Best posts made by Auspice

@jaded said in Good or New Movies Review:

@Auspice
I felt that way when they cast Ehrenreich. I think that Scott Eastwood might have been a better choice among the final few that were being chosen from the final auditions.

Eastwood was higher on my list, too.

I mean you can watch the trailers and in Glover, you can see Lando. He's got the smirk, the mannerisms. He mirrors the way Billy Dee Williams played Lando. And it works. I feel like Ehrenreich didn't even try. He's just playing 'random 'cool kid from the wrong side of the tracks' #15.'

@kdraygo said in Hobby-related Resolutions/Goals for the coming year... ?:

Find more time to play.

Plz. I miss your face.

@ganymede said in RL things I love:

Have there?

If you have my phone number, name, address, etc... in your device and you install the Messenger program... I have not given permission for those details to be stored, utilized, etc. by Facebook.

Yet that is what Facebook was doing. They were using my (or people like me in this scenario) details. Selling them to ad agencies, using them for other purposes (there is one specific scenario in which Zuckerberg is known to have used Facebook to collect intel on two lawyers he had to deal with back in the early days of the site), etc..

That, IMO, is a clear violation. You (nebulous you) gave permission for your data, but you don't have the right to give permission for mine.

As far as 'graphical tie-ins' go, I gave Pueblo a good run back in the day. Like, 'played on a Pueblo-enhanced anime MU*' so I could give it a full try.

I think there's a solid reason the 'full graphical clicky' tie-ins didn't gel with roleplayers. Or why those of us who do dip our toes into MUDs from time to time have a very different mindset for that gameplay vs our usual gameplay.

It's all very fundamentally different. It's not just a matter of 'throw out telnet and make a new interface.'

@sunnyj said in Dead Celebrities 2018:

Lee Ermey, 74.

This makes me really sad. I've heard so much good about him as a person and he was fantastic as an actor.

@rnmissionrun said in Hobby-related Resolutions/Goals for the coming year... ?:

@auspice said in Hobby-related Resolutions/Goals for the coming year... ?:

Who wants to learn Python with me and build an awesome space system in Evennia? I've had Ideas for a couple years now.

Way ahead of ya there, been working on my Expanse game for a while now Will be happy to help out any way I can. Just ask.

I want Expanse game. Means I don't need to make one.

Name of the Wind was the first audio book I tried from Audible.

I had to exchange it because I just could not manage to endure it. Maybe reading it would be better. Listening to it was painful.

I got Dan Simmons' Hyperion instead which was well worth it.

@rnmissionrun said in Hobby-related Resolutions/Goals for the coming year... ?:

@auspice said in Hobby-related Resolutions/Goals for the coming year... ?:

@rnmissionrun said in Hobby-related Resolutions/Goals for the coming year... ?:

@auspice said in Hobby-related Resolutions/Goals for the coming year... ?:

Who wants to learn Python with me and build an awesome space system in Evennia? I've had Ideas for a couple years now.

Way ahead of ya there, been working on my Expanse game for a while now Will be happy to help out any way I can. Just ask.

I want Expanse game. Means I don't need to make one.

It's going to be a while still because it's just me doing all of the work myself. I technically have a friend helping out but so far he hasn't done much of anything but idle and chat >.< Space is functional but still basic. Chargen (I'm using D20 Future, which will hopefully be compatible with the official Expanse RPG that Green Ronin will be releasing later this year) is coming along. Boards and Mail are in. Not much else is, though.

(I wonder if I could make puppy eyes at the people I know at Green Ronin to be able to get playtest copies of that...........)

Horror is an all-encompassing genre with sub-genres. It is bastard child in that they've always been shitty to it.

Get Out winning any Oscars was a big ol' middle finger to the establishment in more ways than just it being written by a black man and the content. The Oscars hate awarding horror films (other smaller, more truly artistic award shows are better about this; if you're a movie buff or want to be in the bizz, watch things like the director-guided award shows, movie festival ones, etc.... those are the ones that show which films are actually loved by the people who actually make films).

I digress.

Whereas in drama you have period drama, romantic drama, etc etc and we all naturally recognize this along with comedy having dramedy, action comedy, black comedy (not the racial, but the dark, for anyone unaware of the terminology)... and so on... we often just see horror as horror.

But horror has the supernatural, the psychological, the suspenseful...

Unfortunately, around the time of Saw, Hostel, et al... the blockbuster films fell into the laziness of the gore sub-genre. And about a decade prior to that they'd given over to the laziness of overusing the jump scare*. Which means true, good horror has been really hard to come by. We've had a few. Some of my notables are The Others, Babadook, Paranormal Activity (the first one, but a couple others haven't been bad).

Get Out knocked it out of the fucking gate as an entry back into true horror, but Hollywood is still stuck in the gore because it's easy. It's easy, it's lazy, and people get in the seats for it. The same reason they get in the seats for the lazy comedy films full of toilet humor and second-hand embarrassment. The same reason we've got 8 Fast & Furious films.

*Pro-tip: in a horror film, you always know a jump scare is coming when the music cuts off during a tense scene. If you look at the upper corner (right or left) of the screen, you can still watch out of the corner of your eye while almost completely negating any likelihood of 'jumping.' If, like me, you are a jumpy person, this is a great way to still watch without being startled or having to look away.

@thenomain said in Hobby-related Resolutions/Goals for the coming year... ?:

@auspice said in Hobby-related Resolutions/Goals for the coming year... ?:

(I wonder if I could make puppy eyes at the people I know at Green Ronin to be able to get playtest copies of that...........)

Green Ronin is very anti-piracy, I know that; there was a very long time where they refused to sell anything as a PDF. How do they feel about Mu*s?

I will get back to you on this.

Okay. I guess I'll try it out.

'Auspice' obvs.

@auspice said in Hobby-related Resolutions/Goals for the coming year... ?:

@thenomain said in Hobby-related Resolutions/Goals for the coming year... ?:

@auspice said in Hobby-related Resolutions/Goals for the coming year... ?:

(I wonder if I could make puppy eyes at the people I know at Green Ronin to be able to get playtest copies of that...........)

Green Ronin is very anti-piracy, I know that; there was a very long time where they refused to sell anything as a PDF. How do they feel about Mu*s?

I will get back to you on this.

OK, official word is:

Green Ronin only has permissions to make the game itself. And they would be OK so long as it didn't violate Green Ronin 'property,' but it's an ask that we get permission from the owner of the IP to run the game.

...so it's basically in that same gray area as every other game ever.

@coin said in Good TV:

@derp said in Good TV:

@aria said in Good TV:

I'm two episodes into "Troy: Fall of City" and I can't decide whether it's objectively just not very good or if my recurring sentiment of ".......You cancelled Marco Polo but decided to pay for this?" is just spoiling everything for me.

Same, but with Sense8. Troy is crap so far.

I can understand them canceling Sense8. It had a relatively small audience and cost 9 million dollars an episode.

They had a similar excuse for Marco Polo. 'It didn't have a lot of viewers and was expensive to make.'

I imagine Troy has a similar cost range and, at the reviews it's getting, will have even fewer viewers.

Hence the ire some of us have. Marco Polo at least was a new story (Troy has been rehashed a lot) and it was done well for 'as few' viewers as it had.

@auspice said in Hobby-related Resolutions/Goals for the coming year... ?:

@auspice said in Hobby-related Resolutions/Goals for the coming year... ?:

@thenomain said in Hobby-related Resolutions/Goals for the coming year... ?:

@auspice said in Hobby-related Resolutions/Goals for the coming year... ?:

(I wonder if I could make puppy eyes at the people I know at Green Ronin to be able to get playtest copies of that...........)

Green Ronin is very anti-piracy, I know that; there was a very long time where they refused to sell anything as a PDF. How do they feel about Mu*s?

I will get back to you on this.

OK, official word is:

Green Ronin only has permissions to make the game itself. And they would be OK so long as it didn't violate Green Ronin 'property,' but it's an ask that we get permission from the owner of the IP to run the game.

...so it's basically in that same gray area as every other game ever.

More to share:
"The Expanse RPG will be like Dragon Age, using a variation of the Modern AGE rules. Which also doesn't exist yet"

@kanye-qwest said in Good TV:

@arkandel said in Good TV:

@derp I had the misfortune of reading through the comments section on a Troy review when I was curious about the show. A lot of posts were about 'Hollywood rewriting characters for affirmative action, lol, they made Achilles bisexual'.

Motherfuckers, have you read the Illiad?

bisexuals get affirmative action, now?

Only if you're homophobic and haven't been paying attention to anything.

@faraday said in Hobby-related Resolutions/Goals for the coming year... ?:

@auspice said in Hobby-related Resolutions/Goals for the coming year... ?:

But it's a fantastic price for having reference material on hand.

I'm just a little dubious on the value of that reference material. It's highly specific stuff ... Learning Robotics. Raspberry Pi. Data Analysis. Networking. These are not general-purpose topics that are going to come up in most projects.

If it's right for you it's right for you. You would know that better! I was just making a general comment about the contents of the package as it relates to game programming.

Well, game programming would be a start. Raspberry Pi is something else I've want to toy with, down the road.

And I have a few friends who have been pushing at me to join them in the land of developing as a career. So if Python works well for me; game programming is a sort of 'entry' as in 'hey this interests me and it'll keep me hooked in from the start,' but the rest may keep me going to get me the leg up I'd need to polish it into something stronger.

EDIT: What I was always told is the best way to learn is to find something that interests you and focus on it for a while. So that's where I'm beginning.

@ganymede said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@auspice

That person is a non-lawyer, and it shows.

As Derp mentioned, the person is referring to what lawyers call an "adhesion contract." A contract of adhesion is one where there has been no meaningful negotiation or opportunity to refuse the terms. The problem with raising it as a defense is that the terms at issue must be considered "unconscionable," and there has to be some evidence that the party challenging the terms did not have a meaningful opportunity to negotiate.

Convincing a court to not enforce a term in an adhesion contract is an uphill climb. If you executed the contract, the presumption is that you agreed to all of its terms. The party challenging the terms bears the burden of proving that the terms are objectively "unconscionable."

Good luck with that.

No sane, practicing lawyer dives in with that defense at the fore. Those that do will get blown out of the water. In the context of lending, that kind of defense hardly ever works, and a bank has a legal team that will take a claimant to the mat every damn day.

This is largely what I felt.

Mostly I just wanted to see if I was right in thinking it.

I get these sorts of emails all the time. Just not usually to this extent. Usually it's either a threat to get a lawyer, or a (badly written) threat that they are a lawyer. "I never agreed to these terms!"

Yes. You did. By signing up. Like any other website. You ticky the box, you agree. We list the prices three times on the second to last page. I gladly provide screenshots upon request!

The worst part is? This is generally over $45. Because the site is a $19.99 for the first month offer, so people ignore that (despite it being on the front page, on the page detailing the package, and then again on that page where it's displayed three times)... and then they get that first monthly charge of $45, they flip out and accuse us of being a scam.

Then out comes the 'I never agreed to the terms!' 'I'm getting a lawyer!'

Over $45.

We've also had people threaten to get the cops involved.

My favorite however, my favorite is when they threaten to contact the Attorney General.

For those I always want to ask if they actually understand what the Attorney General is.

@haven said in Silly things you'd been tempted to do on/for a MU*:

Silly thing = Delaying sleep to RP with random strangers

F U, random strangers.

One of my favorite people to RP with back in the day was a Brit who could largely only RP from work, meaning his RP schedule started at like, 4am for me. There were times I would nap, wake up, and then set triggers to where my client would chime at me whenever he'd pose so I could nap between poses.

I point at being like, 16/17 at the time as my excuse. And I had graduated (GED ftw), so it's not like I was... screwing up anything other than whatever shitty job I had at the time? >.>

Plus teenagers do stupid things.

@thenomain said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@tyche said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Origins Game Fair event registration. How can you screw this up 4 years in a row?

I think you're being considerate if you're only blaming the last four years.

The new low bar for GAMA to do better than is: Will the line for early registration pickup be 2 hours long again?

Or: Will the executive of Origins once again decree that you cannot get your money back for canceled events?

If I didn't live here, there would be absolutely no question if I'd rather go to Origins or GenCon. Origins is absolutely the Uber of the con scene: Bigger than it should be considering the way they treat the workers and also the customers.

The first year I went to GenCon was eye opening by way of Cons and how they should run.

I have no want nor interest to go to most any others nowadays. I did check out ECCC while in Seattle and it was fun to wander for the day, but by and far, GenCon is my bar. I have zero desire to go to DragonCon, for example. I went to Otakon a few times when I lived in MD because it was there (like you and Origins), but GenCon...

Even GenCon's dealer room is laid out amazingly well. It never set off me and my crowd anxiety issues once. I didn't sign up for events and just got the 'general' passes and still was able to attend and enjoy myself because they make registration so easy. It was just a fun experience all around and every year since (because living in Cincinnati made it vastly more affordable to go) I've been sad I can't afford to attend.

If you're a gamer and can afford GC, I totally and completely recommend it. Even if you have anxiety / crowd issues (and I have them pretty intensely), it's a really, really well done con. I GenCon so much.

@roz said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Yeah, I'm a little confused by "there is too much focus on combat characters" but also "I don't like the idea of social systems based on my assumptions of what they are."

I've actually read it closer to:
"I feel there's a huge focus on combat that has needlessly complicated things and now I feel these new systems might needlessly complicate the social side and put up a wall that will make it even harder for newer people to achieve things while already established PCs will continue to dominate."