Posts made by Arkandel

@Ganymede No one understands my pain.

@WTFE I remember being legitimately annoyed once, years ago, when I was trying to make an account for Age of Conan's beta. I mean I don't use wimpy passwords for anything anyway, but that thing had some absurd requirements - like 10 characters, two non-alpharithmetic, mixed case?

For a beta account? It didn't even have my credit card information or real name!

I blame @Auspice.

@Gingerlily said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

I think the people who really dislike MSB and think it is a net negative will not see this thread so they will never comment @Arkandel. There are many people in that camp who still MU* and/or still talk frequently to other people who MU* but there's not really a way to get their input here, so the thread will likely conclude at least in part that MSB is a good thing.

For sure. But the thread isn't supposed (or at least I didn't mean for it) to be about patting ourselves in our collective backs; it's about taking as honest a look as we can at what we do here.

There are people who dislike MSB for completely honorable reasons. They want their gaming experience to be about only the fun parts, or they'd rather not peek behind the mirror, or simply think we're full of shit; I have nothing against those folks, and I'd never try to convince them otherwise. To each their own.

And there are people who don't like the fact we might speak less than kindly of their actions here; well, perhaps they shouldn't be acting in a way that might be spoken of that way. That's not on MSB.

But you know what? There is a third kind of person who will not post on this thread. I was surprised at how many people with a lot to say and share came out and did so over PMs here who had barely posted once on the forums. In fact one said they never had (and I had only met them over a MU* we both played), but wanted to share how they were being treated on the game they were still on. It's not because they feared retaliation, just... they didn't want the attention, the extra hostility. But they wanted to chat about things with other people in the hobby because who else would understand the weird shit we say and do in the hobby?

I think that's an important outlet as well. Most of us have seen some weird stuff, right? Whatever underbelly online gaming has is really tough to translate into the real world, isn't it? You can't just go to a RL friend who's never played here and explain it - it's one of those things you need to be part of in the first place to understand.

MSB does that, too. It provides the sense of community - your buddy might not understand why the hell you'd be upset some 'staff member' of some weird niche hobby game was nasty to you, but folks around here would. At the very least you can share with the rest of the class and see if there was something to be legitimately annoyed or frustrated by.

I know you and I (the you being Ark again) have discussed at length and in some detail your opinions and my opinions and that was kind of where I ended up then too. I support many of your theories as to why it is or has the potential to be valuable, but am not sold enough to buy stock.

Sure! But that's the thing too. We don't have to agree to get along. I think it's the key to a forum like this, or maybe even the hobby overall.

@Auspice What the actual fuck?

@WhatInTheSun said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

How many people are active on here? In the few places I've read, there's a smallish group that's vocal, then another layer of semi-vocal.

There's a link at the top where you can see stats about posters, etc.

@Botulism said in Fear and Loathing:

Yes, we're aware that it looks like it could be easily abused, but as players from the game have said, it really hasn't been. There really haven't been any problems of Guest Stars dominating RP or slapping Stars around. If it happens, we'll act.

I like that part.

As a whole we're typically so very worried around here about OMG-abuse that we don't try things for fear they'll be taken advantage of. But often enough that's not a design flaw, it's staff not being on top of things or letting unfortunate situations develop unchecked, regardless of the system.

For me it's like this:

MSB has its drawbacks. But with all those drawbacks combined we are still better off than if there was no neutral ground like this at all.

People who bemoan the negativity that can emerge from this place are often correct, but they're neglecting to mention confirmation bias. Sure, we can form lynchmobs to go after This Week's Public Enemy #1 in no time, but without MSB the MU* landscape was quite a bit different. Petty despots were ... I won't say the norm, but they weren't the far exception they are today. Game-killing Queen Bees did their thing with relative impunity and reputation didn't count for much since there was almost no continuity at all; the community was a great deal more fragmented than it is now.

We have some very experienced people posting here. Folks who've ran games, who've designed them from scratch, staffed them, coded them, played them, abandoned them. That's... an invaluable resource - it's not organized, we're more like cats who knock everything down sometimes just because, but the collective knowledge on MSB is unparalleled.

Quite simply I haven't ran into anything else quite like it out there. There are smaller forums (usually game-specific) and more generic places but nothing that targets MU*ing specifically or for so long. I'm still often surprised when I ran into people who don't know about it.

Hey folks,

Since it's come up a lot in both private conversations lately but also in Random Bitching, I'm wondering what your views are on MSB's (and WORA's before it) effect on the community and course of MU*ing in general has been.

Aside from our personal feelings on the matter, i.e. if we're using it as a way to connect and catch up with with friends over time, how do you think this place's existence has influenced our corner of gaming as a whole?

Might also remind everyone this is inthe constructive section of the site.

@Misadventure said in Fear and Loathing:

What is the point of RP?

Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their MSB posts.

@Auspice I hear ya. In Toronto where the real estate prices have ballooned it's impossible to find a reasonable place where I want it with enough space... else it would save so much time. Hell, money too - with a year and a half's membership fees you can afford a pretty damn decent home gym and that's if you buy everything first hand.

@Auspice If you have the space, have you considered a home gym?

@Misadventure said in Fear and Loathing:

This way maintains the illusion that your effort and time spent in RP matters to your power level.

Players don't like being behind, and they don't like having their work turned valueless. So we construct illusions.

I'm in a cynical mood today so I'll make a baseless assertion.

Some players don't like it when they can't leave others behind.

@Ganymede said in Comic book diversity:

These days, the myriad of storylines makes every single fucking comic feel like "WHAT IF?" issues, Rick James and all.

You know what's funny though? Unless you're paying attention to hype and writers attached there's no way to even know which "What If" is going to be relevant outside of its own arc's scope or affect anything else at all. They're not all created equal, and there's no way to determine that from a storyline.

For example the X-Men being plucked out of the past... how many stories like have we read over the years? Alternate timeline characters, characters from the future, you name it. And yet Bendis writes this particular one, Marvel promotes it ahead of time, and then you know it's meant to be significant...this time. Otherwise plot threads with about the same kind of story in them become redundant the moment you stop reading the particular mini-series in which they appear.

Diversity aside, I may or not be an outlier here because I like the same characters being exposed to new situations over time. I want Peter Parker to be Spider-Man, and it bugged me when - for prolonged periods of time - there was no comic book published by Marvel where he was. I was disgruntled when the 90s reboots took Hal Jordan out of the Green Lantern book; it was irrelevant to me what race or gender his successor was though.

But then again it used to be we got a reboot maybe once a decade; usually longer than that. A reader could go over the story arc of Tim Drake becoming Robin in the eighties and stay twenty years with the character until there was a very good sense of continuity involved. In a sense it allowed a reader to bond with the characters. These days... well, it seems to be happening constantly, it's hard to keep up. Is the young Cyclops brought back from the past (along with the rest of the original X-Men) still the one in the current universe? Is it someone else? I don't know. I don't even care who has what name; it's irrelevant to me if Thor is a girl, as long as Thor - the character - is around and involved with the Avengers.

The other thing that bugs me is how much comics are used as billboards for movies. I get it, that's where the big bucks are... but knowing there's a beef between Marvel and 20th Century Fox or whoever because the latter have the Fantastic Four rights, and that's the reason there's no FF comic being published which in turn affects the, well, IC part of the universe's continuity and takes loved characters like Reed and Sue Richards out for the duration annoys me. It's not a creative reason, they're not trying to tell a better story this way... it's just bullshit marketing politics.

I was going to post this over in random links, but maybe it merits a conversation.

http://www.vox.com/culture/2017/4/4/15169572/marvel-diversity-outrage-gabriel

Do you think the turn to female and ethnic characters is what's hurting sales?

I'm inclined to think it's the way it's written, not the gender or color of the skin. For example I hated the Clone Saga because Spider-Man wasn't Peter Parker (even though it was still a white dude who looked exactly like Peter) yet I loved Ultimate Spider-Man where Spidey is a black kid. The only way I can explain that is that one story was simply better than the other.

Thoughts?

@surreality said in PC antagonism done right:

@Derp Yeah, I'm with you on things re: respecting status merits and similar. Those things exist for a reason and they shouldn't be ignored.

In the situation you're describing, though -- the example earlier re: domain is a good one.

Some of it is supported, but people don't use it. A lot could be done with resource blocking, for instance; use contacts to figure out JoeAdversary's money comes from his graft, get Allies in the PD to look into it and freeze the assets for investigation, etc.

Bits and pieces are, but it goes back to what I was saying earlier; such elements are add-ons, they're not integral to the game from the ground up and thus they only affect it so far.

So for instance many Vampire/Werewolf games do support claiming domains, they have colored maps on the wiki to show who's got what, the idea of Status does exist and in some (correctly) there are even different ways to achieve it based on your Covenant; being well regarded among Carthians for instance might have a lot to do with notoriety or popularity but the Ordo have an strict, codified ranking system. Furthermore city-wide Status has been a thing ever since HM.

However the missing gaps is where the magic should happen. Domains don't give you anything and thus, they don't really take anything away when they're absent; they're not tied to city Status for instance, or to hunting (which in turn woulhas to be designed very carefully as to not starve out every newbie and neonate), and thus neither social warfare or resource deprivation are viable tactics.

Boons, which would generate a currency system among Kindred and enable Harpies to actually have a role are usually gone (I understand RfK had a system) so there's no bartering as part of politics like it's described in the books and the main part of what legitimizes Elders in the nWoD - it's not their sheer power (that's mostly an oWoD concept) but the respect, connections and treasure trove of favors they've accumulated over time that matters the most, but what do any of those things mean without the systemic support structure? Exactly as much as Gangrel punches in a statless, consent-based system.

My point stands. For this to work it needs to be part of the initial design. Everything has to be tied together cohesively.

Ice breaker: Join a scene and don't make yourself un-roleplayable.

It's that easy. Don't be lost in your thoughts, sitting at a bar staring at your phone. Don't be behind a newspaper. If someone tosses you a RP bone take it.

That's... all it takes. Don't be in your way.