined, are populated with young Instagram models lifting pink tiny weights. Not that I mind the view but they aren't showing off how to squat in their videos, they are just showing their ass - and the form itself on many is shaky at best, with the explanations themselves literally coming down to "yeah, so sit down and then stand back up!". Gee, thanks?
Now don't get me wrong, there are some really good athletes and accredited trainers in the mix. Stefanie Cohen is a goddamn superheroine, that chick can lift things I can't even fathom (nevermind that she gets comments by men deriding her on youtube), but that's almost scarce compared to the male-oriented content. Almost nowhere to be found were the 15+ minute videos breaking down compound movement phase by phase which I was used to seeing - for the most part the content seemed to be... super skinny early 20s girls promoting their physique.
Meh.
@Tat said in What even is 'Metaplot'?:
You see them a lot in TV shows. Take Buffy, for example. Each season has a Big Bad who is trying to do something Big and Bad. Many of the episodes (but not all) deal with some aspect of the shenanigans caused by the Big Bad on the way to achieving their goal.
And that is correct, but notice TV shows also do it more intelligently than that (or do these days, after they've had some time to evolve their methods). For instance how much fun would Buffy have been if the entire run was about that one Big Bad? What if we had, I dunno, seven seasons of The Master plaguing the gang? That wouldn't stay fresh for too long, right?
Metaplot to me is an overall narrative. It's a hook to give characters something to work toward and to keep them busy, but it can't be all there is to do and it still needs to be renewed once in a while. Gaming encourages niches (or, rather, gamers are very protective of their niches) so after some time there is a lot of entrenchment going on; a certain kind of player nabs all the positions of Organizer and don't appreciate competition, others pick Tasks to do and don't want others treading on their territory, and so on - if this is allowed to happen for too long without mixing it up then metaplot can actually work against your game by turning newbies and OOC disconnected players into sidekicks. That's nearly always a very bad idea.
I think my favorite kind of metaplot is non-binding. For example I loved Gehenna in oWoD because it wasn't... clear what the fuck it was. So the Antideluvians are coming back... maybe? How about Caine? We had all these tidbits of information but they were either tainted (were that Elder's memories corrupted by someone?) or just unreliable (half-destroyed texts written thousand of years ago by priests on some serious drugs) and most of it was just guesswork. It was quite possible characters weren't even going to ever see the Final Nights be resolved, that they were fighting just against a specter, an idea of what that could entail, and that would be perfectly fine because... how do you fight an idea?
Anyway, yeah. Good metaplot is great, but it's not an automatic solution. You still need to know what problem you are solving, and how.
@Darinelle I think Aspirations shouldn't need to be successful (or failed), only resolved.
For example maybe your long-term aspiration is to become Prince. You work toward it, you might even get within shot of it, and then monsters attack! Upheaval! Half the Primogen are dead! The Praxis moves on to a new government under completely different conditions than before, so now maybe your goal isn't so much abandoned or failed as it is... settled. Whatever the character had to reap out of that should be reaped, and they can move on.
Especially in MU* it should never be about the destination, it ought to always be about the road there. As long as aspirations serve their purpose that's all you can ask from a mechanic.
@Taika said in How much plot do people want?:
Thinking on it, I like when people pitch ideas.
'Hey wouldn't it be cool if...?'
'Couldn't we do something about that thing there?'
Yeah, but they won't. It's the very rare player who'll actually suggest things they want ran which involve them; most will just know whether it works for them or not after you've already done it.
Another sad fact is the type of player who does know what they want are often very... particular about it. I had someone ask me to run a PrP for their Legacy a while ago for example, and their request was basically a step by step guide of everything that should happen in that PrP. Dude, that's a script, what do you need me for?
@Gingerlily I'd rather make them feel BAD ABOUT THEMSELVES. It's more rewarding in the end.
@Sparks said in How much plot do people want?:
Focusing on a specific goal is always great for character motivation, but it's particularly useful on games with multiple plots running like Arx.
I mean to each their own, but I avoid playing characters that focused on that one thing, not because I find it's limiting to my roleplay but because it doesn't lend itself to three-dimensional characters. If I had PC obsessive to that degree I would need to go in fully aware I'm actually playing someone who has issues, and although that can be rewarding on its own, it isn't something I would choose to do as a general principle.
@Lithium That's a separate problem to solve. How much plot you throw (or don't) at your players is different than the logistical challenge of following up on the aftermath of those plots, particularly if you're also including player-ran stories (which you should).
@Chet said in How much plot do people want?:
The bigger your population, the more plot devices you'll need to churn out, to keep them fresh.
I've observed the opposite. The bigger your population the higher a chance players generate their own content that much better, and the easier it is to draw Storytellers for these sorts of big productions where they have an audience for their stuff.
Brandon Sanderson's Oathkeeper is coming out soon and I couldn't be more excited about a book. The Stormlight Archive series could make for a hell of a game, there are so many playable concepts and themes.
I think The Orville is hitting one thing correctly - very correctly - in that Star Trek isn't really about space battles and pew-pew lasers and acrobatics. I mean it can have those but in its heart it's about the narrative of sensitive human issues discussed in a different context.
I didn't dislike Star Trek: Discovery. It has potential. But let's be honest here, they are not going to spend $8 million bucks per episode about a trial discussing ethical dilemmas. It just won't happen, that's a complete waste of that money.
And that's why The Orville is closer to Star Trek. Because it can afford to do these things. The toilet humor is just a plus in my book. 