Posts made by Arkandel

@GentlemanJack said in Star Wars: Insurgency:

1. Why would any of these feature characters come to Corellia? I realize you were departing from established canon at an odd time period, which is interesting, but having Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Chewbacca, and Leia running around Corellia for reasons will be strange.

I'll tackle this one. How about these explanations as to 'why':

1. They come over because of things the PCs are doing. Presumably characters are IC occupied with something important and interesting that eventually gets the FCs' attention so they peek in.

2. Assuming they're not played full time as regular PCs (which I hope but that might not be how this game will do it) then they won't be there all the time. So to reverse your question, is there a reason Luke, Chewbacca and Leia would never visit Corellia?

I have the following comment to make.

In a thread much like this one someone followed a general "personally I don't like this concept" objection with bukkake. I feel they got frowned at considerably less than Theno did for not liking ANSI/ASCII art.

We're not being fair, and by doing so we're diminishing people whose histories should speak for themselves. No one is doubting Kanye's value to Arx (even though she'd prone to cranking it to eleven on issues that matter to her) and it'd be foolish to doubt Thenomain's character and overall maturity (even though he's prone to assuming his way is the right way).

But take those two quirks away and does either of those people seem bad? I've disagreed strongly with both on a variety of issues in the past, and I don't think so. So why don't we step back a bit - from a topic about ANSI art, are we in the nineties again! - and go back to talking about Arx?

@Ganymede said in RL things I love:

I'm not a doctor, so I don't know the science behind it; however, it works with the plyometric and yoga principles of active use and stretching to create strength.

A trainer told me he thought the yoga advocates were injuring themselves because they extend their range of motion but fail to maintain strength through that range, and powerlifters were injuring themselves because they increase their strength but fail to maintain excellent form due to an insufficient range of motion.

It's almost as if we're supposed to have some sort of balance in our bodies. Someone should look into that!

@Ganymede said in RL things I love:

@Catsmeow @Arkandel

Actually, my friend turned me on to something called "Jefferson curls." You grab an unweighted bar, step up on a short platform, and then "curl" by doing Romanian deadlifts slowly, with at least 5 seconds per rep.

It's good for strengthening up your lower and mid-back muscles. Good for people with back problems that deadlift a lot, ARKANDEL.

So like a deficit romanian deadlift? Interesting... I might try that as a warmup. It's awesome to find little new things like that, isn't it?

I think what turned things around for me (so far... herniated discs don't simply go away, so it's always going to be a vulnerable area) was tuning in my sumo deadlifts so I can use proper hip drive. Once my body realized it's not supposed to pull up with the back but push forward with the glutes/hamstrings and down through the floor with the heels, and that the core's only real job is to keep the torso at a steady angle, everything else fell in place.

Accessory work helps... planks, dead bugs and barbell glute raises are great, even if they take a hell of a toll out of the nervous system for the next day or two. It almost feels like I have a cold, every time. Oh, and stretching. I think that was the biggest change overall, I had completely underestimated what a huge effect shitty flexibility had on me, and what difference it makes when that starts turning around.

@Catsmeow said in RL things I love:

@Arkandel @Ganymede

Oh yeah? Well.. I can lift the bar up without plates. Yeah. See? You may all be in awe of me.

You're joking but picking up just the bar from the floor involves a much greater range of motion and requires more hip, hamstring and glute flexibility than I can safely afford. The 45 plates set the bar at 8.5″/21cm up.

Conversely that's some why gyms carry those 10 lb fake-plates to elevate it for beginners and rehab.

-Arkandel, provider of unsolicited facts.

@surreality said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

FWIW, I have known Thenomain for a fairly long while on and off. We argue a lot and agree on... well, not a heck of a lot, sometimes. In all that time, though, I have never known him to blow smoke up someone's ass or issue a false compliment, or one meant to undercut someone else.

When I signed up to staff on TR I had to pick the bit's name after a city where a disaster had taken place. I picked Waterdeep because of course I did.

At which point Thenomain asked if we were scraping the bottom of the barrel for names now! Screw you, Theno! That was a perfectly good name. I shall be silent no longer.

-Arkandel, who's carried this inside him for years.

@Ganymede said in RL things I love:

@Arkandel

Two plates each side?

Yeah, that's the standard way to count them.

Two-plate deadlifts for reps.

Now, that doesn't mean they won't still kill me at some point in the (near) future. Or that @Ganymede won't go "I TOLD YOU SO".

It does mean before I died I pulled two-plates for reps from the floor.

@faraday said in Star Wars: Insurgency:

@Arkandel said in Star Wars: Insurgency:

FCs like that don't belong in bar RP. If they are then it's a problem.

Kind of an ironic thing to say given that some of the most iconic scenes in Star Wars movies take place in cantinas.

... Okay, you have a point.

@WTFE said in RL things I love:

Enjoy your moral high ground, jackass, while an incontinent orangutan pisses all over the world.

Well, that's strongly worded.

RL things I love indeed!

@ThatGuyThere said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

i know this is the old musher in me yelling at kids to get off his lawn but the horrid ANSI colors (basically any use of color) is the major reason I could never try mud-like games.

You also won't play a comics MU* if Barry Allen is the Flash! Your will-not-play peeves list must be a long-ass document dude.

@Seraphim73 said in Star Wars: Insurgency:

I think that you're ignoring the mentality of players here, and it's something you're very much going to have to look out for. In general, if players check a Where list looking for RP and see that Luke Skywalker is in one room, and Abist Trass is in another, unless they've RPed with Abist before, they're going to be heading for the room Luke is in.

The trick is for Luke to never be in a room unless there's a damn good reason for him to be there. Unless he's serving the plot, currently pushing the story forward, Luke shouldn't be online.

FCs like that don't belong in bar RP. If they are then it's a problem. l generally get more RP, more weight behind their RP, and thus more position in the metaplot simply due to the OOC weight behind their names.

@jibberthehut said in New Kushiel Game:

@Arkandel So what we have settled on, and we're still open to constructive criticism on this, is that the higher ranks - those who are royal/line of success - are NPC held. They will be brought out for scenes as they are needed/requested.

I agree with that. It's a good take. Your challenge will be to make sure there are enough carrots for people to chase, but it might work.

@jibberthehut Hey, thanks for putting a new game together.

My fundamental question about your MU* in particular; how do you plan to address the 'musical chairs' issue endemic to the genre where people rush the high ranks of the major Houses early on and others have at times been left unable to participate to the same extent those early players can?

One question about Arx's theme... how is homosexuality treated IC, in general? Is it acceptable? Frowned upon? Ostracized over? Castrated/hanged for?

@Ghost said in Star Wars: Insurgency:

FCs are awesome quest givers. That's kind of the golden "badass" standard on MMORPGs. Once you're getting your quests from FCs, you know you're important. Always been a fan of FC quest givers/NPC plot devices/etc.

The way I look at it is this: There should be a distinction between whether FCs are played for the sake of their players or for the game's.

So when you pick, say, Nightwing on a comics MU* out you're out for yourself; there are probably some general guidelines you're still going to need to adhere to - it's an athletic guy, trained by Batman from an early age, etc - but otherwise he's yours. You don't owe anyone else an explanation about how he turns out. Maybe he'll end up hooking up with Barbara, maybe he'll discover he's gay, maybe he'll go on to lead a Suicide Squad. You can play him as a daredevil, or more brooding or anything in between - he's your character.

When you play an NPC handed out by staff specifically to facilitate thematic roleplay on the MU* that's not at all the same deal (in my eyes, at least); the goal is different, and so are the means. No, Han isn't going to break up with Leia because reasons. Luke isn't going to diverge too far from the path his current timeline in the movies suggests. Their role is to provide context for PCs and advance storylines, and if you start to go off too far from that then the character should be taken away.

They're different things. Yes, corrupt staff and idiotic players have messed it up before. But that's on corrupt staff and idiotic players, because it's also been done well before.

@Ghost said in Star Wars: Insurgency:

I was just explaining (with a few rhetorical questions) why --outside of Super Hero games where playing FCs is the focus of the game-- FCs are historically a sign of a bad game and disliked by the 80% of the gaming populace

Citation needed.

@fatefan said in Star Wars: Insurgency:

@Arkandel My apologies if my post seemed like overly negative criticism.

No, it was the bukkake part that did it for me.

Even if a system is flawed - as long as those potential flaws are acknowledged and staff think they are worth the risk - there's no need for us to assume the very worst case scenario is simply inevitable. Yes, there are reasons to want to play Luke Skywalker that don't involve sperm showers, you know what I mean?

I feel that's one of the reasons people don't make games. It's the rampant preemptive criticism. No this can't work, no this will end in tears and bukkake. No!

If these guys fuck up I'll be here with the gasoline. If there are problems maybe we can offer solutions. If we're discussing game design before the fact then that's fine, let's do that - constructively.

But blasting them before they even open or do anything with open, unbrindled cynicism... damn, MSB. Sometimes you can see WORA between the lines.

@Thenomain said in RL things I love:

Well, I'm hoping that the press get their heads out of their asses and return to the era fact-checking and contextualizing. I don't believe they're dirty liars, but their reporting has a huge impact on what people see and know.

I realize I'm referring to the media and not the press but I'm getting really sick and tired of attacks on Trump over the stupidest, most inane things. For instance take this bizarre story of Trump’s plagiarized inauguration cake.

What this means is when an actual journalist actually nails him on something meaningful and important we'll all have been completely desensitized to it. If every day brings another excuse to launch a jab at him how can it result into anything else? Then he can shrug it that much easier.

All this is not even accounting for the fact the people such articles are trying (?) to sway aren't going to read them. The narrative is easy for Trump to set: the corrupt media are attacking him again, let's move on.