Best posts made by Ganymede

@Ghost said in What do you WANT to play most?:

When I say dark fantasy, I'm saying as grimdark as Bill Nighy and Nick Cave drinking motor oil atop a pile of bones while listening to the audiobook version of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar
I'm thinking more akin to the middle ages scenes from Underworld, where there is the darkest, blackest, foulest magic out there in the night. Where piles of stripped bones line the entrance to the unsurvivable forest. Where the Midnight Queen awakens for the first time in a thousand years and marches with her army of the undead, adding to her ranks with every mortal they kill.

Or some shit like that. I dunno.

So, the Witcher.

@AmishRakeFight said:

I'm trying to buy a house. Trying. The inflated prices on what are 900 sq. ft. heat traps with dubious ability to stand up to an earthquake are insane. The condo market is better but $700 mo. in HOA fees on top of a mortgage payment on a building constructed in 1969 and looking every minute of it?

Around my parts, $700/mo. will get you a pretty decent 3BR/2BA single-floor, stand-alone home.

Maybe you should consider moving elsewhere?

@Tinuviel said in PC antagonism done right:

How do we mitigate the sore feelings of failure? Do we even want to?

We offer benefits to failure. CoD does this with giving you Beats. Similarly, if you fail at something by choice, the benefits ought to increase.

So, what's the penalty? Failure is failure. There will always be an incentive not to fail, but if you provide an incentive for allowing or choosing failure you will make the game much more interesting.

@GreenFlashlight said in RL Sads:

Very few people deserve to be killed by their government to stroke a senile narcissist's ego.

71 million people don't qualify as "very few people."

@Luna

I use +finger to figure out if my alts have any unread mail, or if my potential PCs have any. It has been useful recently, as I've been waiting for Ripley to get approved after re-spec for almost two weeks. I connect as Clarice, +finger Ripley to see if the +job system has sent her a @mail saying that she's approved.

Why? Because when I log on as Ripley, I get asked if I've been re-approved yet, and I have to say no. That, and I get excited to play, and then realize my re-spec has been going since mid-February. It's a little demoralizing, and I'm doing my best to be positive.

So, I wait, and use +finger to determine if I should hop on as the Ripster.

@HelloProject said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

I've lost about 30 pounds in the last two months, due to suddenly shifting to a permanently better way of eating, and also working out a lot and lifting weights. But I'm also stressed out for reasons I can't quite put my finger on.

Good! The stress may be from all of the different things you are trying to accomplish.

@Arkandel said in PC antagonism done right:

What I suspect lately is that people create winners.

Many do, perhaps. I actually try to pick loser concepts. Makes gaming more interesting.

I have tested positive.

We will be missing Thanksgiving, and my little girl is beside herself.

At least it's not Christmas.

Again, I find +watch functional, and I use it all the time. On the Reach, folks on your +watch are highlighted when you use +where. This helps me figure out who's on and who's active, and is useful on a game that can have 100+ logins.

@Darinelle said:

Sidenote: I fucking LOVE Crossfit.

I like cross-fit; I just dislike the people I've met who do it religiously.

@saosmash said in How do you keep OOC lounges from becoming trash?:

I hate OOC lounges. Channels are fine.

I concur.

But I like having OOC lounges to keep the shitheads in one place. I usually stay IC all the time, so if the OOC inane stupidity is left in the OOC lounge, it makes the channels more pleasant to lurk on.

@Aria

Oh dear.

Well, we’re here for you.

@Wavert said in How do you keep OOC lounges from becoming trash?:

I like having a community on the game, but I've seen so many instances where someone takes what is meant to be a playspace and turn it into their critical outlet for whatever they can't deal with or handle in life, and just wonder if there is any way to cut that off without making people feel like they are overly policed.

I got this text from someone yesterday who said, basically:

"After taking a break from my phone yesterday, I decided that I need everyone to invest more time in their friendship with me. I can't do it on my own."

The thing is, I barely ever spoke to this person. I don't even know how the fuck they got my number; I know who they are, and I know why they could have her number, but we never hang out and I never bothered to get to know her. Because I didn't want to.

A part of me wanted to text her back and point out how unreasonably narcissistic it was to demand that any friend invest any time into anything because of your needs. Part of me wanted to shake the fuck out of this unwitting idiot who doesn't seem to realize that I don't know why she bothers.

But if I spent my life fixing the lives of people that simply demand it without payment, I wouldn't have time for the people I actually care about.

If you want to be part of a local MU* community, you don't need an OOC area to do it. How about just chatting like a normal, well-adjusted human on channels?

@Aria said in RL things I love:

I am going to remind you that you said that when I need survey responses for my marketing classes.

I am going to remind you that asking me to fill out surveys is sort of like asking your most hated child to serve as your executor.

I mean, do what you want, but I can't be held responsible for your choices.

@surreality said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

There's so much talent here in this community, but plenty of people are (quite understandably) not at all willing to do things because it's like painting a target on their face, ass, and heart all at once.

I'm not sure if MSB's nature is the cause for this reluctance.

People with creative talent usually get recognized for the same away from these games. And, when they do, they have less time for the games.

I like to line my roasting pan with foil before using it. It's not a perfect solution, but it makes clean-up a bit easier because the bits stick to the foil, even if the juices seep onto the pan.

I brine in a literal bucket, so that's pretty easy to clean up.

@Pandora said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

A game is 'doing it right' when it doesn't wind up on WORA/MSB. That said, I think games that voluntarily advertise on MSB are very brave and open-minded, though they should keep in mind that they'll be attracting a specific sort of crowd that is heavily biased toward 'The Way We Do Things Just Because It's How We Do It'. I enjoy MSB for what it is and for reasons I mentioned earlier in the thread. But I'd never voluntarily bring any game I play to anyone's attention here; my internet life has been very peaceful this year since the MU I play primarily isn't on MSB and most people there either don't know what MSB is or are scandalized/terrified by what they read here.

It's good to be brave and open-minded.

Like many, I oppose the idea that this board is dominated by WoD games. This sounds hypocritical coming from me, I guess, because it is true that the vast majority of my experiences come from those games. That said, any comment I make to which I would attach experience as my basis of understanding is invariably going to come from a WoD game. That doesn't mean my opinion is any less apt from that basis, but I don't think it's entirely fair to say that I and folks like me are knowingly trying to dominate the conversation and steer it towards WoD games (and I know that's not what you intended to say).

But, I get what you're hinting at, and I mostly agree. There are a lot of games out there that are doing just fine. Some advertise here, some don't. And I wish they would because I am open to new experiences.

SW: Fires of Hope looks nifty. I made a PC there, but I haven't gotten all the way through the CGen process. I also ginned up a PC on End of Days, but I too have not completed the process. SW: Dawn of Defiance was a lot of fun, but it wasn't for my entire crew. And, to be frank, I did have fun at Kushiel's Debut, Arx, and other games that I've played on.

In my opinion, many game designers and operators don't want their work bashed on. So, they've concluded that our Hive-Mind will poo-poo anyone that comes here. This is untrue. I can understand why anyone wouldn't want bad publicity, but a lot of games get good publicity here too. And just because an incident arises that could make a game look bad does not mean that others won't or can't see past the bullshit.

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

FOR FUCK'S SAKE, JUST TELL US WHAT YOU WANT.

See, this is sort of the crux.

In my opinion, in law school, when a professor gives you weekly assignments it is to test your mettle as a lawyer. After two years of law school, I would expect that a student who know what that means. Students are required to take a full-year of writing and research courses.

But as a practitioner, I don't expect shit. Really, I just want them to hand in an assignment that wouldn't get them fired from a firm. So timeliness, writing style, and grammar are more important than legal analysis.

Should I expect this from 3Ls? Yes and no. I am not going to flat out tell them:

"Look, losers, you don't know shit about shit. You really don't. I don't want to make you all into emo-kids, but you're going to need to suck it up and realize that nothing you produce will ever satisfy your legal partner the first day in. Take your lumps, adjust, and adapt. That's how you survive. But the first step is doing shit quickly and meeting deadlines, so give me something and I probably won't flay you alive."

But that's really kind of the truth; I want work-product I can cut to pieces to help them become better lawyers, and the main goal is to get that shit to me in a timely fashion and be ready to learn the hard way.

If I tell them that? I'm going to get absolute garbage because they know I'm not going to hammer them for garbage. So it's sometimes best to keep vague about that shit and let them rely on what they know.

@Ghost said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

I think that WORA and MSB have been responsible for more negative behavior than positive. In fact, I'm of the opinion that WORA and MSB are primarily positive mostly as a resource for finding out which games are the new games.

I can't argue with an opinion, which is what I call a statement cannot reasonably be proven as false. So, one of the things I have to decry is how, on WORA and MSB, opinions masquerade as facts.

WORA/MSB help spread and cement the following negative behaviors:

• The creation of cliques centered around board veterans, and the weird maintaining of ooc reputation through board posts alone

Allow me to concur with @Thenomain by laughing so hard at this that my food literally fires out of my ass and shreds my underwear.

• Mob-justice, valid or invalid, gets taken to the boards where anyone unethical with a slightly convincing argument can use the board as a social dominance tool

I have yet to see any game or clique rise or fall based on what was said on WORA or MSB. You're free to provide an example.

• Promotion of the player over the character, thus expanding the assumption that all characters are the player

The connection between players and characters has been discussed ad nauseam, with no concurrence. I guess I better remind my partner that I've been on stage as Othello, so that bitch better not lose my hanky.

• The ooc connection Nexus for players to spread gossip, which is usually heavily one-sided, and build that into the community's network.

This board shares and shreds gossip in equal measure.

If you mean to say that community members may have greater sway over other members because they have better skills of persuasion? I can get behind that. And has this misled others? It sure has, as a truism. But that's the nature of communicating in a written medium, so you might as well rail as to how newspapers seem to be able to convince people of their perspective by publishing articles that others read.

@tinuviel

Hey.

Shut up.