Best posts made by Coin

This reminds me of something. Gosh, whatever could it be.

@surreality said in Dealing with bad actors:

@Roz That makes a bit more sense, then. The only Shadow I knew of before that was @Coin, and he would never do shit like that.

@SG said in GMs: Typical Player/GM Bad Habits:

GM Bad Habit: Throwing a Big Bad in front of low level players expecting them to run away.

I get that having a teaser of what is to come is sometimes a great thing, but this is so overused(In mushes and TableTop), I've seen and am now a player who will almost never go for it because almost every encounter is a death sentence.

As a GM, it's taken me years to get my players to trust friendly NPCs, after having one screw the party over back in the day. I've also done a lot of work rehabbing my group with having realistic stats for bad guys instead of 'Scaling for level'.

Anyways, this came to mind saturday when my TT GM jumped our fresh 3rd level characters with a fucking Aboleth. We tried to run, but cultists teleported in and kept us from getting away and now we have a jellified illusionist in a bucket.

On the other hand: player bad habit: always solving things a single way and/or being unwilling to lose and try another day.

As a GM, I try to make it very clear when a situation is beyond their skill scope, and will outright state it OOC: 'in this scenario, violence will not work' (for example) mostly because I don't like to waste anyone's time.

That said.

Bad GM Habit: Wasting player's time when they know a lengthy and/or convoluted and/or complex action is going to lead nowhere. Especially on MUs, where that can take weeks or months of the player's time and effort. Just tell them.

"This isn't going to get you anywhere. Feel free to play that it is frustrating not to get anywhere for as long as you want, but also feel free to drop it as soon as you want."

It's not hard and it fosters a good relationship where players don't feel deceived and storytellers don't get annoyed being asked about some inconsequential shit.

Better answer is to actually make it consequential (to the main plot or as a side thing) but just by telling them "this isn't gonna get anywhere" you still avoid a lot of the problems.

All of this. At once.

My anxiety is through the roof lately which doesn't help.

And I always feel like the people I do connect with and play with and click with will forget about me or think I don't like them anymore when I stop playing because I can't manage it.

@Kanye-Qwest said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@Ominous said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@HelloProject

. A few games do explore other races/species, though, like Burning Wheel's racial mechanics with Elves having Grief, Dark Elves having Spite, Dwarves having Greed, Orcs having Hate, and Humans having Faith.

uh i have no idea what mechanic this is but it SOUNDS racist af, just from those terms. Never thought I'd be an elf apologist but EVERYONE SUCKS BUT HUMANS is yikes.

lol, except some of us find 'faith' as some sort of defining virtue to be super horrible, so I guess IMO those all suck.

This whole thread is pretty interesting. I do play a majority of white dudes, not gonna lie, but when I do play a character that is an ethnicity sufficiently different from mine (which is white Hispanic) I do my research and then generally just -- play as normal. IMO, one of the best ways of not stereotyping is making sure that the cultural marks (social or physical) are genuine and not there for the sake of being there.

Also, if you're not black, don't feel free to use the n-word because you're playing a black person (yeah, it's happened a lot). Same for other slurs. That's just... I feel that should be obvious.

This all reminds me of a relatively recent thing where someone playing a PoC character, on more than one occasion, metaposed that their character's way of talking was hard to understand and/or "arguably English" (when it very clearly was neither of those things, especially since any of the non-strictly prescriptive grammar used in dialogue was pretty close to AAVE). Like, yikes, ya know?

@Waller said in Gauging Interest in a new Erotic RP MU* (with anonymous survey):

@HelloProject said in Gauging Interest in a new Erotic RP MU* (with anonymous survey):

Like damn, let me be a wizard who does sexy wizard things, but also I can do other wizard things, and Doom Guy won't suddenly walk in like "I'M GONNA FUCK YOUR SEXY WIZARD THINGS!!!"

This sounds like if someone made an Oglaf MUSH.

An Oglaf MUSH would be ridic and fun, ngl.

@SinCerely said in [NSFW] Erotic RP Concepts:

I like werewolves and tieflings.

There I went first.

@山口-二矢 said in MU* Clients:

What are the best MU* clients lately? I still use tinyfugue, because I have a strong preference for command lines over GUIs, but I think a thread where we talk about these clients is worthwhile.

I STRONGLY encourage you to try BeipMU. It has all the versatility of any other MU client and is actively developed with a helpful Discord community/server where you can go for any questions and help with triggers and scripts.

Seriously, @magee101, just stop.

Some people made a game!

Dove Cove is a sandboxy bit of slice of life drama with a little bit of a twist. There is no deep far-reaching metaplot. Instead, we will be running a series of encapsulated stories within the setting that we've established. These may run the gamut from the sorts of stories you might see on daytime and prime-time dramas, cop shows, forensic shows, hospital shows, procedurals of various types, murder mysteries, crime dramas, and various other town-related nonsense. There is also the added twist that those who come to the area find that they are able to slip in and out of one another's dreams, sometimes sharing dreams with individuals or entire groups. Why this happens is a mystery, and perhaps in time that story will evolve, but for now it's merely an excuse to explore dreams and traveling through dreams with others that one encounters in Dove Cove.

We have lots of game info for people to read through if they stop by! We look forward to you visiting!

https://cove.mugames.org

cove.mugames.org port 4201

@Thenomain said in RL Anger:

@Coin said in RL Anger:

I'll take whatever.

I'm easy.

As easy as your mom?

OooohhhHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Oh my god, @Thenomain finally nailed an 'your mom' joke.

I hear galloping in the distance; sixteen hooves in the night, the Horsemen are nigh...

@arkandel said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:

@lithium said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:

@redmeadow What is good in concept doesn't always work well in practice. Every time Mage is involved in a game, it dominates the game, sometimes that is intended, sometimes not.

I don't like that argument. It's like saying Batman is a useless character because Superman is way more powerful.

But power is not the vector that decides a character's relevancy.

It is not like that, because in a story, Batman and Superman are written by the same person and their relevancy is decided by the writer, who can adjudicate who does what in ways that don't overshadow each other (not always the case, since writers love to make Batman de center of everything but I disgree).

In a game, different people control different characters and their relevancy is dictated by several players who may or may not want to have the same level of cooperation. So power level doesn't decide the character's relevancy IF THE PLAYERS DON'T USE IT TO ASSERT THEIR RELEVANCE OVER OTHERS'. This is easy in story writing, but often very difficult in roleplaying.

Your analogy is bad.

That's the intro. Now for some facts:

We're not open yet! We're not even letting people log onto the game yet. But we are showing people our wiki! Take a look at it. There is a lot of stuff there. We've been working pretty hard to cover a lot of bases, but some things are still missing. These include:

• Splat-specific character creation guidelines;
• putting a lot of our NPCs up on the wiki;
• anything related to werewolf and the Shadow/spirits;
• some setting stuff (mostly city history from the points of view of vampires and werewolves);
• some of the custom content stuff that we've got to put up.

It may seem like a lot, and in some cases it is, but mostly because it'll be challenging. I'm still trying to figure out how we're going to do Bloodlines and Lodges, largely because Requiem 2e didn't touch Bloodlines at all, and Forsaken 2e is unlikely to touch Lodges much at all, either.

Instead of waiting forever to get the official material, we'll most likely go with something custom made that reminisces back to the first edition. I've even picked out some stuff already to work on.

That said, some stuff we have is all us. We have a territory-claiming system for all splats (even mortals!) called "Neighborhoods", and our High Society and Government spheres have their own "how to get on top" or "how to screw the other person" mechanics.

Eldritch has a metaplot and it has themes that we feel include something for everyone: mysteries, horror, savagery, humor, regret. It's all there.

We are also super duper proud of our grid, y'all!

I will be updating this post periodically as things get closer to opening. For the moment feel free to stalk our wiki and take a look around, read the copious amounts of stuff we've written (omg, y'all) and get ideas for PCs. In a few weeks, we open the doors for people to log into the game and start networking.

We soft-open for Mortals only (perhaps with minor templates of spheres, perhaps not) on the tentative date of March 16th, code-allowing.

...

Bam!

@Arkandel said in Good TV:

GoT Season 7 Finale SPOIIIILERS.

... Still here?

Did anyone else get annoyed at the kangaroo court they had for Littlefinger in there? There was no evidence, no chance for the accused to prepare himself or even to know he'd be on trial, just a quick 2-minute recitation of the accusations and then an execution! He didn't get to ask for trial by combat or to negotiate taking the Black.

Worse? No one even passed the sentence, and if Sansa implied it then she certainly didn't swing the sword. Arya just went "eeh, I've heard enough STABSTAB". That's as much a Stark thing as wearing fur!

Honestly?

No. Not really.

I found it appropriate, and in keeping with the attitude that all three of the people with actual authority in the room have developed over the course of the show.

Sansa learned how to be ruthless from Cersei, Joffrey, Ramsey, and Littlefinger himself, none of them people who would give their target a chance if they could avoid it, and she could.

Arya really likes killing people, and doesn't really give a flying fuck about rules when she does it.

Bran is beyond emotion and propriety as the Three-Eyed Raven now, and he knows the truth, objectively, as a nigh-first-person witness to it all, so there's no requirement of 'fairness' from his point of view, either.

Everyone else was either the command of Sansa, or probably had fucking enough of Littlefinger and was way more internally loyal to either Sansa or, at the very least, Jon, who left Sansa in charge, and they are smart enough to realize that coalescing the forces amassed under a single command instead of answering to Littlefinger-who-answers-to-the-Starks is just simpler.

In short: there wasn't anything Littlefinger COULD DO, never mind that letting him talk is just always a mistake and that was what Sansa learned--slowly, but she learned it.

Never have I seen a comparison thread so hilariously mismanaged as this one in such a short amount of posts. Congrats, @D-bone.

P.S. I prefer 2E because the system is cleaner, the power levels are consistent, and a lot of the conceptual stuff is more to my liking.

I just wish they'd hurry the fuck up with Changeling and Sin-Eater so people can stop making 1e games. >.>

@de-villefort said in Birmingham: The Entangled City (BhamMu*):

@cobalt

Honest opinion? Scrap it and start over.

To prevent magic from spiraling into a mess of chaos and power gaming you have to start really basic. Also, if you have to define every magical effect as your players make them up, you're going to end up needing a full time staffer just for that. Simpler is better.

Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Mind, Spirit, Life, Time, and finally Transmutation.

Approach it like old school Mage from WoD does. If you have rank 1 in <element> you can do this kind of stuff. If you have rank 2 you can do that kind of stuff and so forth and so on. Not spells but guidelines. Say, at Water 2 you can shape or control X amount of mass of the water and conjure half that much into being.

Magic should be like building with lego blocks and each block should be clearly defined.
Don't just say your magic system is part science, part magic, make it work like that. Define elements, rules and set up guidelines then let the players build things with those elements.

Want to turn a person into a statue? Life 3 to seize control of the person's body, Transmutation 3 to transform one level 3 worth of mass into another element and Earth 3 to shape that amount of mass into a statue.

You could use Life3, Transmute 3, earth 1 to turn them into earth but they would be a lose pile of dirt instead of a statue because you need earth 3 to maintain the stability of the mass of stone in the statue shape until the transmutation process is complete.

If you have a system where everything is defined by properties and values you don't need to write out every spell and every ritual because the requirements can be self-evident.

I kind of feel like if Cobalt wanted to run a Mage game, or even an Ars Magica game, she would make a Mage game or an Ars Magica game.

It kind of feels like you want to play something completely different from what she's clearly aiming for and instead of, you know, finding that okay, you want something entirely different because ... it's... your preference? Lol. Come on, now.

Also, LOL at Mage-style magic systems "preventing magic from spiraling into a mess of chaos and power gaming".

I think it's very simple.

If you are going to run or play a historical game, you should be made to watch a few episodes of Reign (or some other similar drama wherein the specific era you are aiming for is depicted in full-on Hollywood glory).

If you can stomach it, nay, even enjoy it, despite its inaccuracies and ridiculousness? Carry on.

If you can't? Stop. Figure out something else to run/play.

@Pandora said in Accounting for gender imbalances:

I work in a predominantly male office, though the majority of the admin/reception team is female. There's a guy in my department, very sweet, very friendly, we're friends on Discord, play video games together, so I just want to make it clear he's not a total shithead all the time.

But.

He's got opinions that are not workplace-friendly for discussion. He likes to argue about equal opportunity, cite fringe research that proves men are discriminated against more than women, that men are abused just as much as women but it goes unreported so no one cares, and this past Sunday was Father's Day, and he went on a riff in the office about how single mothers should not be allowed to celebrate Father's Day because that's making the holiday about themselves and renders it meaningless. He corners the few women in our department to make these arguments - it's never the other guys he's talking to, as most of them are not silly enough to engage in this type of behavior. It grates on my nerves to see women who haven't researched these topics unable to refute his 'published statistics' floundering as they make perfectly reasonable emotion-based or anecdotal arguments that he waves off, and he dismisses these arguments with statements like 'I don't need to be married or a father to have an opinion on these topics' despite being a 30 year old virgin with a deep-seated seeming vendetta against the secretly abusive girlfriends and wives and celebratory single moms of the world. When I swoop in to rescue them from this bullshit is when our (male) team lead will finally break it up, because this colleague haranguing the women in the office is one-sided 'conversation' but when I refute his points it's now an 'argument' that needs to be broken up.

I'm kind of at the point of considering physical bodily harm the next time he starts speaking at work, but at the same time I'm hesitant to go to HR to file a grievance against someone I consider a friend.

Sounds like he's a shithead.

If he doesn't behave like a shithead outside of work where your replies won't be curtailed by your (male) team lead, that means he knows exactly when to do it (and to whom) so that he's operating within a bubble of safety while he compromises the safety and comfort of others.

Ergo, shithead.

Doesn't matter how much fun he is at video games, IMO.

This is not to say that I think you should change your behavior, but I do challenge the idea that he's not a shithead outside of the moments and places where he chooses to behave that way, because if he doesn't behave that way outside of those places and moments, he's doing so consciously. he's either cherry picking when he espouses the views, or cherry picking when he shuts up, but either way, it shows a deliberate discrimination between when he feels he can get away with it, and when he can't.

Or maybe he goes on those rants on Discord and you don't care. I don't know.

On one game, once upon a time, a friend of mine and I decided our characters should hate each other, so we started to blast each other publicly every chance we could. It got to the point where we were writing the stuff for each other (i.e. me blasting my own character, and him his).

Then we had some one-on-one actual in-depth character scenes and the characters realized they were really similar and had similar goals.

So the OOC process of my writing bad stuff for his character to say became MY CHARACTER writing bad stuff for his character to say, and vice-versa, and it was just the best.