Best posts made by Ganymede

@auspice

It's so angry!

@bear_necessities

I may be stopping by as well.

@mietze said in Open Sheets?:

I will say that I think games where there's a culture of open stats seem to (in my observance) have a more consistently high quality of rp/player on them; but I think that's largely due to self selection. The players who want to win against other players at any cost and cant help themselves are going to self select out.

I think this is why a PvP game would be better with open sheets that show basic stats, but not have open, full information available.

Snowflakes usually melt in the sun.

@derp

Act II

Him: There's a problem with your memo.
You: What is it?
Him: Why did you include all that information about Civ. R. 41(B)? I just wanted to about voluntary dismissals pursuant to Civ. R. 41(A).
You: With my last memo, you told me to include everything.
Him: Next time, use your judgment, and only give me everything related to the facts of the case and the assignment I brought you.

Welcome to my world.

@Derp

I concur.

I've very familiar with Vampires, Werewolves, and Changeling. If you're thinking of going to The Reach / Fallcoast, you're going to want to know 1E as well as 2E. I'm fairly confident I can help for those races.

Let's get back to the game development discussions, please.

@auspice

I don't know your parents, and I don't know you well.

But the instant my parents started telling and expecting me to act like an adult, I started to do that.

Adults don't tolerate raging dicks, and tend to deal with them with shovels.

@Kireek said in Arx- Gareth:

I don't know if I actually believe that sentiment is realistic Ganymede. You don't believe it's appropriate to talk oocly about people in your factions about scenes you might want to have, why you haven't gotten the results you should of for things etc? In a game where I play an antagonistic character- it can often behoove me to speak oocly to people about things, to communicate feelings, emotions, sentiments, etc.

It is very realistic, actually, because I picked my words carefully.

I said that I don't OOCly try to coerce people into playing what's needed for my faction rather than what they want to play. That is, if someone asks me what is needed to play a healer, I don't try to coerce them into a playing a warrior. Or to pick stats which benefit me or my faction.

This is not a subtle distinction.

For example, when I first came to RfK, I did so at the invitation of a friend who is also @lordbelh's friend. I fell into their RP group pretty quickly. While they told me what they liked to see, I ended up taking a different concept. And while I wasn't as useful to their faction stat-wise, I was an active participant and contributed in other ways that fit the concept I chose. At no time did anyone tell me how I should build my PC.

Obviously, if someone asks what I might need for my faction, the wheels come off. But that's very different than what I was talking about. Or what you're talking about.

@bad-at-lurking said in Potential Buffy Game:

"The Hellmouth moved here."

I don't really know what a Hellmouth is, but I presume it is something which spawns bad things.

In which case, there are lots of good sites, like the old Mound Laboratories site. If you want a central location, you could look at the Dayton Arcade or Woodland Cemetary and Arboretum, which is located next to the University of Dayton. But if you want to go for the old, trite "local military installation is a secret laboratory for the paranormal" trope, a la Stranger Things, then nothing's better than Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

I like "the Mound" due to the nuclear weapons research / Indian burial ground confluence of "why the fuck did you put that there?" questions.

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

It's a little hazier when we're in dependency law. It's a civil case that they are appointed counsel to protect their constitutional rights to parent. I think TECHNICALLY I can override him re telephonic testimony but it's a little hard to manage a case for a client who won't stop screaming about his confrontation rights and how everything is illegal and unjustified literally every time you call him.

Peeve: People who think the Confrontation Clause applies to non-criminal adjudications.

Bless you for handling this shit, though. I'd be bad at it.

I too am with Olsson. If only because I'm thinking of making a Hungry Courtier named "Kanye."

@arkandel said in MUSHgicians elements:

To use the same example as before, Hermione went on plenty of adventures herself. The difference is how she spent the rest of her time; she hit the books while Harry flew around on a broomstick and shit.

And no one should be penalized for not wanting to RP through reading books and shit. This is why Downtime / Action Points are important for games.

@Corruption

Not too far away, but not my jurisdiction. Still, I know a thing or two about a thing or two. I can still do some research for you via WestLaw, if interested.

@Taika

I think that modified weapons should at a minimum cost XP and come in the form of a merit. Otherwise, people are going to make them with impunity.

@Taika said in City of Shadows:

There's only so much staff can do, too, though. If staff doesn't have the support of players to make the magic happen, then it's dead in the water. Likewise, players without staff support can also really struggle. The trick is finding the perfect balance. Get the info to the people willing to spread it and push to help loop in newbies. Have the staff go to them and find out what they might be interested in to.draw them in.

Territories.

Let me say it again: territories.

I think your most important "buy-in" is the ability for players to affect the world they are in through their characters. Plots are one way to do it, but territory development is another. That, I think, is what made RfK so damned successful: there was something to fight for.

When you have something to fight for, you will make alliances to protect it. On The Descent v. 1.0, Wolf actively sought out anyone who would assist him in protecting and developing his territory. On The Descent 2.0, Templeton did the same thing. Allowing players to shape the world they are in through their characters will draw people in. On Echoes in the Mists, protecting the Church is what drives Maddy. A player like me needs that motivation to keep things going. And if I'm as skilled a sphere-driver as Arkandel thinks, then I think you need to re-visit this system and take the time to code it up or have someone do it for you. (Modern Nights, a V20 game, has a Downtime and Action system you may be able to adapt.)

If you want folks to steer away from the tradition race-based groups and towards multi-race factions, then I highly recommend implementing a territory system that works irrespective of what race you might be. It will be tricky with Mages, but I think it can be done. Making the game all about protecting and modifying one's claimed territory will steer people away the "more traditional" traps that games tend to fall in.

@auspice said in Random links:

Pretty much. U2 is about as bland as it fucking comes.

What the fuck?

Like, seriously, girl, you kidding me? Bland as it fucking comes?

Where the Streets Have No Name is a blazing 1980s anthem that has absolutely no equal from that time. None. And I'll take the Pepsi challenge: find me something matches The Edge's arpeggio, and then have someone try to play it as crispy and cleanly.

Sunday Bloody Sunday was written before then (1983), and is one of the greatest protest songs I've heard. Its lyrics are as poignant now as then:

And it's true we are immune
When fact is fiction and TV reality
And today the millions cry
We eat and drink while tomorrow they die

I'm not really much of a U2 fan, to be honest, but I'm not going to call it "bland, processed garbage."

Shit, you kids, save that for Ariana Grande.

@derp

I disagree, and believe the analogy is apt. You have no more power to vote out Officer O'Malley than you are to vote me out.

That said, if the membership is okay with the administration acting like a monarchal oligarchy, that's fine. Let's just be clear that this is what is happening, what is expected, and what is demanded. If so, then let's also put out there that, as a monarchal oligarch, none of the admin have any responsibility to publicly inform anyone as to the basis of any decision, and, if you want to discuss the rationale about the same, all such inquiries may be made directly to me.

You okay with that?

@HelloProject said in UX: It's time for The Talk:

I thought you said you're ready for the flames?

Look you said this:

For years, since I even got into this hobby, I've noticed just really monstrously shitty design practices. One of the most grave shitty design practices is just what I can only describe as a complete disregard for UX design.

Has it ever occurred to you that there are people that work diligently and carefully on their games, and you just went and said, from a position of relative privilege, that what they've done is "monstrously shitty"? And then you conclude that this is a "complete disregard" for user experience? This is neither constructive nor civil.

I don't think you'll get much opposition here to the premise that certain things could be coded better, differently, or more efficiently. Certainly, I'm not going to argue here to the contrary.

When I say "leave the coders alone," I mean "focus on how you can make a better gaming experience for yourself and everyone around you." Blaming the code is easy: what's harder is actually writing up the help files, assisting players in using the commands, etc. So, when it comes to "improving user experience," I think: do what you can do where you can, player or staffer or coder. If you can code things better, great. If not, then still do what you can.

Flip the situation around. I'll bet coders roll their eyes until they spill out when people can't figure out what they consider to be relatively easy code to work with. And maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. I've found in my years that when people are new, other players come to their aid, and new players that invest themselves a little into learning the systems and the ways tend to stick around and meaningfully add to the experience. Once they've done that, like @Paris, they tend to gravitate towards the familiar because of that investment.

So, from my non-coder experience, I would say: maybe if we all just tried a little harder to learn, things would be better as a whole.

Someone told me that Stormbirds were hard.

They ain’t hard.

HZD is awesome.

I'll make a comparison.

I played on Modern Nights, a recent V20 game. It had a lot of options and a lot of potential. But there were no wikis, and the players weren't really talking to one another online. It was hard to find RP most nights, and I did not have the ability to sift through wikis to even see where I might have a tie or two. Yes, there was code available to guide me towards folks that my PC may have known, but that's a far cry from being able to browse at leisure.

Contrast this with Echoes in the Mist. That game had a wiki, but you didn't have to reveal your stats if you didn't want to. Even the most basic information -- Clan, Covenant -- was enough to help me figure it if it would make sense that my PC would bump into another. That made me feel more comfortable reaching out for RP.

Aside from Ares-based games, I don't know of or haven't played on games which allowed all-but-full disclosure of stats. Whether an OOC masquerade is purposeful I think largely depends on the kind of game you want to run, but I prefer games with player wiki pages.