Posts made by Arkandel

@RDC That's fine, but can we keep things vaguely on-topic in this thread please? There are better places to specifically discuss and criticize games.

@Thenomain said in What to do when your mush is attacked:

@Ghost

How about a link to a HowTo, then? A lot of game runners don’t know where to start and mucking around in iptables could be dangerous.

It is, but I'd arguably say not knowing the basics of networking while messing around blindly with iptables may be worse than whatever attack is happening on your game, since you're risking making it inaccessible even by yourself - say, by blocking ssh connections.

Perhaps what a kind soul could do is create and document examples of very specific things to do for common tasks - such as banning one IP, or one specific /24 range.

For example

sudo iptables -A INPUT -s 110.111.112.0/24 -j DROP

will drop all inbound traffic originating from 110.111.112.* .

@Rinel I love the guy's explanation for why there is no male version of his product though. "Uhm, well, there are more pictures of nekkid women on the interwebs!".

Stay classy, guy.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/06/28/141241/creator-of-deepnude-app-that-undresses-photos-of-women-takes-it-offline

I switched from a powerlifting gym to a gym chain recently since it made more sense for my life; I go before work anyway and there's a club nearby, so I skip rush hour altogether plus when I visit people outside the city I don't need to worry about where to exercise. Plus it's a bit cheaper.

However the people who go to Goodlife are animals. No one reracks their freakin' weights but just leave them right on the barbells, and if they take dumbbells out they are just left behind when they are done. What the hell.

On the gross side I've had the dubious pleasure to become reacquainted with the sight of old men airblowing their wrinkly balls in the changing rooms. I had forgotten about that daily sight from the last time I had a chain gym membership but now I am having PTSD flashbacks every time I go to change. Whyyyy.

The latest episode of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was pretty damn good.

What an underrated show.

@Runescryer The reason I'm bringing this up isn't so much that we need to strip people of their characters, it's that there may be better ways to set a culture than to strong-arm the solution.

The issue here isn't Superman ruining Black Canary's plot. This can be approached organically by the GM or other players.

The real issue is how this skews the game's composition and, by association, theme itself. The example I gave before still stands; if 80% of your playerbase is made up by PL12 characters then not only are chances good most plots will be ran for that power level but also it creates a catch-22 situation where players see this and roll at that level too so they can fit in, perpetuating the demographic imbalance.

Or in other words if almost all of your characters are JLA level it's unlikely you'll have many plots ran in the streets of Gotham because... why would they be?

To be frank any player who goes to a comic-book MU*, picks a powerful character then tries to resolve plots by himself is a jerk.

It's kind of an honor system even in the comics themselves. Thor doesn't go after Daredevil's goons - of course he can take on a bunch of ninjas. He goes after his own threats.

Ultimately I think we might be trying to solve a social problem through mechanics here.

@faraday I stand corrected in that regard. That's true, and the other way to solve it is to enforce balance across the board by whatever means (premade characters, a very straight forward system making it impossible to screw it up, etc).

Maybe we should look at the problem the other way around - not in what we have but what we want. This isn't really a superhero game-specific issue at all, it's just that comic books traditionally feature more fights than say, WoD MU* do, but the latter have the same problem of some plots being absolutely lethal for some characters that would be cakewalk for others so how do you balance that?

I personally haven't seen this problem being solved. Ideally you'd want to not isolate parts of your playerbase based on their progression or current power level but be able to run PrPs that accommodate as many people as possible.

Or to put it the other way around you never want to 'waste' plot. Ideally each time you have a GM who wants to throw a PrP and players who're available and want one you'd rather they were able to just throw something balanced for all of them at the same time.

I think what @ZombieGenesis says is that even with PLs the issue isn't really solved because player knowledge of how to optimize builds is as important as the actual PL rating itself.

Double post, again to ask for people's experiences: How do PL levels affect PrPs?

For example let's say you're about to run a plot. Four PL10+ characters show up and one who's PL8. Is there pressure for that one to suck it up?

Or if you know 80% of your playerbase is PL10+ does it mean most of your PrPs are going to aim for that range? Wouldn't it be silly if you advertise a PL8 plot and only PL12s show up?

These aren't rhetorical questions, I don't know the answers.

@ZombieGenesis It's what I suspected. My backseat driver theory is that it's not a fault with the system but rather with players -- our culture is so worried about falling behind the curve in other systems that we carry that mindset to games where it's not really a concern.

@RDC Question: In your experience are people applying for one PL range more than others? For example assuming all levels are equally available do you see a significant number of players creating PCs in the average level range? Are they top-heavy? What's the ballpark figure for that distribution?

Since we're discussing post-apocalyptic stuff I'd like to mention that - for me - either such games can be aimed to create a Flintstones kind of setting (impromptu generators, utopian gardens and funky steampunk inventions recreating civilization as we know it) or a more lets-make-sure-we-survive-the-winter kind of world full of scavenge hunts and diplomatic missions between settlements, but not a mix of them.

@bored said in Things I've Learned Running Horror Mu:

Realistically, if he wants me to edit out that line, fine, but the sentiment stands.

I'm way more tolerant about personal attacks on me, mostly because I don't take them well... personally. But if you thought I was attacking @Botulism I don't know what to tell you other than that it was certainly not my intention.

https://www.themarysue.com/how-dungeons-and-dragons-became-so-gay

@mietze said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:

@Arkandel I am not even sure I have a length of projected run standard anymore. To some degree I wish I had more bandwidth to play more games so I could support the experiments and sure why the hell not let's have fun while it lasts stuff, that is the only thing that keeps me from trying out interesting stuff. I would love to have a short lived but intensely fun run than spending months and months and months trying to break into a more stable place for uncertain acceptance/inclusion. But I can see why someone else with the time limits that I have might gravitate towards more stable games instead (since in theory the time invested wouldnt go to waste if things come to an abrupt end!).

I only have two reasons for caring about longevity at this point.

1. I hate CGen and I'm not a big fan of staff scrutinizing and nitpicking applications in general, so if it takes me 2 hours to do that - unfun - parts and only get 4 hours of fun out of it before the game dies down it's a poor investment.

2. I want some payoff for my characters' arcs. I have too many of them sitting in a Google Docs folder who barely got played before their games bit the dust - and it's actually worse if I take a liking to them in that time. But once everyone I know stops logging on everything crumbles. I've hit that point so many times that it's discouraging because it's not even overt when one of my regular partners doesn't log on for a couple of days, then maybe another as I'm not sure at first if it's a pattern or just RL.

I really don't expect games to be around for years - can they give me six months of a healthy playerbase? Because if I suspect otherwise then I won't commit, either.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/20/petition-netflix-cancel-amazon-prime-good-omens-christian-neil-gaiman-terry-pratchett

................

To be entirely honest this is my game selection process.

1. Check for dealbreaker genres. It's just purely personal preference, but for example I've never liked sci-fi MU other than Star Wars because lightsabers.

2. Is the game ran by sane people?

3. Do I think the game will survive more than a couple of months?

4. Will the game draw more than 15-20 unique logins so there is RP available?

5. (Optional) Is anyone I know already playing there so I have an easier time finding RP?

If all those conditions are met I'm typically going to give it a try. Bonus points for cool new code (Ares has led to an emergence of that) but I wouldn't go play if the rest of it isn't in place.

As you can see it all has fairly little to do with daring new concepts - they help, but it's not a top priority at all.

@Jaded It's just clicks. You won't get many (or any) for criticizing works no one cares about.