Best posts made by Auspice

@bored

That may be part of why they stand out to me, also.

Continuity in scenes is such a big deal to me.

'How tf did White Knight Argus get over there to save Wilting Lily when he was all the way across the river fighting eight demons?!?!???? MAYBE LILY WANTS TO SAVE HERSELF but noooooo he's first in initiative and this isn't D&D where travel distance is a thing so no one else is saying anything but damn if it doesn't throw me out of the scene because my mental map of where people are is aaaaaaaaaaall fucked up now.'

@Rucket

Is you.

@mietze said in Empire State Heroes Mush:

Someone did make a remark to me that superhero places were even more sex crazed than WoD

they are, 100%.

I can go 6+ months on a WoD place without having my PC ever get hit on.
Superhero games, playing a female char is basically like walking onto Shang with kink flags of 'ANYTHING GOES' it feels like.

Blue Bell ice cream has a new flavor: Raspberry Brownie Fudge. The base ice cream itself is almond flavored.
I decided to pick it up to try today and it is amazing.

I kinda hope it moves out of their rotational and into the regular stuff.

@TiredEwok said in Empire State Heroes Mush:

I won't lie. I'd love to play Dex*Starr. I mean, playing a little bundle of whiskers and purrs and claws and rage and blood vomit? Hell yes!

he's the best kitty

@Lotherio said in Good or New Movies Review:

@Runescryer I've said it before, I'll say it again. Its part of the whole buying Fox thing. Thanos has his human side so when MCU combines with Fox Mutant-verse, the whole why Josh played Cable and Thanos will make since. Cable is a future split timeline that is righting itself*.

***=* - Citation***

click to show

The myriad explanations, and confirmed by the Ancient One in the Bruce Banner metaphysical dialogue sequence, to say all other time travel movies/tv series are wrong and one can't change the past. To help with the Thanos paradox of killing 2014 Thanos who doesn't incite all the movies that lead up to Infinity War (cause that would be Marty - Back to the Future if him dying changed the past for 2023 and that movie was total BS according to Stark I think). If 2014 Thanos death meant anything (or if he wasn't from an alternative timeline) that would prevent Infinity War which would prevent Endgame or something. Thus, Cable is Thanos, they knew it when the cast him in both movie verses.

I recommend reporting and blocking the guy. He's clearly not here to engage in good faith.

@Alamias said in RL Anger:

@surreality You forgot towels.

If you're a Con-goer, esp. Origins or GenCon, there is a lady who makes very nicely embroidered 'Don't Panic' towels. You should all buy one from her.
(She's a friend-of-a-friend, but I support all crafters and really, her towels ARE quite nice.)

@Quinn said in MU Things I Love:

@Meg said in MU Things I Love:

super well-thought out

Haha, I was scrambling for prizes like twenty minutes before it started and thought I came up with shitty last minute things. But everyone loved them! I was most shocked that the book I threw together, which I was certain would be one of those things where someone just ended up with it rather than picking it, was chosen by the second place person. Whew!

I hope you do another sometime. I like scavenger hunts and wanted to check it out, but I was too flu-y to do anything other than sit and chat (and barely even that) last night.

@Sparks said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

@Auspice — something I have learned roommates are excellent for is periodically asking "have you actually eaten?"

(My answer has historically been "oops" more often than it should be. Hopefully the meds change that!)

Back when I lived in Cincinnati, I had a friend who would drop by my place a couple nights a week, food in hand: 'I know you haven't eaten yet today.' It really is a wonderful thing for those of us who just... space because something as simple as a walk to the kitchen can become two hours doing other stuff (esp. if you have an OCD element to your ADD/ADHD as well).

On work days, I do eat because I have my lunch break and there's a cafeteria on site. So there's at least that definite every workday I get a good lunch. But... dinner is more hinky and I only work 4 days a week. So those other 3 days? I sometimes don't remember to eat until 4, 5pm.

@Ganymede said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

@Auspice said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

tbh, for casual RP between two players? I wouldn't want any sort of special commands.

We're adults. I'd like to treat my players as adults who can communicate between one another what they're comfortable with.

To pull the conversation back to where we started, though, I thought we were mulling over commands that may assist people in communicating the breach or existence of a personal boundary.

I will admit to being lackadaisical in following this discussion.

Call me uncaring but I think if we need an entire structure of commands to negate communication then we're fostering an environment of distrust vs care.

Relying on commands to tell someone if you want to proceed with rp or not basically signals that you don't trust them enough to have a conversation in which case.....why rp with them to begin with?

I'm as anxious as they come. IRL I find it hard to even speak up sometimes. I will hover at the edges of conversation at a party I want to leave for an hour just hoping the host notices me so that I can say farewell....because I'm both too afraid to interrupt and to be seen as rude if I just leave.

I am one of the most shy people ever IRL

Once I relax around you, sure, I'm really outgoing. But around people I don't know / don't know well? Nope.

If I can have conversations and communicate with people, I have every confidence everyone else can, too. If it's someone I feel unsafe communicating with... I reach out to a friend for advice and/or don't interact with that person.

But considering a lot of this has surrounded 'input your consent to TS' type stuff... Holy shit people that is something you need to be comfortable talking about. You are gonna invite ten times more drama, avoidance, and other issues if you become someone who can't even say 'I prefer ftb' or 'I'd like to rp this out'.

I really like the guys I work with on Thursday and Friday. They're fun to be around and they're genuinely good people.

I've needed to get my days covered for this weekend (despite putting in over two weeks early) and one has spoken up to ask second shift before I even get a chance to open my mouth# asking them on my behalf (I mean, he knows I'll gladly cover shifts when he needs, but still!).

He picked up quick on my anxiety and has been cool about shit like that and making calls for me when I'm having bad days. I put in extra work elsewhere to compensate, but it's just really awesome to work with people who look out like that.

@Tempest said in Arx's Elevation Situation:

isn’t the obvious answer to build some sort of relationship with your vassals and be a good leader that inspires them to want to remain in your fealty?

I have nothing against my liege but still want to rise because it makes sense for the house/family/story.

I dunno, I'm fine with it.

Back when I was still married, mother's day 'well wishes' were very, very 'biological mother' only and I was a stepmom. And my mother-in-law ground it in even more (she resented the fact that we hadn't given her kids). So mother's day was wildly depressing for me (I wanted kids, but I was dealing with infertility).

So seeing the constant deluge of 'IF YOU HAVE KIDS BIOLOGICALLY, HOORAY FOR YOU!' was incredibly depressing.

I understand where y'all are coming from, but as someone who was a stepmother for roughly 6 years and was surrounded by media that was very poignant in saying 'you're not a REAL mom, ha ha ha' ... I am totally OK with the attempt that has been made to shift language/advertising to be more welcoming.

Since @Wizz came back to Gaston, we've been talking about making duchy. It's something I've always fancied the idea of, but without having had an inter/active Gaston previously, was something I largely put on the backburner in favor of building income/resources and getting plot for people in the house.

For Blackram, it makes sense. It's nothing against Telmar. It's the fact that Blackram is written as being so isolated (the Cloudspine is way out there) that they largely govern themselves anyway. ICly, why wouldn't they want to take that step up and make it 'official' in a sense? I mean, they're a March in the Oathlands whose physical closest neighbor.... is Farhaven.

So storywise it makes sense for them to look around and go 'you know what? we've supported ourselves for this long. Let's take that step and make it official.'

And who knows, maybe being a Duchy (if/when we get there) with the ability to add marches beneath us will be appealing to incoming players wanting to make their own house, because no one's had an interest in being a county or barony.

@surreality said in Meg and Pikachu:

...so glad I'm too old for most of this shit to reside in the memory banks. For like, the very first time, I'm super glad I'm too old for a thing.

A new feel, thanks to MSB. Thanks, MSB... I think.

@Derp said in Anyone kind enough to help me with oWoD?:

@Coin said in Anyone kind enough to help me with oWoD?:

I'd make sure whoever was recruiting you to play a Kinfolk isn't someone who ascribes to the (very much official, as far as in-game attitudes are concerned) position that Kinfolk are basically breeding stock.

Unless they're really hot.

And then you should suggest LARP. <.<

His Dark Materials season 1 trailer

I would watch McAvoy read the phone book y'all

On SGM, Paradox and I took a stance of forcing a 'share the spotlight' mentality. We both have slightly different approaches to it, but we actively ST with an eye out for who has and hasn't had their moment in the light.

If one PC 'dominates' (either by their own actions or because it's necessary; such as in translator scenarios) a scene, we would structure the next to give them a smaller role (or even ask if they'd be willing to sit out so another PC that can perform the duties could attend). It may hurt someone's feelings short-term to be sidelined, but my hope was that people would see that we were paying attention enough to make sure that it came back around to them.

That's easier when you're running 1-2 scenes a week.

When you ST less often, a few things I find help:

• Looking at sheets, RP hooks, and BGs (on games where these are visible).
  • This allows me to get a picture of who the person is, what they like, and maybe pick out more obscure skills or even find something from their BG that could be of benefit in the scene (much like @Pyrephox does).
• Asking people beforehand for some details as to what they're good at and/or interested in (best for games without open sheets).
  • This way, I know what THEY want out of the scene and I can look for places to fit it in.
• Asking specific PCs for specific rolls and allowing others to roll 'assists.' This means everyone gets their chance to do something cool and there's no need for awkward conversations of 'Hey can you scale back a bit please?'
• Remind people, frequently, that they can reach out to me directly if they want to do something that isn't specifically outlined.

On SGM, the only roll that would frequently be 'everyone roll this' would be Alertness. Which leads me into something else I do (and love when other STs do the same!):
Custom responses. If everyone rolls a Great Success (in FS3 terms) on Alertness and you page them all the same info, it comes down to whoever hits enter fastest. It also assumes that, IC, everyone is looking in the same direction and has the same 'kind' of Alertness.

When I'm preparing for an Alertness roll, I type out a few options to hand out based on result. And then I issue them out. So if I have the following rolls:

• Bob - Success
• Jane - Success
• Mike - Good Success
• Henry - Great Success
• Sally - Failure

I know who is gonna receive what. I wrote custom responses for each scale of success, so I can hand those right out to Henry and Mike (while coming up with something for Sally's failure that she can play off of). Then I take my custom for the Success and give part to Bob (maybe he was a forward scout so he'd see more while Jane hears more!) and part to Jane (maybe Jane was staring at some sort of data collection device, so she can get pertinent details off of it).

Along this vein, I find when an ST poses and includes the results in their pose it almost always leads to PCs that aren't named reacting.

Example: As the party approaches the mouth of the cave, Bob sees signs of a bear's passage in the form of a big print in the mud just outside the yawning hole in the rock face. At the back of the party, Jane sees a bit of bear fur on a tree.

Mike, your super quick poser, then comes in with: Mike raises the alert as he sees sign of bear, calling for everyone to halt.

So: give people their own private thing to react to and make sure they get to pose it out.

I'll post more as I think of it.