Posts made by Arkandel

@ThatGuyThere You would bruise my delicate feelings that way? You savage.

@ThatGuyThere said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

@Alamias said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

I'd be willing to play on a 7th Sea game.

So off topic but I would dearly love any 7th Sea game not focused on pirates, or even set in a coast city so Pirate folks count get their pirate on and the folks like me who would rather be Three Musketeers or the Scarlet Pimpernel could get our swerve on as well.

There's a thread for this discussion but it's not this one. Yeah, that's right, I'm the thread police! The thread nazi if you will.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

I wouldn't mind seeing the reputation system done away with, since some of the high rep people are MU*ers I know personally are drama-flaily hypocrites I would like to reach through the Internet and punch in the goddamn face.

You mean upvotes? People care about those? I just take it as a +1 on something I posted, that's all.

Though I also like the ability to register mild agreement or mild disagreement without posting anything. So idk.

Now I'm confused though... isn't that what upvotes/(downvotes) do?

@Ghost @Ghost said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

Pretty much, if you post here, you should understand that there's a chance people who disagree with you are going to go "fuck that guy" and find out who you play on any given game and avoid you. Which would make sense if you were been stalkerish, but when it happens because of an ooc disagreement on what constitutes as an actual apology, it's just petty and fucktarded.

Petty or not though that's how human beings work. I never operated under the illusion that being critical of certain situations here will always make me friends; it's only been a couple of days since I got an angry PM over the Arx situation. So do I think there aren't players out there who'd rather not play with me because of MSB? Absolutely. Are there folks around here who're trying to incite drama? Yup - and in fact the PMs specifically mentioned 'someone else' was informing them of things I allegedly posted here - which I hadn't even actually done, which is easy to see since... they are all public.

So is this whole affair kind of like highschool? You bet.

But would I rather keep my trap shut (or fingers still, if you prefer) to avoid the fallout? Nah. I'm a big boy, and if anyone wants to not play with me is welcome to do so and I won't be butthurt by it. Despite appearances we're not actually in highschool, you know? My self-esteem doesn't depend on how popular I am or in what circles.

Who cares?

@Thenomain said in What RPG SYSTEM do you want to play on a Mu*?:

Everyone has a different idea what "simple" means. Is WoD/CofD simple? Think of games you've played online and tabletop, and that you think it would be hella-fun online.

How about "fast" then?

Let me give a simple example - my character wants to talk your character into something. This is something that happens constantly in every scene - but if to do that the system requires both people rolling, then cross-referencing the results of those rolls against a table to see what happened, and then even worse if the wording of the outcome is subjective so now GMs/staff have to be consulted then it's a failure. That's how I define 'simple'; not because it's not good but because if it's too much work and it can't fit organically within the ebb and flow of regular everyday RP then people won't bother with it. It won't get used.

In other words - a system doesn't need to be super robust. It shouldn't need to explicitly cover every subcase of every single situation imaginable. What it should do though is give as fair, inambiguous and conclusive an outcome to general challenges requested by players in as few commands as possible.

In most RPGs these things are usually covered very well for combat because that's many systems' core, and a GM is assumed to be present to guide social situations. That's where mechanics translated into MU* fail - usually.

Does this help? I'm not asking rhetorically, I don't know if it's what you want out of this thread.

@Thenomain I'm not familiar with enough systems to pick what I do want, so I don't know if my answer falls within your rules Theno.

What I'd like to see:

1. Simplicity. I simply don't like mechanics-heavy games, and there are probably others like me.

2. Availability. One of my issues with SAGA was it was spread over 12 books, all out of print.

3. Keeping (1) in mind, making non-combat characters viable for everyday RP (no niche/redundant skills, etc).

Just as a general outline, of course. I'm not sure if that helps.

@Miss-Demeanor said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

I WANT TO BE A PIRATE DAMMIT.

www.thepiratebay.se

@Meg I don't want to sound defensive on behalf of MSB but sometimes it is a dismissive tactic by people trying to pigeon-hole the forum overall and paint it a certain way to serve an agenda.

For instance there have been legitimate concerns, backed by several independent sources when the latest bout of Arx-related complaints came up in the wake of @lordbelh's ban. It was easier for staff apologists to rebuke the legitimacy of those complaints by bundling the place collectively due to the hive-mind's general negativity than to address and answer for the specific allegations raised.

Note that often the same people do use MSB as a platform to launch their gripes for when it fits such an agenda, mind you.

@HelloProject Did you read what Deadpool's director said about the sequel right after the first movie became a success? I can't be bothered to track down the link right now, but he spoke of this push in the industry to make follow-up works bigger and flashier, to have the plot baloon up from saving the girl into saving the city, then saving the world, then saving the universe! Or to add characters, more villains, more stuff to use up the expanded budget... which takes away from movies, it doesn't add to them.

The same principle applies to comics, just without the budget. In some ways it's self-serving - writers and editors in chief get more exposure, their names are out there more to advertise these big blockbuster events no one reads any more, they create storylines they hope to make viral and sell a few more issues through controversy ("Captain America is a HYDRA agent!") which is a tactic that used to work before it became first the norm then a tired cliche ("No More Spider-man" or Elektra's death were innovative stories at their time, then it went to "Death of Superman", then... then it became a 'is it Tuesday again?' when the latest superhero died or the universe was at stake, you know?).

I don't really know that it's the repetitive nature of the big two's comics. I'd personally love to read good stories about the superheroes I'm familiar with. But who are they? Take Marvel - Peter Parker isn't a lovable, relatable loser trying to make ends meet, he's a CEO or something? Thor is Jane Foster, Iron-Man is dead (I think?), Captain America is... you know, Fantastic Four isn't even being published, and that's just major characters who're in movies.

I don't know what's going on there or what their strategy is, but if I want to read about completely new characters why wouldn't I go read an independent publisher's stuff instead? They're throwing away the only real advantage they have - recognizable characters with a rich, established history between them.

@Pandora said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

A game is 'doing it right' when it doesn't wind up on WORA/MSB. That said, I think games that voluntarily advertise on MSB are very brave and open-minded, though they should keep in mind that they'll be attracting a specific sort of crowd that is heavily biased toward 'The Way We Do Things Just Because It's How We Do It'.

For starters it's quite normal (and for good reason) that games which are or are becoming popular invariably end up on MSB simply because someone plays on them. I think this is confirmation bias on your behalf to claim that, since being on here isn't a bad sign - in fact many threads have had nothing but good things to say about the MU* they were about.

May I present Star Wars: Defiance as a counter-example? A bunch of 'us' tried it, and we gave it pretty high marks; I said they had a good and very helpful staff, Ganymede praised their CGen and helpfiles, etc. Even when I decided to move on that was because I just couldn't get into SAGA (the system they were using) which had nothing to do with the quality of the MU* itself.

MSB isn't universally harsh on MU* by any means. Nor is there a universal 'we' involved when 'we' see something iffy happening; yes, some extrapolate wildly from a tiny sample ("this will never work because six years ago someone tried something vaguely similar and it didn't pan out" but the rule isn't that we get the pitchforks out.

Which is not to say pitchforks don't exist, or that they aren't within easy reach, mind you.

@Auspice This is obviously what comes to mind.

Mileages may vary obviously but I found it very sandbox-y - you could get some RP if you were in the right circles. But as far as the grid was concerned much of the RP happening was basically of the "dating with magic" variety.

@SG I'm not reading that, but I think it's about to be explained more fully.

@Thenomain I just completely fail to see the point. Either people would miss it, so why put it there in the first place, or they'd see it in which case he'd get fired.

Wtf?

@surreality It's a history of WORA, too.

@Autumn said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

The problem I've observed with online fora where vitriolic, jerkish self-presentation is accepted (or actively encouraged) is that eventually, that's all it's about.

The people who start that sort of forum often do so because they think that a lack of restrictions on debate foster a more honest and open discussion, or because they think calling people out as harshly as possible will make people consider their arguments more carefully, or because it's funny if you do it in as absurd and overblown a manner as possible among friends who know it's all just a gag.

You know how there are counter-games? Games basically made by disgruntled players of whatever MU* who decide to do the-same-thing-only-better and almost invariable create the same-thing-only-much-worse? The same principle applies to forum philosophies too - by trying to 'free' the conversation, but framing it at the same time, what they're doing is limiting it. A place that's made to talk shit will talk shit; news at eleven!

And in the manner of all things toxic, eventually all your users are those who thrive in or at least tolerate the toxicity, which is a smaller subset of the folks you actually want sticking around. For extra hilarity observe what happens when the founding fathers come to disagree, too.

@ThatGuyThere said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

MUSoapbox has definitely improved as a place to discuss things compared to WORA but I would be lying if I didn't say that WORA was a hell of a lot more entertaining to read.

Now you remind me of @HelloRaptor (I hope the fucker gets back here) who left because we had gotten too soft.

What's kind of neat is how several people on MSB aren't actually playing anywhere. I don't mean folks just taking a break between games but folks who haven't been on a MU* in months or even years.

For them this forum is the community.

Okay, so this is a bit uh, weird.

http://www.polygon.com/comics/2017/4/11/15256972/x-men-gold-marvel