Best posts made by GangOfDolls

Updated with all corrections and additional games noted from posts above this one in the thread

@ganymede This is more or less my passing thought that I'm weighing.

I guess the thing that breaks my brain about 'well its there but not really' or 'well some NPCs that you won't interact with will act badly' or 'there will be shade but not actually any directly experienced shade' is that if its there but people are looking for ways to mitigate it like this, then why have it in the theme at all?

And not just this game but any game where there's a repressive social element that is central to theme, this is presented as being a big deal in theme, and then ignored or only sorta lazily goes through the motions of it being around to avoid actual consequences on this theme?

Like, its sorta like games that have huge, dire rivalries between Group A and Group B where there's years old blood feud, murder hungry hatred and when these groups encounter each other in game...

They do fancy dances like the Sharks and the Jets and talk some mess but avoid actual escalation for any and all reasons because PvP isn't actually okay.

I still (personally and only speaking for myself) don't love the bigoted themes but I'm just sorta not getting the 'well its there but really its not' sorta approach in games that have this.

@thenomain

Probably so, yes.

I'm not unopposed. I'm just looking to avoid from this going from a 'oh look they updated things!' community resource to a 'omg you're the worst and you never update this fast enough and I have a lot of expectations about what you owe me for the low, low price of free!' in terms of formalization.

Though admittedly, the minute I made this list formalization done did the thing.

So if people can basically be cool, then I'm fine with putting this on a wiki.

Fair. I bake a fair amount. Partly as I enjoy the chemistry and ritual of cooking and I like to try out new things. Also, I travel a fair amount of work and finding things I can eat without going too far off the wagon in airports is a challenge. It end to bake/make snacks that are adhere to the way I'm eating now.

I also make them for the movies as we have the AMC A List Stubs thing and watch a lot of them and it's a much cheaper alternative than spending 20 bucks on a box of candy and a soda.

@RDC said in NOLA: The Game That Care Forgot:

Speaking of LARP: Do people think there'd be any interest in borrowing certain concepts from LARP games, particularly some concepts relating to Boons, Status, and Renown effects from the BNS books? I'm on the fence as to whether they'd add or subtract from a MU* setting - there are a lot of similarities between MU* and LARP, and they're certainly more similar to each other than either are to tabletop, but I'm unsure as to whether borrowing would be better than not.

Bonus, status, and Renown generally doesn't work in MU* settings, I've found. It just, unfortunately, doesn't work for a couple reasons:

• Buying Status & Renown in Cgen: Everyone does it if its an option and most games don't police if the amount of either being purchased because it becomes so ubiquitous that it loses all of its meaning and value. Players easily and readily ignore it in a way you can't in a live action setting unless you want to die.

• The Revolving Door Nature of PC Leadership: Status and especially boons are often swept away in Sept Alpha and Praxis Seizure changes. The PCs that might be recording and tracking this information to any meaningful end tend to eventually fade out, these records get fubar, and it's all meaningless. In a Larp setting, even if there's a new Prince every month-- they are generally at the game and you have ways of getting their attendance. Not so in MU* where tracking down people is hard and getting them to RP with you about this stuff can be harder.

• Status and Boon Enforcement: In Larp settings, its a lot harder to get away with ducking out of a boon and being a turd to someone with higher status than you, 9 times out of 10 - if you do either, it's on and cracking and usually ends with your PC getting dragged to a boot party. In a MU* setting, its a lot easier to just hang out in your hideyhole and never come out as staff is often loathe to allow haven raids, etc. PC leaders will evade every chance to enforce these things because there is such a resistance to PvP because it goes so poorly and players react so badly when it doesn't go their way that its exhausting and it burns out PC leadership.

• Immediate Consequences and Benefits In General: In larp, your status and boons can be an immediate button you push when you want something and you want it 2 minutes ago because everyone's assembled for play that night, you only have 4ish hours to pack in your to-do list for the month, etc -- basically, created immediacy. In MU* you have to find the person/people, get them to agree to something, get them to show up to something, deal with the scene over a course or days if people can't all be on at once, and then finally execute. That's exhausting and so people stop bothering.

I think therefore if you want to try and include that in your game then it becomes something staff has to track and enforce, which generally comes with a lot of conflict so you have to have staff willing to take it on the chin and crack skulls when they must.

@thenomain

I probably also read this when tired so the subtlety sort of whiffed by me like a slow walk at a 4 year old's teeball game.

I actually kind of like the idea of a block chain of these lists just because there lots of games out there that aren't visible to us, but they're visible to someone.

@paris Oh, for sure. I use a lot of almond flour and coconut flour - with gelatin or xanthum gum, you generally get the same neighborhood of textures. There's also this: Carbquik

Pasta is harder to have/find when you're trying to cut simple carbs and sugars. That's the part I don't love because I love me the shit out of some Olive Garden.

I'm a simple girl with Bellini tastes when it comes mid-range fake Italian food chains.

@lordbelh Yeah I'd say that's true. The problem as you point out is you have to get everyone on board with it which in a lot of online games is the central point where it falls apart.

At the risk of possibly starting a shit hurricane, it would help to know this game for context.

Having experience with staffing where headstaff are checked out or pouting or some combination of the two, it's a bullet train to burnout. You can't make significant decisions without the input of headstaff which means you can't respond to any major crisis or semi-crisis, plot actions, PVP actions, any action really that isn't an XP spend or a rules check. It's sort of like working for the DMV but on an unpaid basis where players take their extreme displeasure at absent headstaff out on you, while you stamp widgets on their sheets.

Don't do it.
Save yourself.

@too-old-for-this

The brand that I use/like is:

Sea Tangle

There may be others out there but I buy these at my local pan-asian grocery store. You have to pre-soak them to get them to soften but they otherwise take on the flavor of whatever it is you're cooking.

I would like to try lentil pasta but lentils are a heavy carbohydrate (but at least they're complex) source and they often made with semolina flour to stabilize them, so they tend to be nearly as sugar heavy as regular pasta. It's on my 'cheat day' list but as a more daily thing, I tend to avoid them.

A primer:

CS runs off Lambda. Though a heavily modified, largely bastardized version of Lambda. There are several generations of wiz bit coders involved in it at this point. I have no idea how it looks lately as a former wiz bit coder but much of the core game features are legacy from decades ago, so it seems to be okay?

It's a MOO, which you don't see much of anymore. Ghostwheel and Diversity University were also MOOs if anyone remember those places (I believe they are both long over). DU wasn't even a game. It was ... some weird collegiate sort of... I don't even know.

Functionally however, much of it appears to be MUD oriented in how automation commands must functions from combat to the economy to movement on grid using IC transportation and cyber implants.

There is RP. It's hit or miss, as has been always the case. Some staff groups required more of it, some staff groups cared way less so plot is also kind of hit or miss depending on the staff and their level of interest in running it. There are pockets of players who RP and run effectively PRPs for each other. Much of the RP is akin to Nordic style larp in that you put a bunch of competing factions in the game who are living in a slum walled off from the corporate paradise that San Diego in the future has become (now called New Carthage) and they tend to make trouble for each other.

There are always twinks and people who want to slash and hack. You can avoid them or engage them. It's generally easier to avoid them than you'd think.

Application Tiers: The more time and effort you put into a Tier, the more stuff you get to start with. Tier 1 is basically a non-CG, jump in and play situation. You get like a minimum of credits, a clone/no clone, and nothing. There is no application. Tier 2 is medium effort application, you write a BG of small length and/or answer a survey (I can't remember its been a while) and then you get a better clone/more creds/some gear/middling starting stuff . Tier 3 is effort required application that staff is obligated to read and approve or not and you get even better stuff, including sometimes an IG job and an apartment depending on what it is you're trying to play on Tier 3.

I was on the staff when Tiers were first introduced. I don't know if they've been modified since but it sounds pretty much the same.

Clones: It's hard to permanently die on CS. You do have to pay for the upkeep of a clone on the game. When you die, you wake up in your new clone body (as per Cyberpunk genre) having no memory of anything that happened to you between your last paid update to record your memories and the time of your death. The better the clone, the better your chances you'll keep coming back after you die which is why death isn't as big of a deal on the game and it tends to attract a less risk averse crowd. Your clone can fail based on a random roll and if that happens, you're kinda boned. The extent of the failure and the quality of your clone can make it so that your PC is a vegetable and its better to just have them killed off. Less unfortunate failures have permanent negative changes to your PC. A high quality clone failure is pretty rare. A cheap clone fails kind of a lot.

CS isn't for everyone.
The learning curve can be really tough.
It's been around since 1994.

--Former Wiz

I think the really oogy thing here is that personal, private details about offline lives became fodder for this and not just like irritations and passing upsets that happen between players while logged in to a game. I guess that's the part that's making me squirmy in terms of whats alleged because if true, that's kind of a big problem. I'd be super unhappy and justifiably spooked that someone I didn't know in any offline sense went out of their way to repeat personal life details about me to another player on another game. That's a lack of boundaries that's beyond.

Raw cookie dough, fuck the chocolate chips. I'll actually eat around those.

I don't like sugar-y shit when I'm not depressed. My dad died over the summer so how the fuck I didn't get salmonella poisoning, I have no clue. I certainly ran up on it and punched in the face, like it needed to come at me.

@Derp said in Favorite/Most Memorable Childhood Books:

V.C. Andrews - Flowers in the Attic Series: Look, I was a pretty advanced reader and I devoured this series. Even the prequel that everyone else hated.

Nice. When I was kid my family went on vacation and I took 2 books along, Red Dragon (the prequel to Silence of the Lambs) and It. My mother was horrified that I was reading books well beyond my 11-year-old sensibilities, so confiscated them.

When we got to the cabin we were staying at, someone had left behind Flowers In The Attic and My Sweet Audrina and I read those instead. She didn't have a clue about them.

I definitely learned something from those books.

ETA - Meaningful childhood reading list:

The Stand - Unabridged and Illustrated Version
To Kill A Mockingbird
The Princess Bride
The Little Drummer Girl
Discworld series through Hogfather (and then it changed enough that I didn't like it anymore)

@faraday My intention isn't to be contrarian but I think it needs to be qualified that the kind of game we're talking about has dictated application response.

Certain themes/genres have larger appeal and fanbases than others. I don't think its necessarily coincidence that the WoD games that have opened recently or might eventually open (hi Miami) roll up into the urban fantasy/modern horror niche that tends to have a fairly wide response base.

Something a little more niche in terms of IP or theme is probably also going to have a different level.

I guess the thing I'm kind wondering is - while I don't assume bad actions or intent on the part of staff, it does seem a little unable to read the room that genres and themes that have tended to garner stronger application responses and tend to have a larger draw in the MU* community wouldn't pull in a large number of applicants. Especially because there's such a noticeable lack of operating above stall speed or open games in this wider genre right now.

It's a lucky break that their timing was so good but it is a bit surprising that they didn't seem to be aware that a good chunk of the community wants to play in these types of games?

OKC is pile of jokes in the city I live in. It's mostly PoF, Tinder, and Bumble around here, even though of these three Bumble seems to be the worst of the three. The theory behind that is because Bumble only allows women to make first contact, it seems to be some kind of gilded invitation to show me your dick because I said: hi.

I have no problem talking to people in bars, personally but the bars I tend to gravitate towards are the kind where everyone is hunched over their drink with a look that threatens death if you talk to them. I travel a lot for work so I got over eating by myself at restaurants and it's actually kind of nice to be able to zone out and scroll through your phone while you stuff your face. For the record, I prefer going to the movies by myself, too.

The last few people I've dated - I met through volunteering at the USO Reception Room at the airport or hobbies. Honestly, the USO Reception room has been kind of fun in terms of unearthing the military people who are relatively well adjusted, into cool shit, and not xenophobic MAGA weirdos.

@Faceless said in General Video Game Thread:

Ghost Recon Wildlands

I got to play test this at Pax. I totally thought I was griefing my friend at the console station to the left of me and I turned out that I kept shooting some nine year old's toon over and over, instead.

I'm a bad person.

It was fun though!

@groth Fair but I'll try and clarify what I meant:

There are coders in this community - many in fact - but they are outnumbered by the players who don't know how to code. From that pool as I think @Meg pointed out, you have to find coders who want to give freely of their time (there are some perhaps more than some) to a project and a lot of that comes down to their interest level in that particular project.

That's where the personality issue and clashes come into play.

It's been my experience that depending on code language, we tend to see particular repeat coders. The reasons for this are a few but in my experience of this hobby and in the games I tend to frequent, the coders tend to be a particular roster of people. Since they have a skill set that's particular, they do hold a certain amount of cards when it comes to agreeing to take or pass on a project and sometimes its time and interest but finding both can be difficult when you don't want to work with who is asking for either.

Running a game is also a problem in terms of finding staffers who want to, are able to find the time, and don't have a problematic track record. That's also a problem but to my way of thinking, you can't open a game unless its functional which is where the code part comes in... Or, you can but you'll drive people off in asking them to scale your CG process for example without it being user friendly.

@Miss-Demeanor

Uhhh.... okay?

I was referring to someone else's use of the word 'dogpile' in this thread. I read what you wrote, what others wrote, and shared a thought I had about the general thing of it.