Posts made by Arkandel

@Apos Sure, that could work. In fact I've been doing something roughly similar by having ties to important NPCs in the plot given to specific characters I knew would enjoy certain roles. For instance in the long arc I was running on Eldritch a major villain was a PC's Sire.

Notice however this would probably be a very bad idea if I was staff, since it could be taken as showing favoritism to certain players. As a plot ran by a lowly player though? No shits given.

Either way I would be careful when designing the plot though to make sure those roster-characters weren't too important to the detriment of every other participant. 'Regular' PCs should have the ability to make just as large an impact to the story's arc else why would they bother playing if they're essentially sidekicks to the real protagonists? If you know what I mean.

@Apos said:

@Arkandel said:

While you're at it, realize the game is also a participant. I had a plotline on Eldritch for 6-7 people, 5 of whom disappeared after a couple of months. That decimated my plans because too many of the hooks and threads I had planted were left dangling, and I would essentially have to start over.

One side note, until I tried it I never liked the idea of a roster system for characters. Having tried one, I was surprised at how effective it was at reducing the problems involved with continuity since so many of the characters involved in storylines could stay consistent. Obviously not everyone's cup of tea but might be worth considering.

Elaborate on what a roster system means in this context?

@skew said:

@Admiral said:

I want to know the answer to the question I asked to begin with. Does TSing/being friends with staff qualify as exemplary OOC behavior for bonus XP?

Staff has no friends, and doesn't like TSing.

Half of those things are lies.

@Admiral There are no friends like friends with benefits.

Most of my plots are composed of long arcs even though I often run one-shot scenes which seem disconnected at a first glance, and those arcs themselves are acts in a larger story. If that's what you mean by 'campaign' then I have some experience in this area.

Some observations about what I've found is good to do or to avoid:

1. Before you begin get approval from staff. Even if you are staff get approval from your colleagues but it's especially important if you aren't. The last thing in the universe is to get griped at for doing things without asking or, worse, to be forced to stop after investing a lot of time into something like this.

2. The biggest problem you'll have by far is people, including yourself, flaking out. Campaigns aren't based on bursts or activity but the long burn, which is a very tough balancing act of real-life schedules, time zones and availability.

To solve this it's very important to have as few bottlenecks in place to begin with. To start with ask yourself some realistic questions - how available can you be for the foreseeable future? Do your online times match most of your potential players'? Then afterwards, make sure no one character is essential to the plot because what do you do when they stop playing abruptly?

While you're at it, realize the game is also a participant. I had a plotline on Eldritch for 6-7 people, 5 of whom disappeared after a couple of months. That decimated my plans because too many of the hooks and threads I had planted were left dangling, and I would essentially have to start over.

3. Avoid rail-roading for both your sanity and everyone else's. What I do is come up with the framework ("what's happening?") and the principal actors in it ("who's doing it?") along with some potential events which are probably going to happen, then leave players enough rope to do what they want with it. Yes, this means you rely on players being proactive and good - but I've found it's a more reasonable condition than doing so much hand-holding that they're merely acting out a predetermined 'correct' path of action.

4. Finally... document everything. I try to do that every time. Some of it is on the wiki where each posted log goes on a central page - this makes it far smoother for new people to jump on-board and catch up, at least OOC. You can even mark down sections of it to be IC common knowledge to allow for a faster transition. If you have a thread for staff open (and you should) keep it up to date with what's going on - just an executive summary so they can tell at a glance what's going on. This will save you a ton of time down the line.

If there is interest I can put down notes of campaigns I've ran on MU* before to look at and learn from my many, many mistakes. I hope that's useful though.

@Saulot said:

Easy. Three eyes are better than two. I may switch to Garnet at some point as well. Same reasoning too.

You can form a group with @Three-Eyed-Crow and fight crime.

@Coin I still play with you, don't I? I'm in no way stating length equals quality, that'd be dumb. But there's a correlation there.

Let's put it this way - if someone writes a paragraph (or more) they've spent some time and paid some attention to it. It might not be great as that depends on the player's writing skills more than anything but at least I can reasonably say it wasn't put together in five seconds when they remembered that window.

Now, I realize some folks will be rubbed the wrong way by this - it's fine. I don't mean to be offensive by making gross generalizations like this, only to claim I value my free time quite a bit; when I MU* it's almost always in the evenings after I've taken care of everything else in the house that can't wait but before bedtime. So if I only have 2-3 hours to do fun things... well, it's not fun to wait twenty minutes for a crappy pose. It's not rewarding to read a hastily generic response after I do wait for that long.

Nor is this unique in gaming. If I'm on a WoW 5-man group and one of the characters is always staying behind, going AFK, etc they're not being good players. Obviously there are differences there (posing is turn-based and the pace is a lot slower) but paying attention to people you're playing with seems like a universally good rule of thumb.

@Warma-Sheen said:

A lot of time you wait for someone else to pose and they crap out some rushed line because like the younger people their attention had been elsewhere and a 20 minute wait was spent with 19 minutes of it focused elsewhere and 1 minute to bang out a pose.

This bugs me so much. I honestly don't mind waiting because someone's got a RL emergency (or if they state in advance they're slow due to RL reasons). Fine. I don't mind waiting 15 minutes for a great pose, although my arbitrary threshold is around 10.

But waiting for more than that for a 2-liner is going to deplete my interest real fast because obviously you're distracted between three windows and five chats.

Yes, some people will claim their two sentences are better than "a paragraph's worth of flowery stuff" - well, different tastes and all. Give me more detail, facial expressions, set up the atmosphere and make the scene come alive with your pose and I will return the favor to the best of my ability. Don't... and well, more power to you, but we won't be playing much.

</elitistrant>

Right. And being good excuses many things. Being bad but very loyal to the material excuses little.

However take I, Robot for instance; the original novel (well, collection of stories) is one of my all-time favorite Asimov works, and he's one of my all-time favorite authors. I wasn't expecting the movie to follow anything in those stories because they aren't that cinematic to begin with, so I went in with zero expectations in terms of how close the plot complied to anything.

But that wasn't what was violated, it was what the books were about. Asimov's world is magnificent in how unexpected turns and twists based on a set of inviolable rules - in this case, the Laws of Robotics - can turn into major or even deadly problems which beg to be solved. And his underlying mandate all through his works is that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent; the idea, essentially, that intellect and planning aren't merely equal to force, they are superior to it. As for robots in particular, much of Asimov's entire body of works was about dispelling what he coined the Frankenstein Complex, the idea that intelligent machines would want to destroy their makers.

Then the movie came out where the Laws of Robotics were violated and the protagonist was blowing shit up to stop the evil robots.

I mean, come on.

@Luna said:

The hard part about stripping is dealing with the customers.

There's a pun in there somewhere.

@Thenomain said:

If you're just in it for "dat ass", it's not going to come up anyway.

In (some?) seriousness, I think what he's saying is it's not a very good pickup line. He's probably right, depending on the girl.

If anything, society norms mandate people have hobbies but they aren't very serious about them. "I watch Game of Thrones" is perfectly acceptable, but talking about Jon Snow's parentage in depth is frowned upon. It's not too different in that way from being a sports fan; you can say you like basketball and it's fine, but going over Westbrook and Durant's record PER is a no-no.

Source: I haven't dated in ten years.

@Warma-Sheen said:

Universally. I've never had a night where I said to myself 'man, I really wish I would have told that extremely attractive woman that I like to play D&D'. Never. Not a single time in over a decade.

And that's why she can't find a D&D group! You're a monster.

@Coin Of course I want the show to be good. But if it's good, yet it's not <X>, then call it something else.

Obviously when there's a change in medium there need to be - often significant - changes to make it work for the new format. But there's Game of Thrones and there's "I, Robot".

Having said that, Garth Ennis seems involved so it bears a decent chance of being decent, and I like the casting choices.

The new Preacher TV show will be 'very different than the comics'. I don't know how I feel about that.

@Ghost That's not possible. On a MU* you are a sex deity bumpin' uglies with other sex deities after saving the city from demons. In real life you get to use tissues and run to the bathroom to avoid wet spots on the bed while dinner's getting ready.

... Unless that's your thing in which case congratulations! The sex is gonna be great.

@Ghost said:

@Arkandel That's a shame. I bet your roommate ended up with someone who didn't have the same interests. I didn't hide my interests in horror, gaming, and metal music. It helped me find a girl who liked similar things. Now we game together, watch horror movies, go to metal concerts, and have the sex.

That's the silly part, he's been married twice and converted both his ladies to play games. No table-top stuff but they play board games, watch fantasy, etc. <shrugs> It's not like this stuff carries the stigma it once did (?) anyway.

For me in this context my nerdy interests fall in the same category as liking animals. If a chick didn't like my dog I wouldn't be interested in her (and it certainly wouldn't be a hard choice between the two) so the same applies to stuff I like doing, reading, watching, etc. I mean what I like is part of me, it's not like those things are disposable.

@Ghost said:

I love being able to fly my nerd flag high, so whenever I come into contact with someone who loves it but has to hide it, I try to be supportive.

My room-mate from the university was (and is) a huge nerd but he so in the closet about it. We used to go to the local comics store and grab our weekly stuff then go to McDonalds to grab a bite. I'd take one of my issues out to browse through while eating and he wouldn't because he'd hilariously claim he was 'protecting their collectivity'. Oddly enough he had no issues eating and reading them at home though. He also gave me warning looks if we were chatting about nerdy things whenever a girl was coming anywhere close to us.

Pfft!

@thebird Feel free to add me. The username is Arkandel as you might have imagined.

And basketball, how are you at basketball!