Best posts made by bored

There's definitely some blurry boundaries as far as terminology goes here. A system is not the same thing as code, for instance.

IE 'Free form' to me does not mean simply a lack of a coded rank structure or economy commands, it means a game with no real systems at all, even diceless ones. I think I agree that politics on those games are pretty pointless, because they tend to run afoul of consent issues or the ultimate arbitration by a single staffer (thus making it not free form in the end). This is more like 'cops and robbers' level stuff with an angry parent eventually coming out and yelling at Tommy that he has to give Johnny a chance to be police captain now, or w/e.

You step up from this to games with minimal in character structures but few or no real established methods (systems) for interacting with those structures, with instead quasi IC/OOC power ultimately invested in a few people (often staff alts) and any 'politicking' really being at their permission. This is where the old Pern games would land.The weyrleader, holder, and guildmaster positions were both IC and OOC power slots that acted as admins while the wizards were rarely involved in the day to day game, and the route to promotion was far more OOC schmoozing than IC anything.

Then you get to games with fairly hard systems for pvp, but maybe not full coded political simulation. Yet these can still have well-defined RP structures (like voting councils etc). I thinks this is where most WoD games fall, as very few really code up complicated status/resource/boon/etc type systems, but most do tend to have heavy player-to-player politicking.

And only after that do you actually start approaching full out political simulation (via code or simply via dice systems), which is very rare. I think the best recent example of this might actually be Star Crusade (did someone mention spreadsheets?!), although obviously Firan and Arx have elements of it. But even Firan was only halfway here (and often closer to the example above) since most political processes were still just RP. Leaders had coded powers, but they weren't selected via code. And we only pulled the spreadsheets out once a year to trade baskets for silk while engaging in the moosepocalypse. (edited as even I was kind of imprecise w/ 'system' vs 'code')

@ganymede Uh, that's an amazingly lawyer-ly putting of words in my mouth, and not in a good way. Shame, <censored for the Hog Pit>, etc.

To be clear: I never wanted any of the changes in the first place, certainly not to the degree they've occurred. I expressed doubt in negative content being banished from ad threads, because that turns them into propaganda vehicles. I also saw how the wind was blowing, and have been suggesting alternatives to preserve as much as possible (ie, in one of the early discussions I suggested links from the ad threads to their review threads).

In any event, to reframe the 'experimental' changes as the status quo and therefore paint me as wanting to fundamentally change things is quite the shady crock. It also suggests @Arkandel acting in bad faith, because if the 'experiment' is really 'the way it's gonna be' and the automatic assumed status quo, well, then it's a lie.

All that said, absent the changes being reverted, I want you to do things to prevent good critical content from being banished to the Hog Pit and to maintain the nature of the board true to the way it has worked in the last several years. I am open to, if not particularly invested in, harsher moderation of personal attacks. A new section may be the most practical way of achieving that, but it is not, in itself, my desire.

@insomniac7809 said in Potent Potables:

@TNP said in Potent Potables:

@Rinel said in Potent Potables:

The White Russian

Oh, these are so very good. I highly recommend.

Also a fan, as I'm a vodka drinker (must be the slav in me; in related news, Russian Standard is a nice balance of price to quality) but do occasionally prefer to temper my distilled misery with something more flavorful. Substitute Irish cream for even more yum (evidently a Blind Russian, never knew the official name). A fun party trick is that either variety can be pretty cleanly layered.

I think this raises a question: is this really planned as a quasi VTT 5e game being advertised here, or as a full MU that will get as many players as it gets?

Because yeah. Given the lack of medieval/fantasy games that aren't Arx, you'll probably have a LOT of interest.

@faraday said in Regarding administration on MSB:

I really wish you'd stop assuming that all of the dozens of people whom I've heard express concerns through the years were just "my friends". It's not accurate and it's pretty condescending.

It wasn't meant as condescending, it was just shorthand for 'all these anonymous people.' Apologies. In any case, you're speaking for some silent body that I will acknowledge exists but do not really believe has a say, via you or any other proxy, specifically because they don't participate.

We can certain disagree about all this stuff. We obviously do. I do think the idea I've put forward is constructive and works toward valuable compromise.

@Auspice

I'm not suggesting there's a rampant problem, because obviously, it's been a few days at best and things are settling. I do feel (or at least, did feel, before this thread, where a few folks have acknowledged my suggestion) that we were in a bad place where moderation was not going the right way in part because the 'Constructive'/'Hog' divide is so stark and it really seemed like the moderation was going to tend to 'when in doubt, Hog.'

For all that me and @faraday are going back and forth (probably far beyond where it's constructive in any way) I do think this thread and my prior exchanges with @ganymede have been productive and I have a more positive outlook than I came in with. The rest is just... well, people liking to talk on the internet, as ever.

@Bananerz I was DMing on Monday, we have an assassin rogue and let's just say he's gotten some very underwhelming surprise auto-crits. Also the conjurer summoned a shadow demon, which preceded to get lose, hide, and then sneak-crit one of his allies for... well, a lot more than the assassin rogue.

Basically they almost TPKed to a throwaway fight where all the monsters were <half their level in CR.

@arkandel I'm not casting you as the villain, I just don't particularly know how it went from 'maybe we shouldn't let people be mean in ad threads' (although that's an idea I'm not even on board with because of how it makes it hard to get information) to anything else.

@Seraphim73 The Hog Pit is already opt-in, completely invisible to non-registered users (casual readers) and registered ones who don't go through a (somewhat not obvious) method to gain access to it. It's pretty contained.

The only way for there to be more containment, obviously, is acting much more quickly/aggressively/with a lower threshold to shunt 'negative' content into the Hog Pit to make it invisible. That's also part of what I'm concerned with.

@ganymede said in Regarding administration on MSB:

I'm not sure how you got this impression from my treatment of your suggestion. I explained why I thought it was interesting to me.

From:

@ganymede said in Regarding administration on MSB:

I don't hear a lot of disagreement with your idea, so I can only presume that it is well-supported.

And also from how we went from ad thread rules to active mods.

@GreenFlashlight said in D&D Stew:

bizarre activation failure chance powers had back in second edition. It was bonkers, but in a cheerfully naive way I couldn't help appreciating.

Oh yeah, the hilarious flip-side of the afforementioned 'disintegrate at level 1' was the fact you could fail and dust yourself. I had that book when I was... I want to say about 10? Crazy shit.

@faceless

You're clearly missing some of the context of prior conversation here and I encourage you to read the whole thread. The Hog Pit was an acceptable alternative when we had little to no moderation (really only in extreme cases) and when non-constructive content was allowed in ad threads.

The issue is that the new framework does not create a space where someone can say "This game is bad, it just is, I'm not being constructive, you can't fix it, you shouldn't even consider playing there, here's why, I repeat it's really terrible, plz no just no" and have that visible to the general public. This empowers game owners to conceal their shame because the Hog Pit is not visible to casual observers.

@thenomain All verbal grappling aside, I do feel this thread has been productive and I'm cautiously optimistic about things moving forward, yeah.

@Bananerz Yeah, the weapon from the card is part of what turned my char from 'ok' to 'Strahd-slaying menace.'. I'd forgotten about the tarot thing so that makes it a bit less of a spoiler to mention. There definitely is good loot, including some stuff way overblown for a level 8-10ish party, but like everything depending on how/where you explore you can miss a lot of it.

@auspice I've been back and forth on this territory man times this thread. They're not automatically, but with more proactive moderation than in prior days, it's very easy for them to end up there. It also has a potential limiting effect, because every critic has to be wary of a 'that's not constructive!' counter-'argument' and getting their posts reported to the mods.

I don't think 'skirt the line of what constructive really means as a word, it'll probably be fine' is a good policy.

Back from X-mas (the preferred pronunciation of the 31st century).

I am a pretty huge Witcher fan and enjoyed it immensely. Casting someone who actually likes the material? Man, it shows. If the larger industry takes away nothing else from the show, it should absolutely be that. Don't treat these IPs like disposable content that you cast some bankable but disinterested actor to 'I'm just here for the paycheck' their way through. Find people who are excited to do it.

Similarly, Yen blew me away. We had a good idea from trailers and leaked shots that they'd be filling out her BG and doing Sodden, but it was really far better than I could have hoped for. She's dead perfect in the role.

I loved the time stuff, but <insert read the book smug> (Poll: What's our Red Wedding equivalent?) Still, it didn't seem super obscure. The person I was watching with (who has only 'I saw the unicorn video on youtube' level prior Witcher experience) was wondering where Ciri's mom was right off, so I feel like the holes/inconsistencies primed the audience to anticipate the subsequent revelations.

Gripes are the things most folks are griping over (ballsack armor, and maybe Nilfgaard in general - hael Ker'zaer). I do wish the season was maybe 10 episodes, as there were clearly places where they had to cut and jam in stuff to make it fit (episode 2's non-Yen plot). Or well, just more money so we could have had Borch in his full glory. But who doesn't want more, better? I am mostly annoyed that I have to wait more than a year for more.

@alzie Why is out of Rokugan the goal? You instantly run into a ton of issues there, because the whole game is built on the assumption of people all being clan samurai. Even ronin/BoS/imperials/etc have traditionally been pretty hard to make work. Look at the new character creation, for instance, where questions (that yield stat changes) specifically reference your clan, lord, specific bushido beliefs, etc.

Your only other well-developed option is the Burning Sands (Egyptian/Arabian styled). The world has a lot of other stuff existing distantly elsewhere (including a Europe analogue) but these places would be pretty distant.

@Groth said in Good TV:

@Ghost said in Good TV:
The single wierdest casting choice to me is Fringilla because unlike a lot of other characters she has a lot of family and is supposed to hail from what is basically fantasy france. Does that mean all of Toussaint will now be sub-saharan African or what?

I don't see too much trouble with her, tbh? Fringila is almost a non-character in prior media. She features in a chapter or two of one book (in which all she does is sleep with Geralt), and a brief appearance during one quest in W3 (in which she mostly is part of some background dialogue joking about how nearly everyone present has slept with Geralt), and in ensemble with a few other sorceresses a couple more times beyond that.

TV Fringila is essentially a new character, so its hard to say there's heavy expectations of what she should be like. I like that they've made her family prominent, since Artorius was another interesting but highly obscure character but putting him on the council and highlighting the obvious nepotism was a good story beat (and arguably, the casting makes it easier for the audience to read that when the names otherwise might go over their heads - ah, the two black mages are related!) I'm not sure having one Toussaint char means the entire Duchy has to be black? It might affect Anna Henrietta's casting (since they're also relatives at some distance) but... OK?

@lordbelh said in Good TV:

@Jaded I've only ever heard good things about Anya Charlotra's portrayal of Yennefer. Personally I think she's the best part of the whole show.

@bored said in Good TV:

there's also the Polish fandom, which in general wasn't positive toward any race bending

This I've caught. While part of that is surely a touch of old fashioned racism; the Eastern Block isn't exactly short on it, it also seems a bit more complex. Something along the lines of not wanting to get caught up in the American race and diversity politics, when in Europe its Poles who have gotten shit on for centuries, and this being their time to shine and be seen. As opposed to being portrayed in ways to suit American sensibilities. Anyone following Brexit'll have caught on the general 'shitty polaks coming to steal our jobs' sentiment simmering, and that's common enough across the board. From the Polish perspective, there's little conception of white privilege, or guilt, having had no slaves, no colonies, no empire, mostly just being victim to them. The places they're likely to go, they're the second class citizens from the second class culture (though its changing, at least where I live - white Slavs doesn't quite get the usual suspects' blood boiling like it use to, not when there's Syrians and Afghans - anything muslim really - and Africans to panic about). Its one of the most homogeneous countries in Europe, too, with the vast majority of migrants being from Ukraine (especially the Ukraine that used to be Poland) or other Slavic countries. So when its their fantasy culture on display, they're like to expect it to be pretty darn white.

Is that naive? Sure. Is there a bit of racism there? Yeah. Is adding a bit of diversity a sign of American Cultural Imperialism, or Cultural Appropriation? Heh. Though reading this one guy going on a bout it made me chuckle, and I've been searching for that article (or blog post, or whatever), to link, but to no avail. But there are some complex currents working through the responses that I've found interesting to read and ponder a bit on.

This is a good analysis and I have some mixed feelings, myself.

Obviously it's racist. But you hit the nail on the head about how they feel about the use of what they see as a (rare) cultural export from their country that has gained such fame being co-opted by others and then wrapped up in a political discourse that simply doesn't exist in their country. There's also a parallel issue, both for Europeans but also (moreso) for immigrant Poles - and basically for all slavs - that Western media tends toward highly caricatured, racist depictions of these groups when they bother to identify them: IE, everyone from anywhere east of Germany is either a Niko Bellic-esque tracksuit wearing vodka-swilling mobster, or a low-class, smelly, Ruritanian (look up that word) dullard. So I can understand that it's divisive. Of course the counter-counter argument is that the Witcher is spreading a broader view of some of their cultural elements and that having one or two black people won't instantly ruin that.

On the plus side, thanks to the show, the books are now NYT bestsellers and keep selling out physical copies.

@thenomain

It's not so much 'should have talked to the adults' as 'made another stupid mod-voice (or sarcastically non-mod voice?) post' with a possible side helping of 'do they actually discuss this shit?'

Are we not allowed to criticize? How many 'and most of the time I moderate it just makes things worse' does a mod get, both personally, and in the general sense of us realizing maybe mods shouldn't just be modding for the fun of it when ever they have an opinion and instead save it for really critical problems as has always been the case?

@Ganymede What are you really asking?

Is it doxxing, definitionally? Depends on the definition. Aforementioned hacker version: nah, the information is too public. Modern twitter definition? Probably.

Are you asking if I'm happy about the outcome? Lizard brain says: hey cool a nazi got in trouble, take that. Just like lizard brain can watch Richard Spencer get punched in the face repeatedly to great glee, while realizing that the guy doing it is definitely guilty of assault and punishing him for it is a basic requirement of modern civilization. Logical brain might also posit that having good laws on this topic would help when, say, the theoretical KKKer's bros gather to launch doxx campaign against <leftist target du jour>.

So my bigger scale answer is 'I would prefer there be some good laws about this stuff,' but as someone pointed out earlier (not sure if in this thread), our lawmakers have a tendency of treating online shit like it's make-believe, which is problematic. I'm not a legal scholar myself. In your example, I imagine a public rally to some degree mitigates expectation of privacy. But then again, this might also affect, say, one's college-aged activist-minded but still immature child getting spotted at a left leaning rally and losing out on future job opportunities when their would-be employer googles them.

It always cuts both ways.

@Misadventure @Arkandel was doing a better job by himself before.

At least so far, I haven't seen @ganymede screw up horribly.

@Kestrel Maybe you want to eat and you don't have ready access to other employment options? Like, for a person really interested in discussing all this stuff, I'd think you'd recognize the privilege there.

As for companies being able to 'have an ethos,' again... sounds great in theory until you examine the other side of what is happening there. If you want to find something that gives corporations power to control workers, including subjecting them to every imaginable form of mistreatment, -ism, and bias, there's hardly a better candidate than at-will employment contracts. The power to fire someone over a tweet is terrifying, and it's the same power used to fire an employee who speaks up about something internally that they 'shouldn't.'

Beyond that, I've never read a Harry Potter novel and I am unsure why parts of your post are even directed at me, as I am not a surrogate for the thread at large. My concerns are mostly in regards to law vs. mob, and it's... disturbingly oblivious to argue in favor of the latter in a thread discussing the KKK.

@thenomain said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@bored said in Regarding administration on MSB:

How many 'and most of the time I moderate it just makes things worse' does a mod get

You're going to have to be clearer on how her recent post made anything worse. I sure as hell don't see that she was:

Well, there's now a mod post that can easily be interpreted/pointed to by detractors as 'MSB admins have to keep their braying hyenas of a community in check' and/or 'MSB admins are posting transparent spin to hide how shitty their posters are.' The post just looks bad, and accomplishes nothing.

@Auspice said in Separating Art From Artist:

This is sort of a benefit to at-will employment. Because in an at-will state, an employer could absolutely fire you for -phobic rants.

People often worry about 'but what if I get fired for being LGBT and my boss is religious' and at-will does not apply where it'd be illegal (you can't be fired for your religion, sexuality, race, etc.).

You absolutely can be, in a number of states. I think that one is actually before the Supreme Court presently (and given the makeup doesn't look good)?

I brought this double-edged at-will employment sword up already. I think most of us agree that people being fired for being raging asshats isn't bad, but the idea that at-will employment is good is a far stretch, and historically I daresay it's been used largely for oppressive reasons/outcomes. So its weird to see people treating it positively, even if they like some person getting fired for something they said on twitter in a very specific case, it's hardly a pro-labor concept.