Posts made by Arkandel

@Tempest said:

I really disagree and think this is an attitude that is cancerous to the future of the hobby.

Not every game needs to use WoD because 'omg the most people know it'.

If people want to ignore a game just because they don't feel like learning a new system, hey whatever, but that doesn't mean everybody should stop making anything that isn't WoD.

Wow, cancerous. That's a strong word! I've seen my attitude described in a variety of ways over time but I think that's a new one.

No, it's not cancerous to the future of the hobby, it is the opposite. We are a shrinking community, not an expanding one, and further fragmentation into ever-smaller niches damages instead of reinforces whatever it is that's still holding us together. In more prosperous time - the late nineties for instance - we could and did afford to run a whole lot more things since the pool of fresh students who were first getting on the internets was nigh-inexhaustible.

You could argue - and I certainly can't refute you - that if you want to run a game based on absolutely whatever it is you find appealing then you should. That's absolutely true. But making a new MU* from scratch is a ton of work; I'm talking setting up code, wiki, a grid, the full trappings of getting something like that off the ground, not to mention creating word of mouth so you can have people help out and (heavens forbid) actually play the blasted thing in the end.

Well, it's your time and effort. I got zero say in it. What I am however suggesting is that doing all of this work for a handful of players may be ill-advised compared to just grabbing those players (at this point you probably already know them by name) and pulling them into Skype. The same amount of fun for a fraction of the work.

I'm not theorizing most people don't want to read new rules and be introduced to fresh mechanics for a game they might or not even keep playing after a week. I consider it to be obvious. Hell, I know a lot of folks who've been playing WoD for years and still only know, if anything, the barest basics. Hellx2, @Coin still berates me on my own lack of knowledge on the system.

What you do after that is your business.

@Miss-Demeanor said:

Maybe I'm just a monster... but I like the D&D based ruleset from that Exodus link Lithium tossed up earlier.

I know this will make @Misadventure want to slit my throat but I like D&D as well. Pathfinder as well I guess. But it's not really due to some nerdy which-ruleset-is-the-best inner debate but, rather, on the basis of recognition and media support in an attempt to have a game's mechanics be as immediately familiar as possible with as many potential players as can be.

Sure, the ultra honed heavily houseruled set of Bob's Fantasy Compedium (Eighth Edition) might be exactly right for... something, I dunno, but if no one's ever heard of that shit next to no one but friends and family is going to play it. The niche will be played by our community's equivalent to hipsters, roleplay will be incestuous at best and impossible to find at worst and all that effort might as well have gone to a Skype-ran campaign in the first place.

@Lithium said:

It's sort of like setting a game in the Matrix but before Neo. It could be done, it might even be able to be done well within the limits of that setting, but people would expect Neo to come along and everything would change and nobody's actions would really matter, because Neo.

Yeah, that's a terrible idea. We had a similar issue in our Wheel of Time game years ago where characters could be powerful and everything but they weren't book characters. And since those book characters held all the important decision-making positions, were by definition the most personally powerful people (no channeler could ever rival Rand no matter what) but also had the tendency of doing things themselves people just did their thing by delegating themselves to being support cast.

Which sucks. PCs should never be support.

I believe today is the last day this bundle is available: http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/19819219/the-grand-tournament-pre-purchase-bundle-7-29-2015

If you're playing Hearthstone, that's 50% cheaper, which is a decent deal. It can only be used once.

I'm working my way through Ruin, the third installment of The Faithful And The Fallen series by John Gwynne. It's a pretty good series - the protagonist is a bit on the whiny side even for my tastes (as I often enjoy a bit of brooding) but the story is top notch and very well done.

The basic story is pretty standard - a prophecy speaks of the return of an evil power, and there are two figures who'll rise to support or fight it. The interesting twist here is that, although the reader is pretty aware who's who, the characters in these novels can't tell; many of them who consider themselves good people loose their footing on the moral scale through committing acts of necessary evil, then they justify themselves after the fact into following them up with apathy when they witness increasingly worse things.

It's not an easy tale if you like the good guys to win more often, either, because the odds are seriously stacked towards the other side who's smarter, better prepared and seem to know what they're doing because they mean to win and don't have moral qualms about it.

For this portrayal alone the series is a good read.

Ctrl + mouse wheel, it's not exactly a big deal. Then, if you're using Chrome, it remembers the setting for that domain.

You know you can enlarge/shrink fonts from the browser side, right?

What do you think about people's reactions to this? https://ca.movies.yahoo.com/post/127153060736/goonies-house-owner-slams-tourists-for-doing-the

Fans have not taken well to the restrictions.
One told KGW News: “She should realize that there is a following for this movie and that people really want to see this house.”
Added another: “It’s a bummer as someone who just wanted to come see a piece of childhood and something you think you’re a part of.”

I'm sure those are the kind who work in sales or marketing - or, worse, lawyers. They're not people. Don't mistake them for such.

• Why wouldn't you count spaces?

@EmmahSue said:

O science!

http://www.iflscience.com/method-removing-carbon-dioxide-air-could-return-us-pre-industrial-revolution-co2-levels

ES

Uhm. What's to keep someone batshit enough (North Korea comes to mind, the leadership there is ripped straight out of comic book pages) from doing this hard/long enough to kill everything? We do still need CO2 in the freakin' atmosphere.

@Coin said:

See, I'm in the camp that thinks that cheating is fucking horrible, but that doesn't give hackers a blanket pardon for breaking the law and then leaking people's private lives all over the internet. It's not "okay" just because the people you're targetting may be cheating on their spouses.

That was never an issue though. The hackers didn't do this for moral reasons. They did it to blackmail the company for money. It was when the blackmail didn't work that they released the data - publicising the issue ahead of time was just an extra method to apply pressure on them.

This isn't a morality hack. This is a (fairly standard) data extortion scheme with some morality sprinkled on top.

... Having said that, it's hilarious, and getting some statistics out of the service because of this actually helps answer certain questions about the demographics of all such sites, even the less sketchy ones.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/hackers-theyve-leaked-massive-database-ashley-madison-users-101012586.html

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/hackers-dump-data-cheating-website-ashley-madison-online-012742489--sector.html

First of all, what kind of absolute moron uses his work address for this? Especially people in the military/government.

But also no, the leak isn't what's threatening all those people's marriages, the rampant cheating does.

Those are all things a spy would say.

@Coin said:

@Cobaltasaurus said:

Fuck this 25+ page history paper. Fuck it in the head. Also fuck myself for putting it off until I have, uh, 6 days to do it.

Procrastinators Unite.

Tomorrow.

Aren't you a teacher ?

WE HAVE A SPY HERE, GUYS!

'Code' seems like an obvious group. Not everyone cares or even understands posts in that category.

Maybe 'media' as well - TV shows, movies, music, comics, that kind of thing.

'Sports' maybe? For things ranging from working out to actual sports - we're all a buncha nerds but surely some of us follow teams or individuals.

Reporting problems and offering constructive criticism are legitimate reasons to post on any forum worth its salt.

If something's wrong it should be brought up whether it's 'new' or 'old'. I've experienced several problems with this version of the forum even after I cleared the cache, including Bad Gateway errors.

Having said that, it's a free service someone else is offering us. Whoever doesn't like it I'm sure @Glitch will be happy to give them a full refund.

Paste or it didn't happen.

What's with the giant avatars?

I don't usually complain about new things but the new things in question sure aren't super pretty or anything.