Posts made by Faceless

Son's sitting in his high chair, having some dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets and green beans. The cat is in the kitchen with him, sitting on the floor about 12' in front of the boy's high chair. Each time he raises a chicken nugget to his mouth, the cat tracks his hand and the food. Then back down when the boy lowers his hand. After a couple chicken nuggets, Boy seems to recognize that Cat is essentially begging for food. Boy just glowers at Cat with a sort of look that says you're out of your goddamn mind, these are dinosaur chicken nuggets.

This is a remarkable improvement over past behavior where anything Boy picked up ended up thrown at Cat, for his consumption. Who'd have thought cats loved shells and cheese?

@Packrat said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

This is so very, very true, a MUSH is a text only medium, people have no idea what your intended tone of voice is and thus how you mean to say whatever it is you just typed.

And this is why I read everything in Ben Stein's classic tone. On top of that, when in doubt: ask.

Instead of waiting to find out if someone's being a catty bitch. Say: "Hey, are you being a catty bitch?"

If someone inquires with yourself: "Hey, are you being a catty bitch?" Then you may proceed to answer in the negative or affirmative as is required by your cattiness or lack thereof.

Hey, I know you! You're awesome. Good job. Keep it up.

• "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.

I picked up Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands for PC. If you did too, shoot me a PM with your Uplay name and we'll shoot people in the face together!

@Templari said in General Video Game Thread:

@Faceless You do see patrols, especially later on. Early on they are more sparse. Later on the faction patrols including Unidad increase. Also rebel patrols increase as you finish missions in the area. They will also start fighting each other randomly near you.

At one point the cartel and unidad started duking it out over shooting at me, then rebels showed up and unidad and the cartel teamed back up. It was pandemonium!

Okay. I may have to give this another look. Progress further into the game, maybe. Are you playing on PC?

@Templari said in General Video Game Thread:

@Faceless I liked it. Reminded me a lot of the Mercenaries games. Also, they have definitely improved the AI. used to be they wouldn't do a damn thing without an order.

It was Mercenaries that I thought of within the first few minutes of play. Unfortunately I ended up putting the game aside and moved on to another one. The general open world of it and the largely barren landscape save for the hot-spots spread across the map just killed any immersion I may have felt. All that wasted space should have saw patrols to encounter and what not.

I did like the Unidad faction though; like the cops in a GTA system, complete with a "stars" system. I thought that added a degree of importance to maintaining a low profile in most scenarios.

@Auspice said in Mental Health and Grown Up Stuff:

@Ganymede said in Mental Health and Grown Up Stuff:

@Auspice said in Mental Health and Grown Up Stuff:

So long as you're buying. I'm too poor for bar drinkin'.

We're doing this some place cheap, right? I mean, me and @hedgehog are supposed to meet up in Dayton, Ohio some time. You should come with. Booze be cheap down here; I be drinking double Blantons neat for under $10.

I haven't been to Dayton in about a decade.

Because it's...Dayton. That's reason enough.

I jest.

Trying out the Wildlands open beta. It's fun, but it feels like with the huge spread of the available map that beyond the hotspots that there's very little to do in the wilder regions. I thought maybe wandering into the countryside would result in encountering random patrols and such, but so far that seems to not really be a thing. You may find or or two people randomly standing around a body, but for the most part if just feels like a huge amount of wasted space and potential.

Edit: Yes, I know, it's an open beta. It's release date is in March 7. So I doubt there'll be much changed as far as the aforementioned issue I saw being altered until the game's released and patched a few times.

High School:
Fast food restaurant
Pharmaceuticals
Delivery driver
Specialized group activities

Big Kid:
Construction(Refractory)
Machinist(robotic assembly and welding, quality control)
Corrections officer; sergeant(medium-to-max security facility); gen pop, seg, mental health, patrol
Collections(student loans)

These Days:
Made Man. Stay-at-home dad. I get paid by taking the stress of childcare off my spouse so that she can focus on her career as a financial rock star.

@Coin said in Roleplaying writing styles:

@Faceless said in Roleplaying writing styles:

@Coin said in Roleplaying writing styles:

P.P.S.

Thank you for not writing P.S.S.

Who the fuck writes P.S.S.?

It's post-script. If you do it again, it's a post-post-script...

[bashes his head in]

I saw someone do it recently. Probably why it's fresh in my mind.

Staying on track with the thread: I prefer detailed poses. Humans are more than a few words and vague actions. I provide enough details about physical actions, especially(as @Coin can probably attest with his time playing Shadow) for those characters who are fairly quiet or otherwise don't have a lot(if any) dialogue. You have to offset the lack of dialogue with well described (and potentially verbose) physical actions.

At least that's how I feel. If you want to give someone something to work with while playing a tight-lipped character, then you have to offset that shortcoming with plenty of detail that physically displays the fact that character is a living, breathing person with more than vacant stares and the occasional smile.

@Coin said in Roleplaying writing styles:

P.P.S.

Thank you for not writing P.S.S.

@Faceless said in Storytelling:

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.

@Faceless said in Storytelling:

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.

Here's a link to the original thread started by @Arkandel.

The Wizard's First Rule.

@Roz said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

This this this. I've seen big stoic characters forced to react appropriately in certain GMed scenes because of composure checks.

Likewise I also enjoy seeing those players who take the initiative and just force themselves to make a Composure check. It's not common, but when I do see it I always get a little smile over it. To me it shows maturity and recognition that it's less about winning and more about making for a potentially interesting story with some random, unexpected twists thrown in.

@Coin said in Darinelle's Playlist:

@Darinelle said in Darinelle's Playlist:

@Coin said in Darinelle's Playlist:

You can't be busy with other stuff for a long time and leave us high and dry and then come back and be like 'waaah they're busy now'.

Hypocrite!

I mean, I feel like I've successfully proven that I CAN, in fact, do JUST THAT.

I'm sorry, let me rephrase briefly:

You can't be busy with other stuff for a long time and leave us high and dry and then come back and be like 'waaah they're busy now'. Without being a DIRTY HYPOCRITE.

Go take a shower of honesty and self-crit.

@Coin, my man, broheim, Broba Fett, brochacho; you seem like you have a lot on your mind, heart, and shoulders. If you need to talk about it, just log onto Arx and page me. I'm more than willing to hear you out.

@Coin said in Darinelle's Playlist:

@Faceless said in Darinelle's Playlist:

@Coin you know, that place I tried to get you to come play on this past Sunday and you gave me a very evasive "I'm totes done with MUing" answer?

Edit: And @Royal too.

Yeah well.

In both their defense it wasn't phrased precisely like that, naturally. I'm sure they'll come around eventually, when the real world permits it. We still heart you both.

@Coin you know, that place I tried to get you to come play on this past Sunday and you gave me a very evasive "I'm totes done with MUing" answer?

Edit: And @Royal too.

@Darinelle there is no doubt in my mind that since day one I've very likely mentioned having a terrible memory anymore. Someday we will probably talk to one another and I'm going to call you by my wife's name and talk about the first day we met in that park.

That aside, I adored the many opportunities I had to play with Alice. Our characters were opposites that worked well together in sensible chuckle-worthy ways.

You're rocking out with Leona, which I am so very happy about. She's an awesome character and needs an awesome player to take the reins. Keep up the excellent work on that end.

Also, stop stalking me across games. k?

Oh, hi there. I know you. From every single game you've listed.