Posts made by Auspice

SABRINA TRAILER

So I'm poor which means it's not good for me, but... mebbe some of you. Discount code 'OCTOBER' gives $5 off $30 or more on Target's website on Halloween shit until the 6th.

And they've got some p stellar decor this year.

There's a bigger gap in this 'generation' than there have been in previous because of how much digital tech changed things.

There's these terms 'Digital Immigrant' and 'Digital Native' that (I feel) describe the two a lot better. Those of us who grew up with analog and transitioned (like @Coin mentioned) would be the Digital Immigrants and the younger ones would be Digital Natives. It splits along a much different line, but it has a more clear way of explaining that disparity we all feel.

I was born early 86, graduated when I was 16, began working when I was 14... by pure age, I'm a Millennial, but I share a number of things in common with the 'Xennial' deal due to when I graduated, began working, etc etc. 2 of my 4 siblings count as Millennials, but I would still call 1 of them a Digital Native, too. He was way too young to remember anything analog. He wouldn't know what to do with a cassette player, VHS, etc etc.

So that's the divide I always use. It doesn't quite give you that comfort of precise years, but it works for say... expanding definitions to countries where the timeline may be altered.

So I had my rant recently about my boss talking down to me and me pinging on it being fairly fucking sexist.

Well.

Because our project/client is so freakin' stressful/intense/etc...

the client manager and HR sat down with each of us last week to get a temperature read, feedback, etc. and because I'm in 'no fucks given' mode, I was honest as shit about a lot of things. I was still professional, polite, and even-keeled, but I was honest. Usually I'm reticent about issues, usually I withhold, usually I'm just 'oh yeah everything's fine!' No, I spent a good long while with both of them detailing out everything.

And I brought it up.

And while the client manager (fellow woman) was silent, the HR guy did the whole 'Are you sure it was because your teammates are male and not because Dimitri <named coworker in the original exchange> is considered a senior on the project?' and I was very adamant that yes, I am sure, because I could read the tone.

I have only once before reported a coworker/boss for sexist behavior and that was the ass who made the 'If I had my way, women in this place would be forced to wear skirts because women always feel prettier in a skirt and when you feel pretty, you're happy, and you work better' comment to me.

Fast forward to today. I'm tasked with building accounts for the new hire on our team. I go to mirror the account for the guy hired not after me, but after the guy hired after me. Well, not even after me. I'm one of the original three. So he's still pretty fuckin' new. He's so new I lose time every day to holding his hand through shit. He's so new I brought him up in the above meeting as 'He needs a lot more training because he's floundering.'

...except when I go to mirror him, I find out he has higher level permissions than I do.

So I ask my boss wtf.

Boss: 'Oh, well, after <coworker who quit the other week> left, his perms got raised for redundancy.'

His did? Not mine? 'For redundancy'?

Fuck all you motherfuckers.

@sunnyj said in NOLA 2: Back in the Vieux:

@auspice People expect staff to do all the work, and staff seems to think games should cater to these people. I met and RPd with @ganymede and all of my friends in games.If you log into a game and you can't find a single person to RP with you steadily, your times are either wacky AF, you need to figure a new way to approach things, or you just leave and accept the game is not for you.

Staff should only provide support to things like the Praxis and Consilium, something that serves the WHOLE Sphere.

Anything else? Eh! Go relearn how to have fun.

I happily ST and run stories for friends (and others) on games. I usually just need Staff for, yeah, support/oversight/approving stuff I'm uncertain about. But I feel like WoD games are largely just sandboxes anyway but it's so hard to get people to... move even these days. Like just... do things. Go. RP. Play.

But the refrain is still just 'there's nothing to do.' Okay. Make things? Make up story? That's... that's the point? And I mean it's part of why I think a game's story should just be a framework (as mentioned above for NOLA). Give people that freedom rather than too rigid a structure. Allow them something fluid to play in rather than something that relies too heavily on Staff/ST oversight.

But regardless it's still gonna fall back on people actually going out and doing.

and yet it feels like players are steadily more demanding of STs/Staff providing their fun.

It's a conundrum I've been trying to figure out the answers to. How to build a game that truly gives people all the tools they need to get up and go and do what they need to be able to just play and have fun and run stories for themselves because I'm hoping that's all people are waiting for? But deep down I fear that it really is people just wanting someone else to do the work.

Khaibit = good balance to Dragolescu and their terrible ghost enslaving ways. (Plus a great martial Mekhet bloodline)

Okay, let's keep this focused on the original topic. We're starting to dove tail into gripe territory here.

IIRC, there are a number of converted ones on the OP forums.

For me, re: Storium, it's that it's kind of clunky and awkward to use. And stories never get up off the ground because people never even finish creating their characters. So then you have the story try to move with 2 or 3 people....... and most of them never take their first actions / first poses and...

...whelp, no story happens. I stopped even trying after a few.

@kumakun said in MU* Server Technology/Features. What do you WANT, what do you SEE?:

Is it maybe the 'client' that needs improvement or needs improvement as well?

I definitely think a new/improved client would be fantastic.
Mudrammer for iOS is pretty good, but has its flaws.
I don't think any of the Android clients out there are really all that great. I hear nothing but complaints about them. I used Mukluk when I had an Android and only because it was the least bad of the lot. I know on ChromeOS there is only Duck Client and I know people struggle with it to no end.

So in the arena of "mobile clients" for tablets/mobile devices, there is definitely something lacking and that makes approachability (I think that term vs. accessibility is probably preferable to help differentiate) difficult.

@Coin

I use RP to aid in my writing after a fashion. The way I do this is such that I use RP to try new things, new styles, new methodology.

@arkandel said in How to: make your poses less repetitive:

Now and then I re-read a pose I just sent out and sigh because I repeated a certain word too much.

I will say, everyone latches onto certain words sometimes. Even established authors.

Read Piers Anthony's Wielding a Red Sword (published 1986) sometime. I swear that man had just learned the word occidental right before writing that book. It showed up so often that when I read it as a teenager I wanted to meet him just so I could ask WHY.

But that's the other thing you'll see if you read a lot. That authors have certain words and turns of phrase they favor, too.

You can also always run your poses through this tool: http://www.hemingwayapp.com/
It'll help identify things like legibility, passive voice, how many adverbs you've used (don't abuse those too much).

This is something that can get people very hot-headed, I admit (and I'm one of them >.>).

I am very much in the camp of liking where we're at because my experiences with forum RP and Storium haven't been very good. Not one single Storium game I've been in has ever gotten past the initial setup / "scene." Any forum RP I've been in has floundered or been very short-term. MU has been the only time I've ever been able to really engage in long-term stories.

It's also the only way to really get things done in a short period of time. If I need to wait days or weeks for people to reply, I'm gonna lose the thread/interest myself. I gdoc with people sometimes (when there's scheduling issues, for backscenes, etc.) and by and far, if more than 2-3 days pass between poses? The scene is considered dead.

The other thing there: accessibility, as you said. You need to think in the other definition. Not 'accessibility to a broader audience,' but accessibility to devices (a lot of forums, 'neat' websites, etc. scale very poorly to mobile phones, but I've known people to run WoD combat from a tablet!) and accessibility to the disabled community. MUs are accessible to blind users. I'm not sure other formats are. The last I used Storium for example, it was very image heavy and had a fairly complex interface. I'd hate to see MUs switch over just to maybe gain new blood, but lose some of our long-time players who are there because it's a form of gaming they can access.

The web-interface built into some of the new codebases like Ares I think is a great meeting of the two. You don't lose what we have and what works while bridging in some of the 'new.' And while you get that great web experience (web CG, being able to interact over the web, etc) on Ares... you can also do everything from within the classic telnet client itself without needing to go on the web portal (which makes it beautifully accessible to people who have to use screen readers!).

@wretched

I have a Halloween-kitty, too. I don't know Ike's exact birthday, but it was sometime around the 1st week of October 9 years ago.

I'll say this first:

There's nothing wrong with writing at a '5th grade reading level.' In point of fact, that can be a good thing. I think part of why people 'get lost' in scenes or forget what happened in previous poses is that they struggled to process what those poses said. We need to write for comprehension. We're trying to write to tell a story, not to compete for who has the most florid prose.

Two big things I've taken from the various blog posts and talks that Neil Gaiman has done over the years on writing are this (I wish I could find the exact quotes/posts, but I'm a big migraine-y today, so please forgive):

• You are not going to abuse the word 'says/said'. Our eyes naturally gloss over it and it makes you rely more on show, don't tell. Why go for "Stop that," she grouched, when you can use "Stop that," she said, glowering at him? This one took me a while to really grasp onto because I thought 'No! My manuscript will be full of says/said and look repetitive as fuck!' But the more I made myself do it, the more I realized: it forces me to show, not tell, and the reader's eye really does gloss over those two words easily. Whereas the other words we'd fill in are ultimately passive and crutches.
• Write freely at a middle grade level. Revel in it. Enjoy it. Don't stress if you can't remember that 5-pt 4-syllable word. Who the fuck cares. If you're writing at a middle grade level, guess what? Your work can reach a broader audience. Now, this more applies to writing for publication, yes... But for our purposes (RP), it also means that people can absorb your poses more readily (a) and you can have greater freedom of exploration (b). I find it a lot easier to figuratively stretch my legs and play around with language when I can be casual and sprinkle in those more descriptive terms than if I'm trying to build an entire pose -- each and every round -- around being verbose and expansive.

But I also wholly agree with @Ganymede. Stage directions are good. Exploring the way people move is great. The more I dug into describing the physical stances, directions, and movement of my characters, the more I opened the door into my poses. It's the difference between just 'crosses her arms' every time and 'clutches at her elbows, all but folding in on herself' or 'crosses her arms, shoulders back' which are two very different stances and emotions being expressed!

@haven said in Miami, Blood in the Water:

@thenomain I don't think you are asking for a friend. I think you want to know for yourself.

@thenomain said in General Video Game Thread:

Now that I know that Tell Tale Games is going out of house to finish The Walking Dead, I’m thinking about asking for my money back for the next two episodes.

What a complete dick move to fire your entire staff then outsource to finish development. Continuity is shot, people are abused, just leaves a bad taste in my mouth that I want to vote with my wallet.

We don't know the how or if yet.

Telltale's statement just said:
“Multiple potential partners have stepped forward to express interest in helping to see The Final Season through to completion,” the statement read. “While we can’t make any promises today, we are actively working towards a solution that will allow episodes 3 and 4 to be completed and released in some form. In the meantime, episode 2 will release tomorrow across all platforms as planned. We hope to have answers for your other questions soon.”

So they were approached by people (or companies/investors/etc.) in the wake of what happened (shutting down the studio for financial reasons). It might be that they'll get the money necessary to hire TWD's team back to finish it. That's a hope at least (and the best outcome). If they do go out of house entirely and don't do anything for the team yeah, that'd be total bs (and would result in a subpar completion since it wouldn't be the same game, VAs, etc.), but nothing's concrete/set in stone yet.