Best posts made by Derp

@Auspice

You live FAR, FAR AWAY, Donkey!

@L-B-Heuschkel

I agree. That's the approach I usually take.

The problem I see is when the character is being a dick and the player doesn't want to accept the character being called a dick because the player gets hurt OOC. It feels like a 'get out of jerkass free' card, and I'm really not on board with it, nor do I think it's healthy for any player involved in such a situation.

@Auspice

Is there?!

Anyways all the stuff I like is dead simple. White chocolate pretzels. Green bean casserole.

Yeah, I'm really not sure. I'm not sure where the block is coming from, just based on that. If it's at your home device, for some reason, you would need administrator access to configure access, and if it's somewhere between you and the server you're connecting to, you're kind of screwed.

I really wish that there was more than that to offer, but that's the long and short of it. If something is playing goalie, you need the power to make it play nice, and that doesn't come easy.

It's really hard for me to lose fat. I don't really understand why. I have TONS of muscle, and DEXA scans show that I am somehow pretty fuckin' jacked under the fat. But the fat just refuses to come off. Like -- it doesn't matter what my macros are, or what my calorie intake is. I will lose muscle mass before I lose fat mass. Always.

But I have regular blood pressure, regular cholesterol, can run several miles without getting winded and can squat twice my bodyweight, deadlift even more.

It's annoying. I'm in better shape than most of my friends but you would never be able to tell just from looking at me.

Point of all that being: Weight really isn't an indicator of anything truly important. Go get other benchmarks tested.

@phase-face

Like all elephants, you eat it one bite at a time.

First, come up with your theme. What game do you want to play? What sorts of things do you want to create? What sounds fun to you?

Then, decide what system works best to bring that into fruition. Is it something that can fit well into something that already exists? Is it something that would require a pure homebrew system? That's an important choice. You have to balance what you want with what you can realistically get your hands on.

Once those two things are in place, it's just a matter of figuring out what commands you'll need to support that, and creating them. Some MU platforms have more readily available code than others. Some have more willing help than readily available code.

I would personally recommend Ares. If you're going to have to learn to code something from scratch, Ruby is a good code to learn, and it comes pre-packaged with a lot of the stuff that you would have to hunt down elsewhere. FS3 is also a fairly flexible system, assuming that you don't need much in the way of heavily coded magic. It can handle quite a few situations, and I'm having fun with it on a few games. Then, your overhead is pretty straightforward.

But all of this really starts at the top and works its way down, threading between those steps as necessary to balance an ideal with a reality.

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

Day 6 of being on strike and the employers are just now starting to come to the table to talk. Well, that's £500 already down the drain from my paycheque. They'd better bloody listen now and do something about it.

That's the thing about a strike. Short of some kind of contractual obligation, most employers can afford to wait you out.

@ganymede said in Sensitivity in gaming:

In my line of work, I have become mostly callous to: (1) others' opinions; and (2) always being in the wrong.

This. All of this.

ETA: I had a friend who wanted to do legal work shadow me and my attorney for a day. After all the client meetings and various research and writing work was done, his response was:

"Jesus, now I get why you're so fucking soulless."

Which was kind of endearing, believe it or not.

This thread comes from a place of like -- gushing empathy, but there is an entire other side of the population that learn to professionally disconnect from emotional reactions and making decisions based on how people feel.

@JinShei said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@Carex said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@Kestrel
Also, remember, once she is inside your house you can shoot her dead. Just make sure she is fully inside the residence. If you have a restraining order out on her and she breaks into your home, you have a license to kill.

Just finish the job. Shoot her at least three times at range, wait about a minute, call 911 while she bleeds out, try to sound like you're confused and in shock.

You scare me

That is not true in every state or every situation.

Best not.

@saosmash said in Sensitivity in gaming:

What exactly requires "gushing empathy" here?

It was hyperbole. But a lot of this reads as though there is a considerable amount of hand-wringing going on about making sure that everyone is perfectly accommodated.

And that person is not me.

I have flat-out told people that entire game lines are not for them because they complain about the content that is very clearly portrayed in said game line, and I always have disclaimers in multiple places. The effort that I will put into ensuring everyone is cozy above and beyond that is absolutely minimal, and I'm not gonna get all tangled up in knots and fidgety about whether I've given people sufficient warning about whatever.

Opting out is always an option. I leave you an escape hatch and post the expectations in the handbook. Past that, you're responsible for you, and I don't care if people think that's not enough.

@Auspice said in Hey, nerds (a shameless self-promotion thread):

I want one that says 'I'm silently correcting your grammar' so I can giggle to myself a lot

Seconded. I would absolutely buy this.

@insomniac7809 said in Sensitivity in gaming:

A first step kind of has to be "someone Arabic," which is why the people being mocked in the bad video are talking about sensitivity readers. Not that every Arab is going to have the same answer. But, I mean, it's 2020; you can probably find someone on the internet who's actually a part of the culture you're depicting to tell you if you're doing a fucky.

Eh.

I mean, I get that in a sort-of general principle way? But like -- I'm not sure that that's a great idea either. That would be like saying 'an American' gets to decide whether Squidbillies is a fantasy comedy based on specific tropes/stereotypes or a horrible slander against Appalachian persons.

Which American? Which culture? Which age range? Which geographical locale?

What sort of education? What are their political leanings?

Ultimately, the people who get to decide what is 'too much' are the consumers of the media, based on their own tastes and preferences as social mores change. People can certainly be advocates for change, but I'm not sure that anyone gets to be "the arbiter of how much is too much" when it comes to things built on, ultimately, stereotypes, whether accurate or not.

Accuracy certainly isn't the point most of the time, and the offensive nature of something is so subjective as to be almost a not-helpful metric.

It's something that gets thrown around a lot: Who decides. But I just have never once in the entire history of reading those conversations found them to amount to anything useful outside of a chance to air any grievances and let the wider audience decide for themselves.

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

@JinShei That actually is a really good way to put it: it's how you wake up if you're waking up to an actual blaring alarm or the sound of someone screaming like they're being murdered. A lot of people don't get it, and I'm totally stealing that to help explain it.

The husband could sleep through the apocalypse, and fall asleep again easily after almost any interruption.

Meanwhile, me:

More like:

@ominous said in Sensitivity in gaming:

@insomniac7809 said in Sensitivity in gaming:

@derp said in Sensitivity in gaming:

I mean, I get that in a sort-of general principle way? But like -- I'm not sure that that's a great idea either. That would be like saying 'an American' gets to decide whether Squidbillies is a fantasy comedy based on specific tropes/stereotypes or a horrible slander against Appalachian persons.

I mean, there is something to be said about how lower-income white people are the last acceptable target of mockery, and one would hope that someone writing about Appalachian characters would have more knowledge or experience of their subject to draw on than having heard jokes about toothless cousin-fuckers.

As a proud Appalachian who is related to the McCoys of the Hatfields and McCoys, I take offense at the stereotype that we are toothless and can proudly state that I have all of my teeth aside from my wisdom teeth.

ISWYDT and I love it.

Fried rice.

Best to use day-old rice for this. Either leftover rice you have from something else or just rice you make and leave in the fridge for a day. (You want it cold and not as full of moisture as fresh rice, or it ends up a sticky clumpy mess.) You're gonna want about four cups of rice for this (roughly two cups dry).

Break and scramble four eggs. Set aside.

Throw a dollop of oil in a pan. Some people like sesame oil. I think that has way too strong a taste, so I just use regular vegetable oil. Dice up a large white onion into pieces you find palatable. Sautee those in the oil until they start to sweat, and then throw in a bag of frozen peas and carrots. Add ginger and garlic to taste until onions are translucent. Remove from pan, set aside.

Add a bit more oil to the pan. Take the cold rice and break it up as much as possible without making a godawful mess (you want as many grains to get coated with oil as you can manage, for best results). Stir cold rice into hot oil, frying for a few minutes until it starts to get heated through.

Add soy sauce to taste. I use a lot of soy sauce, but you definitely want to add enough until the rice is brown. Make sure to work quickly here -- it absorbs/evaporates fast in the hot pan and if you don't work fast you'll never mix this stuff fast enough and it will be all weird and spotty.

When it's a uniform color, add your eggs and veggies and mix thoroughly, then top off with some fresh green onions and red pepper flakes, to taste.

You can add meat if you want. I prefer not to.

Cheers.

@saosmash said in Sensitivity in gaming:

Mostly in my experience this just means we have to tell people not to use warnings for stupid jokes.

It's not exactly easy to know the difference sometimes.

Is Content Warning: Underwater Horrors just a throwaway cheesy way to comment on scene content or an actual warning? What warnings should be included?

I disagree with @Tinuviel. If something is a strong trigger for you it absolutely is your job to let people know that, not the GM's job to read your mind.

Content Warning: Penguins might be great for that guy with that traumatic zoo experience, but to everyone else it just sounds stupid.

@Ganymede @surreality

Just to be fair and, you know, cite properly, I'm pretty sure it was @Tinuviel that said lying requires intent.

I said that lawyers are basically professional killbots that require a referee and a clear set of coded parameters to keep them from going across the table at one another on the best of days.

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

namely that there's nothing fucking wrong with cheesecake. The other less-obvious issue: cupcakes are for children and not half-as-appropriate for an office party as cheesecake.

I maintain that cheesecake is the best dessert (possibly tied with hummingbird cake) and that disrespecting the cheesecake in favor of cupcakes is grounds for divorce murder, let's be real.

@greenflashlight said in Sensitivity in gaming:

That's not the question, though. The question is whether you have ever in your life seen or heard of a person being upset that a trigger warning was not given for the example you provided.

And it's an irrelevant question, because the point was that everyone has different limits, and using an example that would be considered broadly ridiculous except for people that have that issue illustrated that there is not an objective line, and people are treating something wholly subjective as if it were some sort of objective social obligation. It's not.

So no, I'm not going to entertain that line of thought, because it isn't relevant to the purpose of the example in the context in which it was given.

@greenflashlight said in Sensitivity in gaming:

Especially in light of previous comments you've made, it sounds very much as if you're constructing a world where it's okay to hurt people because they aren't legitimately asking you to respect their own pain, they're all maliciously out to get you personally by tricking you into thinking they're actually in distress.

Ask is the keyword here. If someone asks me, specifically, to accommodate a thing for them, I am perfectly happy to do so. Go look at pretty much any of my staff +fingers or wiki profiles and you'll see that I give plenty of examples of what kinds of stories you can expect from me, and if you ask any of the players that I actually run for, if you ask me for something? I am perfectly fine with working with you, with the default option being to give you a graceful out if it's too large to just gloss over.

Others in this thread suggested that it is not the responsibility of the people with the issues to make those issues known, and that GMs should simply anticipate their needs.

I flatly reject that theory.

That is not how the world works, and I don't think it's how the world should work. Like any other condition that significantly impacts your life but throws you to the small parts of the bell curve of 'typical reactions', it is up to you to ensure that the people around you know your limitations and to request reasonable accommodations.

It is not my affirmative duty to proactively make sure that your needs are attended to outside of the steps that I already take: I give a broad overview of what to expect, and an escape hatch if we run into something unexpected.

My ability to empathize ends when I get the impression that someone feels I am obligated to cater to them. I am not. Entitlement is the quickest and surest way to find that nobody is feeling particularly charitable.

@rinel said in Sensitivity in gaming:

ETA: gotta say @Derp I was surprised at your response, because
@greenflashlight said in Sensitivity in gaming:

because compassion is a resource you limit to immediate friends and family.

is definitely how I also took it. I hope I'm wrong.

I guess, as in all things, it comes down to a question of how we're defining 'compassion'?

Like, if you're having a bad day, I'm happy to give you a pat on the shoulder and a 'that sucks, buddy, I hope you get it figured out', with increasing levels of concern the closer you are to my friend circle.

But for 99.95% of the population? You're not in that circle. I'm not in your support network, and I'm not interested in joining. I'm not your therapist, I'm not your confessor, and I am certainly not obliged to do any emotional labor on your part, pretty-much-complete-stranger. I can feel bad that you're going through some shit, but I've got enough shit of my own, and that is where any obligation to take up another's cross ends for me.

You get more from me if we're closer than 'that dude that sits a few seats away from you in science class'. Which is a pretty good analogy for how I view the vast majority of MUSHers.

We don't really talk. We only know each other, at best, in passing, and we got assigned to this project together. We're not buds, and if you're having a bad day, then that sucks, but. That's a you thing. Not a me thing. I'm not obligated to drop what I'm doing and ask what you need. If you need something, ask, and we'll chat about it, but otherwise we are here for a specific reason and I'd like to maybe get to the end of it staying focused on the task at hand and not talking about what a terrible life you have had, random stranger whose name I only know because I heard the professor call it that one time.

So does that make me dangerous? Fuck, man, I don't know. But I also don't think it's an unreasonable position to take, either, and I do think that the idea that people are obligated to do any more than that is unreasonable. I don't owe anyone anything beyond what I choose to.

I have basic compassion, and can show common courtesy. But I feel that there are wildly different views on precisely where those lines are, and mine tend to be pretty damn conservative.

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

Filling out onboarding and background BS this week (but got a job offer, yay!) - Sadly, the recruiter and I seem to have a communication issue - "Hey, this won't let me sign it." "Please sign this form and send it back to me." " ... I tried to do that, I downloaded it again and refilled it out - it still will not allow me to sign it" "Please redownload and sign it. "

Just... Grr

That sounds like the nightmare that is DocuSign.

@tinuviel said in Sensitivity in gaming:

Then yet again we have a fundamental disagreement about reasonable expectations and common decency.

I mean -- yeah. That was kind of my point? What you consider reasonable I consider a pretty ballsy imposition and kind of entitled. So. Agree?

I mean, for what it's worth, on your broader point, I actually agree. But I also think that 'Cinema Ratings' sort of disclaimers are pretty well handled by the theme of the game itself, and the files that typically go into them. Anything extra needs to be communicated, and that burden of communication falls on the player with the need outside the scope of what has already been communicated.