Posts made by fortydeuce

@cobaltasaurus "an ex of mine" = asked and answered. My sympathies!

(Time to go to sleep. Or try to. Caffeine is a hell of a drug.)

@cobaltasaurus I'm fine with eating noises, just as long as people close their mouths (not a fan of the visuals of ABC food).

In something at least less overtly gross, I'm still flinchy around Bluetooth phone conversations (even though it's been, what, ten years now that that's been a thing?). I have a bad startle reflex IRL because of boringmedicalthings, and every time someone starts talking out of the blue like that I jump a mile in the air. Bonus points if they look at you while they talk on the phone, leading to the inevitable "What the fuck do you w -- oh, you're just talking on your Bluetooth. Kay." song and dance.

@cobaltasaurus Oh God, yes. I just don't know why it's become so public nowadays, besides the old canard that "people are just ruder now" (but I bet every generation says that in their time). It's freaky, and completely shameless, and I just... can't.

@Olsson got to Locke Lamora before i did. I'll also add R.A. MacAvoy's Lens of the World series. Also an interesting take on low(ish) fantasy, some neat gender representations, and a first-person narrator that doesn't drag or get boring at any time. Nazhuret (main character) is rootable but flawed. The only reason I found the series as a kid was because it was on the discard bookshelf at my library; I feel like nobody but me has ever read it. Start with the eponymous first book.

I'll never be able to write like Patricia McKillip, but Winter Rose is a fantastic and haunting take on Tam Lin. Her writing is lyrical and spare and breathtaking in that book, and it's probably the best standalone fantasy novel I've ever read.

Not social awkwardness, but: people publicly spitting weirds me the fuck out.

This didn't used to be so common ~20 years ago as it is now. I'm a woman IRL, and I'll see guys walking down the street, just spit like it's completely fucking normal, and it repulses me. I want to bring back spittoons and make them mandatory at every city block.

Is anyone else weirded out by this? Why is it so prevalent nowadays beyond the obvious answers? I can't be the only one out there who finds it not only gross but odd. Also it's going on 5 AM and I'm still awake because ???. Send help please.

Relative newbie (2 weeks) to Arx here; will second the recommendation and add the reply: "what do you want the theme/play to be like?" -- I like investigations and darkness; I'm getting that. There are people who like more lighthearted RP; I think they get that too.

I'm playing a PC heavy on mentals and socials and I haven't felt like I'm gonna get beat down outside of what the PC might deserve for his IC sharpness. Stat crunch as far as the dinosaurs walking around isn't that damning in terms of people looking to lord over you (though I play a PC who isn't easily impressed by that sort of thing anyway, haha). My PC has the combat stats of a two-week-old kitten (no, really, I rolled a -7 or something at a strength+huge wpn check at 15, just as a laugh OOC). But that's not his focus. If I were into combat types and not investigative, I could probably find what I was looking for on the roster too.

There's a fair amount of ground for flexibility in terms of where you want your RP to go, though at the moment the city is heading towards war/marshaling troops (which my PC doesn't have a damn thing to do with, but I don't really dig combat anyway, so that's fine). But I bet if you wanted a character who just chilled in Arx (the main city) while the war was going on, there would be stuff to do anyway. I know Derovai (my PC) is not going to go fighting anywhere, because he'd be toast in a second, and he ICly knows it.

That's kind of a non-answer, I know, but let us folks who are there know what you're after, and we might be able to point you to the right direction on-game! Also, it's 4 AM and I'm buzzed on caffeine, so this is a bit repetitive. Sorry!

Hi Caith! I'm Derovai (2 weeks ago-present; wasn't the original player/creator about a year ago nor whoever picked him up for a week or so (?) in October).

@brent Fair point with the origins -- but the adjustment shouldn't be that hard, since we already know how to write in present tense before we switch to past tense. It still breaks my immersion just from grammar alone, and creates problems in the pacing/flow of a scene. To me, that's in the same boat as someone "p0sing n l33t sp33k" -- it's conventions that just aren't proper for the medium (well, that wouldn't have been proper back in 2000, when people still typed like that).

@seraphim73 @mietze Thirding so much, per my response as well. I'll go even further and say that past-tense posing, unlike tabs or one-liners, is wildly inconsiderate of others. It breaks my immersion instantly as I struggle to figure out, "Was that a reaction to something earlier, a la 'While John was talking at length, Jane smiled. Now she's drinking her coffee'? Or is it occurring concurrently?"

I will avoid a person who doesn't pose tenses alongside the rest of the players. It's rude and distracting, and there's no excuse for it, unlike a metapose gone terribly wrong. It strikes me as a gambit for attention.

• General spelling and basic grammar: I used to be bitchier about this than I am now. I teach English literature, and although my writing style on games is pretty practical as opposed to well-written, it's hard for me to overlook really egregious cases -- but I'm less weirded out by the odd comma splice or whatever than I used to be.
• Pose length and detail: please don't overwrite. There is a place for a one-liner now and again, but that place is rare: 4-5 lines is a sweet spot, provided (of course!) there's something to react to.
• Tempo: I am on the slower side, especially if I play characters who are more thoughtful about their actions. It takes me a few minutes to write up a pose. But even my attention will drift and I'll start WHOing and the like if we're rolling towards 15 minutes without a reply.
• Personal peeves: don't care about either of the listed. I hate when people pose in past tense in a present tense game, though. Follow conventions, whatever they are.
• Pose ordering: don't care mostly, but with the caveat that I'm a slow poser compared to some, so if someone talks to my char, and then fires out another pose while I'm still writing, that pisses me off. No worries if the chars aren't interacting with mine, though.
• I'm kind of weirded out by you-posing, because I am very much not my characters in a billion different ways, and also because of the level of familiarity that implies. I won't avoid a scene with a you-poser in the way I will with a past-tenser or the like (which breaks my immersion even more), but I won't be as likely to make that person a long-term RP partner.

@Pyrephox -- thanks for the reassurance!
@Darinelle -- totally valid point. Just looking at it from someone who's been there for, uh, five days, and thinking "How would this be more practicable to me at this very moment?" Because it still feels like the tip of an iceberg in terms of systems (as opposed to theme), and I'm thinking how that could be rectified.

OK, then that makes sense, because I was wondering why I didn't have a @revelation for it per this thread. But if it doesn't exist, that works for me. No worries!

(And the char's gathering the posse, slowly but surely!)

But also, some organizational structure to the clues would be nice -- maybe ANSI could be utilized there to categorize?

Yeah, I know I have some clues about some things that fit together, but I don't have any @revelations about those things, even though maybe I should. But that's a guess.

@pyrephox Good job beating @Roz to the punch! Thanks.

@pyrephox See, and there's another point of newbie confusion -- how is @revelations different from @theories? The helpfile just lists the command. I didn't even know it was a command.

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

ouldn't clues that has been gotten already be adjusted to give 2 or 3 that are in the same tree? Like if Joe Blow is looking into the Brightest Star' by Jane Smith has already discovered multiple clues, if not most, relating to that couldn't the new ones looking into along the same lines end up with multiple clues to reflect a lot of the legwork being done? To me.. THat would cut down on the 'outdated' and rehashing of clues and help newer (or not been played) characters feel relevant/catch up.

Highlighting/seconding this for @Apos and @Kanye-Qwest -- I'm a newbie, and I think this is a Very Good Idea. I'd also tack on that, as a newbie, having what clues I do have be in story format, while interesting, can be pretty unclear sometimes as far as fitting the pieces together, especially while I'm still cobbling together the theme in my head OOC. Some sort of branch/tree structure that's (increasingly?) visible as you get clues would be great.

Checking back in to see what my post wrought! I will say, 5 days in, I'm still having fun and I am involved, so those are good signs (of course, I'm also too proactive on that front). I am playing a social PC, and I haven't had that negatively impact my course so far. I've had scenes with heavy-hitters and fellow newbies alike. Catch me on the game if you want (Derovai, again)!

Tired of being minorly sick. Nothing anywhere near as bad as everything everyone has posted, but:

Was in Vietnam for three weeks in December. Was fine there. Got a bad headcold promptly upon returning to the States (12/28), and dealt with that for a week. The very day the cold ebbed, a tropical bacterium foot infection cropped up. Last Friday, I couldn't walk on my right foot, because I had just been to the doctor's for the ulcer that was on my second toe from the infection, and she had it drained. I've been on antibacterials for a week, and it /was/ clearing up, but yesterday it returned with a vengeance. I can walk -- it doesn't hurt as bad as it did when I had the ulcer drained -- but there are a lot of nerves in your feet, and so I'm getting constant reminders that, yeah, the SOB is still there.

It's just annoying, but I'd like some breathing room!

Man, I like the Killers' new stuff, but I love "Run for Cover" so much more!

Also, the origins of my username -- nothing to do with me except that I live in New York state; I just thought the name was catchy when I was 19 or so (before the burlesque club with the same name opened up and made me step away from the name, sigh).

@cobaltasaurus Let's meet at some point! Anyone else above too, if you want. I've got two scenes today that I'm hoping to get to, but I'll be at the Murder of Crows' darts tourney as well.

PS: totally course-prepping and not using this as a handy excuse to ignore it. Believe it. (I hate course prep. Burning fire, thousand nuns.)