Best posts made by Auspice

@admiral said in RL things I love:

@auspice You aren't uglyfatgross.

I just feel like I am sometimes.

Years of doctors ignoring health issues and doing the '<handwave> just lose weight and you'll be fine' + the usual media of 'if you aren't thin you're ugly/undesirable/unwanted' + my own anxieties ... so I spend a lot of time just seeing only this... really gross, hideously fat person in the mirror and feeling convinced that if I could just lose a ton of weight everything would be okay.

So when I hit these sort of small milestones, it can help a lot.

@Thenomain said in X-Cards:

@faraday said in X-Cards:

The whole purpose of the card system is to be no questions asked.

And if you don't like it, change the system.

Which is what I said.

And thus it invalidates the system at its core.

It's a great system when you're going in blind (as in, yeah, Cons) and you don't know anyone (a), you're on a limited timeframe (b), and you're likely already in a stressful environment (c).

But on a MU, I think we'd be better off trying to foster better communicative environments. Someone suggested adapting events systems to have tags that could work as ways to flag what an event might include as triggers. I know I (and I've seen others do it) try to notate when a plot scene might include things that could be triggering (such as horror themes, lots of violence, etc.) so that people are forewarned. A tagging system where it could be readily listed in a common (as in the same every time) location that people can see at-a-glance would be great.

Policies wherein people know they can approach the ST privately (or if they're uncomfortable with approaching the ST, a Staffer or 'Guide' on the games that have them) to say 'Hey, I'm not comfortable with this specific element' and discuss it in an adult way (on both ends: STs who can handle being told 'I don't like this' and players who can handle being told 'I'm sorry, but it is a core aspect of the plot; you may need to consider sitting this one out.'

And the last is a vital thing, too: I think there have been times where people put themselves through things they shouldn't (and know they shouldn't: be it triggering content, clash of personalities, etc.) because they want the XP, the loot, or the Staff attention and become the problem themselves after the fact. Sometimes it's just not going to work and you need to acknowledge that ('This element I don't like is a me thing and I need to step away rather than continue to be a detriment to everyone else.' for example.).

...I think in our particular unique sort of community we need to utilize other methods and there's no amount of 'house ruling' X-Cards that would see them still be anything of their former self without just being a sort of... hassle. We can grow what we currently have (making a richer +event system, building a better policy, being our best selves) instead, IMO.

Honestly I think it's part of why I dye my hair.

It's a lot more fun to have the little girl in the drug store go '<gasp> Mommy, look, a mermaid!'

Srsly, one of the best moments in my life. I absolutely loved when that happened.

@faraday said in X-Cards:

Sure, you could create a wholly different system (like the tag thing @Auspice mentioned) but that really wasn't what we're talking about here.

I was actually going to ask you how difficult it would be to add a tags field to your events system in Ares. A non-mandatory one, of course (since social events, casual ones, and 'it takes time to adopt' would mean it's not necessary for everything).

I think it could have a lot of value and help people in identifying 'Is this event for me?'

The only work related thing on my desk are a few notepads with random notes on them in my cursive handwriting that most people are too lazy to read.

Everything else is on a resource site we all have access to. No one should ever need to fuck with things on my desk because the rest is mine.

I also think X-cards in V5 works better for two reasons:

Smaller group and it's a single splat.

We have very few single splat games anymore (I can look at a, say, Demon game and go yeah, not for me and wander off) and a small group can hammer out their no-go topics ('OK, no PCs will be under 18 at the time of their death, no rape scenes implied or otherwise, no graphic descriptions whenever Jake kills someone with his katana...').

I also think, again, using it as a base when its base is the whole issue is....kinda like building a house on a foundation when the foundation is cracked through.

We need a wholly different approach altogether.

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

Did I mention I'm one of those rare people that has a hard time with anesthetic working? So I got to have novocaine shots three times for the max amount I could possibly have.

And then still they had to avoid one area of my tooth.

Ask me about my first c-section and the doctors not believing me when I said "I can feel that!"

I am in this same boat. There's a gene that goes along with the gene that gives red hair that apparently makes you more likely to be immune to anesthetics and pain killers.

I discovered it when I had to have a baby tooth pulled when I was 12. They gave me the max dose, shrugged, decided I was 'just being a baby' and went for it anyway.

Thankfully now I'm a goddamn adult and they have to listen. It does mean I need, for dental work, to get my jaw 'blocked' instead, but yeah. Shit sucks. I am legit jealous of those for which novocaine, lidocaine, etc. works for. But it just adds to my severe dental anxiety.

I have a deep hatred of fanfic (as an author, the ones I've seen that pervert the author's characters make me angry) so it's hard to approach this.

But. I don't mind stories set in a world so long as the FCs aren't present. (Comic chars are an exception but with so many writers....my feel is so long as they stay to the spirit of the original, I'm good.)

Which is what this sounds like? Sort of. It feels like a blend of the...two concepts? Like: let's take all the same characters and plop them over here.......which again would give me weird feelings for being done to someone else's character.

Ugh. The more I think about this the more awkward it feels. I'm gonna give myself hives.

LSS: I'm against using other people's characters (which is why it took me so long to adapt to the idea of rosters: the constant terror of 'I'm doing it wrong!!!') but I'm cool with worlds/settings being used.

......but then if you're altering someone else's setting too much does that not fall into the same issues as characters?

....yeah this concept may not be for me.

@Testament

Good for you on your adoption. And cats are a lot more social than people think! Many do prefer to be the solo cat in the home, but they see us as their fam. And many others (like my Ike) really do need other critters around to feel 'right.'

A companion kitty can also do wonders for a cat's later years. It gives them social comfort, helps encourage them to exercise (just like humans need to continue to exercise into their later years, so do kitties; even if it's just getting up and walking around after their companion).

When I got AJ, I was actually looking for a slightly older kitty myself. I still swear he tricked me at the adoption agency by being all sweet and cuddly and falling asleep in my hair, then turning into a hell beast later.

@Rinel said in Alternate Universes, OR, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Fanfic:

@Auspice

Does the idea of "[setting] three hundred years down the road" bother you as much, where it's just a sort of silly prediction of what sort of things will have happened or what sort of tech will be present?

No, that doesn’t. Not as a thought exercise for sure.

Now if someone copped Arx’s theme and just went ‘it’s Arx, but 300 years in the future!’ I’d prob be pretty bothered on behalf of the people who made it.

the era of GOMO games bothered me a lot, too (the ‘ha ha we snuck in and nabbed the DB and now it’s the same game but with a new name and us in charge!’).

@Ghost

I am super sick of shitty apartment ownership myself. In my case, it's just a complete lack of fucks given. Raise rent, but fuck if they'll actually fulfill your maintenance requests. Raise the cost of the machines in the laundry room, but most of them are broken.

Like, y'know what? I'd be fine with either if shit would actually get fixed/replaced, but don't take all the extra money and just let everything get worse. If I could even think about home ownership, this is when it'd happen.

@Sparks said in Alternate Universes, OR, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Fanfic:

(As for fanfic, I honestly don't think it's that harmful. If the canon content isn't arriving fast enough, I will read it. Sometimes I will write it. And if I ever publish one of my various fictional worlds publicly, I don't care if others come and play in it. Please don't show me your playtime, for a whole slew of reasons—I've had two published friends have really disturbing fanfics of their characters sent directly to them—but definitely go have fun writing it.)

I think this is why I’m so opposed to it. I’ve often said, when asked about fanfic, that part of my terror in ever getting published is having someone come up to me all ‘I THINK <Char A> and <Char B> ARE TOTALLY IN LOVE HERE’S MY FANFIC OF THEM FUCKING’

...and this isn’t just because I’ve seen such horrifying fanfic, but because I’ve personally run into those people with their tales of ‘I hope I can meet <creator> at the Con so I can give them a copy of my fanfic!’

@Ghost said in Good TV:

Just want to say that these shows are my shows right now, and they're awesome:

• Brooklyn Nine-Nine
• Orville
• Deadly Class
• The Magicians
• True Detective

Watch this stuff.

On 'recently discovered good TV' front, I just began binging AP Bio this week.

I fucking love Glenn Howerton and Patton Oswalt.

@Derp said in Sexuality: IC and OOC:

@Ghost said in Sexuality: IC and OOC:

@Derp I hear ya. It's weird. There's definitely a culture of shame surrounding glancing and comparing. It's a thing and everyone knows that it happens, but like a lot of things it has this weird spooky shame factor. At the urinal it's kind of weird though because it's an awkward state of things.

I've been having a lot of conversations with my SO lately about things like that. Generally speaking, she likes to point out how a lot of girls are more comfortable touching each other than men are (braiding hair, sleep overs, sharing beds, etc), and so many men are weird about even SITTING next to each other.

I think there's a whole metric ton of psychology and philosophy piled into why that is, and I have my own take on it that is probably far better discussed over coffee than on MSB.

I would legit meet you for coffee to discuss, lol. If you're ever in my part of the country drop me a line.

You should go to Ghost's preferred coffee shop. 5/5 would recommend.

@Derp

What makes me feel (marginally) better is I've had multiple teammates tell me in the past that things would fall apart without me. There's multiple processes that only I know how to do.

I've tried teaching other people. I even made documentation. But most of them were too lazy to ever learn. There's also a lot of shit I just know or can do in a fraction of the time.

@JinShei said in Interest in a Discworld game?:

That sounds reasonable. We've moved to looking at GURPS discworld, to see if that can be made as a Ares plugin, since it is designed to be discworldly! I can tell himself is looking at Ares since I can hear the code mumblings just to my side.

Edit: GURPS copyright seems to make it not easily transferable. Leaning more fate-wards

I hate GURPS anyway. >.> go go fate

@Ganymede

I'm still most upset about BoP. Maybe Joker will turn out fine, but I am hella angry about BoP.

Yes, let's take Babs' brainchild and where she truly came into her own (as Oracle), how she went out and made it her mission to find other female heroes who had struggled and arguably 'fallen' and given them a purpose and....

.......make it a Harley thing.

Fuck you, WB (I'll put the blame where it belongs, yeah). Fuck you.

@Jeshin said in Cyberrun:

FROM THE CREATOR OF HAVEN RPG...

Cyberrun.

Per the Haven RPG forums where this has been discussed he wanted to create a next-gen interface/game because MUs have been relatively the same for a long time. By all reports, the client for this is pretty amazing, but he wanted to put little to no time in the game. Thus it was sex-oriented to ensure a testing base large enough but is really just a sandbox for people to do their own things with other groups of people. There is little to no metaplot or overarching narrative.

Careful, you will summon things not meant to be summoned in this part of the forums.

@Kanye-Qwest said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Too-Old-For-This i honestly thought everyone knew about this genetic MUTATION. I mean i feel a lot of sympathy for the mutants who can't experience the unmitigated delight of cilantro, but maybe we should put them all on some kind of registry, just to keep track of them.

No, no.
Just remember.

It means you can stare them in the eye as you add it to guac, knowing that it means more for you.

@Thenomain said in What MU/RPG opinions have you changed or maintained?:

Or who the hell let me keep "Thenomain" as the name of a Pern character?

Pern games had only one hard and fast rule on character names: that they not end in -th.
That said I had a guy once, on Star Stones (sort of doubt anyone here ever played there but ehhh) throw an absolute and utter tantrum at me when, as a Guide (Player Helper sort) I told him no, he cannot be named Sephiroth.

Anyway: Pern games often had ridiculous names. Usually because someone knew what they wanted their 'Impression' name to be and built up a name around it. They might have thought you wanted to shorten to 'Th'ain' or somesuch. Heck I went from "Tadiera" to "Era" on Star Stones (and later renamed to Tad'ra because I missed the "Tad" part of the name).

So yeah, ridiculous names were just sort of a thing on Pern games.