Posts made by Arkandel

@Misadventure said:

*It's 2002. I am running demos of Forbidden Kingdom at Gen Con. Two women come up and want to play together, but I only have one seat left at my table. There's plenty of room. I refuse to seat them both. They leave the game room.

I really liked the post, thanks for sharing it. I'm not sure what the problem with that one incident was, though; it's not clear that gender had something to do with the limitation. Is the implication they wouldn't have felt safe otherwise? If it had been two guys wanting to play but only one seat would it have been a different story?

@Apos I agree with you - and I'm typing this fully aware it's a peeve of mine - but where it actually goes wrong is when things like that take over. Consider these two similar-sounding takes on them:

1. We need to build a great high-tech reinforced wall and moat, get a solar generator, motion detectors and heat sensors to detect incoming human threats. Let's launch a series of plots trying to get blueprints for this stuff, runs to gather supplies, political deals to get the manpower and expertise to build them and combat characters to deal with the zombie-attracting noise levels due to all this construction. Then when it's built let's deal with the consequences of having something other groups will want to take away from us since it's so cool.

2. We describe this on channels then put it in a +job. I have <merits> and so do the people I've CCed in this, so let's get rolling.

Obviously I've no issues with the former approach - if I was staff I'd love the kind of proactive players who'd go out there and make a try for something this ambitious.

I made the lethal error of reading youtube comments... so much whining. MSB's hog pit is nothing, nothing in comparison.

@Coin said:

Great reason to hang out in mist-covered London. There was a series of books by Fred Saberhagen that had Dracul as the good guy (he went by "Matthew Maul") and he lived in Chicago, favoring its supposedly consistently overcast skies.

Many works in pop culture though - and I'm mainly talking movies/TV series here - employ lethal sunlight as a limitation for vampires.

I guess it depends on how they're used as well. As antagonists (say, in Fright Night) they are obscenely overpowered compared to the mortal heroes, so a way is needed to ensure they survive long enough to win. As protagonists it's too limiting to never show your stars in the day if you're running a multi-year series.

And there is always 30 Days Of Night; set north enough so the sun literally doesn't go up for a month, it's the plot device that drives the entire thing.

@Coin said:

Sunlight doesn't actually bother Dracula all that much, either. I think at most it limits his powers a little bit, but he's quite active during the day in the novel.

Wikipedia to the rescue!

"Dracula is much less powerful in daylight and is only able to shift his form at dawn, noon, and dusk (he can shift his form freely at night or if he is at his grave). The sun is not fatal to him, though, as sunlight does not burn and destroy him upon contact, most of his abilities cease."

@wanderer said:

Also, zombies are lame and so overdone. Come up with your own apocalyptic bad guy. Alien infestation. Triffids. Monsters from a secret government laboratory... well, okay, the horror of zombies is that they were once human, so you have to kill a decayed former-person. That's pretty cool. But the way they've been overplayed, especially in computer games like L4D, it's just gratuitous slaying of hordes. Zombies work best when it's not strangers, when the zombies are humanized. When they are family and close friends that the protagonist has to confront/kill. I guess ease of infection is a significant factor in this regard.

I think you may be missing the point in turning something like this into the game.

With a few exceptions - if you want to dangle the apocalypse's resolution in front of your characters as a potential goal, for example - it doesn't really matter what manner of creature has caused the breakdown. Whether it's brain-eating zombies or aliens craving human flesh, everyday roleplay will be between normal people thrust into abnormal circumstances, which means the threat works as just one of many environmental variables; that's what's interesting here, how the PCs' respond to these things.

With the caveat that there are more than one ways to make a game the focus should be on those interactions. Do you see the other person - or group - as a potential ally? As a joiner? As a competitor? As an enemy? Other human beings are your greatest potential asset and biggest threat, far more so than mindless hordes of whatever it is that's out there. Dealing with resource deprivation, psychological trauma and the knowledge all it takes is one bad day for it all to end.

In that context it doesn't matter what it is that's out there. You won't interact with it outside PrPs, it's just a point of reference.

IMHO one of the benchmarks to see if your game might be going the wrong way is if you have Flintstones-minded people trying to fix the apocalypse on channels, purely OOC. Let's build a steel wall, surrounded by an acid-filled moat leading into corridors with zombie-killing grinders powered by zombies on treadmills who're also providing infinite electricity, woohoo. If that gets traction it's all going into a different direction.

The Rogue One trailer - holy shit this looks good. And Felicity Jones is actually a pretty good actress.

Damn females are taking over my Star Wars universe! We need a goddamn galactic treehouse, that's what we need.

@Ganymede said:

If I recall correctly, you hurt your lower back not too long ago. And then I read that you went and tried to hit some deadlifts again. That injury was, what, maybe a few weeks ago? Three or four? I could be wrong, and, if so, then my comment doesn't make sense.

Hm, I seriously hurt my back the first time around... 2005. Something like that - nothing actually happened, I still don't know 'what' happened. I think it was just a weak core, extra fat and a desk-jockey job that herniated my discs over time. The last time (before now) my back was hurt was in 2014, doing romanian deadlifts. I was out for a couple of days, then was okay again but took a very long break from them anyway.

I started working out in my early 20s, and have been keeping in okay shape since then. I'm not perfect; I'm not rigorous; I could be more zealous. And what I've learned is that lower back injuries are tricky beasts because it is difficult to pinpoint if a strain is myalgia or tendinitis. If it's the former, you'll be back in a reasonably short period of time; if the latter, not so.

Yeah, all joints are. A friend of mine at work plays soccer constantly - he basically has no knees left to speak of after multiple ACL surgeries but he keeps at it because he's crazy.

Me? In 2005 when I hurt my back doing nothing I'd spend almost a month limping around, being unable to get out of bed, taking heavy anti-inflamatories and doing physical therapy. Now, this one? I fully expect to be able to do a 2-hour basketball run on Sunday (which is still stupid, I should rest more, but if I can I will so why linger on that? ). My point is, exercise worked; it's not just for looks, it's not just that I like seeing some muscle tone there... it changed my life for the better. It's the difference between "I do nothing and I'm in big, constant pain" and "I lifted 150 pounds off the floor and I'm in discomfort for half a week".

Given how delicate that area is? Best not to take chances, I figure. I had a minor tear of a pectoral near the clavicular area, and it didn't heal for 4 months. Recently, I fell down the stairs and got tendinitis around my obliques; another 3 months out of commission, basically. I'm basically your age, so I have an idea on how long things may take to heal.

That's the only big fear here. A torn ACL, a shoulder cuff injury, an actual structural disc problem at the back and ... well, it's over for a long, long time. Form has to be perfect, if you allow yourself to run on ego it's not gonna have a happy ending.

I tried pilates before but you know what? You might not get it, I'm not sure... I was the only man in a class full of chicks - pilates is amazing but the chromosome composition is very biased. At first they seemed a bit ... taken aback, maybe. Before long those chicks took me under their wing and it was great, but at first - and this could be my own paranoia speaking - maybe the only guys who join things like that do it to hit on hot chicks, so it's treated with a degree of caution. Maybe. But it's a thing for me, I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable.

That said, I'll say it again: try interval sets.

How long does it take you to blast out 10 chest presses? I'll bet it takes 20 seconds. Lengthen that to 30 seconds; how many can you do at 80% of your lifting capacity? Keep challenging yourself to do more in 30 seconds, until it is almost physically impossible to do so. Then move up 5 pounds, and start all over. I'll wager that if you do 30 seconds of chest presses, then 30 seconds of rest five times, you'll feel a better burn over 5 minutes than doing a boring 10 x 5 set.

I've done HIIT in the past. What I don't like about it in combination with freeweights is that it's easy to sacrifice form. It's the same issue I have with stuff like crossfit; when I go in thinking 'this is 5x5, I just need to move this damn thing up and down five times and the set is over' I can focus on doing it exactly right. The other issue is lack of resources; there are a lot more posts, blogs and documentation about how to perform the perfect bench press than to do interval training.

I find this has worked wonders for me. I can go as fast or as slow as I want on the reps, but the faster I go, the harder I burn. In 35 minutes (6 sets with 1 minute break in between) of interval sets, I can get a better workout than I did doing 15 x 3's or 10 x 5's. The added bonus is how the exercise becomes aerobic: your cardio mixes in with the lifting.

Oh I have no doubt at all it's worked for you. We're not insects! There's more than one way for us to be fit and healthy. For me the main thing - other than not dropping a few hundred pounds of iron on my face - is to make sure I'm enjoying what I do enough that I keep at it. For example if I did 35 minutes now and 35 minutes next week I wouldn't know if I'm progressing; am I? Did I do better? Am I advancing?

With free weights (and that's one of the reasons I love it) there's no guesswork. Did you lift more today than you did last time? Gratz! Now back to work because it's gonna be five pounds heavier next time, sucker.

It's a different mentality. You're not going for weight; you're going for speed. And I'll bet you you'll burn more fat, and have a better basketball game in 3 months.

By the way, I love you, man. Honest. But I think you could work out smarter.

I you too! It's awesome to share insights on that sort of thing with people who're into different stuff. And no one has ever accused me of being smart, as you should know by now.

@Ganymede said:

@Arkandel said:

There's no such thing as too old for deadlifts, by the way; there are people in their 70s lifting substantial weight without issues. For my specific situation after cautious experimentation they didn't work out but there was only one way to find that out - which kinda was the point.

So, you knew that deadlifts would hurt you, and you went ahead and did them regardless?

Any kind of exercise can hurt you. Any kind. Walking on a treadmill can hurt you, either as the result of an accident or chronic issues based on your joints, age, pre-existing conditions, anything at all. You're always playing the odds.

At some point in my early 30s I found myself quite out of shape. My lower back just started dying on me for no reason; once I sat down at work with no prior issues then when I got up a couple of hours later I found myself limping and in very considerable pain; it was nuts. It kept happening over the period of 1-2 years before I decided enough was enough since I spent weeks in discomfort and reduced mobility, getting better briefly through physical therapy and rest before going down again because of some stupid everyday reason such as... I hit the brakes in the car too suddenly or got out of bed the 'wrong way'. I herniated disks not because I damaged them through exercise but because I allowed myself to get weak and had a sitting job. It was nuts. And it happens to millions of people.

What attracted me to exercise in the first place - later in life than some - ended up being the realization it wasn't a thing other people do. It just dawned on me it wasn't meant for the jocks and a special, genetically blessed crowd, but that it was just a matter of doing stuff I had been doing my entire life; figuring out how things work (where the 'thing' in question was my own body) and then hacking around to make them do what I wanted. In fact once I looked online I didn't find athletes - I found forums, threads and subreddits full of nerds like me. It was a revelation I wish I had in my early 20s but hey, better late than never.

So when it comes to deadlifts I did heavy research. Starting Strength (the free weights bible) has an entire chapter dedicated to just that one exercise and I've read it extensively. I had a personal trainer go over my form, I spent weeks in advance working on rack pulls - which is basically a deadlift with a smaller range-of-motion - to become better acquainted with the movement's mechanics. I watched countless form videos on youtube and read dozens of accounts from people with 'bad backs' (more on this soon) who went back to deadlifts after their injuries and are up to 350+ pounds now.

The point of this is I didn't go uninformed - not because I never do such things but because part of the reason I exercise is so I get to do the research in the first place. I love reading about it as much as I do progressing in the lifts themselves! So I knew there was a risk involved, but there is also a big reward - it's just about the best exercise you can do with insane benefits - and I did everything I could to minimize the negatives... which arguably worked, I was on low weight, fully stretched, with a belt on. It just doesn't fit my particular body; a 'bad back' is too generic a term. People with worst issues than mine could very well be capable of loading the weight up and never have an issue, but due to my particular circumstances I could not. Eh. There are people out missing limbs or facing actually serious conditions, I won't bitch too much because there's this one thing I can't do.

As for the ouchies, I'll be okay soon. It happens, it's exercise. I play basketball too - it's more dangerous than freeweights by far since there are other people involved. I've had shoulder injuries, my ankles are both shot to hell because of it, as I type this there's a long gash in my chest from last Sunday (wtf guy?) but it's a blast, too, both socially and as a workout. And while I could be doing other things as you suggested since our bodies can benefit from a wide range of exercises and I'd definitely get a benefit from them too, this is just my particular brand of poison. I need either a team around me or goals and a progression to get me going; every time I try to work through a plateau at the gym at 7am just to add 5 more pounds to that barbell there's a rush, and when I push through it it's a victory. No one's there to see it, it's absolutely unimpressive and no one cares except me, but I care a great deal about those damn 5 pounds.

What good would it do me to do ... hot yoga or take a cycling class for example and not go because it doesn't excite me?

And that's where I'm coming from.

@Ganymede You wouldn't believe how much I read. I don't even play MMORPGs without extensive research, let alone put my body under a barbell and start heaving weight around.

There's no such thing as too old for deadlifts, by the way; there are people in their 70s lifting substantial weight without issues. For my specific situation after cautious experimentation they didn't work out but there was only one way to find that out - which kinda was the point.

I do weighed lunges, shrugs and of course barbell squats. It's still not the same; there is no true substitute for the deadlift, one of the most important compound lifts - if not the most important freeweight exercise in existence.

Alas, it's not for me. Sucks but hey, there're lots of people far more impeded than that and some have done very well for themselves. I just need to find another way to do the same thing.

@Rook It has until SUNDAY. Or ELSE.

It's a good thing we have scientists doing important research in the world.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/04/06/0128211/people-feel-weird-about-touching-robot-butts-researchers-find

Gave deadlifts an honest try with rather low weight, a belt, stretching before and after and as good form as I could manage.

My lower back still exploded with the owws. I hope the nerve that's pinched forcing my hamstring into shenanigans gets over it before Sunday or I need to cancel basketball, too. And I need to find an alternative now (possibly to squats as well) which really sucks - lunges aren't nearly as good.

Maybe I'll give pilates a try again if I can find a class that's set at 2 pm on weekdays. Who the hell makes it to those?

Meh.

@Seraphim73 said:

A Moment in Tyme (over 15 years, so yeah, there are a lot of characters there):
Harkan Kirthak, Child of the Light, later Queen's Guard

@Thisnameistaken

This would work or fail based on two major factors:

1. If resource deprivation leads to a dynamic environment where one group's gain is another's loss - with all the friction, politics, backstabbing and brutality that could entail - or if playing kumbaya with each other leads to a quick happily ever after. This includes dealing with a tilted demographic (why won't every new character go join the winning side until they take over through numbers alone) without adding too much micromanagement to people's gameplay.

2. Whether players will have something to roleplay about outside PrPs, since STs will always be scarse. Also consider fracturing the playerbase too much might be an issue, especially if it's broken down into X IC sub-communities with little or no IC contact with each other.

I'd focus on those two factors and design game mechanics based on those, especially (1).

I'm just gonna leave this here.

http://www.craveonline.com/entertainment/972903-gamers-flood-baldurs-gate-expansion-negative-reviews-introduces-transsexual-character

@Coin Your brother sounds like a cool dude.

@Coin What the actual fuck is going on there?

@Roz - Fair enough. I don't think we need shortcuts here - it's not reading comprehension that's the problem but rather actionable observations - but I understand where you're coming from.

I blame some part of this on pop culture, also. Obviously not all of it (women are treated truly horribly in places where movies aren't even played) but how many films have we watched where the guy just never gave up on the girl even though she wasn't interested? And he was the romantic hero for doing so. She just didn't see the real him until he opened her eyes to the truth.

@Ganymede said:

would I feel uncomfortable if someone that I found very unattractive would did the same to me?

I agree on the rest but not on this point.

Why should it matter who you find unattractive? Molestation is not more acceptable because the other person has supermodel looks. I mean I get it but it sets the bar at a pretty bad place, you know? The guy is a creep if he's unattractive but charming and quirky if he's not?