Best posts made by Faceless

Mrs. Faceless went in to visit HR at her previous employer, to resolve some issue with her 401k. If you're playing the home game, it was mentioned by her former management that she would walk around the office like she was "Mrs.Faceless Fucking McFacelessface".

So she went to the office and was promptly swarmed by roughly 15 people wanting to see her, elaborate how much they've missed her, how things have ground to a halt in some areas because she's not there to answer questions, and other stuff.

Rando: "I really miss you, I wish you hadn't been let go."
Mrs. Faceless: "I've missed you all too, but it's okay! I had a couple interviews lined up within an hour of being let go."
Rando: "Well, that was quick!"
Mrs. Faceless: "I have a couple offers from..."
Rando: "It's been ten days..."
Mrs. Faceless: "Yeah, well, I'm Mrs.Faceless Fucking McFacelessface. That's what I do."

This amuses me primarily because I know it will get back to her former management and when they receive the news this morning that Mrs. Faceless' unemployment will go through because, per the State's investigation, there was no wrong-doing on the part of Mrs. Faceless? They're going to be sad. It'll just be made all the better when the gossip of what exactly she said during her visit, gets back to them.

I love that smart ass. Her sarcasm is majestic and fucking beautiful.

@skew said in skew's Playlist:

Come winter, he'll need bootie

Don't we all.

Today's MU Things I Love:

When something on a game happens that is so good that you then have to spend five minutes explaining lore, mechanics, and statistical implications to your spouse because they're curious why you've just shouted aloud:

"Ohhhhhhh, shit SON!!!"

When normally you're this:

But briefly become this:

ETA: Then you remember it's just an imaginary thing:

@Jennkryst said in Things We Should Have Learned Sooner:

The numbered dial on your toaster is for how many minutes the bread is toasted for, rather than the 'degree of toastiness'

Holy shit.

Back in my day you apologized to someone in person or at least directly. Doesn't really have the same weight when someone steps out onto their front porch and shouts to the street "I am sorry that I stretched out the crotch of your panties when I wanted to dress like a lady for a day"!

@deadculture said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

He'd try to force whores to TS him despite their OOC refusal, and at one point he had his character, I forget which it was, but it was a Sadin bastard, I think Andreas, hold a girl at swordpoint and abduct her, shoved her into a wardrobe, wherein he kept her inside and raped her repeatedly.

• "You're good, but you're no Luke Skywalker." And then the murders began.

• When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton. And then the murders began.

• Every Who down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot... but the Grinch, who lived just north of Whoville, did not. And then the murders began.

@Monogram here is my outlook on it. Do it. If you're sorry, apologetic, or otherwise feel as though you somehow slighted someone and truly feel remorse for it? Show the other party that you recognize your mistake and are attempting to correct it, whether that means moving on from it and trying to return to a sense of normalcy or leaving them alone.

Why do people hold grudges? The answer is likely as varied as the person holding it over the span of months or even years in our hobby and I'm well aware that I can hold grudges for decades. Why do people hold grudges repeatedly? Well, as we've saw with a member or seven of our community and as you indicated in your post "Oh, I can't believe that X and Y are friends again"; sometimes people act like asses. Repeatedly. We see X and Y being friends again after Y told X they hated them, then six months later they're enemies again when it gets out that X said they didn't believe Y over their self-diagnosed Asperger's. People attempt to forgive, forget, move on, and never stop to think maybe their personalities just don't coincide. Which spawns years of back-and-forth loathing-make up-loathing-make up relationships that we see sometimes.

Sometimes? It's miscommunication and the ability of some people to refuse to be adults in the situation, even only some of the time. Other times one or both parties just want to avoid the drama until it blows over, but it never does. Sometimes it's not even clear what the other party was pissed about, people are finicky creatures at the best of times.

Two or three years ago I was acting like a complete and utter dick to @Coin. He may very well have not noticed it, I only say this because he never mentioned it to me directly and I never brought it to his doorstep. I allowed it just quietly fester. At that time he was running his own game, with multiple people inviting me to come check it out. I refused because he was a (head, I think)staffer and I figured that he'd use his position to be an ass toward me. Fast forward a couple of months and I finally gave in to the repeated attempts to get me onto the game.

You know what Coin did? That jerkoff (I say this with love)? He was nothing but friendly, professional, and overall Chillzilla with me. Maybe he didn't know about our quiet beef? Maybe he didn't care? Regardless, if he did have some inkling of it he gave zero indication and took the high road. This, in turn, made me realize that I was being a childish dickhole. It was on me, not him. This made me reassess how I was treating others and as a result made me want to change how I behaved toward others; selfish, right? Well, change has to begin with yourself. Now? I pop onto Skype randomly to share pictures with Coin, check in on him randomly, make small talk briefly while I'm on there(which isn't often), and generally attempt to restore/maintain the sense of camaraderie that he and I shared a long time ago. Know what else? I've never actually apologized in written word, I've only tried to show that I was sorry for my actions by returning to a sense of normalcy.

But, if I'm wrong about showing rather than saying. Then you have my apology @Coin for acting like a fucking idiot by taking something that could have been resolved early with a simple conversation and blowing it out of proportion. I hope that my actions have shown this to be true.

Now that goes against my earlier comments in this thread about making an apology personal, rather than shouting it in the street. Which makes me a hypocrite now, I guess. It seemed appropriate, oh well.

Found this today in a folder while checking a couple things in a Hunter book.

The file was named USE_THIS_SOMEDAY.

I'm so very happy that this gif is readily available. It's probably my favorite gif.

1. Have an ending in mind. It doesn't have to be the ending that you eventually come to, but it helps me in planning out a plot. A scenario like a scene in a movie. How did the Terminator end up in that foundry at the end of Terminator 2? Fill in the blanks to that ending and you've established some milestones for a story. None of these milestones may ever be used but you've at least given yourself the general outline of what you'd like the players to pursue.

2. Use the rules. The books have rules. Use the rules. Knowing the rules of the game both helps inspire some sense of confidence in the storyteller as someone who knows what they're doing, and further makes it possible to help teach those who don't have gold medals in Rules 101. Don't know a rule? Looks like an opportunity to learn something new. There isn't a rule? Make something up that makes sense on the fly. Don't bog down your story mid-scene to get an answer, come back to it later and find an answer from staff or someone else who may know where you can find the rule. Also don't be afraid to take advice from a player who may know a rule. On the flipside, don't be the rules lawyer player who disrupts a scene because you want to show how obnoxiously super-smart you are.

3. Get to know other players on your game. I don't mean that you have to tell Joe all about your wife, kids, cat named Sally, or your used condom collection. What I do mean is that the more of a visible presence you are on channels and joining in on the general banter, the more likely it is that people are going to feel comfortable approaching you later in pages to ask about the possibility of running a plot. They say one of the reasons the dog barks at the mailman so much is because he can see him, but not interact with him. He's an anomaly in the dog's territory. So don't be afraid to let the other players smell your hand. Some players may want to smell more though, so be careful.

4. Be willing to accept people outside your clique. It's great to run things for your friends, but MUSHing at this point is social networking. The more you reach out to or otherwise make your stories available to people you normally don't have frequent contact with, the more you network. Networking is good.

5. Run what you're going to have fun running. As has been mentioned previously in the lists of other posters, most players don't know what they want. So run what you're going to enjoy. If you build it, the players will come.

6. Give the players options. Fight, talk, run, drop a piano on the villain, whatever it is. Options let the players know that they have control over their destiny. Even if they walk their characters into a possible death, they made a choice.

7. For the participants out there: don't just offer up the canned "thanks, it was fun" at the end of a plot, event, scene, or whatever. If it was fun, please inform me in a @mail, pages, or right then why it was fun. What did you enjoy? If I get the "thanks, it was fun" and nothing else at the end of something I tend to believe that they're just being polite and something didn't suit their tastes. What could I work on? I'm not asking for an exhaustive review, but give me something to help tailor things going forward for you and others. Was my pacing great but content felt hard to grasp? Was my content awesome but the pacing felt like a crawl? Did I make the common mistake of shooting for Mystery and ending up in Confusing? So storytellers, don't take constructive feedback as an attack.

It's certainly not an exhaustive list, but it's a few of the things that I had spring to mind first.

@stabby said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

Why not a place with actual seasons?

I had a few more of my own personal rules pop into my head. Wrote a song about it! Wanna hear it?! Hear it goes!

1. Be consistent. Storytelling isn't just about telling a good story, it's also about being fair. Never do for one what you are not willing to do for another. Whether it is in rulings, addressing a player, resolving actions, or anything else - be consistent. People get shanked sometimes for being inconsistent in the pen.

2. Be patient, but not too patient. You're running a story/plot/event, you are the leader. Understand that at times emotions can run high even for the player of the character, so don't take anything personally. Likewise don't allow yourself to be walked over. You are volunteering your time for the good of yourself and the game as a whole. Staff should be consulted if things get out of hand.

3. Pay. Attention. I repeat, PAY ATTENTION. How frustrating is it for you when you're participating in a scene and the Storyteller is clearly trying to run a plot, play their four characters, and very likely responding to their mother via text on their phone? Don't shut out real life of course, but make sure that you're diverting a good deal of your online attention to your audience.

4. Be concise or verbose, pick one. Either path you choose, make sure that you are adequately explaining the world you are painting around the players. For myself and I imagine others, nothing pumps the brakes on a story like being confused about the setting. How often have you watched someone pose still being in the bar and addressing the group when clearly the Storyteller and other players posed now being outside the bar four rounds ago?

5. Take a break. You've just ran seven plots in a five days? Take a few days, a week, or however long you feel you need to recharge your batteries. You don't carry the game on your back and you're allowed to take a break; you are a volunteer after all.

6. Leave your own personal ego at the door. You are not a god. You're nothing more than some old dude/chick sitting around a campfire, telling a ghost story. You'll face criticism at some point, so handle it with grace and remain humble. You'll look awesome and they'll look like an ass.

7. Take care with "mystery plots". These plots can quickly devolve into "confusion plots", where no one understands what it is you're trying to explain. This is where details come into play. The more detail, the less likely your players will be met with confusion during your mystery. This is a good resource for mystery plots in my experience: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/essay/RPGmystery.html

8. Try not to recycle plots that you ran on previous games of a similar genre. But why, Faceless?! Because our community isn't vast and the players involved may recognize it. You want things to be surprising, you want to build suspense, and you want things to be fresh. Would you want to play in a plot that you know someone ran four months ago on another game? It feels like you're the runner-up. You're the friend who gets to hook up with your crush, but only after he or she got shot down by their crush. So don't do that to your players.

9. Lose the snark. While you may be a playfully sarcastic person at heart much like myself, text doesn't often convey the playfulness of it. When dealing with people who aren't your close friends and don't know your personality, you look like you're just being a jerk. So play it safe, ditch the snark.

Edited for clarity.

@ghost said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

@faceless said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

@ghost said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

I can't say that if the change were in my hands that I wouldn't have gone with a new locale myself.

Beaver City, Nebraska by Night.

I've been there.

When you're 15 that city sounds like exactly where you want to go, but no no no no NoOoOoO it doesn't live up to its name.

Right, I just went with a small ass town. You thought I'd suggest something larger than Aleswich was? Nope! We're going smaller!

Mostly because I want to see how quickly the 500-something population town is occupied by millionaires, multiple strip clubs, yachts(bruh, Nebraska), and Bugattis.

When incredibly awkward situations that should rightfully feel incredibly awkward, do.

When incredibly awkward situations that tend to result in some players foaming at the mouth and dragging their ass on the carpet, don't.

Combine these two things and you've had a great scene.

I tend toward just using shop code, assuming that an apprentice or some such did the work, and go from there. In the past I've used Hana and others for projects and when asked what I wanted, my general answer was just some variant of "whatever you want to do, Phil". Mostly it's a matter of not wanting to feel like an inconvenience to the crafter in question.

Though when Ida was active I did have some fun scenes with that character and player surrounding a commission, but it wasn't actually anything coded. It was to discuss a harness for an animal retainer, so nothing that was any sort of coded need. RP for the sake of RP.

In short: be kind to your friendly neighborhood crafter. They really don't need to put up with your shit. Besides, if one asks around they can tend to find people who enjoy doing ASCII and coloring stuff for the sheer fun of it or their BFFs of the Week.

@Rook said in Cheap or Free Games!:

For me, FO4 was a waste of money. It's boring, it's repetitive, it's boring. There was, other than a new setting, nothing really all that different from FO3. I don't understand the hype. Marketing dollars? Paid shill reviews?

I don't think it was paid reviews or marketing dollars. I think it was just that another settlement sent word that it needs our help.

I fully support this idea, if only to be present to watch the failed Leap of Faith rolls.

I love that quicksand isn't as prevalent a threat to my daily existence as pop culture tried to make me believe, while I was growing up. Pretty thankful for that.

Edit to include: I'm also thankful that having your young child piss on you while changing them is either easily avoided with good reflexes or simply not as common as pop culture in the '80s and '90s would have lead one to believe.

@Apos said in MU Things I Love:

@Thenomain Doesn't happen as much on games with coded money and any feeling of resource scarcity.

This. Playing on a game with coded currency, I've watched auctions take place and there's a real sense of competition. Good competition. People started small or at a moderate level and the stakes became increasingly higher until what I imagine what was each of us side-eyeing our available funds and getting to the 'too rich for my blood' levels.

Flip side to that, I've been present for auctions on a WoD game where coded currency wasn't a thing and the auction was vastly different. Where someone has presented an auction and immediately someone's shouting "$25,000!", "$50,000!", "$75,000!", "$132,638.42!!!!!". Not exact figures, but the example is still sound. There is less investment risk without hard figures and it reflects in how people play. 5 dots of Resources and 2 dots of Luxury is so vague compared to I have $14.32 until next Thursday and would really like a big ass, greasy cheese burger.

Hell, I recall someone on either The Reach or Fallcoast(I think it was TR) posting a Classifieds ad or whatever was the equivalent bboard, about wanting to pay someone something like $20k(I think the first time it was like $12k and it was increased after no one bit) to 'go on a date' with their PC. Which that could of course happen in reality, but without some means of codifying the value of that income? It really accounts for nothing in the grand scheme of things. Short of a justification to increase Resources, even though I'd side-eye that as a suitable justification since it would be a short-term increase of income until it gets thoroughly blown on cocaine and McFlurrys.