Best posts made by Ganymede

@thugheaven said in Armageddon MUD:

The argument has been new players are punished for mistakes and no they aren’t. If that’s the circular argument then yes it will continue to rage on, because the people that play now say it doesn’t happen.

This is not a circular argument. This is a simple argument with two sides.

That said, this is what is catching my eye and mind right now:

@evilcabbage said in Armageddon MUD:

despite what hedge would tell you, we "are" very welcoming to new players. the welcome might be an introduction to being mugged and murdered, or being abused, or being treated lower than low because you're a commoner and that's a templar, but you are being introduced to the world. (Emphasis added.)

Now, if I'm taking what you're saying at face value, that leads me to the conclusion that being mugged, murdered, abused, or treated poorly may occur, but not as a consequence of making an IC mistake.

Am I understanding this correctly?

Because, if so, I still don't know why most people would be interested in a gaming experience where they may, for not fault of their own, get killed or robbed when they hit the Grid.

Now, if this isn't the case, someone's lying. But if this is the case, then it's good to know that I may be drubbed like a rented whore if I play.

No, I didn't like Dark Souls.

@admiral said in RL Anger:

They should have known better than to go there.

I concur.

But fuck the New York Times for even publishing such sanctimonious tripe.

@Rook said in How to Change MUing:

1. Narrow the roleplay of all players on the game, giving all characters reason to interact with all others.

On WoD games, the races are segregated because they have different aims. The Reach was a bit different, but every race still has their own power structures and politics. I agree that things should be narrowed, but I believe it should be narrowed to single-race games. That will help keep the setting tight and the tropes relevant.

The "whole-world" feel created in the Old World of Darkness simply does not exist in the "flexible-world" feel created by the New World of Darkness.

2. Get rid of the dependencies on +jobs. Enforce interaction.

This presumes that everything is done in +jobs. This also presumes that you have the time to interact. Those in power positions simply cannot meet with everyone, and the proclivity of gamers to multi-task with MU*ing makes a lot of scenes unbearably long. Most games do not permit proxy-RPing as well.

Encourage interaction by permitting proxy-RPing. Rely on existing tools like @mail or other bits of code to communicate in writing ICly for quick things that don't require interaction; in the corporate world, think of when you would write an e-mail or phone someone. Interaction is interaction. Keep +job interactions to players communicating with staff; that's what +jobs were for.

3. Revamp XP gain to be non-singular, non-vote dependent. My idea here was to base a global XP gain pool based on the amount of RP happening on the game.

Brother, I said this yeeeeears ago. With you.

@rahnevyn said in Armageddon MUD:

Yes, explicitly, that is the proposition of Armageddon. It's a roleplay-enforced world where there are permanent consequences and life is not fair. You may be mugged or murdered by someone you never expected to assault you, possibly you have not even met. No IC mistakes are required in order for bad things to happen to your character. Typically though, if you wind up mugged or murdered, your "mistake" was that you trusted the wrong person or wandered into an area that your character was probably not cut out to be in.

See, this is a good answer without equivocation. I like it.

MUSH player tend to eschew this sort of mentality, though. If I wanted to play this sort of game, I'd pick up Dark Souls, as I said before, or maybe go plug away at some PvP MMORPG or something.

@admiral said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Looking at tour dates. Puddles Pity Party in Austin on August 25! Yes!

...Austin, Minnesota. -MOTHERFUCKERS-.

@faraday said in How to Change MUing:

Racking up the XP to become super-awesome? Nope.

Speak for yourself.

I'm just really bad at this aspect of the game.

@faraday said in Armageddon MUD:

Hey, I love video games. But you're not going to convince me that Tomb Raider has anything to do with roleplaying when my "super-awesome adventurer/explorer" Lara Croft is constantly walking into walls and flailing around uselessly just because I the player suck at the game.

That's because if you want to be a super-awesome adventurer/explorer, you should be Aloy.

That, and I have a thing for Merida + dreadlocks.

so hawt

@tragedyjones

Does it matter? She's the ex for a reason, right?

@ThatOneDude said in Eliminating social stats:

But couldn't you /deprive agency/ with physical stats? IE: I grapple you and force you to stay when you want to leave. Or using force/violence I could make your PC do something they normally wouldn't. That's why to me it just makes sense to have a like for like system, that has like attack/defense. Then follow up with the "if you don't feel good with what's happening then fade to black or whatever."

By "agency," I mean intent and thought, rather than actual ability. As mentioned by another, grappling me is different than using some power or social ability to prevent me from resisting. You could physically force me to back down, or do it via power. I personally don't mind someone depriving me of agency, but it is a sticking point for others due to past histories, creepers, etc.

@seraphim73

I liked my PC. Adrien was interesting in several ways for me to play.

But, like Arkandel, I found little to hook me in. There were events, yes, but I wasn't able to make them (through no fault of anyone else). There were stories being told, but I wasn't involved with them (through no fault of anyone else). And then other games started becoming more active, and I became more involved with them.

Then RL hit, and is still kicking me in the groin.

One thing: a game about pirates seems inherently PvP, yet there was so very little of that. I think you can have plenty of PvP without it going overboard.

@deadculture said in RL Awkwardness/Cringe:

Social health care systems work if people aren't abusing the system

Anything will fail if abused.

Signed, someone who lived in a place with a social healthcare system, but now lives in the Hidden Pirate Kingdom, aka the United States.

P.S.: In Ontario, Canada, you have to pay a smidgen to see a doctor, like, $20 or something.

@Ghost said in Eliminating social stats:

If social skills/stats are eliminated from sheets, then games and characters can become sorely imbalanced.

Unless the game's setting and structure makes social and intellectual skills secondary or unimportant. Example: BSG: Unification, where having a particular secondary skill may make it easier to do a task or two, but actions otherwise revolve around a core of action skills relevant to combat.

@Meg's point is probably the most compelling. Eliminating social stats would give savvy players like @HelloRaptor an advantage over players that couldn't persuade Madonna to give it up for a bag of Peeps.

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

Beaver City, Nebraska by Night.

@macha said in RL Anger:

The place he wants to go is opening tonight, and you never go opening night anyhow! But no, he'll stomp up the stairs and pout.

When my son does this, I tell him to close the door and be quiet.

And then I enjoy a bourbon on a porch.

He's five. He'll be fine.

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

I definitely see where you're coming from, with players having an interest in being able to avoid entering some weirdo's magical realm, but wouldn't it be preferable to just ban magical realm shit without suppressing the import of social roles in basically any other context, than it would be to handwave social stats completely?

Some people just don't want any such rule or controversy, really. Whether it's wise or not is what we're discussing.

I'm on the side of "I prefer a system," but I'm also on the side of "or not" because I do very well on games which don't have a social system. Even on ones where one exists, my social concepts tend to do well because I am able to convince people to see my way (eventually) through text. (It's kind of my job.) I'd like to think I'm not a social power gamer, but some people may say differently.

But I'm addressing @Arkandel mostly here, as he and I have bandied around ideas for a while. I'm not sure if I'd agree with him here, but what may be more interesting is a resource-based system for political combat.

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

I don't like Pete that much but we'll see what we can do.

Who the hell don't like Pete?

@lisse24 said in RL Anger:

I have. Hence the increasing amounts of frustration.

Have a lawyer friend start doing this for you. Works wonders.

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

Such is similar with players who want to use some subtle emotional ploy with their Manip 1 Persuasion 0 character. It almost definitely doesn't work. This is precisely why we have rolls. So yes, you can RP the specifics how you want, but if you fail the Manip + Persuasion vs Resolve + Composure roll, you are obligated to make your character say/do something stupid. Something unpersuasive. Something mildly embarrassing or just cringey. Why? Because he sucks at this.

I get what you're saying. Now, go ahead and enforce it.

Basically, every pose calculated to arouse something in someone is going to need a roll, and that just doesn't happen. Do I personally care if a person rolls to check if my PC is lying? No, I don't, but I'm pretty easy-going. That said, if I'm interrupted every freaking pose, I'm going to get a bit testy.

I would love it if everyone RPed their stats, but that's nigh impossible. People take fucking Presence 5 that can't pose their way out of a box. Should staff step in and cut down their Presence to 2? Because that's where I see this going, taken to the extreme.

@EmmahSue said:

I can't tell if you're being mean to me or not! Please clarify the intent of your pointed statement.

I never intend to be mean, ES, but I can often be blunt.

Being a Sanctified is tricky. Many Sanctified PCs have been quite reviled. It goes hand-in-hand with their philosophy. They are like really anal-retentive Sabbat at times: preachy and boring. So, it's not your fault, but being Sanctified may be the reason why people are avoiding you.

@HelloRaptor said:

I didn't suggest any correlation between CEO pay and company performance, only that the influence that CEO has on company performance is significantly greater than that of any single worker or group of workers of the size discussed in most layoff situations, primarily because the scope of action and influence had by either is on a completely different scale.

You're right, that's not the same thing. Glitch is also correct; a really shitty CEO can take a company down no matter how proficient its workforce is.

What matters is that a working classical capitalist model posits that a company's workforce enjoy greater wages based on productivity. When wages increased commensurate with productivity, the United States's economy grew stronger and more robust. When this ceased being the case, in or around the late '70s, the country's began an inexorably debt death-spiral that it isn't coming out of, even now.

It's not about living wage: it's about paying your workers fairly based on their productivity. Unfortunately, no one honestly likes the idea of taking a pay cut when their performance is terrible, so they are willing to accept a consistent paycheck even if their productivity increases over time.