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    Posts made by Coin

    • RE: RL Anger

      @Arkandel said in RL Anger:

      Haters. Am I chatting with a friend about how great Sunday's Game of Thrones was? I HATE THAT SHOW. Is someone talking about how they love Arkham Knight? UGH I HATE THOSE GAMES. Hey, I like Diablo 3, it's an awesome game. I HATE THAT. Okay, fine, why? I HATE ROLEPLAYING GAMES UGH.

      Then they go on and on about how there's a wide world out there and it's the summer! Just go out and have some fun!

      My favorite (?) line when I brought up reading fiction - not just a book or even a genre but fiction in general: "Well, I think the real world is interesting enough."

      "And I think you're an asshole. Go fuck yourself!"

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Core Memories Instead of BG?

      @Arkandel said in Core Memories Instead of BG?:

      @Coin said in Core Memories Instead of BG?:

      <rant>
      As an aside, I am repeatedly baffled at how difficult it is to get people to understand how to build Breaking Points. Running Eldritch--especially app approval--was a challenging experience mostly because I just found myself not even being able to even with some people's inability to comprehend this. And I know it makes me a bit of a dick--some people just have trouble with this sort of concept and it's not, you know, their fault. But the twentieth time someone presents a Breaking Point as, "one time my character shot a person and left them to die" as a Breaking Point, I twitch. It's not that hard to rephrase that as an actual Breaking Point, man. "Abandoning someone who may potentially die". Come on, man.

      Anyway.
      </rant>

      I suspect you'll disagree here but there comes a point once enough players don't understand a mechanic or system enough times that it might be that mechanic or system's fault as well.

      As you know I'm not big on rules myself even though I go over the theme parts of splat books very carefully but still skim over the dice parts; even so I'd say I'm better than most people care to learn and had to help folks in my plots with both very basic and more advanced things. So sure, we can blame reading comprehension and it's warranted to a degree but if the issue is recurring and wide-spread there ought to be a time when we say - okay, this thing is either not very intuitive, or we need to provide more help and examples, or ... well, rant about it on MSB which is acceptable as well. 🙂

      Or maybe a system isn't geared towards people who aren't willing to sit down and read it for comprehension. The fact of the matter is that MUing is fucking filled with people who will play a game just to play what they want to without actually giving a shit about its theme or its system or its rules.

      "I just want to RP, the system isn't important to me". Then find or make a place that caters to that attitude. If you play at a place that uses Chronicles of Darkness, don't be surprised when people expect you to have sat down and read the god damned book for comprehension. If you feel that requirement is too much--then maybe (re: probably) the system isn't for you.

      I'd never expect someone who doesn't like crunchy mechanics-heavy systems to enjoy Exalted. But I would absolutely call them a fucking dumbass for trying Exalted and then complaining it's crunchy, while still insisting on playing it as if it wasn't.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Does size matter? What about duration?

      I'm super flexible.

      I find that I tend to accommodate myself to my partner's times, but this can have deleterious consequences. For example, if you take between 10-15 minutes to pose, then I'm going to take around 10 minutes to pose. Because while I'm waiting for you to pose, I'm going to do something else (watch something fullscreen, read a comic book, check out a blog, whatever) and I'm not going to just stop every minute to check and see if you've posed. I'm going to let the scene finish, or finish the issue, or the article, or whatever.

      If you like big flowing paragraphs, you're shit out of luck with me for the most part. Oh, sure, if you're posing flowery long stuff, you'll get it out of me more often than not--but by and large, my poses are anywhere between a single line and 6-7 lines. I don't get longer than that unless there's a real need. Usually I stick around somewhere between 3-4. This isn't on purpose. It's just how it comes out. The only time I really concentrate on how I want them to seem is when the writing style is meant to convey something about the character--I played a character who was based on Hemingway recently (again, shocker right?) and his poses tended to have very little exposition and they had short, to-the-point sentences. He liked to talk, but he didn't talk overmuch. This was because that's how I wanted him to come off. In contrast, I played a character who didn't talk at all, and refused to use sign language or lettered communication--he was one of my most popular on The Reach. Everyone who bothered to mention it told me they loved playing with him. I had Interdisciplinary Specialty: Body Language, and I posed the hell out of it--but it was still just 3-4 lines a pose. He got his point across. I know at least one person found him frustrating, but they just didn't play with me much. No skin off my nose.

      I really like it when dialogue takes the front seat, in contrast to some other people here. Some of my favorite scenes have been pretty much just dialogue--I even have had some partners with whom I could drop to just dialogue, without any dialogue tags even. Just the speech--back and forth--bam bam bam bam--rapid-fire comments, entire conversations that happened almost in real time. It's only possible in 1-on-1, of course, but still!

      I hate pose order. I understand the need for it; I still hate it.

      I also know some people fistshake at me because I pose too fast ( @Sunny, @Gingerlily). #sorrynotsorry. ❤

      If I am having a lazy Saturday or Sunday devoted to RP, I can do the same scene for hours and hours. I once had a scene on a comic book MU between Superboy (me) and Nico Minoru that lasted eight hours and by the end we were both like--you know we should probably stop because we need to eat and maybe do other stuff today. Not because the scene couldn't continue. But in general--in general--I largely prefer my scenes to last around 2-3 hours; and if they can be shorter? Great. I see scenes as scenes, not as long drawn out interactions. Start the scene with something significant, end the scene when something significant concludes. I hate (and this happens a lot, and that's okay, but I still hate it) when scenes sort of peter out. I love scenes that start almost in media res and end before they conclude.

      Devlin and Phineas start a scene on a plane--they jump out of it! WHEEE! They land in a field of ostriches. Oh shit! They run around for two hours of RL time, having fun-finally they escape the ostriches. But they need to get back home! Oh, look, there's an expensive car on the road with no driver and Phin says, "I just found our ride." End scene.

      Maybe we pick up with them already half-way home, speeding down the highway in their stolen car. Maybe we just assume that happened and tell the story to someone else later on. But the scene was the ostrich field. Not the car ride. Two separate scenes. If more people were able to cut scenes this way, I would be so much happier.

      In direct contrast, in plot scenes--omfg, storyteller, move it along. A "plot event" does not need to only comprise itself of a single scene that happens in a single place. Fade in! Introduction! Crossfade! Next scene! Crossfade again! Next scene! Crossfade to climax! Fade out! Storyteller goes to bed, and the players play out their epilogue or whatever. Keep it movin', yo.

      Anyway, rant.

      As for time management: man, fuck continuity. Fucking television shows don't give a shit and millions of people watch and enjoy them. Don't give me this "but I don't know if my character can do this because this and that" crap. Either keep it nebulous, or make sure you know what the fuck your character is doing all the time. Argh. So many scenes that petered out into nothing because half the people RP a lot all over the place and the other half don't--so some have a lot of conflict and others don't. /tableflip.

      Also, you wanna make me happy? Like, really happy? Storytell. Not events, not PRPs--just storytell. Introduce complications. Make it weird. Have something happen. Man, I will help you out. There is this misconception that all great scenes have one ST. No, many scenes have more than one. I will sit at my chair and roleplay with you all fucking day if you storytell with me. If you collaborate and make the setting come alive with me, and I see this so little that I barely do it anymore, either. A bar fight should not be an event, guys. A bar fight should be a random backdrop in an otherwise random scene. Karaoke night should not be a scheduled +event; karaoke night should be every Tuesday, from 7EST to 11EST, come rain or fucking shine, for anyone who wants to show up, which sometimes means two people and sometimes it means thirty.

      God, karaoke. The first public MU I ever played in was Devilshire, a Buffy MUX. Shoshana Swann had a place called The Penalty Box and they had karaoke night there every Tuesday, like fucking clockwork. One of my alts worked there. Sometimes I participated. Sometimes I didn't. But I knew that if I showed up in that build on a Tuesday night, the roleplay would have a backdrop of karaoke. I just knew it. And it was fucking awesome. It didn't have to happen every Tuesday. Shoshana wasn't even there half the time--sometimes it was just players, none of which had alts working at the business, who still did karaoke RP on Tuesdays, because that was the activity there on that day. And sometimes Tuesdays had a lot of people and we used places code; and sometimes it was just four of us and we injected some plot--vampires loved karaoke night and we loved staking them while someone sang Voltaire's Vampire Club into the mic off-key. Whatever. It's Buffy.

      Anyway. Yeah. I went completely off-topic, I think. Sorry.

      <.<

      (notsorry)

      posted in MU Questions & Requests
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Core Memories Instead of BG?

      Just as a point of fact:

      This "Core Memory" and "Defining Moment" concept is, actually, pretty much what the CofD chargen asks of you when you're building your character's Breaking Points (Chronicles of Darkness p. 30). It's just that the questions for Breaking Point design are more specific and not as freeform, which makes the vast majority of MUers twitch like epileptic ferrets. But look at these questions:

      1. What is the worst thing your character has ever done? There is perhaps nothing more core memory than this, in a Chronicles of Darkness game. What's the worst thing your character has ever done? For my character above, it's probably "ditching his daughter to go monster hunting". So abandonment, abandoning someone, could probably be a Breaking Point.
      2. What is the worst thing your character can imagine himself doing? Hurting his daughter--and all children are probably a logical extension of that. It's not that he would ever do it on purpose--but he has nightmares about it. Just because you can imagine yourself doing it desn't mean it has to be on purpose. So hurting children or even just putting them in danger can be a Breaking Point; -2 if it's his own daughter.
      3. What is the worst thing your character can imagine someone else doing? This one is pretty standard. In fact, this one and the previous one are so repetitive, really, that I have to wonder what the fuck the developers were on. The first three questions are very similar, even if you can make distinctions, it's not a good design. The concept we're talking about in this thread is better suited.
      4. What has your character forgotten? Another perfect catalyst question for a core memory--except this is the opposite. What your character has forgotten is probably almost as important as what he remembers. Why? Because it can both represent something so traumatic that they blocked it out--but also what your character feels is insignificant. Tony Stark can't remember half (or even 90%) of the women he's bedded in Iron Man (the first movie). Why? Because they aren't important to him. It defines him as a character at that stage in his life. If we apply that to Breaking Points: being confronted emotionally with his disregard for women as people, being forced to face is own womanizing and misogyny, being shown the consequences of his ways (as he is, particularly in Iron Man 3, in the case of his womanizing) should be Breaking Points for Tony Stark. (This is a horrible example, by the way, not because it doesn't work mechanically, but because it makes Tony's womanizing and misogyny into a vehicle for his own character development, which... ugh... but I digress..!)
      5. What is the most traumatic thing that has ever happened to your character? The epitomy of the "core memory" concept. What has happened to your character that traumatized them the most? In my character example, his entire posse was murdered in front of him by a monster and he alone survived--he's traumatized by that, wracked by Survivor's Guilt.

      So really, this entire concept is already part of the CofD chargen process. It's just that what we're looking at is a way of expanding what the "questions" are to fit the more freeform mold of MUing (and perhaps less focuzsed on "horrible, no good, very bad things, which is maybe better for us, but less in-theme with what the CofD is all about), and also merging it with the (unnecessary in tabletop) "requirement" of a background in most MUs. We're also looking to apply it to more than just Mortals, which is a good thing, I'd wager, especially since the Supernatural splats also suggest adding some customized Breaking Points to the lists already in place.

      <rant>
      As an aside, I am repeatedly baffled at how difficult it is to get people to understand how to build Breaking Points. Running Eldritch--especially app approval--was a challenging experience mostly because I just found myself not even being able to even with some people's inability to comprehend this. And I know it makes me a bit of a dick--some people just have trouble with this sort of concept and it's not, you know, their fault. But the twentieth time someone presents a Breaking Point as, "one time my character shot a person and left them to die" as a Breaking Point, I twitch. It's not that hard to rephrase that as an actual Breaking Point, man. "Abandoning someone who may potentially die". Come on, man.

      Anyway.
      </rant>

      I think the best thing you could do is have a list of 10-15 questions that could help someone come up with good Core Memories. Don't make it a requirement to use any of them. Just have them as an aid that people can use to generate 5-ish defining moments (at chargen, or over the course of play). Reward it somehow. Help characters make those defining moments into Breaking Points (if the moment fits--most do, if you know what you're doing). Remember that there is no limit to how many Breaking Points a person can have, so as long as you have 5-ish basic ones that everyone falls under, you can let people add as many as they want, and they can be very narrow ("hurt my mom with a skillet") or broad ("seeing a man talk nasty to a woman"). At that point, the player is deciding how often their character's Integrity will be challenged. Some people may want to roll all the time and some may not. Some will try to exploit it (e.g. the "seeing a man talk nasty to a woman" person is going to roll a lot, probably, and if they have high Resolve+Composure, they might succeed a lot and still get Beats for it--give them a penalty every subsequent time after X times. Or decree that if you succeed at something like this more than X times in a month, it no longer counts, if Beat farming in this way is something you want to avoid).

      posted in Mildly Constructive
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: RL Anger

      @Roz said in RL Anger:

      @Coin Have you tried Calibre? I've used it for exactly that purpose.

      Yes. But I cannot get it to actually make a .doc into an .epub without fucking all the formatting up. Like, the one time I got it to work I had to go through some excrutiatingly precise editing of the .doc myself before hand.

      How do you do it? PM me or something! Thanks!

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: RL things I love

      @Arkandel said in RL things I love:

      @Coin Your mom asked me. And I do read manuals. <shifty eyes>

      I call bullshit on both counts.

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: RL things I love

      @Arkandel said in RL things I love:

      @Coin said in RL things I love:

      @HorrorHound said in RL things I love:

      @Coin said in RL things I love:

      @mietze said in RL things I love:

      @Coin Are you pregnant, girl, or just really fat?

      I am none of these!

      Can't a man just love naps and oatmeal with brown sugar? Gosh. So oppressed. ;_____;

      Wait...are we not supposed to love naps?

      I DON'T KNOW ANYMORE!!!

      @Coin If it's any consolation, you never did.

      No one asked you. Also, you're one to talk, you don't even RTFM.

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: RL things I love

      @HorrorHound said in RL things I love:

      @Coin said in RL things I love:

      @mietze said in RL things I love:

      @Coin Are you pregnant, girl, or just really fat?

      I am none of these!

      Can't a man just love naps and oatmeal with brown sugar? Gosh. So oppressed. ;_____;

      Wait...are we not supposed to love naps?

      I DON'T KNOW ANYMORE!!!

      Ask @mietze.

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: RL things I love

      @mietze said in RL things I love:

      @coin Waiting for you to instagram every meal you've ever had. 🙂

      I don't have an Instagram, either!

      This is profiling!

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Comics Stuff

      @Vorpal said in Comics Stuff:

      @Coin I'll rephrase that accordingly:

      "This will most likely become one of those 'storylines publishers will want to forget ever happened and ignore everything that happened, and which will be one of the things that the internet will never let us forget, like Rob Liefeld drawing ginormous penises on shrinking characters.'"

      Better? 😛

      Yes.

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Comics Stuff

      @Vorpal said in Comics Stuff:

      The move is risky and the setup is pretty stupid, it's going to take a wizard to pull it off without it ending as one of those "storylines we're going to forget were ever written" things.

      These don't exist anymore. We have the internet now.

      Mistakes are forever.

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: RL things I love

      @Faceless said in RL things I love:

      @Coin said in RL things I love:

      • Getting Ashe or Nasus in ARAM

      Noooooo, man! It's all about Fiddlesticks in ARAM!

      I don't have Fiddlesticks, and the time I played him I didn't like him! So boo on you! You can use Fiddlesticks, I will stick with Nasus or Ashe. Or Jinx. I do love Jinx in ARAM. Especially when I respawn with my ULT up and everyone is clustered on the other end of the map and I just fire that mega cannon like a boss and it accumulates power throughout the entire lane until it just one-shots one or two of the opposing team... >.>

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: RL things I love

      @mietze said in RL things I love:

      @Coin Are you pregnant, girl, or just really fat?

      I am none of these!

      Can't a man just love naps and oatmeal with brown sugar? Gosh. So oppressed. ;_____;

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: RL Anger

      The lack of programs and/or apps that can convert a .doc into an readable, formatted .epub or .mobi.

      Come on, coders. Do me this solid.

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: RL things I love

      @Kanye-Qwest said in RL things I love:

      @Coin Yes! I build AP nasus and get kills under turret as soon as we push in. Nobody expects that damage.

      I'm horrible at League of Legends, to be perfectly and brutally honest.

      Like, until I picked it up again recently, I used to have record deaths and shit. I didn't even give a fuck. I still don't, really. Nothing makes me grin like a sadistic monster more than watching people lose their shit because I'm bad at a game and they need this win against these bots omg.

      So when I was the one carrying the entire ARAM team on Ashe of all squishysquishes, it was fucking hilarious. And then the rest of my team surrendered. Who the fuck surrenders in ARAM? Bunch of wusses.

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: RL things I love

      @Kanye-Qwest said in RL things I love:

      But getting Lux in Aram, though.

      Srsly.

      But I don't own Lux, so I never really get her.

      Nasus tho'. Dat Spirit Fire spam, amirite? Takes up like two thirds of the fucking lane, man.

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: RL things I love

      @Faceless said in RL things I love:

      • Disney Pixar's "Inside Out"
      • Freezable teething rings
      • Nap time
      • Baby Azkaban
      • Weird Al's "Word Crimes"
      • Nap time
      • Getting Ashe or Nasus in ARAM
      • Nap time
      • Weird Al's "Tacky"
      • Brown sugar on oatmeal
      • Nap time.
      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Core Memories Instead of BG?

      This is what I do, mentally, as it is.

      My Bump in the Night character, for example, has a few defining moments:

      • He divorced his wife (amicably) when she realized she was gay.
      • It led him to leaving town--and his daughter--which he's remorseful of, for her early years of life.
      • His entire posse died recently and he alone survived (hel-lo, survivor's guilt).

      And then I started playing him, and...

      • His dad and grandfather were brewers, that's why he brews his own beer at his pub!
      • His dad cheated on his mom with another woman--that's where he got his little sister, whom he adores! And why loyalty is important to him, but conflicting--after all, disloyalty got him one of his favorite people.
      • One of the people who died was his best friend, and his sister's ex, which involves her and makes her invested in the whole vengeance angle--they have a common drive: revenge.

      So at least half of his defining traits came post-CG, and they built organically and aggressively.

      Of course, BITN doesn't even require a background, so I could do this easily.

      On The Reach I pretty notoriously had the shortest backgrounds. Like, a paragraph. Like I literally tended to write more about my character's past in a single set pose reminiscing some shit from his childhood to justify why he was at some playground at three am getting high than his entire background.

      You know. Shit like that. This is a good idea, especially if you allow additions later on.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Good TV

      Eh.

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
      Coin
      Coin
    • RE: Marvel: 1963 (Lookin for a Coder)

      [does the hex fingers at PennMUSH.]

      posted in A Shout in the Dark
      Coin
      Coin
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