Best posts made by Coin

I am sorry for trolling my friends whenever I have staff powers by setting their @aconnect to /quit.

I mean I'm not sorrysorry, I'm just sorry enough that you might think I won't do it again.

I will, though.

I totally will.

@Derp said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:

So, my two cents here, trying to move away from specific people to a more generalized thing:

I think that it's a double edged sword in how we go about this. Either way, there's no real way to 'win' when it comes to 'people that other people don't like'.

Personally, I try and avoid Scarlet Letters. Each game is a unique space. They might share players, themes, hell, even code, but ultimately, each game is a thing unto itself. No two games have been perfect copies of each other. Even The Reach and Fallcoast are different beasts, for a variety of reasons, and that's the closest thing I've seen to a copy of one from another.

That goes for players too. I think that if we get into the habit of treating players differently based on past experiences or whatever, it's gonna lead us down a bad road. Players can have difficulties on one game, given that game's atmosphere and environment, that they'd never have on another. I've seen it happen before. While I don't buy into a lot of the 'hivemind' stuff, there is definitely a flow that you fall into based on a game's players, stories, environment, rules, etc, and like all social creatures we'll in some way conform to that, for good or ill.

This makes some people unhappy, sure. People who have been around for awhile and dealt with the same people can be wary, and with good cause. If you don't do what they expect, then you can catch a lot of heat.

But you can also catch a lot of heat singling out players for different treatment for any reason, and not treating all players as if they were playing on a level playing field.

There is no middle ground there. You either do treat them all the same, or you don't treat them all the same. No matter how you try and nuance it, it comes down to one of those two things. And either way, one side is going to be unhappy that you chose that path.

There is no right or wrong way to do it. It all depends on what you want from your game. Me, I choose to lean toward the 'all players starting on a new game have a clean slate, and will be treated as equals under the same set of rules'. Partly because I feel like that's the better option, and partly because it makes it less complicated. i don't have the time, energy, or desire to track the complete MU histories of the dozens of people that have A Reputation in this hobby. I staff on two games right now, and there are literally hundreds of players that I have to manage and work with. The ones with the Reputation are a small fraction of those.

So ultimately, I think that it just comes down to preference. And as I've said before, as much as we like to make it sound like MUers are a cohesive lot when it comes to certain things, it's just really not true. We're incredibly diverse, and we see it pop up all the time. We're just never gonna agree on certain things. And that's okay.

So that's my constructive two cents on People We Might Not Like.

I was going to go point-by-point to answer this but I find that I disagree with the core premise of your post, so that's pointless.

Character is what you are in the dark. Sure, an Evangelist said it, so we can't really be so sure what he considered 'the dark', since I'm sure he believed God was always watching, but the concept behind the quote is solid: who you really are is what you do when nobody's looking, when you're alone, when you know you'll get away with it.

In MU terms, we can transpose it to "character is what you do when nobody knows it's you". Me? I typically play cat-and-mouse with @Quibbler or @ILuvGrumpyCat until they figure it out, I slip, or I get bored. But other people use it to manipulate, hurt, and twist others.

This doesn't CHANGE because you go to a new game. My morality, my attitude, my conscience, my personality, my respect for myself and others, and all the things that influence how I behave and what I think, do not change just because I switch servers. Saying that the surrounding environment influences how we behave isn't wrong, you're just massively overstating its importance in this context.

The environment of any given game is similar enough to any other game that your attitudes towards and respect for your fellow players shouldn't change. If it does, you're an opportunist at best.

Spider has proven to be the same person time after time after time after time on game after game after game after game; at what point does your philosophy of "start from scratch" start feeling like you're being naive?

After what Sovereign did on Reno, I banned him when he came to Eldritch. I didn't wait for him to do something bad on Eldritch, because he's a shitty person I don't want on my game. Spider was pre-banned. These are people, not usernames, and changing their PC, going to a different game won't change that. Only a consistent, protracted, sincere change in attitude will, and even there, no one is under any obligation to give them that chance, especially when it's been given more than often enough, and always ended in calamity.

Your entire point is flawed, because you choose to grant a clean slate to people based on an arbitrary notion like "it's a new game". The action isn't justified by the reason. It's like saying, 'this man is a thief in Illinois, but in Michigan he's not'. No, dude, the guy's a thief, period--he may not have committed theft in Michigan, but that doesn't make him any less of a thief.

I like details, but I don't like verbiage, if that makes sense?

I don't need LONG FLOWING POSES. I need the details. A lot of people confuse "detailed pose" with "long pose that explains every little thing". To me, a detailed pose is a pose that has a sentence about the action, and a good few verbs and adjectives to explain that action and make it come alive.

My writing workshop professor this semester loves the poetry of explaining things indirectly. Yesterday he went on and on about how someone said a character 'blonde' and he would really have preferred something like 'as I brush my hair, I pick a gold-colored lock from my sweater' to let him know the character is blonde. To which I readily witheld my reply of 'fuck that shit'. And that's for prose. In RP? FUCK IT TWICE.

@Pondscum said in Good writin'.:

@Arkandel said in Good writin'.:

@Auspice I think I've mentioned this before but...

We were in a three-person scene that had been going on for a bit when this guy comes in from outside. Immediately, and without waiting to see what was going on or ask OOC what we wanted to do, he posts about him being bloodied because of the pitchfork-carrying mob outside trying to get'im.

In all my years in the game that was the grossest attention-seeking I've actually seen in practice. I still can't quite imagine a bigger 'fuck you and what you were doing before, from now on it's about me' than that.

If you were in a public grid spot and someone pulled that, it's fair game! Yes, it'd probably be annoying, but if you were in a bar or restaurant RL, a car can come crashing through the window, a psychopath can run in with a knife or some bitch from hell can come in and flip out that you're cozying up with her partner. It's impossible to control the world around you and if you're needing no interruptions your best bet is a private room.

This sort of attitude just kind of glosses over the fact that being polite and considerate is something that would be great. Like, I get it, 'public place, fair to do whatever!' but what this completely ignores is that we're supposed to be playing a cooperative game. Wouldn't you prefer to play that sort of scene with people who want to play it? Why would you foist it on someone who is having fun playing another type of scene already, especially without asking if they'd prefer what you have planned?

You can justify it by saying it's "technically okay" because they were in public, but I can just as readily point out it's fucking awful from a cooperative, social point of view, and disrespectful to other people to boot.

I think, @juke, your problem here is going to be that there are no games in which you'll find just the style you want. Sure, some games have a style most players adopt, but by and large, style is more of a person-to-person thing, in these cases.

For me, randomly looking back, the people I really love writing with when it comes to cooperative back-and-forth, and pose efficiency and clarity, while also maintaining some sort of poetry (and this, I stress, does not mean I don't immensely enjoy writing with others) are very few and far between. Many of them are not on MSB.

The following is an extremely short list of people I randomly remember who I also know the MSB usernames of:

@EmmahSue, who enchanted me as Meadow on The Reach.
@Eerie, who hasn't played in a while now, but who is just so much fun.
@Gingerlily, when I can get her to not scroll my screen like she's playing Galaga with words.
@Quibbler, less about the poetry and more because we just click when it comes to rapidfire back-and-forth, laconic shit.
@tragedyjones, because we share humor, even though he barely ever plays, the fucker.
@Scorn is furiously fun when she's on, which if I played now-a-days, I would hope would be often.
@ILuvGrumpyCat ditto the above, when she's on, she shines.

Honestly? If I seek you out for RP, especially to make groups or long-term stories, it means I like the way you write.

@Carex

I don't know how to say "alien, fantasy cultures do not have to operate under the same psychological logic and behavior that human beings have, because they are alien and fantastical" any other way, so if this is a problem of you not wanting to follow that train of thought, then that's on your and your inability to suspend your disbelief.

@Luna, I don't even need access to youtube to link this.

@Roz said:

@Coin said:

@Roz said:

My therapist knows a whole lot about it now. It's alternately hilarious and frustrating the amount of background setup I have to give him just so I can talk about the actual emotional parts that's relevant to the therapy session.

Oh, man, I feel you on this so much.

"OKAY SO THERE ARE THESE THINGS CALLED PLOTS, WHICH ARE LIKE -- SPECIFIC STORY ARCS? AND THERE ARE GMS THAT RUN THEM AND IT'S REALLY HARD BUT THEN THERE'S ALSO THIS THING CALLED--" forever and ever

Me: "[...] and some people have a lot of characters. I have a bunch of them. Sometimes I play one character more than others for a time and then I switch."
Therapist: "Are all your characters the same?"
Me: "No, not at all."
Therapist: "But do they all follow the same archetype?"
Me: "Noooo, not even close."
Therapist: "This hobby of yours is highly dissociative. Not necessarily in a bad way, of course,. It's rather impressive, actually."
Me: "... you have no fucking idea."
Therapist: "Tell me."
Me: "Oh, boy..."

@cobaltasaurus said in Development Thread: Sacred Seed:

It's honestly just going to be:

Birth control is available to all, works on both genders. It's 100% effective until the two players involved don't want it to be. OOC consent must be had by both parties for pregnancy to start.

And uncomplicated miscarriage is possible if the pregnant character's player does not want them to be pregnant anymore or, for example, if the character gets rostered while pregnant and the new player has no intention of playing parenthood/pregnancy.

@carex said in Good or New Movies Review:

@theonceler

I'm not saying it was a bad movie. It was good and I enjoyed it. I'm just saying, objectively, it's not a movie people should be pointing at as a liberal ideal just because it's got black people in it. It's suuuper racist and the character of Black Panther is a shit person who has to learn basic human empathy through the course of the movie.

It's not racist.

Even Wakanda isn't racist.

It may be isolationist and even xenophobic, but it is not racist. There is a difference there.

I can't say I disagree with every point you make, though--I also can't say I didn't think about it before, though. It just seems like something entirely superfluous to argue about given the MCU also has stars like Tony Stark, who literally begins his story being a war profiteer.

The talk about "if you're worried about your character's safety when an ST rolls up unannounced, that says something about the ST" reminds me of the "True Friend Merit" debate on The Reach when God-Machine Chronicles came out. It went roughly like this:

For those of you unfamiliar with it:

True Friend (•••)
Effect: Your character has a true friend. While that friend may have specific functions covered by other Merits (Allies, Contacts, Retainer, Mentor, et cetera), True Friend represents a deeper, truly trusting relationship that cannot be breached. Unless your character does something egregious to cause it, her True Friend will not betray her. The Storyteller cannot kill a True Friend as part of a plot without your express permission. Any rolls to influence a True Friend against your character suffer a five-die penalty. In addition, once per story your character can regain one spent Willpower by having a meaningful interaction with her True Friend.

Some caveats: on The Reach, a "story" is, as a non-abstract unit of time, more or less equal to 1 Month (or was, at the time of this debate).

Anyway, we were smack dab in the middle of the GMC Re-Spec Extravaganza (hosted by our very own @tragedyjones) when a subset of staffers lost. their. fucking. shit.

I am not even kidding. They hate this Merit. Like, they absolutely fucking abhor it, and their reasoning went something like this:

"This Merit is overpowered because for three dots it stops the ST from killing the NPC and it lets them regain WP and even if you want to affect them via the NPC you take a five-die penalty this is the worst dingoes ate mah baaaaaaaaaabies."

Or.

"Whatever. I don't have to kill them. I can just kidnap them! Or put them in a coma! Or drop them down a dark shaft and assure the player that they aren't dead. Mwahahaha! I am so the evilest of evil!"

Both of these positions are fucking stupid as shit.

Let's begin with the fact that the Willpower regain effect is meaningless on a MU. It just is. The overall time it takes to tell a story and the chronological constraints we find ourselves in due to it being a persistent and constantly moving game (whether you're there or not) make it pointless. You might as well be paying XP for an extra die in "any rollt o understand the Teletubbies' strange baby language". Any concerns over this mechanic (and there were concerns, voiced loudly and shrilly) were idiotic, especially since you could only do it once per story, which meant that it was a mechanic available once a month. A month. On a MUSH. FFS.

More to the point, however, were the other concerns. I cannot tell you how supremely vexed some of these people were that the Merit would prevent them from just killing off someone else's NPC on a whim. Like, they apparently really thought it was their right as a staffer and storyteller to be able to kill anyone's NPCs for whatever reason they saw fit. Seriously, how much of an asshole do you have to be for this to be your philosophy? Do you still hang around in your mom's basement and lord the fact that you're the only one who owns the Dungeon Master Guide over your friends so you can kill their PCs over and over and over? Fuck, man.

I said as much on the jobs back then, but they continued to complain and whine and you'll notice that the True Friend Merit has never been available on The Reach, because apparently someone having a steady NPC presence that means something, story- and character-wise is too much of an affront to some staffers.

Fuck.

Anyway, these are the same assholes I wouldn't trust dropping into scenes randomly to run surprise plot, because they have no sense of scale and an entitlement complex the size of a fucking sun.

All right. Back to your regularly scheduled thread.

For things like Bone/Blood or Mask/Dirge, I've always been partial to making people choose at least initially and then allowing them to change later if it doesn't fit, without any hassle. Especially if new, custom ones are introduced into a game that fit the character much better.

For things like Sires, Fetches, adn background stuff like that, I am all for making that shit up in play if the player wants. That can be some of the most fun interplay between characters if you start interweaving your background on the fly (and also for plots--I love it when people let me play with their backgrounds in a plot so I can write something compelling).

As for justifications for high stats--nah. Look, if you don't want a stat to be above X at chargen, just cap it. Simple. Otherwise, let people take that shit.

I'd abolish marriage as an institution and leave it, and other unification-type ceremonies and rituals, to cultures that wish to define them as such. The legal benefits of a civil marriage are almost as archaic. It's a contract. Just let it be a contract.

I wouldn't set it in El Paso--Juarez mostly because I don't trust MUers to not be complete shitlords and use "it's El Paso--Juarez" to justify excessive rape/brutality plots. They already do it with "it's the world of darknesssssssss" as it is.

My idea for a comic book game inspired by The Strange is the opposite:

Remember Amalgam? Remember Exiles?

The Stage: The Multiverse.
The Headquarters: The Panopticon.
The Players: Original and amalgamated characters.
The Catch: Only a limited (e.g. 3) versions of the same character (amalgamated or otherwise) can be on the game at any one time. (So there are three Wolverines--one is similar to the usual Wolverine, another is Dark Claw, another is a version of Logan who grew to old age qwithout ever knowing adamantium, or maybe gamma irradiate, or or or... etc).
The Plots: If you create a character you get a number. That number is your Universe. You get a room, building privileges inside it, and you can make it be, look, whatever you want. Galactus can be a chicken. I don't care. The Panopticon is staff-regulated. characters go on missions to different universes to fix the multiverse through various actions--some are benign, and some are a little more vicious, which is why the Panopticon also recruits, you know, Deadpools, and Carnages, and Punishers.

So you can play in your own world, crossing into the Panopticon occasionally, or you can play in the multiverse, mostly going on player-run missions across the vast expanse of infinite possibilities--and since "universe destroying dangers" can only destroy one universe--if you wanna do that to a universe you created? Fine. Go for it. Only threats to the multiverse and the Panopticon need staff oversight.

And if your character gets frozen (due to inactivity or you just get busy and freeze them)? Someone else can app a similar one--but not yours. Your Wolverine is YOUR Wolverine. You might have to wait for a Wolverine slot to open up, but the stories you told are yours, the relationships are yours, etc.

This is true of any rabid fanbase, though.

@arkandel said in #WIDWW pt 2 - ST, Player, or staff?:

@lisse24 said in #WIDWW pt 2 - ST, Player, or staff?:

is just not fun to me, and I don't understand people who want to play the gazillion XP vampirewerewolfmage and win with no cost. I agree with the other person who says they don't really see many dark WoD games out there, because if you're going to explore dark themes, then there has to be cost and consequences and in most cases, that just doesn't exist.

But that's the thing. It's not the XP. You can make some pretty damn powerful characters with relatively little - practically right out of CGen - so you can get good academic rolls, some melee, some firearms, etc.

The problem is people playing to win, not systems that can't be beaten. It's on us.

It's also not a problem of players being too powerful compared to their antagonists, but rather the antagonists being too weak. Okay, you have your super-powerful vampire; I, as an ST, am going to ramp up my antagonists, then. It's a matter of scale, and surprise, the ST can always win the scaling game, because we don't need XP.

The problem is that players expect to win, like @Arkandel says (god that hurt to type). They expect to win because they "put a lot of effort into all this XP to be powerful" or whatever, or "this isn't really fun for me" if they aren't winning or if they're getting shit on by the antagonist. Adversity in MUs is something you play in your downtime, apparently.

I played in an IRC Exalted (tabletop style) game for like two years or something and my character was constantly shit on by this Abyssal who juast kept showing up and beating the living shit out of me. Like, "almost dead" several times. Eventually, I figured out his style, his powers (after he'd used every single one of them on me) and then I built a combo that let me shoot him in the face. And I didn't even kill him, one of my Circle finished him off.

And it was the best time because I felt like my character had earned that victory.

Most MUers don't really feel that way.

Man, I gotta say, I side with @Herja here, pretty hard.

Nothing matters if the players don't care about it. Mechanics, system, all that is there to facilitate or guide the narrative. Some people may only want to play a certain narrative because it uses a certain system or code or whatever, but that doesn't mean that the real value isn't on the narrative. If people don't care about the story, they aren't going to play it, no matter how cool the system is.

"Jennifer Garner famously played Elektra to Ben Affleck’s Daredevil on the big screen."

lolololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololol.

I love how she mentions Garner played her in Daredevil but neatly dodges even mentioning Elektra. I mean they were both shit movies, but haha.

Few things:

• Wow. Just wow. I mean wow. I didn't expect a seven-page thread based on @Seraphim73 taking exception to someone using "cunt" and me backing the request (and, in the spirit of sincerity, I have used the word, as an insult no less, more than once--special shout-out to the time I used it on WORA to punctuate the end of a rant about VASpider and @Quibbler was like "I was not expecting you to use that word...").
• Shit needs to stop happening that makes me agree with @TheOnceler, we have enmity that goes back like ten years and I find it very distracting to agree with him on things without also having some reason to still be mad. Don't mess with the dynamic, dude. It makes holding on to my dated, pointless grudge super difficult. Stop it.
• The difference between Nazis co-opting a Buddhist symbol and creating the Swastika (i.e. taking positive symbology and ascribing to it something hateful) and someone being okay with referring to themselves as a SJW (or being referred to as) is that in the former, the values are applied to the symbol, whereas in the latter the symbol is applied to the values. It is very different to imbue a symbol with hateful rhetoric than it is to have a general attitude towards social justice be referred to (however mockingly) as "SJW". I mean, I didn't take offense to being called a SJW, I took (slight) offense at being called delusional for being one. I mean, I'm probably delusional in some other respects, but not that.
• I'm consistently amused when talk about "left-right-center" starts up here.