Best posts made by Auspice

2016 has been the craptastic year for me. But I keep refusing to let it. Nope. No. Will not happen.

Also, family members not delivering news of pets dying in good ways SUCKS. When I was a kid, my cat was my best friend (yeah I was one of those ;.;) and after spending 3 weeks at my grandmother's, my parents pick me up at the airport and the VERY FIRST THING they did (before hugging me, greeting me, etc.) was tell me '<cat> died.'

I get that for some people, it's nbd, but for those of us who form deep ties with our pets and greatly appreciate and sometimes need their companionship, it's hard. I feel for all of you that have lost fuzzies recently.

I really really really appreciate the doctors I've found here in WA.

The hydrocortisone shot in my hip didn't help, so I went in for a follow-up today. Pain is likely from the sciatic nerve. I half-expected her to do the 'Well if you lose more weight...' but she didn't. Maybe she's keeping track of things and has noticed I've been losing weight. Maybe she knows that everything isn't weight-related.

Next step is x-rays because she wants to be sure there's not something else amiss.

I'm just glad that for something that's been bothering me so much, for so long, that I've got a doc who genuinely wants to help.

I couldn't help myself.

People who have to enter comment threads that are in good spirits (discussing pre-00 anime people like) just to shit on everyone's parade. aka 'You all have absolutely terrible taste. MY favorite anime is...'

Which might have been fine and I could have ignored it, except she decided to target me specifically with:
'You have the tastes of a lonely fat girl. I bet you even like Star Wars. Dune is better.'

...I told her she's an adorable little hipster and someday she'll be a real person.

https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/553lxs/my_31f_husband_33m_of_4_years_doesnt_take_our/

Yeah, lots of wins lately. I ain't gonna apologize. Especially when the migraines are still pretty fuckin' bad.

I had a paper to write last week. I struggled with it pretty hard because it was on analyzing tragic or comedic elements of a poem while supporting our argument... and I hated both poems we were given to choose from.

Ended up getting it done just a few hours shy of the deadline on Sunday.

Today, I got my grade back. 100 and the following feedback:
This is one of the most well-reasoned, well-supported arguments I've seen in a while. I'm so glad that you were able to think critically about this piece and break down its parts like this. We don't have to "like" a piece to learn from it, and you've presented a great objective argument. Would you mind if I used this as an example for students that are struggling with how to incorporate evidence? I think it would be a big help.

I am going to screenshot it and save it as a reminder to myself the next time I'm really struggling with an assignment.

I'm sharing this on @Ghost's behalf since he could only share the main screenshot and not crop/edit:

Where I find it funny is that Alamo Drafthouse has been doing 'women's night out' events for a while and until now, these dudes have had no shits to give.

Which means they only care because it's butting in on the realm of dudebro, aka superhero films.

I also find it funny because one guy decided to go 'What if they did a 'clown only' viewing for IT?!' and the reply was 'We might steal that idea!' They've also said hey, if you want to do a men's only event, here's our private event page. Plan one. Have at.

If this game is run by who I think it is, be very careful about revealing who you play there after ranting here.

Because if it is the same couple, I was torn into for posting a gripe. Spoken to in ways that were abusive on the highest level. All because they have a 'rule' that no one's allowed to talk about them here.

@Lisse24 said in Good writin'.:

In my mind, a good pose should:

e) Does not overwhelm or dominate the scene.

This this this this this this.

I know so many people who 'get' the rest of your points, but not this one. They will come into a scene and pretty much ignore the cooperative writing of everyone else and just steamroll the scene into being all about them. And then brag about how they entertain! They make things interesting! They're great to RP with because they mix things up!

Not realizing how much people cringe when they walk into a public scene because everyone knows they're going derail the entire scene to be about them.

@Carex said in Things We Should Have Learned Sooner:

Instead put some aluminum foil in a bowl and drip the grease into it then when it cools just fold up the foil ball and throw it in the trash.

Unless it's bacon grease. Then collect it in a jar and use it in some of your cooking or in recipes for things like biscuits.

...because it makes 'em super delicious.
(...okay yes I do a lot of southern cooking >.>)

@roz said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

@auspice said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

@wretched said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

yeah people can 'use their imagination'

Using your imagination on a text based game.

How novel.

That's kind of unnecessary. @Wretched isn't alone in being a player who uses grids to get a sense of space and geography for a MU*'s setting. I mean, yeah we can all use our imaginations, but we still use character sheets and have files about setting and theme to give structure to a game. A grid's size and structure informs how players understand the setting. Yes, grids can totally be too big. They can also be too small, and temprooms aren't a viable replacement for an actual grid for a large number of players.

They're the one that began the argument that you can't get the concept of a large city without a large grid.

If a grid is too large, I can't set foot onto it. I can't find my way around. And you know what happens on every fucking game I have ever been on with a big grid?

'Let's RP.'
'OK.'
'Any ideas where?'
'No, I have no idea where anything is.'
'Me either.'
Commence never RPing because either we'll wander aimlessly and end up hopelessly lost or we'll be too intimidated to find anything.

And no, +hangouts doesn't work, because I've yet to see a game ever keep it updated. Oh, let's go to X loca- nope, doesn't work. What abo- nope, that's not there anymore. And the last game I was on with +travel, the locations rarely actually took you to the location +travel said it would.

So yeah, I'll stick to a smaller grid that makes sense and temprooms to flesh out the locations I need as I need them. Instead of 10+ Street A, Street B, Street C, Street D... per... right, district.

How the fuck often do people actually RP on the street anyway?! If in part because it gets old seeing people zip on by as they wander hopelessly lost.
<OOC> Sue says, "Oh, sorry! Just trying to find something!"
Sue leaves.
Sue arrives.
<OOC> Sue says, "Sorry, I'm just trying to figure this out."
Sue leaves.
Sue arrives.
Sue leaves.
Sue arrives.
Sue leaves.
Sue arrives.
Sue leaves.
Sue arrives.
<OOC> Sue says, "Hey, do you guys know where The Coffee Shop That Isn't This Coffee Shop But Is the Other Coffee Shop Built To Help Flesh Out The Forty Empty Grid Squares is?"

So, alright, speaking from real world experience here.

Coders shouldn't generally write documentation. It's often a mess. Sorry, coding folks. It is.

That's why you have tech writers. Like me. Mind, it's a shit job market because a lot of the higher ups think it's "useless," but that's for a whole other board.

But that's why you end up with those 4-page deep things because the coder is writing it from his brain. To a coder, those 4 page manuals make total sense. If you, the player, went to the coder and said 'Uh, this is confusing,' he'd probably be annoyed and wonder wtf was wrong with you. He wrote it! It makes sense! He knows the exact line you need!

But to the average person, it's convoluted.

You need that bridge person to write the documentation.

Unfortunately, in a hobby environment, that adds yet another task. It's basically adding another Staffer role/task onto the pile of stuff that needs doing. It's saying: we need someone who can learn every part of our code, what it does, and then write simple documentation for the players and rest of Staff.

As someone who has done this as a career, it's not easy work. A game would have to be a labor of love project for me to go from top to bottom to do so.

So while I wholeheartedly agree that it's a problem, it's not one that's a purposeful one. If you look at the help files for hard-code functions in Penn or Tiny... I can usually make sense of it in the right mindset (like my documentation writing days), but it's just a matter of being in that headspace. Which most people aren't. It's not a malicious thing.

Even if I don't get the job I aimed for, I'm back up to my full 40 hours at work (without loss in pay) for at least through to the end of August. So no loss in pay.

...sadly doesn't help much with the moving costs as I was already being optimistic and factoring those in. So this is more a 'not getting fucked over' thing, but still yay!

@Jennkryst said in NOLA: The Game That Care Forgot:

@RDC APPARENTLY, Mummy is slated for the next 2e update! But everyone will still hate it, so whatevs.

Personally, I feel we could do without the Hog Pit. I engage there.

I shouldn't.

It's not healthy. It's not good for me, it's not good for the community. It doesn't do anything positive in the end. Who am I helping? Definitely not myself. But as a moderator, I'm gonna see it and I'm a damn squirrel (ADHD, ahoy!) and I can't not. Like any red blooded American, I am drawn to drama (why you think we got all these shitty reality TV shows?). Pass me the fucking popcorn.

But what I am here on MSB for -- what I love it for -- are the community posts (RL Things I Love, MU* Things I Love, etc., silly games we play) and the Mildly Constructive forum. We've seen game ideas come out of that, we've discussed mechanics. We have some great How To threads (that I would love to see collected into a Knowledge Base on future forum software; I'm building pros and cons lists on a new platform if we migrate away from nodebb and some of them do have KB platforms built in). Those are the reasons I'm here. Not the swamps.

But there are very loud and insistent voices for the Pit and... I feel we need to be able to weigh all the voices. Not just the loudest. We have a lot more members on these boards (I watch the metrics sometimes!) than we appear to. We also have members who post less frequently and members who aren't in the Pit at all (because they didn't opt-in). Do we listen to the person who posts ten times yelling for the Pit or do we listen to the three people who post once apiece saying they don't want it?

Just because someone is louder doesn't make them more important than the rest.

@Tinuviel said in Things We Should Have Learned Sooner:

@Auspice True, I don't deal with kindergarteners.

Not since the restraining orders, no.

I remember a time when games would heavily advise against playing wallflower/overly shy PCs because it would make it difficult to be involved. Sure, there's 'your fun' (though I am so sick of that phrase because so often it's used as a defense for being a problem OOCly), but MU*s are made to be cooperative.

I wonder if this game were packed with wallflowers who never interacted with anyone other than their BFFs, if Staff would be pushing to do anything they could to fix it. There's just something about people playing assholes that gets people super defensive about it.

I'm also seeing a lot of 'Well, in the show, it's common for people to behave this way...' Maybe this is just a bad setting for a MU. Maybe folks should write fanfic instead and play games that encourage being cooperative (you can still be a dick, while being totally inclusive; there's a PC that does that extremely well on a game I'm on right now).

@faraday said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

I wouldn't be opposed to that, but I think the core of the issue is that @Arkandel in particular (and I'm not sure about @Auspice and @Ganymede) really just don't want to moderate except in the absolute most extreme instances of hate/harassment. And hey - I can respect that. I personally wouldn't want to deal with the headache of moderating this forum either.

Oh, I would moderate heavily.

I just don't want another 48 hours of 'let's tell Auspice all the ways that she's a terrible human being and should probably die and suffer for it' because I did choose to moderate.

I can moderate. I can moderate and see that the rules laid out are followed thoroughly.

But the rules would be applied evenly and I think that's what a lot of people are afraid of: being 'old guard' or a popular name or a game runner isn't going to get you a pass. I would not care if you're brand new or an institution, but even my ability to get up, close the site, walk away, and remind myself that I don't know most of you from Adam wears thin when I realize that you're putting dedicated time and effort into detailing the ways you want to see me suffer.

(And now I set my personal bet with myself for someone like bored to start that exact behavior in this thread.)

Would it be exactly-perfect-no-mistakes moderation? No. None of us are perfect. No one is. And if you expect perfection out of other people without being perfect yourself, you're not someone I personally want to be engaging with. But if our aim is to craft an uplifting space in which to engage in, I think the majority of people would prefer the occasional mistake than seeing more garbage through than not.