Posts made by Cobalt

@tragedyjones said:

@thebird said:

So I thiught, "Oh, I'll just turn on Jessica Jones while getting some work done."

Two episodes in, I gave up and binge watched the rest on the couch while cuddling with the dog until 4am.

Damnit Netflix.

Purple Man made you do it.

When you think about the fact that Kilgrave's powers are an allegory to rape (or date rape drugs), and the entire plot is somewhat of a commentary on rape and psychological abuse saying things like "The Purple Man made you do it" is ... It's pretty offensive actually. It's basically like shouting: "Tehehe rape! Tehehe!"

What I've watched of Jessica Jones is really well done. I have no issues with how they represented PTSD. In fact, though the cause of mine is vastly vastly different, I empathized a great deal with the scene in either the first or second episode where she freaks out and just runs down the street after being disoriented. Last winter I ran off of a bus, likely knocking into people on the way, because I had a flashback after being crowded in on all sides. Again, while different, I also have a mantra that helped me calm down. So, yeah, whoever was in charge of researching PTSD-- bang up job. Look at Jessica and see that this is what people with PTSD are going through.

That being said, the more I reflect on the first two episodes the more I think after the scene where Kilgrave mind-controls two kids into a closet and /makes one piss herself in there/-- I'll be giving this a pass.

@Olsson said:

Who is this Custodius then?

The VASpider of Firan/Fading Suns/Kushiel Games.

@Insomnia said:

Was that a timed thing? Or maybe a zone specific thing?

It was a timed thing.

@Glitch said:

@Cobaltasaurus

The real error I see is that you've closed your while statement with that semi-colon at the end. This means there's nothing going on inside that loop.
while ( !(Ans == 'F'));

Damnit! Thanks for catching that, bad habit.

For your letter check logic, you'll learn better ways of doing it, but in keeping with intro level stuff, you want any selection from your list to be true so that you can then use the not operator to reverse it.
!(Ans == 'F' || Ans == 'C' || ...)

I'm superbad and forgot to put in that I had managed to get it work, but it was what you said. Let me put the code in:

import java.util.Scanner;

public class Worksheet_7

{	public static void main(String[] args)
	{	Scanner Fred = new Scanner(System.in);
		System.out.println("Today we practice using switch statements \n\n");
		char Ans;
		char DoMore = 'Y';
		while(DoMore =='Y' || DoMore =='y')
		{
			System.out.println("What kind of a car do you drive?");
			System.out.println(" (F)ord, (C)hevy, (B)uick, (M)azda, (H)onda, (S)aab, (V)olkswagen");
			String Word = Fred.next();
			Word = Word.toUpperCase();
			Ans = Word.charAt(0);

			while( !(Ans =='F' || Ans == 'C' || Ans == 'B' || Ans == 'M' || Ans == 'H' || Ans == 'S' || Ans == 'V'))
			{	System.out.println("What kind of a car do you drive?");
				System.out.println(" (F)ord, (C)hevy, (B)uick, (M)azda, (H)onda, (S)aab, (V)olkswagen");
				Word = Fred.next();
				Word = Word.toUpperCase();
				Ans = Word.charAt(0);
			}

			switch(Ans)
				{	case 'C' : System.out.println("Chevy - the heartbeat of America");
							   System.out.println("Chevy rhymes with heavy, don't you know?");
				    		   break;
					case 'F': System.out.println("Ford tough");
							   System.out.println("Ford rough, if you ask me.");
								break;
					case 'B': System.out.println("Buick - luxury you can afford.");
							   System.out.println("Buick .... ick??");
								break;
					case 'M': System.out.println("Mazda - Zoom, zoom");
							   System.out.println("Madza - sputter, sputter, grk, grrrrinnnding noises.");
								break;
					case 'H': System.out.println("Honda - Always dependable");
							   System.out.println("So why is mine always breaking down?!");
								break;
					case 'S': System.out.println("Saab - Find your own road");
							   System.out.println("You got Saab money for that Saab car you're buying?");
								break;
					case 'V': System.out.println("Volkswagen - Vee-Dub");
								System.out.println("Why is the trunk in the front??");
								break;
					default: System.out.println("Get a better car...");
				} // end switch

			System.out.println("Try again? (Y/N)");
			Word = Fred.next();
			Word = Word.toUpperCase();
			DoMore = Word.charAt(0);
		}
	System.out.println("\n\nWell done for now..");
	} // end main
}//end class

This seemed to work beautifully.

Belatedly: Thanks @Glitch! That helped.

I have the current code:

import java.util.Scanner;

public class Worksheet_7

{	public static void main(String[] args)
	{	Scanner Fred = new Scanner(System.in);
		System.out.println("Today we practice using switch statements \n\n");
		char Ans;
		char DoMore = 'Y';
		while(DoMore =='Y' || DoMore =='y')
		{
			System.out.println("What kind of a car do you drive?");
			System.out.println(" (F)ord, (C)hevy, (B)uick, (M)azda, (H)onda, (S)aab, (V)olkswagen");
			String Word = Fred.next();
			Word = Word.toUpperCase();
			Ans = Word.charAt(0);

			while ( !(Ans == 'F'));
				
			switch(Ans)
				{	case 'C' : System.out.println("Chevy - the heartbeat of America");
							   System.out.println("Chevy rhymes with heavy, don't you know?");
				    		   break;
					case 'F': System.out.println("Ford tough");
							   System.out.println("Ford rough, if you ask me.");
								break;
					case 'B': System.out.println("Buick - luxury you can afford.");
							   System.out.println("Buick .... ick??");
								break;
					case 'M': System.out.println("Mazda - Zoom, zoom");
							   System.out.println("Madza - sputter, sputter, grk, grrrrinnnding noises.");
								break;
					case 'H': System.out.println("Honda - Always dependable");
							   System.out.println("So why is mine always breaking down?!");
								break;
					case 'S': System.out.println("Saab - Find your own road");
							   System.out.println("You got Saab money for that Saab car you're buying?");
								break;
					case 'V': System.out.println("Volkswagen - Vee-Dub");
								System.out.println("Why is the trunk in the front??");
								break;
					default: System.out.println("Get a better car...");
				} // end switch

			System.out.println("Try again? (Y/N)");
			Word = Fred.next();
			Word = Word.toUpperCase();
			DoMore = Word.charAt(0);
		}
	System.out.println("\n\nWell done for now..");
	} // end main
}//end class

And I need to make it so that if you don't type F,C,V,B, etc. any of those, you'll be prompted to type one of them, but because of how the not operator works I can't get it to work. >.<

Please note: I don't attribute any value to how long someone does or does not play a character (though I know that many people do). But this is a thought brought up from @JustNobody's thread.

What keeps you on a character for a long time? What keeps you playing it? Why do you stay? For me it seems to be: Start low, and make my way up. I guess, basically, you could say that I like to play out the classical Hero's journey. I like to be involved in plot and feel like I've gotten some spotlight (though I do not need all of it).

Of the four characters that come to mind of "I played them a long time" I can note (plus my two LARP characters):

• Maia: psionic, science, eventually athletics / mild action.
• Girah: engineering, even less action but some.
• Peta: Lots of action.
• Cytosine: Medical stuff, investigations, less action than Maia but more than Girah.
• LiteBrite: Angry. So angry. Action, adventure, maybe doesn't count because she got stored away often so I could ST.
• Amara: Action. Action. Action. Cruac rituals.

So what overall story keeps you coming back? And what details of the story/hooks/types of play keep you coming back?

General advice, I don't claim that any of this will make a character "stick" for you, but it might help:

• Make a character with hooks, but not tied to any one because they can and probably will flake out on you. e.g. Play someone from the same college/workplace as someone you're interested in playing with. Do not play their sibling/boyfriend/some-who-won't-function-if-they-disappear.

• Make a character with hooks that match what you want to play. (Example time: I played on ST:Gamma One for its life span. I wanted to play, specifically, a doctor. I wanted to play a doctor so I could go on missions as 'medical officer', and help people with their 'reporting for duty physical'. Probably, twice, I let Rapier talk me into playing Not A Doctor because he convinced me it was a better concept -- play a nurse! They're needed! Play the Chef Counselor as a psychologist, not a psychiatrist! Each time I ended up being unable to do the two things I wanted: Be medical officer on a mission, or do the RFD physicals.)

• Do you like music? Make characters with songs that you really enjoy and when listening to those songs you'll want to play the character. -- When writing a background or a concept I find a song I really like that matches the theme of the character I'm going for and listen to it on repeat while writing/building.

• Make pretty things -- idk, this has worked for me. Do you play with photoshop at all? Make pretty things to go on the wiki. (e.g. Changeling miens for changeling characters, or mage + their nimbus, or actor in their uniform for star trek / battle star games, etc).

Less advise and more musings:

• My longest running characters on any mush were likely: Cytosine@HM (several years, off and on), Maia@STGO (2 years), Girah@STGO (two years), Peta@HM(~1.5yr). I originally wrote up a long post comparing each of them to each other but it eventually falls down to:

I like to play characters that start out low rank / power, and work my way up to max rank/power. And along the way be in a lot of plots / PrPs, and have strong ties to other PCs, but not ones that mean if those PCs go away I can no longer play them.

My real advice:

Figure out what you like to play, and do that. Figure out what you liked about your longest PCs so far, and see if you can apply that to a new one. Keep doing it until something sticks.

Steam's Mid Week Madness sale has a actually quite a few nice titles out on it. Shadows of Modor, Dying Light, etc.

AHA: It's their steam machine launch sale.

@Thenomain, I think what @Arkandel is saying is that staff should not overly design games (in this case XP policies) that would dictate how people RP or play their characters. That is to say: If staff are requiring that to improve a skill you have logs of your character using that skill, then they are dictating what your character RPs. What if you're playing an academic type? You find it much more interesting to see how not-academics react to your character, so you spend most of your RP in social situations rather than intellectual. But you feel like your character should go up a dot in academics. Should you be forced to churn out the requisite number of 'reads a book' scenes to go up in academics?

I have no opinion on this particular case, but it's what I think Arkandel is trying to say.

@tragedyjones said:

@Cobaltasa did you include your initial xp as auto gain?

Yeeeees. Drop that by 10xp (50beats), edited.

Here's for my character on Eldritch:

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::.  XP & Beats  .:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Normal: Experience: 2, Beats: 4
 - Earned: 56.9 (284)*
 - Spent:  54
Player: Experience: 0, Beats: 0
 - Earned: 2.2
 - Spent:  2.2
......................................................................................................................................
You have been approved for 4M 2w 6d 15h 28s

• ST'd XP: 2.2 (11 beats)
• Aspirations: 0.8 (4 beats)
• Conditions: 0.6 (3 beats)
• PrP Participation: 2.6 (13 beats)
• Starting: 10xp (50 beats)
• Auto-XP: 40.6 (203 beats)

..*: I don't know why it is showing as 56.9, I imagine it /should/ be 56.8, but the code is rounding oddly.

I would not be upset over a 7th Sea board game.

@Sonder said:

I got this page. We have the same IP as them as well apparently. I'll contact Third about this weirdness . Thanks for looking into it, guys. With what'd happened with the wiki, it just looked bizarrely fishy to me.

Gonna second Theno's opinion on this. Likely the games are hosted by the same machine with different ports.

This is eldritch: 50.116.2.160 6666. (hosted by mechanipus)
This is reno: 50.116.2.160 7639. (hosted by mechanipus)

This is darkwater: 50.116.2.160 8000 (hosted by mechanipus)
This is cofab : 50.116.2.160 2514 (hosted by mechanipus)

@Bobotron said:

@Cobaltasaurus
Perhaps. I used to go to a lot of MES conventions. ICC 2006, 2007 and 2008. SCaRE 2009 in New Orleans and ICC 2009. EClipse 2006.

I played Aaron Bourke Savage in the first Requiem chronicle in 2006, and Mr. Black in Lost from its inception.

The same sounds familiar, but hard to place. I doubt you'd have heard of either of my long running characters but I was:

Amaranta di Augusto of the Augustinian Dynasty -- Invictus turned Crone in requiem ... 2006 to .... idunno 2009 or 2010?
In Changeling I was Litebrite aka Sasha SomethingOrOther, the Angriest Winter Queen Ever from shortly after changeling opened until like .... 2011 or so, I guess. I never made it to any of the big cons (grumble ex husband grumble). I really wanted to go to SCaRE. :<

@Bobotron said:

@Cobaltasaurus
You MES? Huh. I wonder if we've ever crossed LARP-paths.
Also, the MES is kinda... meh... nowadays, sadly.

I dunno?

I was active in the Camarilla Requiem campaign, and the Camarilla Lost campaigns for a few years, but only in Florida. And mostly only in Southern Florida. So very doubtful?

@vaermithrax said:

@Cobaltasaurus You still do MES stuff, Cobalt?

Unfortunately, the nearest LARP group is in Portland, and I am car-less.

@tragedyjones said:

Dice... man oh man do I miss dice.

I'm still upset that all of my d6's are in freaking Florida with the ex-husband. sigh

@tragedyjones said:

I have often said that I approach MUSHing from a tabletop background. But I know that some people, perhaps even a majority of us, don't have access to or never have tabletopped, or don't anymore.

So a quick survey, my answers to follow.

Do/did you play in a tabletop game now or in the past?

• Past, probably aga in the future.

What games(s) do/did you play as tabletop?

• Hackmaster
• GURPS
• D&D 3.5
• D&D 4E
• D&D Next (brief)
• Pathfinder
• Star Wars d20
• Star Wars Saga Edition
• Star Trek - Decipher
• All Flesh Must Be Eaten
• World of Darkness (core)
• Vampire: the Requiem - MET
• Werewolf: the Forsaken - MET
• Changeling: the Lost
• Changeling: the Lost - MET
• 7TH SEA
• Fate

Are/were you the GM/ST/DM at your tabletop?

• Mmn, mostly no. A couple of times yes.

Would you tabletop if you had the opportunity?

• Yes.

Do you have the opportunity but choose NOT to tabletop?

• Not currently.

Misc:

• I am a pineapple.

Here are my general thoughts:

We have some people saying "metaplot isn't feasible on a large game", and then some people saying, "a game without a metaplot isn't interesting". So do we want all small games? I don't think that's what we want. But more specifically, I think metaplots work when there is someone who is active around telling a story. Or someone who keeps picking it back up after it goes quiet for a while.

For example: The Gamewide plots for Star Trek Gamma One were kept actively running by either Halmar or Rapier. Events were being run on a regular basis and things we're being pushed and guided by staff (I always felt Rapier was a little bit too railroady, but when the game had a large player base that player base was pretty actively RPing with folks).

Or: The Changeling metaplot on HM was not one that was constantly being run. It was picked up by different staffers here and there. Wagner ran it at times. Sarajevo ran it at other points. As well as, um, I forgot his name by R2's staffbit. (I think it was R2, its kind of blurry at this point).

The one key point that I am pretty sure both of these share is: Documentation. For all that Raper@STGO was very controlling I know he had a lot plot notes written down, and was able to refer back to them. (I doubt he ever shared them very much, but the documentation was there). And there is no way that the Changeling Metaplot on HM continued to exist without documentation from folks. (@Ganymede were you guys good about documentation?)

So my thoughts on a metaplot success:

• It requires documentation. Actually document things. Somewhere that new and old staff can get to and communicate.
• It requires communication -- all staff (involved with running it, and prolly the admit folk too) need to understand exactly what the goals/aims are.
• It requires guidance -- either in the form of things happening every so often, or staff actively pushing the plot toward folks.
• PC actions must matter. In the early days of the TR plot I went back and forth: On the one hand my character (Autumn Dunlin) was quite clearly one of the "stars" of the story/movie that was The Reach-- on the other hand I felt at times what my character had done didn't actually matter (after Autumn killed Jeremiah Dunlan, suddenly he had all this unregistered and illegal weaponry that the family never knew about and were now having to deal with).

My Thoughts Are Torn Here:

• Any PC needs to be able to get into the metaplot -- otherwise what is the point?
• However ... people need to feel like their part in the plot is special. Could someone else do it? Maybe? Is it a matter of only they can do it? Or they got their first? People need to feel like their actions matter, or they are special in some way.
• The metaplot cannot hinge on one person/faction/family/clan/etc, that family/person/clan/whatever could go inactive, or they could not want a part of the plot. If this happens the plot needs to continue on somehow. Which conflicts with the above.

So here's my question:

How do you make the metaplot open to any PC? Not contingent upon one PC? And at the same time make PCs feel like they have a special part in the metaplot?

@hedgehog said:

@Cobaltasaurus

This is SIMIANLOGIC?!

Oh wait. I got my people confused. No, this is Sensational.