Topics created by Arkandel

@JinShei

Haha yes of course. They're very useful things! I simply want the history clear.

I know I have carried a concept over a few times, but I tend to generate backgrounds and descriptions uniquely. There was a period in the 90's when I tended towards a very similar description for characters, but I grew out of all that when I became fascinated by building powerfully flawed characters for each setting. Now I'm old and lazy and I want all my PBs to be either Abe Vagoda or Vic Tayback, regardless of character particulars.

My roommate in college. "Sarahn i will be the only girl in this group, i don't want to go alone. Can you come for the first meeting?" It was a tabketop group of 5 guys ranging from old school to7 years older.

They owned the local gaming store. I think I was bribed with a life size han solo cardboard stand up. We stuck around, hell they gave me a job in the store between jobs till I picked up another. They added my husband in - thats a long story that eventually saw one guy leave the group in a snit. They were there when we had our kid and our subsequent wedding. They helped me through my husband being deployed, we traveled across the border every two weeks for 4 hours for gaming night with them when I immigrated to the US.

They were my portal to all this. We are meeting up at gencon next year if money permits. I can't imagine life without scott the elder, scott the youngern geroge the computer guru, bart the stoic, chris the never aging, andrea the knitter. They hijacked my wedding even, five minutes to have me combat my maid of honour in - we played tt star trek - a rite of combat to marry my spouse. Complete with lirpa's and tgey supplied the dice for rolling to have us kiss.

Man. Memory lane. Nerd origins are fun.

@Ghost

buggs bunny

@Arkandel I've never really had a situation where there was an option to compare RL/online with the same group, we do it online because we're all far-flung (hence the keeping in touch component in general). But if I had to guess, I'd say it's easier and that's going to make up for any lack of pizza related draw.

Adding to what @Jeshin said: Obviously, the engagement is different. Online plays slower, and you'll never quite have the feeling of all being at the table together constantly cross-talking or fiddling with the map together etc. But if you're talking about people who would be hard to schedule otherwise, it may actually kind of be an advantage?

If a person has to field a work email on their phone, that's a fairly big interruption in person. Online you won't notice. And family wise, yeah, they will be in the background disrupting. But? We have one new parent in our group. As of 2 weeks ago, we have another soon-to-be. The first time, we joked we'd never see the guy again. In fact? He missed 1, maybe 2 sessions and was back at it. Committing to be out of the house for 4-6 hours leaving the other parent alone is a huge difference to setting aside that time (minus travel) to be at the computer but able to get up and lend a hand.

Basically, yes, there will be distractions but I kind of think it's a strength, in a way. Just make sure you set basic guidelines so people know what pace of play is expected and can judge when they'll be too busy to keep up.

Been using mushclient for almost 20 years now and its got pretty much everything. Colors, spawns, clickable https links, force create links if it didn't populate correctly. I think the spawn nestings are garbage (they just come up as notepad windows inside the client and you use ctrl+1 if it is world one or ctrl+2 etc to cycle thru main window and spawn windows), it has a simplistic scripting language that made learning macro coding fairly easy and there is a MUD named CLOK that I was able to fully automate two different professions using triggers/macros, and a single macro would switch my character between the two professions (and yes this is legal in that game, but you can't be afk so if an admin gets ahold of you and you dont respond within a few minutes you getsa temp ban)

@Tyche I agree with these sentiments. It's absurd.

@arkandel I think this idea is neat, but it takes a lot of thought/time/mental energy to participate in,and right now I don't have it to spare. (But I hate when I have a neat idea and it doesn't get traction, so I'm sorry about that!)

@faraday

I would lock page to an unused flag (since you can't lock it to just any flag), then lock that flag to Wizard-only, then have the flag set/unset based on location.

I have a working prototype for this exact thing for people who are frozen, having to do with @tel and @link more than anything else. Can be done.

@faraday said in Looking for...:

That's well and good until someone decides to troll Harvey by creating a wiki page for Harvey.

Look, that's just what phouka do, okay?

Have to agree here. To folks of a certain age who grew up with text 'choose your own adventure' style games and similar, sure, even if it's still probably a bit of a stretch.

For younger folks, who have always had non-text graphics as an available part of the experience? It's going to feel like a bait and switch, most likely. Whatever the technical definition, this is pretty key. What we do is not what the majority is going to be thinking of when they think of video games. Would they consider it one? Maybe. But it's not what they're going to picture, and it's going to be as much of a stretch for them as envisioning something like the Wii as a real, actual thing you'd have in your house was for us in the days we feared the grue.

@wretched We have scene overlap re: SF Goth a decade ago. Add JJs and the Cracktory parties to things we may have also been at, at the same time and we probably were around each other and never knew it.

@stabeest Yeah that has to be one of the hardest parts of the WoW RP-scene, getting into it without feeling like you are missing out on most of what is going on as it isn't so well documented like MU RP is. I got lucky when I first started and was able to get into a newly formed guild with a fresh storyline. It still had its challenges but from there I was able to sort of work my way into things. Horde-side RP has been my favorite, though.

@ganymede

The Masquerade game was using the newest LARP rules, seeing as they are pretty suited to MU*-style play. But anywho. If something does happen, I hope to hear about it; I would love to get my game on again.

We bought mostly 'family' gifts this year. ie. things the entire family can enjoy. Namely, Amazon Fire Sticks for all the tv's and an Xbox One S for the living room, as well as a blue-ray player that also is in the living room. There may also have been a Chinese knockoff NES mini preloaded with 500 games. >.> <.< So that, then gift cards galore so we could let the kids buy up games and movies for said consoles. And a yearly subscription to Boomerang, because retro cartoons are still the best.

@ziggurat I certainly agree that specific events can be ignored or what-have-you. But in terms of wide-spread social wobbling, I think it'd be... disingenuous, I guess, to totally pretend they're not there.

I'm not saying that every plot or NPC or whatever has to react to it outwardly, but the perception and feeling of a time and place should be preserved as much as possible. Naturally, if you're setting a game in now, and an event happens you aren't prepared for, then skirting around it is definitely appropriate especially if it's of a horrific nature.

I'm also not shouting for PCs to react 'authentically' really, though that's an option if that's what you want to explore... There are ways of portraying a level of racism or sexism or homophobia without outright yelling 'bender' every opportunity you get.

Still, games are about fun and if something isn't fun to play, you shouldn't have to play it. That said, if you don't find it fun to explore the causes of, say, the Harlem Renaissance, then you shouldn't use that as your backdrop. If you don't want to explore the legend of the Trojan War, don't set your game in the period that's going on.

Most folks don't play a modern game to explore those themes, and that's fine. But if someone says "oh we're making a game set in the latter half of WWII in California..." some folks are going to think "Okay... so are the Japanese-Americans in camps, or..."

@arkandel said in Do we need staff?:

True, but there's no way to systematize right.

No, I have to argue with this.

The way to 'systematize' right is frankly up to the people running the game.

If it's not right for you (the queen's you) then it's none of your damn business. Leave them have their right and go somewhere else.

Too many people try to force their version of right on everyone else, and then we wonder why the hell we have problems.

@faraday said in Player buy-in:

Even something as universally recognized as Star Wars can veer sharply in tone between A New Hope and Rogue One.

Heck, it gets worse than that. You could have the difference between Solo/Rogue One and The Force Unleashed.

I think that buy-in is critical, especially on original-theme games, but also media-based games. I also think the most important things for attaining and maintaining buy-in for players are:

Being very clear and up-front about Staff's vision. I still like the idea of a mission statement on the front page of a wiki describing Staff's vision of the setting. Having some examples of feel ("the game is set in the Dark Times, but more of a Solo version than a 'The Force Unleashed,'" or "True Grit -- the new one -- not American Outlaws," or "The Walking Dead not Shaun of the Dead") can only help too.

Talking to players who haven't bought in. Depending on their reaction, this can either be a Come-to-Jesus shape-up or ship-out, or it can be a gentle nudge and a query about what would help make the setting clearer.