Posts made by Eerie

I want to absorb the pros and cons of this substantive debate, but I was unable to get past this part:

@Derp said:

@Coin is often more patient with that crap than I am. >

.... Whaaaaaaaaaat? Are you made of... what, Rage, Hatred and Caffeine?

@Arkandel

Again, I'm not really a gamer, but I am surrounded by them and my personal experience combined with what I've absorbed from being around others very serious about this stuff is this:

Sony leans towards hardware. The PS4 has slightly better specs than the One, though I have also heard that at least for the moment, few games truly/fully exploit this benefit so... eh. Microsoft leans towards software, so the interface for the One is much nicer and it does more stuff. Also if you are at all interested in playing with your friends online, Xbox Live is just... a bazillion miles better than Sony's version. Also, colloquially, I cannot turn on the PS4 without it wanting to update some stuff, which is invariably a 40 minute process that makes whatever I wanted to do initially pointless, so I now have a reactionary loathing of it that means I use it less, which makes it more likely that its going to update when I turn it on, etc, etc.

I do love the Little Big Planet games though, which are PS4 exclusive. I am pretty sure that's like 80% of the reason we have a PS4.

@Arkandel said:

"secretly"
"stolen off"
"at work"

None of these words mean what @Eerie professes.

More relevant to this topic, I'm not even much of a gamer and I'm super excited about 360 games being backwards compatible for the One. Particularly if I can get the Nike game to work, since it was great but the old 360 Kinect could never see me that well in my living room. The One Kinect is much, much better.

@Sammi said:

@Eerie With this, you can keep track of him because he'll always have his cell phone attached to his wrist.

This would not actually be much different than now, it will just look a lot sillier for a bit and then become yet another piece of collectable gaming paraphernalia cluttering his office.

Xbox is up this morning, followed by EA!

My husband already pre-ordered the Pip Boy thing and I quietly roll my eyes. It will still be better than the FPS game that came with creepy night vision goggles and led to him stalking me through the house in the dark. I was secretly glad when they were stolen off his desk at work.

@Tennyson Still!? This is the strangest thing and I have no explanation for why its happening to you. Can anyone more skilled at the internets offer Tennyson some insight or, even better, a suggestion about what to do?

Edit to add: I have had no connection issues and nobody else has mentioned having any, so as far as I know this is only happening to Ten.

@EmmahSue said:

I have trouble finding RP. I ask on various channels and in the OOC Room and get silence more often than offer. I'm not sure if it's because I'm playing a Lance Vamp, so folks don't want to get all up ins? Or maybe I've just lost my touch.

ES, I suspect that you are so great at STing that everyone just assumes you're spoken for, honestly. But if you or @mietze or anyone else for that matter are ever looking for complications or some sort of a plot twist that is going to bring you into the action and into contact with other people, please do open a +job and let me know. Again, this is the reason we have sphere caps - So we can do this sort of ST work. And its fun for me too, even if I am still sort of light-duty for another few days!

@EmmahSue said:

I'll help get it started, but I have no interest in actively staffing on any game but my own, at this point. I'm an adhoc helper-outter and scene/NPC-runner in general for Reno when whatshisname asks, and same for Eldritch.

Hell, that offer is for any of you out there making games. I'm glad to help set-up in minor non-intensive ways as asked.

ES

I highly recommend pilfering @EmmahSue's ideas, she was tons and tons of help both in providing ideas of her own and helping to organize ours. Also if you give her a bit then later on she can potenitally indulge in hi-larious pranks, probably at @coin's and @silver's expense, which makes it a double win-win.

We're super busy with Eldritch but I'm sure @coin and I would offer moral support and our observations muddling through this so far and @thenomain and @chime generally are great about providing their code to the community. From what I have seen there's definitely a desire for this sort of thing.

@iceshinagami said:

do subtemplates (Stigmata/Wolfblood) count for the sphere cap? (I assume they do) Is there a waiting list for getting into a sphere?

Ghouls, stigmatics, wolfbloods and mortals/mortal + are all open and unrestricted for the time being, yup. I just answered a question about this a few days past in more detail.

Well before we ever opened @Coin and Theno and I picked the brains of everyone here about how to do sphere caps and if we should have a waiting list. The general consensus was that there was no great way to do a waiting list, so we just went with first-come-first-serve when we do open, though I think we're going to try to give a couple days heads up before we open a sphere, both here and on the game.

Anyway, stop by the game and we can talk if you have questions. I can only speak for me but I've been having a grand time so far.

@Bobotron said:

@Eerie
I love you Eerie and I can only hope that the next game I run turns out so awesome at the start of it.

I feel like I should just close now so I can go out on a high note. Goodnight Internet! Mic drop!

(<3)

@Derp said:

I mean, that totally might not be what's going on, mind you. It just... I dunno. Kind of seems weird to me, as a policy. Sphere caps on full supers to prevent ST burnout while not capping anything else seems to ring of the idea that everyone else is secondary.

This is absolutely not the case. In fact, I would say my most active, gung-ho player right now is playing a mostly-regular human. I adore her because she was the first and thus far only person to respond to my post offering to throw some plot at anyone who raised their hand, brought five people with her to the scene, including both a werewolf AND a demon, spun that scene off into a whole evening’s worth of RP for all of them and has submitted three separate jobs following up with what she wants to do and investigate next.

This is kind of my ideal for players on Eldritch. I feel like as soon as PRPs started to be the thing and staff as STs less so, staff across various MU*s convinced players that they ‘shouldn’t bother staff’ more than they absolutely have to, and I hate this. I want to be bothered. I want engagement. I want this sort of proactive player who wants to poke at the world and try things and investigate stuff and change things, and even better if she’s willing to drag other people into the mix along the way. Which... is why I said STing and not staffing, and why we need sphere caps.

We’ll see how it goes but we have deliberately tried to keep ‘admin’ work down to the absolute bare minimum. We’re not doing inventory systems. We will (soon, fate and @Thenomain willing) have players doing their own XP spends for the most part, with a few exceptions for stuff like Status that staff will still want to squint at a bit. I have plans to sort of crowdsource to our players a lot of stuff like building, some plot elements and STing, various other things, and our plan was always to have MU*-wide reviews every six months were we all get together and talk about what’s working and what’s not. Part of this is because I want to build a sense of community and investment among everyone so that it feels like ‘our’ game, but part of it is because @Coin and I love STing first and foremost, and we want to spend as much of our time as possible doing stuff related to stories, not WoD accounting.

So why cap Supernatural Templates and not humans and minor templates? Here are my two best, most honest answers:

Demand – We did a soft opening for like a month and we had a paltry few people interested in this, even after working out ways to roll their mortal and mortal+ characters eventually into the supernatural they were waiting to play. Meanwhile, most people continued to log on and chat in the OOC room. They were just not that many people interested in playing minor templates. If I logged on tonight and there were 40 mortals and mortal+ characters in the approval queue, I bet we’d cap everything. So far that hasn’t happened, and in fact most often this comes up in the context of ‘it’s the same amount of effort to staff for a wolfblood as a werewolf’, and the unspoken second half of that is ‘... so just let me play a werewolf because I don’t want to play a wolfblood’. And therein lies the difference, because I can thus far leave stigmatics uncapped and not be subsumed in a tide of apps, but if I did that with Demons I would be divining keys and interlocks until the end of June at the earliest. So it’s that, and...

It sucks to tell people to go away – I am very excited about the world that we’ve made and dying to see what people do in it. I also know that, just at this particular moment, there are a lot of people looking for a place to play they can get excited about and, while there are a lot of things in development, not a ton of them are available yet. Eventually they will be and I expect that the whole community will hit a nice equilibrium, but we’re the first of them open and here we are. I also know that nothing we have done here means a thing without players, and all the world building and STing and policies and code in the world mean jack unless you have players willing to really buy into things and who are excited and have some modicum of faith in the whole thing and want to tell stories with you. So even though I know that what we want to do is just simply not feasible with a game of 500 people, and that none of us want to run The Reach 2.0... it feels wrong to tell people ‘no, we don’t want you’ because people are what makes any MU* great.

All that being said, this is an experiment of sorts based on what we think will work, and who knows if it will! Like I think, in my naivety, that having readily available plot that is not dependent on who you know or what position you hold ICly will really foster a cooperative experience among everyone. I think that a lot of the bitter battles you see on MU*s that spill over into OOC are in part because there is not much happening and so people are fighting to be in a position to be the guy who gets to handle the tiny bit of plot that there is. In that situation, the reason that it turns OOC is because one player is actually going to win and the others are actually going to lose. So what I want for Eldritch is to see what happens when the guy who wins does get the fun plot... but so does the guy who loses. And the guy who is snickering at both of them and not even fighting this particular battle. When everyone can have access to plot and stories and interesting things happening to them, I have hopes it will mean that people can relax and enjoy whatever happens more, because from a fun standpoint, everyone is going to win.

But, again, this just will never work with a giant, sprawling game. It will only work with a medium sized community of players who see a return on their investment in what we're doing. So I don’t expect sphere caps to ever go away entirely, but I do hope that eventually there will be a lot more really good options of places to play and they will start to matter less because of that.

Edit to add: I also want to say our players have been incredible so far and have volunteered and built stuff and offered code and all kinds of help and been super supportive of what we want to do and each other, which is the best part. I feel really lucky we've gotten off to the start we have on the whole, despite a few glitches.

Okay, this is the promised head's up regarding the Demon slots I'll be reopening tomorrow!

At the moment, it seems like I will have seven demon slots to pass out. This could change depending on if people suddenly wake up today and complete their apps or drop out, but this is my count for the moment.

Tomorrow at roughly 11 AM PST/2 PM EST I will toss up a bbpost called 'Demon Open'. After that I will take the first seven +jobs submitted requesting a slot. This does not need to be a concept or anything other than a request for a slot. Concepts and chargen will come after. Submissions that come in before the post goes up will be closed and told to resubmit when the post goes up.

This is obviously not perfect but it's the best I got! Good luck!

@Templari said:

@Autumn Latest rumor is that Max is actually the feral kid from the second movie all grown up and identifying himself as Max. I'm trying to find the article again raised a few valid points and a few stretches, but that's how conspiracy theories work.

I dunno, from the stuff I have read it seems like they put kind of a lot of thought into it. Its true that its kind of a non-stop visually fascinating action fest, but at the same time there are lots of little details that make it feel like a pretty fully rendered, thought-out world. In a Reddit comment thread I read all this stuff about the guitar playing guy who has not a single line the other day and boggled a little bit:

His name is Coma-Doof Warrior. And he actually has a backstory. He was a child musical protégé who witnessed his mother's beheading. He was found by Immortan Joe still carrying his mother's head. His mask is made from his mother's face. Here is an article with an interview with Iota, the real guitarist that plays him where he talks about it. https://www.yahoo.com/movies/mad-max-fury-road-guitar-player-actor-doof-warrior-118997835292.html
More backstory on him from Miller:

"I want to tell a story about him in a comic if there’s an opportunity. For me, it was all about how someone who is blind survives in this place. How does someone weak survive the apocalypse? He survived because he was blind – because he lived deep in an unlit mine, where it was an advantage to be blind."

Miller explained: "So, deep in the mine, he would sit there and eat rodents and get the water from the sea bed -- and he would also play his guitar where no one could hear it. One day Immortan Joe came past, and someone heard the music. Then he was called upon when [Joe] needed a bugler or the bagpipe -- someone who helps call everyone to war."

Which... is a LOT of effort and thought to put into a dude who essentially just rocks out through the apocalypse.

I so completely relate to this.

I think a big part of why I have played so few characters and why I tend to stick with one for a good long while is that the first two weeks with a new character, learning/making up their ins and outs and finding their voice, are a bit of a struggle. I have to think about seemingly everything, even trivial things, because it seems to be part of the process for me. What would she want on her pizza? Who did she go to prom with? For me at least, these somewhat inane details actually make them feel real to me and with bizarre frequency actually reflect themes or more important stuff about the character. And then eventually they click and I no longer have to think so much about any of this.

Unsettlingly perhaps, my drunken, corrupt, maliciously bored sheriff's deputy clicked instantly for me. I'm not thinking about that too much.

Update!

We opened on Saturday fully. This was not without bugs and we rushed Thenomain a bit in the process, but supernatural approvals are progressing apace and RP is happing. So far so good! Now the important bit:

If you have in the past claimed a supernatural spot on Eldritch, you have until Saturday at noon PST to submit your properly chargened application using cg/submit with all the required elements +noted on your character, like covers or touchstones or what have you. If you haven’t finished by then, we will release your spot so that someone else can take it. This should not be news in general, since we have been saying this all along, but just in case there are people that haven’t logged in and don’t know we’re open, I’m posting here too.

On a related note, we will be reopening unclaimed spots in waves. I am going to do Demons first on Sunday. On Friday I will post (on Eldritch) the exact time on Sunday I will be taking +jobs requesting a demon slot, and probably a guess at how many slots I think I will have. On Sunday, I will toss up an ‘OPEN’ post and the second it goes up its first-come, first-served until they’re gone. My feeling is that they will go very quickly. This is imperfect, but as we have established, there is perhaps no perfect way to do this. The same thing, roughly, will happen with Vampire and then Werewolf at a later point in time so as to avoid another vast influx of apps all at once.

I’m very excited to start STing once we’re through with this setup jazz.

Our very own were-bear-wolf gym rat.

@Coin said:

@Derp said:

@Coin said:

@Derp Host it.

I lack any knowledge of how to do this thing.

Learn.

Alternatively, furiously TS someone who knows how.

... Are there elements to how you got @Thenomain on-board with helping make Eldritch that I don't know about? Just curious.

@Thenomain said:

Who's a good girl? Who's a good girl? You are!

I knew it! I knew I was the good girl!

#squirrel?!

@Cobaltasaurus said:

He will pretty much chat code even when you don't want! Or are unsuspecting of the code!

Can confirm. Even if you know that he knows that you understand absolutely nothing that he's saying to you because it is esoteric MU* coder stuff, he will still cheerfully regale you. Sometimes I feel like the Skype version of telling your clueless golden retriever about your day at work.

@The-Tree-of-Woe said:

Did you ever think of the implications of fucking with people's desires, sorrows, or anger? It's pretty barbaric. Put some Changeling sparkles on it, and that shit's A-OK, though?

Another part of what bugged me was how many people with emotional abuse issues completely missed the trick on this.

The Changeling seasonal courts are essentially four of the five stages of grief/loss. Spring is denial, Summer is anger, Autumn is bargaining (expressed through their focus on magic) and Winter is sorrow/depression. They just leave out acceptance from the seasonal cycle, but I have always figured that its actually equivalent to being courtless.

My first outing with changeling I really played through the whole idea that changelings were forged by this singular, horrible, transformative thing. It was interesting and made good RP, but I dunno... my second pass at it I went the other direction entirely and made a Dawn Courtier, who are pretty 'over it' by Changeling standards, and I loved the character. I don't feel like I missed anything from the lack of angst about what had happened to her. So I think you can go either way.

As to Eldritch and Changeling, first I wanna see what 2.0 looks like. But that being said, I think that a lot of the worst bits of any sphere tend to become noticeable and amplified when there's nothing to do except battle each other for crumbs. The most pitched of battles on MU*s tend to be fought over the pettiest shit. A setting and a theme and plot that people can interact with meaningfully, I hope, will solve a lot. That and the fact that we're focusing on integrated STing so its more likely that people will end up collaborating against external threats than hunting each other for sport.