Posts made by Arkandel

Oh. My. Gawd.

https://plus.google.com/+BrycePerry/posts/ga2xnRi7a7p

Vampire: the Masquarade 4th Edition.

@SG said:

It's articles like these that make me think Greece is ahead of its time by about 20 years.

I know some people who'd laugh hard at that.

I was reading an article about the social effects of increased automation - how society would cope with the eventual loss of jobs and if it's something new this time rather than a repeat of something that's happened again and again in human history.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/12/20/1618222/what-happens-to-society-when-robots-replace-workers?sdsrc=popbyskidbtmprev was the thread in question.

So. What do you think? Is this the end of the world as we know it?

Well, she's still dead.

@The-Tree-of-Woe said:

If it's anything like a Garth Ennis comic I'll shank anyone who tries to make me play it.

Explain. Explain while knowing Garth Ennis is my hero.

@TNP You have to apply a style (italics, etc) per line. Surrounding the entire multi-line segment with asterisks won't do the trick.

I put in one random post of mine then, to compare, one of @HelloRaptor's.

"You are heartfelt and analytical.

You are calm under pressure: you handle unexpected events calmly and effectively. You are self-assured: you tend to feel calm and self-assured. And you are unconcerned with art: you are less concerned with artistic or creative activities than most people who participated in our surveys.

You are motivated to seek out experiences that provide a strong feeling of efficiency.

You are relatively unconcerned with tradition: you care more about making your own path than following what others have done. You consider achieving success to guide a large part of what you do: you seek out opportunities to improve yourself and demonstrate that you are a capable person."

versus

"You are a bit inconsiderate, somewhat critical and excitable.

You are self-conscious: you are sensitive about what others might be thinking about you. You are melancholy: you think quite often about the things you are unhappy about. And you are intermittent: you have a hard time sticking with difficult tasks for a long period of time.

Your choices are driven by a desire for connectedness.

You are relatively unconcerned with tradition: you care more about making your own path than following what others have done. You consider achieving success to guide a large part of what you do: you seek out opportunities to improve yourself and demonstrate that you are a capable person."

Hey, this isn't too bad!

@Thenomain That guy is the gift that keeps on givin'.

@Miss-Demeanor said:

Huh. I didn't realize there were people that didn't call it a flash drive.

I call it a USB key. Thumb drive is also used frequently around here.

@Sunny But was that the result of him playing a Sin-Eater?

For those of us thinking about console-buying in the future, anyone here got personal experience yet with XBox One's backward compatibility capability?

@HelloRaptor I think one of the reasons I liked the Secrets of Power series as much as I did is that I'm a sucker for 'training' novels in general. The theme of some random corporate stooge gradually immersing themselves into a different world, learning the basics of what it is to be a shaman and then a very powerful one appealed to me.

Shadowrun 2nd Ed was my system of choice. Man, the hours I spent with an MS-DOS-based calculator trying to squeeze every bit of cybernetic gear I could into a character without making his body fall apart. It was the most fun I ever had simply picking stats for a PC.

Mr. Entropy (Murphy) is my new Demon on Eldritch. Not being a person who often has alts I'm not sure how much he'll be played but we'll see.

It was pretty fun so far in the whole of one scene I've had him in.

@HelloRaptor said:

Sturm was everything wrong with Paladins in D&D for nearly his entire run, and Tanis just... agh. Yeah dude, your mom got raped by a bandit, your elf family treated you like shit, everybody are assholes. Wah wah wah.

On the contrary, Dragonlance might have created some tropes (or at least largely contributed in their creation) such as the frail wizards who grow up to be immensely powerful, but on the other hand they had such a variety of characters for the time they were written.

For every ultra-heroic death facing dragon-riders there was a quiet passing away from old age. Victory didn't shroud the winners in everlasting glory, they went right back to their old problems, having to earn a living and find their way from that. The big romances sometimes paid off, sometimes they didn't; Laurana and Tanis didn't end up being a power couple for the ages.

That stuff was fine. Not great, and if I had to read it again I'm sure it wouldn't hold up the same way it does in my memories, but it worked. The Cleric Quintet was pretty good too, and those Moonblade books had their moments. Nothing fantastic but decent reads.

Another point: Maybe I'm alone here but I find I can pick things up about theme much better from an average novel than a good gaming manual. At least it worked like that for Shadowrun and Vampire: the Masquerade.

@HelloRaptor said:

@Arkandel said:

@HelloRaptor But... Sturm. My 17 year old self hates you for those hateful comments. Also, I haven't read the series since then so screw you, it's awesome!

Man, Sturm was like my least favorite character in that series after Tanis.

... Tanis was my second most favorite character in that series after Tanis.

We need to duel.

@FiranSurvivor said:

Its also likely the people who play Sin Eaters are lazy shits and no amount of Courtly Intrigue will bring them out of their IC apartments.

Maybe. Sometimes it's just the absence of a unique niche - "what makes spheres work" is a pretty complex question and many factors play into it. Blaming it on 'lazy shits' is a pretty naive way of looking at it, no less so than dumping the blame on 'shitty staff'.

• You need active staff, because if no one's handling +jobs in a timely manner people usually walk. If they have a good reputation even better.
• You need involved players already since you can't RP on your own.
• At least some of those players should be a 'flagship' who can generate and carry others to RP.
• You need plot running so there's something to do.

Then you need luck. Sometimes another sphere will just get popular instead and cannibalize the rest since players flock to where activity already is.

@FiranSurvivor said:

One thing I do remember from my time there, is that there was no coded Underworld. Is it possible the lack of the Sin-Eater's main playground helped fuel the sphere's idleness?

Maybe, but I doubt it. For example Werewolf on Eldritch is pretty busy (at least from where I'm sitting) and the Shadow is always spoofed.

Basically I've never seen the grid as a significant factor in either RP generation or the lack thereof.

@FiranSurvivor said:

Sounds like shit staffing to me.

Probably. Sorry about that!

@HelloRaptor But... Sturm. My 17 year old self hates you for those hateful comments. Also, I haven't read the series since then so screw you, it's awesome!

AD&D has two things going for it in my own head.

1. Nostalgia.
2. A fuckload of AD&D novels (the Dragonlance Twins saga, the Drizzt stuff, all those Harpers books, etc) which I used to read when I was a teenager. So, also nostalgia, but some of those weren't bad.

Also, nostalgia.