Best posts made by Auspice

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

Cheesecake is gross. Enjoy your LACK OF DOWNVOTES.

@Tempest said in SGM Staff Diary:

I skimmed this, so all I took away from it was this.

tl;dr

@Auspice said in SGM Staff Diary:

lie

@Auspice said in SGM Staff Diary:

to

@Auspice said in SGM Staff Diary:

your players

I'M KIDDING.

You got it in the wrong order. It's actually:

@Auspice said in SGM Staff Diary:

your players

@Auspice said in SGM Staff Diary:

lie

@Thenomain said in MU*, Youth, and LGBT+ Identity:

I think the only time I saw problems with anyone’s sexual identity have been when they were flagrant about it being about their sexuality. I believe this was less about their sexual identity and more that they were pushing their agenda harshly on bystanders.

I think this is a good way to put it.

I have seen PCs whose entire character concept was 'is trans' or 'is androgynous' (the latter, IMO, is sort of insulting in this day and age because it becomes a 'teehee guess what gender they are' and that's just... no)

I have seen PCs for whom, like @Rinel is describing, it was part of their being as a whole. As it would be IRL.

As someone for which most of my female PCs are bi or lesbian (bi IRL), it just is. It's just a component of who they are. It comes up if it comes up.

It's not oozing out of every single pose.

And I think that may be where people get a little uneasy. And I think, personally, people should get uneasy on both sides. I can't speak for anyone trans, obviously, but as a woman who likes ladies (and guys... really just anyone hot, y'know?)... I find it downright insulting and skeevy when I see one of those 'big busty revealing clothes lesbians' who remind you with every pose that they're a lesbian and that they'll sleep with any woman in the room and ew boys are gross.

So in my mind (again, I don't know for certain): I imagine those who are trans or agender or similar feel much the same way. It's insulting to see the caricatures/tropes.

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

I have an RL peeve that doesn't involve food or linguistics!

Don't use your work email for personal correspondence.
Don't use your work email for personal relationship-based correspondence.
Don't use your work email to discuss your evening with your colleague's sister.
Don't use your work email to send that discussion, including intimate particulars, to the 'all-staff' mailing list.

no, please do.
then make sure screenshots end up here.

@faraday said in First Through the Gate Syndrome:

That might be part of it, sure, but I know that there have been numerous times where it's stretched on well past that mark, to the point where I'm internally thinking 'Oh FFS would someone pose please?' until someone breaks the ice. Then there's a flood at the 20-25-30 minute mark. I really do think people are waiting.

Particularly considering you can set a 10min round during combat and people stick to it pretty well.

I do get not wanting to be overeager or assume 'point.' I've had a handful of times where I have a pose set and ready to go and finally just say fuck it and hit enter.

I also once, as ST, just outright asked: hey no one's posed yet. Is the set confusing? Is there something missing? And poses began appearing after people admitted there wasn't. Maybe a blunt way to do it, but also if the set had been confusing, it would've opened the door to questions.

Part of why I'm mulling this so heavily is I'm planning a plot scene that is intended to 'drop in' on people as they go about their day to day and I'm mulling ways to streamline it. I need the players to set the scene/tone so that I can interrupt.

I remember a time when everyone who was into musical theater at all loved Memories because it's such a damn fine song.

Now it's like this scrabble to find the most obscure song from a lesser-known show.

In short: the hipster disease has infected musical theater and any critics engaging in it.

@Goblin said in First Through the Gate Syndrome:

Unless there's a clear reason for someone to start, why not simply make everyone do a roll. Highest start, then the rest follow in the order of the dice.

Simple and efficient.

I'm torn on this.
On the one hand, it would get people posing.
On the other hand, I prefer a 3PR style to my STing. It keeps the scene from getting hung up on that guy who went AFK and prevents people from feeling like they'll never have a chance to respond to something first because that guy who is first in initiative gets to.

The latter can also occur in free posing because whomsoever types fastest gets the ball... but I try to prevent at least that by picking things out of peoples' poses and having them roll. I also try to mix up who gets what info (this isn't always possible, mind, but I try to always offer everyone at least one instance a scene of getting unique info).

@Rinel said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

lol I wish. My clonazepam gets me to "unhappy and functioning."

I was prescribed this once. I stopped taking it after a month because I noticed no difference at all. It led me to assume, for a long time, that it was one of those drugs that doesn't actually do anything and doctors prescribe it just to shut people up.

I know now it's def. otherwise (based on friend's experiences with it) and I figure it's just yet another thing I'm weirdly immune to.

Tramadol was the same way. I never understood why I had friends who would literally buy it off of people to take for fun. It was like 'I was once prescribed this and it did nothing??????' to which I got some horrified 'BUT WE WOULD'VE BOUGHT IT FROM YOU' looks.

I am KIND OF JEALOUS of people for whom pain drugs work. It'd be nice to take something now and then. Instead I'll just keep fighting for weed to be legalized countrywide since it actually works.

@WildBaboons said in Star vs Ensemble Cast - Why Theme is Vital:

The theme was there, the world building was there, everything you needed for a game.

But tell me this:
What makes it a different game from just 'World of Darkness with limitations'?

I played on a Dresden game once and it very quickly became 'The primary Wizard (aka Harry-analog), his apprentice (aka Molly-analog) and their friends.' The rest of us were literally told 'Staff is not going to be providing stories for anyone outside of this group. If you want plot, you have to make your own.'

Because they realized they couldn't consistently create world-affecting plot. Anything they generated largely fell apart when faced with multiples of X archetype.

ETA: Also, we need to stop conflating 'theme' with 'setting.' The setting was there. A theme was not. 'You're a <X> in New Orleans in the Dresdenverse' is not a theme. It's a setting. 'The Red Court is on the rise and Mab is pushing to answer, with humans caught in the middle.' is a theme......but unfortunately, once again, it's one answered by a very small, core cast while everyone else sits on the sidelines and maybe gets to take part in the big final battle.

I just want something that works for chronic pain. That's all.

My legs are getting worse. Maybe it's the weather. I'm just tired of struggling just to walk in the mornings.

@faraday said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

Part of the reason people put up with crappy games/staff/etc. is because there are so few games out there. While that's not solely a tech issue by any stretch, it is an issue that tech can absolutely help with. There are good people with creative ideas out there if we can enable them to put those ideas into practice.

This doesn't, however, disagree with his premise that 'tech is not the answer to getting new blood.'

A lot of the time people speak of 'we need innovation to appeal to people,' it's end-user/UIX. 'If we give them navigation buttons so they don't have to type nsew...'

What you're suggesting relates to what he's saying:

By enabling more people to create games, people can get away from the toxic environments.

This could be done in a number of ways, absolutely. And many of them already exist.

Ares and its MU-in-a-box.
Arx providing its code open-source so people can use it as a structure for their own game (Ithir!).
Theno and his WoD code.

There are other things that get in the way of running a game and not all of them tech. Lord above if tech were the only thing, I'd've been running games for the past 20 years.

The other questions people run into:
Who do I trust to Staff? (and before you open your mouth, @Ghost, trusting someone enough to Staff with them is a whole other bag than roleplaying with them)
What do I want my story to be (and where do I find the time to write it all)?
What do I want my website to look like? (This one is huge and one I don't think enough of us acknowledge: there were a ton more games back before wikis. And a smaller playerbase is not the only reason why. I HATE BUILDING A WIKI and I'm not talking the design. I'm talking the structure and data. I imagine I am far from the only one.)

The two things go hand-in-hand: ease-of-use in making games and the right culture in which to run them.

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

No my prone-to-getting-sick-because-he-has-a-cleft-palate son may not drink after you and your cold sores. It's why I locked you out o the fridge and do not allow you to drink from the milk carton you fat fuckhead.

No one should drink directly from the carton no matter what.
That's just gross.

@Snackness said in Carnival Row:

@Pyrephox My cynical suspicion is wall to wall fairy sex.

To the window to the wall
'til the glitter drop down my....

@ZombieGenesis

Yeah that person that said that in their mind, anyone who didn't like TLJ is a white nationalist was super respectful.

On SGM we also included a 'staff expectations' policy. It details what players can expect from staff and what staff expects of players.

Shit like 'Staff is here to have fun, too, and will have their own PCS. BUT their PCs are beholden to the same rules as players.' And'if Staff is logged into their PC but not their Staff alt, it means they are taking a break and should not be pestered about game shit' etc.

(all paraphrased) But I think such a file is important. Staff should outline what they expect from their players, but they should also showcase what players can expect from Staff.

I'm just gonna say again: go see 1917. I'm half tempted to go see it again myself. So good.

@surreality said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

The new arrival doesn't care about the difference between MOO and MUSH or DikuMUD historically, why they're different, or how they've been used, why this game is different than the other MOOs before it. They're interested in the kind of play they can find there, and how to do it.

And I think, honestly, obsessing over these is a form of gatekeeping.

When people ask me what I'm doing, my go-to answer is: 'text-based roleplaying.'

It's a phrase that encapsulates the overall idea and if they're interested... then I go into more detail.

But I feel like needing to be absolutely specific in terms of what code-base and what systems-code and....

is akin to:
'Oh, you like the Seahawks? I do, too!'
'Really? So who did they recruit this year and why?'

If you (general you) know the full history of MUing and its code bases and.... great, that's awesome (and I'm not being sarcastic here). But don't expect me or anyone else to do so.

I hate when I reach that point in winter where I feel like I'll never be warm again.

@Prototart said in Embracing Rejection:

@Auspice said in Embracing Rejection:

@Prototart said in Embracing Rejection:

if you wanna go, like, BnB detail

[flashback intensifies]

yeah, i still have most of a moondragon app i wrote for somewhere that's done in, like, basically clinical writing and has a bunch of page-length traits

I spent like 3 weeks working on an OC and then never actually played because the app process burned me out so bad