Best posts made by Faceless

Shuffling around the kitchen, working on getting morning coffee made when it hit me.

AresMUSH's combat system would work perfectly for Starship Troopers, I think.

GOP D&D. Just a few entries. Some of them are pretty funny. More can be found here.

@Seraphim73 said in Fires of Hope: A Star Wars Story:

the first plot-scene on Fires of Heaven had absolutely zero attack rolls in it, and a great many skill and attribute checks

Fires of Heaven, huh? What's that game like? Is it a lot of fun? Fantasy game, right? Angels and all that cool stuff? I bet it's a blast.

Yes, I am being cheeky.

@arkandel Nah. Body count wasn't high enough.

Had a fairly stressful day today. Nothing major, just the death by a thousand paper cuts sort of rough day.

@Coin unexpectedly sent me this on Skype earlier today.

I have no clue what's being sung, but it's given me a few little smiles today as I keep playing it periodically.

I think this means we're practically engaged. He didn't know I was having a rough day, he just sensed it. Plus it's League of Legends, which he knows I enjoy playing from time to time. I'd say things are getting pretty serious.

@Kanye-Qwest said in Lords and Ladies Game:

because frankly you are kind of a boring nemesis.

When you find that music that just helps you write in a scene. Or any scenes, really. At present I listen to the soundtrack for Final Fantasy Tactics. It just helps me hone in and focus. It's always nice when you hit that point where you just feel like you've hit your stride in a scene, a given week, month, or whatever.

@Sunny thank you for paying attention. Seriously.

@Arkandel too.

@otherdarlingreaders Both of those are simple things that I've had folks mention to me the past few days, wondering why people would do it and this and that. It's just a very "isn't this obvious?" situation and it baffles me that people don't recognize it. A troll doesn't care about what they say. 'Oh no, he mentioned the sacred rape!', you're just going to feed it when you bristle over it. Yes, it's shitty behavior. Yes, it's a sensitive topic. That's the point.

But all of these efforts of You Should Tell An Asshole They're An Asshole, only works against people who aren't setting out with that goal in mind. Which these people are. So all you're doing is wasting your collective breath and giving them what they want. More than likely they don't believe a good 85% of what they spew. Even if they do? You're out of your damn mind(s) if you think that someone on the internet is going to change their opinion.

Stop feeding the goddamn trolls. Hit that little ignore button. When you see a new user come on the forum, espousing controversial topics, and they've been a new member for a couple weeks? If you can't pick up on even basic contextual clues and think that MSB brings in new users that regularly? Come on, son. Just fucking ignore them. Put on your goddamn thinking caps.

P.S. I understand it's hard to ignore the behavior when it's either directed at yourself or a topic that is of some minor or major importance to yourself. I can't even fault you for getting worked up over it. Take it as friendly advice - take a step away, take a breath, come back, ignore poster. Done. The more you comment, the more you entertain him, her, or them.

@seraphim73 said in How do you construct your characters?:

because that's the best way to leave holes to fill with other players

I've tried off and on for years and you've not let me smash. What's up?

@arkandel said in How do you construct your characters?:

Do you have a process about breaking down their personality? Do you consciously think about giving them flaws and what kinds interest you the most? Do you prefer to seek out other people and design ties with them or is that something you prefer to happen circumstantially or in-game?

Skipping the 'what do I want to play?', concept, or whatever as you've asked my method usually takes a day or two. Once I have the concept in mind, I think backward. It's also why I tend to mildly hate that your average CGen demands that you set the mechanical aspects of your sheet before the character's background/history/etc. In those systems where the mechanics come first, when I get to my background an change could be made that demands that I then have to backtrack and make a change(or, in some systems, start over entirely!).

So what I mean by thinking backward: I'll just use one of my current characters that I know you've had interaction with, Rybread on Arx. He grew up in a family that for the last couple hundred years has been on a decline. If it can go wrong, it will go wrong. His (birth) family is an exercise in Murphy's Law. Brother killed when he was kicked by his own horse, another younger brother that drowned for no discernible reason, bandits hit a supply train just before Winter and nearly resulted in a bunch of people freezing and/or starving to death, family members dying young(not limited to adults) for one reason or another. Just rotten luck, right? Well, how would that affect someone growing up? Sure, there are some who could laugh it off and move on their merry way, and some of those types are reflected within his currently rostered family. Another option is that you become generally very serious about life, prudent, low tolerance for nonsense, develop an eye for efficiency, a bit overbearing perhaps because of a need for a feeling of control, Constant Vigilance, and likely a dash of paranoia. So there we go, a personality has taken form. Well, he was trained as a knight, by a whitebearded old man who had trained all of them as knights; so he has a sense of duty ingrained in him, which he likely takes very seriously because he takes almost everything seriously. He's been trained with a martial mentality for much of his life so more than likely he respects and adheres to a chain of command, deferring to who is or whom he perceives to be his superiors, while taking command of those who are or are deemed beneath him or his dutiful purview.

So, I've got his personality and background worked up. That usually takes a day or two(I think for the character described above, I was in CGen for about a week, being nit-picky). By then I've got a very good idea of what the character is and who they are. Some CGs are a bit more limited than others, so the mechanical aspects are frequently a case of Set What You Can With What You Have. After that and once the character is in play, then it just becomes a matter of filling in the gaps or guiding the character along the path that I think makes sense. Sometimes, even well after CGen, I'll sit back and think hard about the history of a character. Speaking on a different character, I've got a privileged noble who has lived a largely easy life who has a point in Agriculture. Why did I buy that? Isn't that largely useless for him? Yup. But to me... this guy grew up with the best education, being doted upon, and had the world at his fingertips. If his parents were smart(which, by all accounts, they were) they'd have afforded him the absolute best education that they could have. Which means it would have provided him with a versatile education, which means that even if it was purely for the purpose of him being able to do more than nod along with glazed eyes during a conversation about crop yields with some peasant(he emphasizes with joking condescension), that should be represented. His parent(s) weren't idiots, they paid damn good money to ensure he was properly educated in the world, even in ways that he wouldn't necessarily need to be an expert in.

So in short I put a lot of time and effort into background, concept, and (I think especially) personality. To me all of that isn't done when CGen's done. It's a constant process of digging into the meat of your characters, no matter how different they are from one another. Understanding what makes them tick, what makes them choose the choices that they make, their ambitions, and even the mechanical choices that you make for them. They continue growing into the future, but their pasts shape them just as much.

@zobi said in RL things I love:

Sounds like Mrs. Faceless is an awesome lady to me!

Correct!

@auspice said in RL things I love:

I have an official MTN, a knock-off 'passport' sized one, and the Rhoda Webnotebook I use for my bullet journaling. >.>

I forgot to tell you that I showed her that picture of your journal. She awww'd at it. This also prompted her to try to convince me that I had agreed to keeping a planner of my own in exchange for things. I'm like 91% certain that I didn't.

@thatguythere said in Regarding administration on MSB:

That is something that really only @Arkandel can decides since he is the one in charge.

@Arkandel

@auspice said in RL things I love:

y u so greedy?

Cookies. Preemptive cookies at that.

@aria said in MU Things I Love:

@faceless Nope, sorry, you gotta explain this one to us now, bro. Or at least to me. Because I want to know all the things.

Tell meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. <pulls up the storytime rug and sits at Faceless' feet>

I just had some extremely good luck on a roll is all. Something that proved to be very beneficial, mechanically speaking. Within the scope of lore, just something that's probably exceedingly rare.

@auspice said in RL things I love:

Plus, I'd win Mrs. @Faceless

Naw. I liked it enough to stop being a sloot and put a ring on it. Step off, bruh. fite me

@tinuviel said in MU Things I Love:

@faceless That's like... the holy grail. I only ever get extremely good luck on rolls when they aren't important.

Me too! Probably why I got so excited! For once a roll seemed significant and with some form of pay-off!

I got mail today! I excitedly opened the packaged. It was heavy. It was the dimensions and weight of a sizable hardback book, I knew what this was. Much excitement. I have a couple people eagerly awaiting my receiving The Blade Itself so that I can start the series. They're so enthusiastic about this that they've offered to read it again at the same time, so that we can discuss it as I go.

I open the package. I drop the spine of the book into the palm of my hand, with glee. Oh, no. Book two; which had the delivery date of roughly a week and a half later than book one.

Well, at least it looks nice on the shelf.

Tom Clancy's Clear and Present Danger is still a fun read, I guess.

@sg said in Characters You Enjoyed Playing:

Thatcher on Lost Generation was also fun. Snipping wire under the germans' noses was kind of terrifying. Eating the apple at someone's funeral was also fun. Thatch was an asshole.

I played on TGG briefly. I can't recall much about the character because it was many years ago and only briefly played, so all I remember is a name: Mason.

I remember a gas attack came in and instead of just hanging out in our trench, preparing to defend, we charged the German trenches. I, in a moment of treating it like I was playing Superman and also just playing it like a video game, rushed ahead( @Seraphim73 would probably say this isn't surprising, since I ran ahead on a Star Wars game and it prompted a harried fight). So Mason drops into the trench and is suddenly going: "Oh, there are like at least two krauts here"! He wasn't wrong. There were at least two, because there was like 5-7. Thus he begins fighting as defensively as I could make him, returning fire ineffectively, until the others could arrive. They did take less incoming fire, so I considered it worth the danger.

I do miss TGG, sometimes. There were moments that it got the adrenaline pumping!

The humor of receiving an especially nasty paper cut within the first few pages of a book titled The Blade Itself isn't lost on me.

@seraphim73 said in Characters You Enjoyed Playing:

Volkare Previn was a Zabrak Sith Trooper.

Man, I miss Volkare a lot. He and Pirge, together. So much fun.

Pistol Dude + Punchy Dude. Sith Troopers 4 Lyfe.

Been sick as hell the past few days. On the upswing. Mrs. Faceless wandered in last night with a big ass thing of eggnog and was like 'if you stop being a punk ass and start feeling better, you can have this'.

My goal is to be back to fighting shape by tomorrow afternoon. Daddy needs his nog fix.