Posts made by Collective

@admiral With respect, there are times when that's a burden that sucks for the people who have to put up with that same discrimination in real life. Why should some people get a pass into Narnia and others get hassled at customs?

It depends on what the staff is going for, I'd imagine.

I know that a concept I try to keep in mind when gaming is the Fun Tax.

The essence of the Fun Tax idea is that gamers and game designers tend to bake in assumptions in their games and then cling to them stubbornly as 'genre appropriate' or 'historically correct'. Never mind the game has magic swords, dragons or zombies. Nope, that doesn't stretch the imagination as much as people not being assholes towards black folks, women, Jews and queer folks.

This means that those of us who aren't your typical gamer have to pay a higher buy-in to the game and put up with more insulting and/or disturbing stuff than the average cis/white/straight dude. And that's not fair.

So I ask my players what they want. And if they don't want to deal with discrimination in the game, we don't. Screw genre fidelity when it gets in the way of fun. And again, dragons, zombies, magic. If those don't stretch credibility, neither should somebody's hardboiled lesbian PI or black wizard.

Something I came across when preparing a On Stranger Tides based home campaign a few years back:

https://sexselvesandsociety.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/all-about-the-booty-sodomy-in-the-golden-age-of-piracy-1718-1723/

I'm thinking queer pirates would fit right in, with the proviso that some people (mostly Calvinists) have a stick up their butt over it. And with a player understanding that 'gay' is a 20th century social construct and nobody would identify that way, verbally.

Do you want nigh-ultrasonic squeeing?

Because this is how you get nigh-ultrasonic squeeing.

@the-tree-of-woe

And this is why the Crane win.

A Crane finds their strength in the quiet perfection of self.

A Lion hides their weakness in the midst of a roaring throng.

Still, everyone has a purpose, even if it is to be a cautionary tale.

/me sips his tea and waits for the challenge.

It's the cultural details that make a setting come alive, when the technical ones give it a basic structure. Take Battlestar Galactica, for instance. The AIs, the galactic jumpdrive and such are interesting, but 'robots going bad' isn't a particularly interesting plot hook.

Now, 'We came from somewhere else and we can find that place again to hide from them' is a plot hook. That's cultural. As are the differences between the various colonial mindsets and such.

Tech is usually plot device, while culture is usually plot.

ETA:

Except for the slave miner episode. THAT was some serious 'tech as plot' goodness.

@the-tree-of-woe Barbarian. Probably a Crab, too.

@tnp I joined today, pitched a concept, got approved, found a scene and had fun, making some nice in-character connections, all in the space of a few hours.

I'm not ready to call the place the best thing since sliced bread yet, but I can't fault my first taste of activity and staff responsiveness thus far.

I am always, always, always amused by nerds when it comes to plausability.

"Look, I'm fine with interstellar teleportation, true AI and space Mormons, or FTL ships, matter transmutation and fields of coherent invisible energy that block attacks, or space samurai, laser swords and moon-sized ships, but damn it, this one thing over here is just a step too far!"

Oh man, can I add a couple?

Jakeem Thunder
Stargirl
Wildcat III (Tom)
(all from The JSA but all teenage legacy heroes)
Also
Bunker
Harlequin (the teenager, not the sex kitten)
Kole
and
Offspring
(Titans)

@lithium `

Tri-Stat might be a good option. I know it has gadget stats and omni-powers, both of which are approaches to high tech that would probably work well on a MU.

One thing I've had a lot of luck with (again, mostly in tabletop games, because I've never run a MU) is the concept of modular 'black box' technology. Posit that at some point in the future, stuff just gets too complex for even repair people to handle.

So your tech comes in two forms: Average, everyday tools that are perfectly engineered and darn-near indestructible. That would be your kitchen knives and garden tools, screws and hinges and all that.

But the complex stuff is sealed up in little boxes that are attached modular-style to an also sealed power pack. The difference between a laser scalpel, a blaster and a mining laser are just a couple of universal components. Your character doesn't really understand the tech because nobody outside of the AIs and a few super-genius humans actually understand it. They don't need to, the same way we don't need to know how a combustion engine actually works.

@pyrephox I had a great tabletop campaign with that idea. With the twist that it was supposed to be a penal colony. So the former guards and the former prisoners (who ranged from political prisoners to outright psychos) had to find a way to work together to survive and thrive.

Also, there may have been ruined alien step pyramid cities in the jungles.

Because, well, aliens.

One of my dream projects or finds would be a mush that harkens back to the 'space trader' sci-fi of the 50s-60s but updated for a less 'retro-future' feel. Kind of like Elizabeth Moon's Vata series but more focus on the actual trading houses and the long-term exploration and intrigue than the 'let's set all of that up and then blow it up in the first chapter so the hero can be a pirate, yarrr!'

I have been waiting to play a mincing, well-dressed, urbanely snarky Kakita duelist my entire adult life. (Seriously, I already have a back story written up and everything.)

@arkandel said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@collective I don't see any reason, except it didn't seem like Mildly Constructive material to begin with.

Also why would it have been any different if @Auspice had moved it from MC to the Hog Pit?

Not to me. I didn't mind things being moved at all. My suggestion was meant to be more of a constructive suggestion and certainly not critique, overt or implied. Having been a forum mod with some 50,000 doomed souls under my jackboot, I have nothing but sympathy and empathy for anyone who would willingly take up that job and do it for free.

Well, sympathy, empathy and a suspicion of masochism.

Is there any reason why everyone can't just move discussions on a given ad to Mildly Constructive and then if they get heated to the Hog Pit and leave a link to those threads in the original?

I understand that it is a bit of extra effort but it seems like the easy way to achieve both goals, notification and discussion.