Posts made by Arkandel

@ThatGuyThere said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:

I agree for the most part but with one caveat, using the mage thing for example, I have no problem if someone running a game decides hey I am running a low power level (for mage) game so capping spheres at 4.

For starters yes, you are right - if a game outright says "we're gonna be going low-power for this one" then it's no longer something to hold them accountable for. It's their choice, and I get to also decide whether it's a good for for me or not.

I must say I'm not fond of this approach for two reasons:

1. I dislike low-level caps. Either you don't progress fast enough for carrots to exist so it all sort of feels... futile, as there's no improvement, or you hit your limit and then what?

2. The approach favors early blooming 'builds'.

But to each their own, absolutely.

@Derp said in State of Things:

Aren't they? You say that the consequences of the worst laws you break are marginal.

I still don't see what you're trying to say. A hint: Comparing needlessly killing someone with just about anything else will almost always get the same response from me: It's worse, yes. You mentioned jaywalking and littering, what did you expect me to say?

'No threat to them' is also very subjective. Studies have shown, time and again, that civilians placed in the same situation are often the most liable to shoot first. The trained officers tend to not shoot quite so easily.

I never said the blue code is a real thing - I asked. I'm an outsider, and most of what I know comes from movies and wikipedia articles. Nor am I saying cops in general are particular culprits, but the entire Black Lives Matter movement (at least partially) does, so that needs to be addressed as well.

I'm pretty sure the vast majority of police officers are perfectly good at their job, and probably no better or worse human beings than anyone who's not wearing a uniform. But yes, the bar is raised significantly higher for a person who carries a gun. It's just how it is, there's no getting around that.

Of course cops are human. I might cover for a buddy at work if he deletes a file by mistake, and I'd expect cops to do the same thing over somewhat minor things - if one scratches their police car while parking it and his partner backs him up by saying it happened while they were parked or something... that is fine. It's common behavior.

But the escalation here is where the paradigm completely shatters. If I fuck up in my job in the worst possible way then maybe data will be lost or there could be private information leaking - that's bad. But it's probably not "a guy got shot in the face"-level bad. And you better believe it if I figure out one of my peers is... I dunno, selling data I'll turn them in, no questions asked.

@Derp said in State of Things:

Do you really think it's that simple, though? I mean, realistically, how many laws would you say you break every day? Speeding? Jaywalking? Perhaps littering? Do you always do everything you're legally required to do in a timely manner? Etc.

Well, it is that simple, yes.

For starters I don't carry a gun. The consequences of the worst laws I break are at best marginal. Shooting a guy who's no threat to me (or covering it up for my buddy who did) isn't remotely on the same level as jaywalking. I don't understand what argument you're trying to make there - those things aren't comparable.

For another I'm not explicitly sworn to uphold the law, nor does my failing to do so undermine my peers' efforts to do so. When cops are caught covering for each other there is doubt cast over the lot; it's a sometimes unfair but given the circumstances not entirely unreasonable response.

@Derp said in State of Things:

How much is too much?

Breaking the law they are sworn to uphold is too much.

I'm not saying it does happen, or to what extent (after all that's what I was asking) but the line here is pretty damn clear.

Sometimes the barbell won't move. It'll stare at you and mock you and judge you.

And sometimes, even a week later, it will move with gusto.

Fuck you, barbell. I love you.

@Ganymede said in State of Things:

(I'm a huge law enforcement supporter and a actively-voting Republican at state and local levels, and have a number of law enforcement friends who would agree with @Derp.)

You mightprobably have a more accurate idea of what the case actually is than we non-Americans do due to your profession.

Is the 'blue code' a real thing in your opinion? Do cops back illegal actions taken by their peers to the point of committing perjury or hiding/modifying evidence?

It's also important to make in-game carrots achievable, whatever means of advancement you choose. It is however essential to make anything really neat that's achievable to be universally so, even if the bar is high.

What does that mean?

1. If you're running a game like Mage with certain 'end-game' spells requiring Mastery in one Arcanum and even with high skill (sometimes Mastery as well) in a second one they get some extra oomph to them, at least make that achievable. It sucks to never be able get your build's 'ultimate' ability.

2. If at any time... at any time, say during alpha, you let a couple of players get a nice power and then during play you decide it's too much, or you raise the requirements very considerable, you are a monster. Don't grandfather shit like that. Either take them out from their original holders with some sort of compensation or leave them open to everyone.

Note I'm not saying to make it easy or fast. But doable, and not just 'doable if you play every day for three years and staff decides to approve your application at that point'.

@Thenomain IMHO of course, but it's mostly the fifth dot that breaks the merit. The rest is nice and very cost effective but that last dot of a fucking rote roll for essentially your skill of choice is amazing. So even if that one dot alone was kept from supernaturals it wouldn't be so bad, as per FW.

@Wizz said in Brainstorming: Hybrid/Homebrew Werewolf Game:

All that said, @SunnyJ, @Arkandel and @Ganymede your enthusiasm for this is PUMPING ME UP YEEEEEEEAAAAHHHFHWFNFNENFIUFNUENGIU

Good! Make it so.

I don't want to be a downer right after being an... upper? But! In most games, succeed or fail, it's the implementation that matters a lot more than the system or even theme.

Many great ideas live and die on wiki pages without reaching the grid in a recognizable fashion. Once you finalize your game's principles you should start thinking about how to make them work in-game; how plot will hit players, how PCs will realistically interact on a day to day basis, what will characters be doing.

If you need help brainstorming specific things like that we're here for ya.

The Dark Tower's first trailer.

@Meg said in RL Anger:

But I still think and will die on the hill that good people shouldn't do nothing. Understandable, yes. I am not saying @Arkandel is a bad person. But doing nothing is not good.

Edit to emphasize: I do think you are a good person, Ark, and respect you a lot.

Thanks! But I didn't take it the wrong way.

If I thought there was something to do something about I would have. But I didn't know it was the case (and still don't). It's not privilege that stopped me, as far as I can be a judge of my own actions, it's that I didn't want to bitch some guy out over some sort of narrative I had made up in my own head if I was wrong.

Isn't that a form of privilege too? Writing a story where you get to be the hero when there is no one in need of help? I don't want to be that guy either, especially at someone else's expense who might not deserve it - assuming I misread the situation.

@surreality said in State of Things:

There is a great opportunity in this, but it is one we are typically hamstringing ourselves from the jump, re: preparing ourselves to take advantage of it.

That's creativity. Imagination. Art.

I quite agree. It's just that it's hard for those things to be valued if you can't feed your family - and there are about in the mid-term to be millions more people who won't be eligible for employment any more.

The potential for mankind to be freed from the shackles of unnecessary labor and invest in creativity is fantastic, but who here thinks there won't be a major backlash against people getting 'something for nothing'? They won't be allowed to devote all that extra time to something unique, even if their efforts are literally no longer necessary.

I've seen debates about this on Slashdot where otherwise perfectly reasonable-sounding posters wrote things very close to "if I work then you need to as well, even if you don't have to". They actually expected people to be forced to perform completely menial, unneeded tasks to 'pay for it', whatever it is they're supposed to be paying for.

The kinds of people who post such things - who view the issue from a vindictive point of view, and consider freedom from labor as a social disease, not a goal - are those who'd be the ones primarily in the way of solutions like a reasonable universal guaranteed income; the "no freeloaders" folks.

So it might not matter if there are about (predictions range from 10-15 years before the numbers hit a truly critical mass) to be a pretty damn many of such unemployed people, or that you can't possibly reeducate all those people to get them to code or perform high-end tasks which (currently) can't be automated when they are driving a truck today within the span of a generation.

But then what will happen to that generation?

@Ghost said in State of Things:

• All people matter

To me the "All People Matter" peeps sound as absurd as following cancer awareness campaigners around trying to hijack them with all-disease awareness slogans.

Like, dude, what are you doing?

@SunnyJ said in Brainstorming: Hybrid/Homebrew Werewolf Game:

@Arkandel I don't know about "the closest you can use a system the better it will be".

I misspoke (although you might still disagree with me of course). What I meant was "the closest you can use the easier it will be". If you use the nWoD GMC rules verbatim then it's at the easiest; if you are house ruling almost everything then it's probably harder than starting from scratch.

I can honestly say that after Secrets of the Covenants, my trust in OP mechanics is forever broken.

What was the problem with it?

Please let me know if this is off topic, @Rook.

I think automation is about to fuck our universe up. In the next 15 years or so human kind is going to be changing in a really dramatic fashion; I can't (no one can, IMHO) say if it'll be for the better or not.

Just about any manual job imaginable is going to be automated, and unlike any other time in the past far fewer new jobs will be created to take their place. This isn't 'farming is getting industrialized but factories need workers so people go to cities instead'. This is 'massive unemployment is just around the corner for big chunks of the population, and it will be here to stay'.

Not talking about jobs like drivers or food servers, I'm talking a massive impact to everything from lawyers to doctors to CEOs - for example while a top notch doctor will probably still be superior to a machine (at least at first), going to your local practitioner for routine checkups will be a thing of the past.

There are remedies being discussed - such as a universal income - which are at best in their infancy now, and many years away from being anywhere close to become implemented. It's almost a certainty our rate of automation will outpace social measures taken by most governments to at least some degree, based on how pessimistic we're prepared to be.

So what is the State of Things? IMHO, about to get a real kick in the ass.

@magee101 said in General Video Game Thread:

@Arkandel said in General Video Game Thread:

@Coin Are you more used to a controller, is that why you got one for the PC instead of using a mouse+keyboard?

I've found that for third person action games I really really enjoy a controller over a mouse+keyboard.

I've owned an XBone for a year+ now and I still can't say I like using a controller. For just about anything...other than sports games, maybe.

@Thenomain said in Difficulty of single-player computer games:

This is now the entirely wrong thread for this. Hm.

As the OP, it's not really that kind of focused thread. As long as we're talking about non-MUSH video games it's probably on topic, so... feel free to go on tangents folks.

@SunnyJ said in Brainstorming: Hybrid/Homebrew Werewolf Game:

@Arkandel I can agree with that, too. But what do you do if you base what you are making on published material? Would it make it easier to rewrite it all in a wiki, for example?

I think ideally you try to compartmentalize. "We're taking everything from book A, B, C with the following exceptions:" and then you list them all in one page, as concisely and fully as you can.

It won't ever be full - every major modification probably prompts two more more minor rulings down the line - but you can at least try. If there are a lot of them then you have a problem though since your "one page" will start getting really complicated.

The closest you can use a system the better it will be. It can get pretty damn complex if you need to House Rule every other power and roll because you no longer have Auspices or whatever. In fact there may come a point where you may want to just pick the theme* you want ("we'll do 20th oWoD Vampire"), the basic system as published ("we'll be using nWoD dice rolling and XP") then just introduce your own version of its powers with a simple table for who-can-get-what and at what price.

To agree with @Ganymede, sometimes it's much easier to learn a new system from scratch than to have to keep the changes in mind from a system you already do know, but which is being used in a much different way than the published material.

@Thenomain said in Difficulty of single-player computer games:

I think that we are enjoying a time where we have the luxury of defining ourselves more than we have in decades.

Something that impresses me is how we've overcome a lot of stigma over not that many years. When I was a kid or even young adult it wasn't exactly considered cool at all to play games; it ranged from suspicion over table-top games ("are you guys worshipping Satan?") to epilepsy-inducing coin-swallowing arcade rooms to LAN parties, but it was never anything remotely close to mainstream.

Now it's a multiple billion dollar industry and everyone is playing video games on their phones during the commute. It might irritate some of us in a hipsterish way but we've come a long way, dammit.

So folks, I need your collective social wisdom.

... I know.

I was on the subway train heading home after work. There are two teenage-looking boys sitting across from me, holding hands and generally being physically (but not inappropriately for a public setting) intimate. There's also this third guy in a seat facing them who... well, it's hard to say what he was doing, which was my dilemma. He was smirking for most of the trip - but that could have just been his face - and I'm almost but not quite sure he was tsk'ing and shaking his head while looking at them... but I could be wrong. The idea I was getting without being 100% certain is he was expressing his disapproval for their gay-ness in passive aggressive ways, but he never actually confronted them or said anything in any way.

Dear MSB, what was the correct response here? (I did nothing)