My health plan just rejected my daughter's speech therapist's request for services as "not medically necessary" due to an alleged absence of progress.
My daughter has been seeing the same speech therapy company since she was 3. She is now 7. She is on an IEP with the school district for her speech delay. So, someone's screwed up.
And they will feel my wrath.
@Kestrel said in Borrowing ideas — at what point does it become theft?:
I know that I'd probably like to list credit where it's due with some kind of acknowledgements page, such as 'thanks to HavenRPG for inspiring idea X, Legend of the Green Dragon for inspiring idea Y, and @SkinnyThicket for the innovative mapping/exploration system', but I'm interested to hear thoughts from developers/players here about the practice of idea-borrowing in general.
If you are directly taking an idea, code, or system from another game, you should probably ask for permission. For example, if I swipe @surreality's wiki stuff, I should probably ask first. Credit should always be given where credit is due, so I appreciate it when game developers give shout-outs to inspiration; WoD books generally do this.
I don't mind people using or implementing my ideas because that's all they are -- ideas. I've got a lot of them. If I get props for it, that's fantastic. If people claim that the idea is completely novel, I'm happy to point out where I mentioned it and when, if I believe I came up with it first. The latter instance rarely comes up.
@Lisse24 said in +wantrp Command Suggestion:
To get more specific: We've created an environment in MUs where it's hard (not impossible) for people to break out of RP cliques and for new people to break in. We expect people to act in a way that is not in line with human nature and then bemoan the results. I think this command will be used because it will appeal to the people who are not on this board - the people who want RP, but who come onto games and struggle to get it, and don't know the crowd well enough to page or who feel self-conscious about it.
Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, I suppose, I find myself siding with @Thenomain. The tools are there, but no one seems to care to use them.
Take @mail. I check these every time I log in. This is how we used to let people know that we wanted to RP with them, back in the '90's.
Take wikis. I check these occasionally to see which new PCs have been made. I use them to figure out if there's someone out there I think my PC'd RP well with. And then I use @mail to check with the player if I can't page them.
Take +bboards. I actually read these too, especially the Wanted Concepts or RP Wanted boards. I @mail people to see if they want to link up, if I think my PC would bump into them.
Here's the issue I see: doing any of the above takes initiative. You can make a million tools, but they will be useless if no one takes the initiative to use them.
Take Skew's suggestion. I like it, and there's an incentive to it. I'm generally against the idea of baiting people with tangible rewards (XP) for a behavior, but this will favor active, all-day players over casual players. Still, it's an idea, but it's not one I would implement.
Take your idea -- a flag system that reminds you when someone wants to RP with you. I don't see how this will help a player not feel guilty about not RPing with a PC, and that leading to the PC's player fading away from a game. In fact, that might make it worse. Otherwise, I do not see how this is functionally different from @mail, which I look at every time I log in.
Finally, the shy player. Making new code is not going to suddenly change how that player feels about reaching out to others. It is difficult; it can be painfully difficult; and I do not mean to belittle them. That said, I do not see how new code is going to help them, especially if the target player ignores them. They might think: 'well, I sent them something that reminds them constantly that I'd like to RP with them and yet they are still ignoring me.' The unintended consequence of making a player feel even more insignificant is substantial, in my opinion.
Jumping off from Skew's idea, RfK had a system where, if you RPed with someone random, you got an extra beat. If you implement something similar via +wantrp, where you got 1 extra beat per week for completing at least one, that might be acceptable in my "I HATE POLICIES THAT FAVOR PEOPLE WITH MORE FUCKING TIME ON THEIR HANDS THAN ME" world.
@faraday said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
I think that's very different from guilt tripping your kids into thinking they owe you something for raising them.
Well, sure. I'm Catholic.
But, as I said elsewhere, context is important. I tell my kids how lucky they are and I also tell them that if any of their friends don't come to school with a lunch that they are allowed to share theirs and if they do they will get double dessert at home. I tell them how they should share with others because they are so fortunate.
Of course, I also tell them that I can and will take it all away if they end up being little shits.
As far as I'm concerned, I would never guilt-trip my kids. Why the fuck would I do that? It is my job to raise them to be independent, productive members of society. And once they are out of the house and on their own, then I can enter another phase of my life. Guilt-tripping requires connection, and connection requires contact.
On a side note, on parenting, Denzel got robbed.
@Thenomain said in MU Things I Love:
Wait, did you just call me chum? Who are you, Adam West?
And now I'm going to eat some taffy.
@wizz said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
We know he stalks former female students through Facebook and my sister wants to maybe create a fake profile to try and trap him somehow but I have no idea what the legality of that is.
It is not entrapment if a "sting" is pulled off by a private citizen.
As a resident lawyer, all I can tell you is that you neither have to forgive or forget him, but there is something to be said about hitting the "ignore" button on him. Write him out completely and pretend he never existed. Dissociate yourself from even wondering.
May save yourself the headache.
But, I mean, if you want one of us to hunt him down --
@Thenomain said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
You could be a terrible villain with a terrible villain's-cat. It would be adorable, and you'd be so confused why everyone thinks of you fondly.
Perhaps I am a terrible cat villain?
If you are using a different kind of logic from Jungian logic, which a majority of people I believe use, then how will you hope to market your product to them?
I don't pay people to produce shit I don't understand.
@Arkandel said in Dungeons and Dragons:
I was looking at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/15/dungeons_dragons_finally_going_digital/ . How do you folks feel about that?
About fucking time? But about 10 years too late for me to give a shit.
I'm scheduled for the J&J shot for April 1. I'll let everyone know how it goes.
J&J is less effective than the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, but its effectiveness is better than the average flu shot.
@Ghost said in Because Magic:
Why does it exist?
Why can people touch it?
Why does it behave the way that it does?
Why does any of this matter to the setting at all?
I add to this: what does it cost to use?
One of my favorite magical settings is Final Fantasy VI. Without going into tremendous detail, magic had to be drained from other living beings. Naturally, the villains captured and drained these beings, and used their magic power to fuel their war machines in ways that other conventional peoples could not oppose.
Good stuff.
@Gilette said in PC antagonism done right:
Well, how else do you handle someone with a fragile ego? Kid gloves.
If I have to treat someone with kid gloves, it means that I don't consider them an adult.
If I don't consider someone an adult, I don't see why I should have them on a game where it is clearly stated that all players should be, and act as if they are, adults.
These players are unwittingly toxic, most of the time, but I do not see why staff and players continually hold the belief that toxic players need to be either taught or coddled.
That said, I'm working on a system that throttles this shit down.
@Arkandel said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):
It is not. Constructive is asking them to stop and notifying an admin to take action if they think it's beyond the forum's rules.
I suppose @Ghost could have simply pointed to this post from @bored a week ago:
Several people comment how they don't play, and just kind of participate here. To me this is a hint of how little there is to actually enjoy in the hobby any more. Most games have the same problems they always have, good RP is painfully scarce, and little of what you can scrape up is worth the effort. Of course, a lot of this is due to a change in personal standards of effort/reward compared to games getting worse, although there are factors on that side too (very sandboxy games, etc).
I obviously count in the above category, except that I don't even post here that much. And when I do, it's primarily to be negative. So I probably haven't moved on as much beyond the WORA mindset as I'd like to think, which is on me. Then again, I think there's a lot of people like me; it's just a matter of the degrees to which people go to veil their vitriol in politeness.
To amend @Ghost's comment, perhaps: "Immature troglodytes like you who freely admit that they are here to be negative and cannot find any reason to continue to remain an active participant in the hobby, yet still feel compelled to arrive and take a shit on others' ideas, are the reason people get all kinds of squicked in this hobby, or on these boards, and I hope a bear shits in your mouth."
Constructively, I sincerely hope @surreality changes her mind, comes back, and finishes her work. Or, if she doesn't, that she has a splendiferous time hopefully not having to defend her work against people that, by their own admission, don't give two shits about her success or failure.
@jibberthehut said in Crafting Thread Part ?:
But hauling those bags ugh.
I have hauled 10 bags of 50 lbs. of pea gravel and over 200 retaining wall bricks over the past three days.
I am the diesel.
@Cupcake said in Course Corrections:
So if you see another player doing something - well, not WRONG, but maybe not so right? Do you offer corrections? Do you go through staff?
For example:
- A player uses past tense in poses, when the general consensus is present tense. Do you say something?
- A player ICly says something or poses a an unthemely reaction. Do you say something?
What's the best way to approach this kind of thing without coming off like a dick? Or is the not-dickish thing to do is try to ignore it?
Style is personal. I refrain from commenting on style, else I might as well start commenting on spelling.
Unthematic IC reactions may be made from ignorance. What anyone considers an "unthemely reaction" may be based solely on personal interpretation. Again, if it's an issue of personal interpretation or style, I would refrain from correction. If there is an egregious breach, however, I would bring that up, i.e. a Silver Fang Garou falling in love with a Shadow Lord Metis (which is, for the most part, pretty unthematic too).
@Derp said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:
And if I start my own game, it'll probably end up a lot like that.
In a system I'm working on, everything is related to time. You can convert it to XP to advance your stats, use it to harvest for resources, spend it to build shit, etc. But the more holdings you build, status you cultivate, the less time you have because of the implied maintenance of the same. The more you accumulate, the slower you can advance.
This balances newbs and dinos. Dinos have a lot of stuff to maintain, and have less time to do other things. Newbs have less things to maintain, and can dedicate more time to building themselves up. As newbs catch up, dinos can collaborate with newbs so that the work to maintain the kingdom/empire/faction is split, thus allowing dinos to start to advance again.
