Posts made by Arkandel

@AmishRakeFight See, I'd roll my eyes a lot more at someone who's trying to show off a PC's IC hacking skills by pasting port scan command in their poses than someone who just name-drops a bunch of TCP/IP jargon randomly ("I'm using the mac address to do a reverse lookup on the DNS!") while hacking the FBI database using an iPad over the Starbucks wifi. Bring it on!

And believe me, I am peeved sometimes by seeing people roleplay things which are actually impossible to do with computers such as hacking into machines which aren't even networked. Even that's preferable than turning the scene into an self-promotion exercise.

A bit of jargon just to provide a taste of authenticity at the same ratio they use on TV (i.e. not so much) is perfectly fine. Going too far either way irks me.

@Misadventure said:

TR didn't even know what their badges LOOKED like.

Oh, I remember some channel calls. There were times the dispatcher was saying things which were supposed to make sense - and we were expected to respond in the proper format - where I was just rolling my eyes.

I LOVE that video.

I just wish I could say for sure it's intentionally funny.

My standing theory is that while some people who take part in a hobby as nerdy as this and sink many hours of their weeks into a MUSH still detest being perceived as nerds. So this is their way of differentiating between themselves and regular monitor jockeys.

I'm neither amused nor annoyed unless it gets in the way or goes too far at least for my tastes. For instance I found it frustrating on TR that to play a cop you had to know the jargon and use it extensively, including emergency codes, badge numbers and the such. That was too much, and as silly as requiring a working knowledge of nmap to play a hacker.

Basically I generally don't care who is what out there until it interferes with my pretendy funtimes. Otherwise if someone happens to be a real-life biker badass motherfucker who's also a sixth dan judoka hey, more power to them.

@Roz Justify your heresy, sir.

Because Joffrey has a more annoying face, of course. Duh.

But also he had no reason to be cruel, he wasn't striking back at society because he was a bastard (although he was) or trying to become a Lord or to get something. He already had everything he could have possibly wanted.

He was just baaaad. Also, he was mean to Tyrion which never helps.

@Apu If it makes it any different claims to badassery are pretty common online as well. It's just an easy thing to say, particularly if someone's self esteem isn't that rock-solid.

If I had an internet penny for each time some guy on a MU* would talk about how he's a fifth degree black belt or go on and on about his detailed knowledge of firearms - on public channels if course, just so everyone gets to witness it - I could have bought an internet pizza by now. With extra cheese.

The Bill of No Rights!

@Tyche Any directive, amount of better judgement or common sense is suspended if there are chicks involved.

@peasoupling said:

Many Muslims choose to renounce the religion entirely too, without reprisal. Of course, these usually live outside theocracies or extremist communities. Theocracies are awful, and fundamentalism is awful, and Islam has very serious and troubling issues with those.

Yes, and it's theocracies (or any other type of extreme regime which focuses on its own values to suppress individual expression) which are the problem, not the religion in question. There have been points in time when not being a Christian - or, hell, just a different flavor of one - could absolutely get you killed and/or tortured.

Religion has been used as a vehicle to power before and its exact contents are preeeetty much irrelevant. Christianity claims awful lot of "love your neighbor" and "turn the other cheek" mandates yet large scale atrocities have been committed in its name. To those who just want to blow shit up and burn shit down any ol' holy book will do as a banner.

@Rook said:

Maybe 'half' was too generalized, and I didn't put much thought into the percentage implied there. Research would establish a more realistic number, I am sure, but I don't have the sources in front of me just now.

So what you're saying is that we boil everything into a snippet and then bandy that snippet around as standpoint and understanding? That, in itself is a generalization (har har) but I want to ensure I understand what you are saying there. I agree with it. I, too, hate that we are so 'modern' that we cannot have meaningful commentary about this or that, we just throw out the proverbial one-liners and move on with our day.

I guess I'm trying to make two arguments here.

1. That for the somewhat younger generations TV's newscasting can no longer be the scapegoat it once was. Sure its credibility has taken a nosedive as the major news outlets serve commercial interests in a more blatant fashion than they used to but we have and actually use sources online for so much more about just about everything.

2. With the disclaimer that I don't want in any way to cheapen tragedies taking place near us since when innocent people are killed to make a point it's just as bad no matter where it is, we seem to give a whole less of a shit about them when they're happening somewhere in Asia. Or Israel/Pakistan. Or the Middle East. "That's how things are over there" seems to sum it up. I mean look at this list! Just to single out one incident from there (but holy crap, look at that list) -- "six to ten gunmen associated with the Islamic terrorist group Al-Shabaab open fired at the Garissa University in Kenya. Christians were their main target of the attack, with the Islamic extremists separating the Muslims from Christians before executing them. Up to three hundred students are unaccounted for. One hundred and forty-seven students were reported killed, with fears the toll will rise, along with seventy-nine wounded."

Can you imagine the shitstorm if any of these things had happened in a western country? Just think if 6-10 people had invaded a University, separated one religious group from another then executed hundreds from the one they disagreed with in Germany or Canada. Yet I remember seeing that on yahoo at the time, it was up there... for a day. It's not like anyone hid it from us.

We just didn't give a shit so the media moved on.

@Rook said:

Sorry, if it isn't on Facebook, MSNBC or Fox News, half of America won't see it.

Agreed, but where's the other half?

The western world isn't living under an oppressive regime where the dissemination of information is watched over by draconic overlords; we're given fat pipes to the internet and dozens of web sites where such news are readily available.

See, I cannot in good conscience accept that all those Facebook users - I'm one of them - sharing links all day every day are getting their news feeds from television. I don't think that's the case. We're not our parents, the generations who've grown into adulthood after the nineties are getting their news from a multitude of online sources. Everything else gets sourced from the internet, commented and analyzed or broken down and made into memes. What we're interested in and are informed by isn't limited by what's allowed to be filtered through in the hallowed halls of TV newsrooms any more.

No, if we were in the least bit interested in the misery of people who live far from us and don't look like us we would know all about such things. Instead we don't, until someone brings their bloody feuds to our doorstep. Then we do care.

It's a pessimistic view of human nature but I think accurate enough.

There is no justification for targeting innocent people under any circumstances. I think we can all agree on that.

What is often a point of contention is whether implicit guilt is factored. While I find the practice despicable in the face of civilians and children being put in bodybags, there is still a point in that the political and business interests in the West have been profiting off the selective destabilization of nations in the Middle East for the last several decades so in this global village of ours eventually the upheaval spread in our collective back yards.

We are at least partially morally responsible for part of this ugliness in many ways. I was among those who enabled that silly Facebook French overlay to honor (as if I'm honoring anything that way) the terrorist attack's victims but where was the outrage when a plane carrying 224 people was brought down by ISIS only a few days ago? Or when we catch the news on TV where someone suicide-bombed the shit out of entire crowds of non-combatants - a quick search yielded 134 people dying in just one of them?

I'm not saying we shouldn't feel empathic for the latest victims and the pain their families are going through. We damn well should. But how do we justify not being as outraged about those other people's families?

Just because it's not happening in 'western' countries or these people have a different skin color and/or names it doesn't mean they're not dying. Back home in Greece I read daily about the efforts of freakin' fishermen in their little boats struggling to help refugees - mostly Sirians - being herded out of Turkey through the most inhumane means possible. You know that famous photo of the dead child who drowned and was washed up on a beach? They are burying children constantly out of the waters since when the trafficking networks' shitty boats have any issue at all they dump everyone, and of course it's kids who can't swim as well as adults. Last weekend I was outraged to read the story of this trafficker (who was paid basically all these desperate people had to carry them across Turkey's borders to Greece) who was spotted by the navy and pushed everyone into the sea trying to avoid capture. He was arrested, and I can't think of a punishment good enough for him, but not before most of his passengers drowned.

This is happening. Hundreds of thousands of people are in - past - the brink of despair. They're just trying to survive, and now they are being blamed by some because the very maniacs they are fleeing from are killing civilians in the nations they're trying to reach. It's crazy, and heart breaking.

What the actual fuck. Pizza delivery-rage.

The bad part about the 90s is that they're just not far enough that it'd make such a huge difference. Other than not offering certain technologies (smartphones, basically - I had an internet connection and cellphone in 1995) what themes would you explore which aren't present in present-day games?

Compared to that the 50-70s are a massive departure, socially speaking, with shows like Life On Mars or Mad Men have explored quite successfully. Games set in these areas are actually different; unless someone can present a compelling argument about the 90s-00s, I can't think of them as anything but a rather cheap gimmick to invoke nostalgia to gamers who were kids/teenagers in those years.

People. People keep me. Games keep me because they're people-containers.

Every one of my 'successful' alts happened to prosper in an environment where I was surrounded by talented, involved, active players. When their activity and interest dwindled so did mine.

If I'm in a faction or coterie I like... well, I can keep doing it forever. If my character concept needs tweaking I'll do that, if he needs to evolve he will. I'll talk, communicate to make sure we're going in a direction everyone enjoys to keep things fresh as much as possible.

But it's never about my PC - he's not an island - it's about his surrounding cast.

On my last Werewolf I was playing constantly, doing multiple hours pretty much every night in scenes and running/being in plot. When this one factor changed I vanished within a week or two.

@JustNobody said:

You all are so cool people!

You must be new here.

Also, don't have an agenda. It can backfire.

You know - don't only talk to the hot chicks in a room with six people, even if it's 'what your character would do'. Don't only try to interact with the Primogen and ignore everyone else even if your character is super ambitious.

You get the idea.

Keep in mind MU* are inherently cliquish to some degree. It has a little bit to do with who you are and what you are playing, sure, but having a niche is an enormous factor on its own.

For instance I'd play my primary character and get paged out of the blue with roleplay offers then switch to my alt and have a very hard time finding any scenes at all. In more extreme examples someone rolls a new character in the same sphere (say, after their PC dies) and suddenly they can find very little RP. Why? Because all their contacts, their existing hooks, their history to draw from, their positions or ranks, their coterie... even the name recognition are all gone.

The truth is sometimes you luck out and RP just seems to rain from the sky. Sometimes you look at the channel and realize everyone is in their own sandbox to which you are simply not invited. It has nothing to do with you, it's just timing and positioning.

@JustNobody said:

But in the end... I get bored of my characters, I lose inspiration. I never had a character about which I could say: "That was quite a game! I adored that!" All I can say: "It was ok... but got boring."

So, I am wondering... Is it me? Do I just suck playing out characters, writing stories?

I don't know you, and for that reason alone I must include the possibility that it might be you. After all some people are flakes who get excited about a concept beforehand but once the PC hits the grid they lose interest.

Having said that, I'd say there are at least two possibilities here, in ascending order of likelihood.

• You are making characters who are too 'complete' and don't have enough hooks to be pulled into others' stories or pull them into yours. The super veteran lone-wolf type who's seen it all, done it all tends to fall into that trap because all he wants to do is stick in his fortress of solitude and not get involved. In my experience characters with playable flaws (i.e. things you can actually portray in scenes and which aren't annoying to encounter) are the best for this; give them an IC hunger to get stuff done, realistic and more or less feasible goals they'll want to achieve.

• You aren't connected OOC and/or you're playing in cliquish games. It's just how it is, a reality of our fragmented and simultaneously small player pool; some MU* are just not that active. Unless things are happening - and other players are there with you to share the roleplaying momentum and drive each other - it's pretty hard to get excited about what's happening. My most successful characters took advantage of a combination of good timing (which tends to be random) and great company; PCs rarely thrive in a vacuum.

What I suggest is take a look around your MU* first and make sure you're not simply having a similar experience as everyone else. It's easy to assume other players are off having a blast in their wild adventures when in truth they are as meh as you are for the lack of stuff to do. If that's the case (or either way) maybe reaching out could help everyone involved

TL;DR: Characters do well and players have more fun while in good company. Make sure you have yourself some of that.