Best posts made by Derp

I hate all of you.

@Wretched said in Privacy in gaming:

This is about ethics of MUing

No, it's not. That is kind of the point here.

The ethics of MU can be whatever, but the reality of MU is what's been said so far. The ethical arguments are all well and good, but they're ultimately toothless and armchair philosophy, whereas the reality of MU is important to keep in mind.

This isn't defending bad actors. This is reminding people that there are bad actors, and there is absolutely no real system of accountability, so the only people that can actually protect you from having your privacy invaded is you.

@Arkandel

Had to gank this from the other post, but:

@Eerie said:

. The reason for the sphere caps is it's essentially our best guess of how many people we can actively ST for in a way that makes the game feel exciting.

It's ... not really an assumption when the staff says that's the reason for it? And even if that's the case, and it's about workload, there's still gonna be the same number of players, if they're really interested in playing.

To be fair, I understand a sphere cap as a starting-out measure to get your feet on the ground, but unless you're capping everything then this doesn't make a lot of sense, and will eventually create bad blood because ... people hang on to characters.

@HelloRaptor

I'm not sure that I agree with your sentiment there. Anyone can create as much work as anyone else. Simply believing that the full-on supernatural characters are going to be the most active and involved is reaching.

ETA: To be clear, here, I think that Eldritch's staff have been fantastic so far, and I understand why they crafted the policies. I'm not claiming that there's some grand and diabolical conspiracy. I'm simply wondering if maybe the policy as it's been crafted is going to produce the results that it says are desired, and if not, perhaps it could use some polish. It's meant to be a constructive discussion, not a harsh criticism.

@Ganymede said:

@Derp said:

Having terrible children shouldn't be a carte blanche pass to inflict them on others.

And yet, adults with shitty attitudes believe they have a carte blanche to inflict them on others.

Not applicable to this situation, mind, because I'm in Raptor's and your camp regarding movie theatres. I'm just dealing with a rash of shitty, shitty people right now.

I generally try not to have too shitty of an attitude. I tend to be pretty zen about most things most days. I have my own personal peeves, naturally, but I try and stay rational. I honestly don't understand people who don't operate in this mode. They kind of baffle me.

This doesn't always happen, mind you. I'm human. Sometimes, when I think that someone is absolutely deserving of my shitty attitude, I won't hesitate to inflict it on a motherfucker. But those instances are rare. Occasional outbursts I understand. It's people that just kind of operate in constant rabid antagonism that make my eye twitch and my soul hurt.

@faraday said in Privacy in gaming:

Slapping an 18+ notice on the terms of service helps too.

This is literally the first thing that me and my other admin did.

Yeah, if you had made any sort of substantial progress on the character, then you probably got an @mail informing you that you were still good to apply. Which is at least how Mage doubled their expected numbers. Gabriel (who I think is @Darc ?) is still working on processing those apps.

And staff there have been very open and accommodating of just about everything, from what I've seen, so it's not like people had the door slammed in their faces. If there are people who were in chargen and are now barred, it's probably because they either hadn't logged in for a bit, or hadn't really made any kind of substantial progress on this one.

I know in Mage, literally 20 people got that @mail, and he even said on channel that he'd be willing to work with people if some got missed but were still in chargen. Which is how Mage went from 33 to like, 45 or something.

So this is pretty much the opposite of unkind.

@auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

"We're running late."
"Well, that's fine, so long as you can still give me a ride to work."
"We can't, we have to meet people in Plano."

OH I DON'T KNOW MAYBE TELL THEM YOU'LL BE LATE TO SEE THEM BECAUSE YOU'RE SEEING YOUR DAUGHTER FOR THE LAST TIME FOR FUCK KNOWS HOW LONG? Yeah. This cements it. I'm only allowing this because I want the last of their shit out of my apartment, but I am fucking done. They're prioritizing my father's fucking coworkers over me.

(And same as last week, waited until the last minute to tell me so I couldn't find a better workaround.)

Just make sure you get their signature on the wills that leave everything to you before you cut the brake lines. Be practical.

@Sunny said in Privacy in gaming:

Thanks Dew, wherever you are, yes, for that gloriously colorful code.

Stooorytime!

@Biggles

Just because it's been done in other places doesn't make it any less of a dick move. The community has a certain set of expectations at this point regarding OOC behavior and civility on the part of both players and staffers, and the discussions on these forums clearly show that. Removing a character from territory through non-final measures is fine. Staff killing a character simply because it seems expedient is clearly not.

@auspice said in RL things I love:

@rook said in RL things I love:

I am really liking HelloFresh.

I tried that (or was it BlueApron?) once. If I could afford it on the reg, you bet I'd have a subscription. I think those services are great for people with busy schedules (or those like me who don't have a car and can't go grocery shopping regularly easily).

David and I got Blue Apron. Man, it was awesome. But alas, I am yet a poor student and cannot afford such things on the regular.

But you can bet this is now my goal.

@Tinuviel said in Privacy in gaming:

@Derp said in Privacy in gaming:

it has to happen in a public space on the game

And how do you define public space?
Say two people made some agreement in their room or an office or something, does that count?

Given that this is Ares, 'public' means 'happened in a public scene'. You want us to take it as game-canon, there'd better be an available log of it, and if your log violates our theme, we'll chat about it.

@The-Tree-of-Woe

This, and also what @coin said. You just... you can't do no veil of any kind. You're going to completely break your games. Mage has paradox, Demon has ... everything.

I mean, the setup that you're talking about is neat and all, in its own ways. Innovative. But I think you might be trying to reach further than your grasp on this one. No PVP, sheet sharing, no veil... that's going to attract a very tiny subset of players, and I wonder if it'd even be enough to sustain your game in the first place.

But, ultimately, it's your game. You can do with it as you please. Just, you know... expect it to only cater to a relative few.

@BetterJudgment said:

@Arkandel said:

@Luna said:

Unpopular opinion time...some revealing clothing should just not be worn by some people. And furthermore, we're back to don't be trashy. Revealing clothing isn't always trashy but some sure as hell is.

I'll just talk about guys. Spandex-wearing guys that is, bicycle-riding ones. People who don't belong in tight-fitting athletic spandex-made clothes with brand names and logos on them. Come on, that's not an attractive look, and no one thinks you're an athlete because you're wearing $500 worth of athletic gear from SportChek.

I knew a bicyclist who absolutely should not have worn spandex--not because he wasn't athletic (he was), but because his nickname seriously should have been Tripod. It was both intimidating and embarrassing.

See, this gets filed under the same category as public boob for me. But I also appreciate the, uh, finer points of both sexes, so I suppose it's different. But it's anatomy. We shouldn't be so spooked by it.

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Privacy in gaming:

enabling a certain kind of player to disrupt the game play of other players without actual evidence or cause.

This is one of my big peeves in the MU community too. These players absolutely exist here, and are getting even more ability to behave poorly due to the social climate.

This is one reason why I'm kind of glad that Ares makes it so easy to flag pretty much anything. There is now no reason to not provide actual evidence of wrongdoing.

@Alzie said:

What about the policy seems ambiguous to you?

...seriously? We have been talking about this for a good long while now. How did you not manage to catch the part that several people have mentioned that it's ambiguous and vague, including @coin and others specifically calling out the fact that there is absolutely no mention of staff being allowed to use your PC in any way they want while you're away?

I mean, you're usually pretty on top of things, but this seems sort of naive, especially after we've been talking about it for pages now.

@macha said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Losing your job the week before Christmas - and them telling you they want you to work until NYE. Having your friend sexting the dude she knows you're building a thing with, and trying to lie to you about it. Same guy being a jerk who can't handle a phone call because he's so stressed out.. when you need someone to talk to about losing your job.

Fuck it.

That sucks majorly.

I was coming here to bitch that we'd be spending Christmas in the hospital this year, but yours sounds like it might score a bit higher on the bullshit-o-meter.

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

An NPC is a plot driver. No one owns him but the story. He is a literary device that staff uses as a sock puppet to propel the story onwards. He is not the antagonist, we don't get inside his head, we don't get to know him intimately (in either meaning of the word).
When we do -- he stops being an NPC. He may become a staff PC, someone who interacts part as a character, part as a plot driver -- a favoured barkeep, gossip, or other person whose function is to info dump on the real characters, through his interactions.

See, this is kind of where I disagree. Just because an NPC is a presence with a personality and characters can get to know them well doesn't automatically make them a staff PC. Think of...

Well, you mentioned 'favored barkeep'. Think of Mac, from the Dresden Files. Would we consider him a staff PC, or an NPC? I would absolutely consider him an NPC. He has a relationship with some of the characters, but his main purpose is to be background.

Just figured that I'd drop in here and post an update.

A few of you probably know already, but in the next few weeks, we'll be opening up the Mage sphere for play.

The code is mostly in. It's waiting on me to do a bit more work on the wiki, and get the Signs of Sorcery stuff in (the parts that I'm keeping in, anyway -- not all of it is gonna make the cut, I don't think).

There are a ton of players already getting sheets ready. We've opened up the chargen a bit early so that people can start to tinker.

Please DO read the wiki, especially the application requirements, because these are a bit stricter than the others spheres. I'm being very careful about how this all gets rolled out; I've seen how Mage spheres fail in the past, with players not knowing what they're doing or not caring about the theme that magic should be used judiciously, just rolling over everything in their path.

Which is why some reasons for caution are now baked into the mechanics and theme, moreso than even paradox.

Hope to see some new faces soon! I'll keep you updated on the official open date.

@bobotron said in RL things I love:

My fiance is too adorable.

We have a Friendsday Wednesday thing with a set of good friends of mine. We play games and eat dinner and hang. We've been playing MtG. My fiance has gotten big into it and it's so adorable. He's also been building decks and built a really nice white/green dinosaur STOMP deck.

It's just so funny to see him get so into it and excited on building the decks.

We're all also going to play some Yu-Gi-Oh too. Thankfully full playsets of what most of us want to play in YGO is pretty cheap on eBay. POSSESSED STUFFED ANIMALS AND SHARP OBJECTS ARE CALLING TO ME!

They're cute when they're little baby hobbyist gamers, but just wait until they grow up and you see how much money you spent!

Serious, though, this is cute.

@Arkandel

Which is a form of behavioral control, yes. But it only exists for every individual game, not "the community." No matter how many people or games hate an individual player for whatever reason, there are a handful that simply won't, or will defend that person, either for good or ill.

My larger point was that there are very few things that one can classify as a "community standard" in a community where we can't even agree on terms for things, much less universal blacklists and behavioral policies.