Posts made by Autumn

So I made this post a while back and now that the move is finished (as chronicled here) I'm sort of blown away.

We pulled off the move without any major hitches. We love the house we rented on the basis of a few blurry iPhone pictures and some short video clips. We love being up on a mountain with ravens hopping around the backyard. The property backs right up to a national forest. We narrowly escaped the polar vortex in the northeast and the climate in our new home is being super kind to both of us, after years of waking up in the morning aching and stiff. My partner started getting freelance work literally the Monday after the Friday we arrived. And in under a month I had a job that should (cross fingers) be extremely secure, for more money than I was getting before despite the cost of living being around 75% of what it was. I struggle to think of literally anything that went seriously wrong with the whole process.

I say all this not to brag about how awesome I am and how great my life is. I say it because I am acutely aware of how ridiculously, absurdly fortunate I've been, and I don't want the universe getting to thinking that I expect this. So this is my version of Polycrates throwing a ring into the sea.

Wisdom gleaned from moving:

1. Don't move.

2. Definitely don't move if you've spent the past eight years cramming 8 bedrooms worth of possessions into a 4-bedroom house.

3. If you must move, get other people to do the work for you.

4. If you can't get other people to do all the work for you, do not fill a 26' U-Haul with books and then drive it cross-country.

5. Do not move from a location 350 feet above sea level to a location 7500 feet above sea level.

6. If you do, do not make your plans hinge on being able to unload a 26' truck full of books in less than 24 hours.

(Yes, there is a positive version of this post in the works for the other thread, but this was easier! Also kind of more fun.)

@cobaltasaurus It's okay! TBH I think you made the right choice of Darkwaters to bring back.

But I really wish the wiki from that game was up somewhere.

1: See this thread's title, immediately think: "YAY I HOPE SHE BRINGS BACK WINGS AND CLAY"

2: Click on thread, realize it's not THAT Darkwater.

3: Make sad face.

Once on a (modern) comic-book game, I played a character who'd been created as a loving homage to the Silver Age. So I decided that her dialog would follow Silver Age convention: except under extraordinary circumstances, every line had to end with either an exclamation point or a question mark (or both). It was fun, but also oddly exhausting.

My first thought in situations like this is: why is the character homeless in the first place? If the only thing she needs to get a desk job and a 401k and a Mercedes E-class in the driveway is a place to stay for a couple of nights and free meals, then yes, someone who offers you those things gratis is going to make for some adjustments in characterization.

If a character is based around being X, then the reasons for that character being X, and why she might continue to be X even in the face of determined attempts to make her otherwise, should probably be things the player gives some thought to before starting play.

It's not that I don't believe in characters changing radically in play -- a thrillseeking Acanthus who believes in never spending two consecutive nights in the same bed or passing out with an unspent dollar in her pocket could certainly evolve into someone who keeps a household and is a sort of passable foster mom. But the impact of that evolution is lost if the only reason she was a lazy trickster in the first place is "because her player thought it'd be a laugh."

@ganymede said in Characters You Enjoyed Playing:

I liked playing a lot of characters, but Cai is near the top of the list.

He was Embraced late, after spending 20+ years fighting in various wars for the British Empire and being responsible for the death of his daughter. His Sire was a Bron, and he passed on all of the attendant problems, which sabotaged each and every attempt Cai made to start a family again. And he did try, over and over, resulting in the unfortunate deaths of more than a few women and children.

He entered RfK in media res, having "adopted" a daughter of his own. He was made to help bolster the Circle (under David), but, to keep his mask up, he tried to play the role of the blue-collar worker. He bowled; he went to bars; and he tried to take care of this mortal teen. There was much fun to be had, and it happened for many months.

And then, there was him meeting Nora. That's when he became a real vampire. He forgot about wanting a family; he wanted power. Sweet, sweet power. His "daughter," Sarah, fell by the wayside.

She ran away. Wandered to New York. Awakened during the tumultuous period that began Fallen World.

And she was the Shrike.

You haven't really lived until you've tried to inject British slang into everything your PC says, to the point that she becomes vaguely incomprehensible.

Good times.

MIND. BLOWN.

@packrat said in Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo):

Just being a huge jerk to people is unpleasant, being say, a huge jerk to commoners as a noble in a manner that makes it obvious you as the player think your character is a tool? That can work really well.

I feel like this is a really important thing. If other players understand that you think your own character is a jerk, you can get away with a lot. While too much meta makes me itch, I still sometimes put callouts of my characters in pose text when they do something that's particularly egregious jerkery.

On the other hand, it's not a get out of jail free card. I met a guy once who openly acknowledged that his character was a jerk, and, sure enough, when I RP'd with him the character was so jerkish that I had no desire to interact with him again.

@misadventure Much sympathy to her. Mine passed away within five months of each other, and that was pretty hard. Within two months and I would have been a wreck.

MCU Thor reminds me of the things I loved about Christopher Reeve's Superman. And I'm glad someone does, because the DCCU broody miseryguts Superman doesn't work for me, like, at all.

@mietze I know you probably have already done so (or are in the process of doing so), but in addition to talking to the police and getting a restraining order (and you absolutely should get one), please take whatever steps you can for your own personal security. Call a local crisis center and ask for their recommendations. Self-protection classes, an alarm system, pepper spray, whatever you feel able to do and can afford to do. Take advantage of every resource available.

It sucks so, so much to have to deal with this. Stay safe.

@thenomain said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?

I don't buy this one. The extensive two-paragraph-desc has been around since the DarkMetal or Paris:FdM days, with it not being uncommon to see it even longer. This was along with multidescers and man, people have always lo-o-ooooved to write!

Admittedly, that average desc length gradually increased up until the PB era is just my subjective impression. Fortunately, I have some logs from the same game over a 12-year period within that timeframe, so I can mine them for data on whether my subjective impression has any rational basis or not! Expect a follow-up one of these years.

@thenomain One other possible contributing reason:

• We started writing longer descs, and people aren't willing to read them.

I still have some descriptions I wrote in 1992 or thereabouts, and when I went back to look at them the first thing I noticed is just how short they are compared to those I've seen (or, hell, written) lately. The first one I checked was eight lines long, or a little less than a third of a vt100 screen, which I think is a pretty reasonable length to ask someone to read -- maybe a little wordy, but I wouldn't feel too put-upon if someone's desc was that long. The fashion since then seems to have turned toward much longer descriptions. And who has time to read that much for every character you meet? I have clung tenaciously to "a single vt100 screen" as my measure of the maximum practical description size, but if I'm being honest, I'm reluctant to read even that much. And plenty of people were writing them a lot longer than that. I don't think I'm alone in not wanting to wade through 5-6 paragraphs of lushly detailed purple prose just to figure out what kind of clothes someone's wearing.

Along those lines, I suspect that having short-descs show up in +glance, and later in default room views, probably contributed, too. If memory serves that practice got started around the time people started going way overboard on their descriptions, and I doubt if that was a coincidence.

@ganymede said in Mutant Genesis (X-Men):

I vastly prefer Singer's Cyclops, who gets disintegrated but, before then, is pretty damn consistent.

Singer's Cyclops succeeded in making me think that, if I were Jean Grey and being around too many people with strong emotions made me uncomfortable, okay, sure, fine, this tall drink of bland could be exactly what I need to have in my life.

Whereas comic-book Cyclops' many and varied toxic stews of angst and guilt and anger at the world strike me as a thing I could not possibly get far away enough from even if I weren't a telepath.

@sg said in Mutant Genesis (X-Men):

I'm a bit out of the loop, but isn't that one of Cyclops' MOs?

That sounds way too straightforward and angst-free for Cyclops. Maybe throw in about 36 issues' worth of Hamlet-ing ("to Jean, or not to Jean") before he finally has the decision made for him by circumstances.

@tnp I've only looked at the wiki, but it might be that Jean is using the Phoenix name, without actually being fully powered? Since they have both a Jean and a Rachel, they have to distinguish between them somehow, codename wise.

But I have no idea what's going on with Exodus. He seems like a better deus ex machina device than an actual PC, but I admit I had sort of tuned out of X-lore by the time he came on the scene, so I might be missing something important.

I have to add to the plaudits for the wiki. And the concept's neat, too! While I am normally a little wary of games that split up the player base between different factions, in this case the factions have enough ideological overlap so they aren't necessarily going to be at each other's throats.

@ganymede The cold, damp climate where we are presently makes my partner physically and psychologically miserable. And, to be fair, it's getting to be pretty hard on me as well.

I have just sent in my resignation from a job I've had for the past seven years, which paid well, offered absurdly flexible and limited hours, came with a private office, and allowed me to do things I probably would have done anyway as a hobby, all in a relaxed, low-stress environment.

My partner and I will now be moving 3/4 of the way across the country to a state where I have never previously lived, and do not yet have a job or even a job offer.

Anxiety level: off the fucking charts.

@bleys5 There are a number of Amber games that have met that criterion. Off the top of my head, Blood of Amber, Chronicles 1 & 2, Road to Amber, and I know I'm missing at least a few that had partial powers.