Best posts made by Ganymede

@sunny said in How are you coping with COVID (and other 2020 fun)?:

Gotta be careful with the ones still around, amirite? Sigh. Getting old sucks a lot.

Well, like, you matter to me.

I mean, we've never been friends friends. But we touch base, yeah? And I'm pretty sure when I was starting out in this hobby OVER TWENTY YEARS AGO, you were one of the first people I consistently page-talked with during awkward years.

I remember A2A. I remember TCbT. I remember you on Denver by Night. I remember you inviting me to KD. These are all important experiences in my life which probably helped shape who I am. I can't and won't forget that, even if it isn't something I talk about with my partner or my kids.

It's just one of the quiet things no one ever knows, and I'm okay with that.

@Ghost

Have you played XCom2? I really hate fucking dying in that game. You spend, like, a dozen missions trying to build up a squadmate, and then bang one stupid step forward and you get mudstomped by a fucking Archon or Andromedan.

It's the worst feeling in the world. I have no doubt everyone here would feel the same.

Here's the thing that makes it feel worse, in my opinion: if your squadmate were taken out and could not be revived during the mission, your chances of finishing the mission diminish substantially. If you lose the mission, your entire campaign is put in jeopardy. Fail too many missions and you lose. End game.

So, what's the point of the death? Probably realism, probably to add further danger, probably to make people give more of a shit of making a wrong step. It's part of the game, sure. But if you removed it, the grand game is no worse off. Maybe your squadmate is taken out for a few months, but the rest of your team could feasibly pull through. Kind of.

That's my mentality when I consider the issue: is death necessary to add risk to the game? On a WoD game, I'd say that the threat of death is essential because there is rarely another direct, punitive consequence for failure. On another game, losing a combat encounter may have substantial effects to the game as a whole, providing a different consequence for failure. On a game that relies on PrPs, I'd say that unqualified threat of death is more important. On a political game like Arx, I'd say that death is less of necessary device because there appears to be punitive consequences for failure.

@WTFE

Feel like working with me on an economy system?

@too-old-for-this

Concur completely.

Maybe explain why others might not be okay with it: maybe they are uncomfortable with seeing naked bodies.

I really like how you suggest drawing in a safe place. I might add that if they wanted to show you, that it would be fine if it were done in a safe place. I'd want to know if they were drawing bodies which were inappropriate, like those depicting graphic violence in addition to the nudity. And I would explain why a drawing like that might hurt someone.

@Ghost said in Where's your RP at?:

When character death isn't a viable option, then you're playing the rpg with cheat codes.

This conclusion is easily contradicted.

Blood Bowl is a game based around the idea of football with fatalities; however, in the game, fatalities are ridiculously impossible to achieve, and injuries are difficult too. You could have the most badass Ogre give an opponent a Spinning Piledriver into the turf, and only have about a 50% chance of causing them to roll over and moan.

Is it an RPG? Well, you make the team, which consists of players, and you have a hand in crafting those players when they gain experience. You move them; you determine their actions; and then you roll to determine whether those actions are successful. Sounds like an RPG to me, but you could argue that it is a simulation or war game.

Still a game.

If you play the game to kill the other team, you are going to lose every single damn time. Because that's not the point to the game: the team that scores the most touchdowns wins, to paraphrase John Madden. So, causing character death isn't a viable option in the slightest. Not if you want to reach your objectives. And even if your objective is to KILL KILL KILL, you are unlikely to reach that objective.

So, for some RPGs, character death isn't a viable option, and people still engage in it, and invest ridiculous amounts of disposable income into it.

A character is only as well-written as the person being them. Whether a character has a sense of their own mortality depends on the maturity and wisdom of the person creating them.

@Catsmeow

One time, I had someone text me with that after I was unable to respond to their messages for 30 minutes. This was the resulting text conversation:

She: I guess you just don't care.
Me: I don't anymore, no.
She: Are you breaking up with me?
Me: Not exactly. You forced the issue.
She: I don't fucking understand.
Me: That's the other problem.

Passive-aggressive behavior can be amusing at times!

@Ghost said in Where's your RP at?:

Vampire could be played multiple ways, and technically, per the book, a Vampire could murder their ghoul, legally, because they're having a bad day. This isn't very popular to do with ghoul players, but is the culture of the game playing that level of high risk vampire? Really depends on the game, the staff, and how the Playerbase wants to play.

If the limits of what is reasonable or unreasonable killing is based on how the players involved want to handle it, then you're treading into the "consent"-land of killing. That is, that whether a killing is justified on an OOC level depends on whether the people involved are okay with it. And there will be time when one person says "you must die," and the other says, "but I didn't do shit to deserve it."

That's when staff have to come in and make a call. On the one hand, vampire is deadly game involving characters that are political predators who, in nWoD, can kill each other willy-nilly, barring some Prince's rules. On the other hand, if you have players killing other players for flimsy reasons, you're not going to have much of a player base left that's interested in playing with people they think are assholes.

There are plenty of WoD characters/players that love having that 75 agg per hit means you must fear my UNDEFEATABLE DICE PENIS factor. Some flaunt it. Some don't​. I would never condone that kind of bullying other players to keep them humbled, but the real question is...Is it in theme?

If you don't condone it, then why would you let it happen on your watch? That's the dilemma that staff often face: having to please a diverse group of players who have their own idea of where the "line" is. Theme or not, the question, when faced with it, comes down to: who do I want to piss off? Because if everyone's okay with it, then staff aren't being called in.

Again, this is where being clear about the risk expectation of the game, going in, is necessary.

I've been around the block on this topic for over a score years now. From my perspective now, I can say this with anecdotal and experiential authority: you are never going to be crystal clear about the risk expectation of your game. You can definitely try, but you won't get there. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try, but it's good to be realistic in your expectations.

@arkandel

@WTFE said in MU Things I Love:

Seriously, though, while we don't always agree with each other, I've never found a reason not to respect your opinion. (And I'll swear this to be a lie under oath if challenged, but you have changed my mind on a few things over the years too.)

We're both Canadian, but I'm actually Chinese, bro. Sorry.

A couple of things.

Lies.

Not me. I am a defense cat.

@Ghost said in Where's your RP at?:

IMO, if your game uses lethal action, then you cannot rule out character death as a result.

Right. I agree. I think the issue here is the agency in making that determination, and recognizing that some players prize their characters an awful lot.

That's why I brought up XCOM2. It stings a lot when you lose a squadmate that you spent an awful lot of time building up. And for what? If you lose a mission, you can lose the game. And if your squadmates are out for a huge amount of time, you can also lose the game.

Again, it's about risk in the end. And risk can come in all sorts of forms, as @Seraphim73 points out. Build in a system where risk is more than just DOOM, and I think you can satisfy everyone. Let death be a choice by players, and I think you meet everyone's expectations.

@sunny

I don’t recall taking any position regarding Kobe Bryant’s death, but if I did it was not to censor or censure anyone for pointing out that he settled rape allegations against him.

Nor am I here to excoriate anyone for pleading to not speak ill of those who have passed. I believe that many people earnestly believe that speaking ill of the dead is morally and ethically wrong.

What I will do, however, is suggest that earnest discussions regarding people’s legacies be moved elsewhere. It is natural however to react immediately here, for better or worse, and I’m not going to start wielding a weapon unless it starts getting out of hand.

Is that fair?

@Shayd said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

...don't you think that crediting one person for ruining games is a bit of a stretch, not to mention giving him waaaay too much credit for his impact? I mean, even if I loathed him and thought he was the worst thing ever to "contribute" to MU*ing, I wouldn't allow that to push me away from a game I otherwise liked. It seems like you give him way too much power over your choices.

That may be true.

Looking at it another way, I really like alcoholic beverages, but I really won't accept one from Bill Cosby. Sure, he hasn't raped me (yet) and I've only heard second-hand that he's a rapist, but I'm not David Hume and I don't require a ridiculous level of proof to make an acceptable conclusion.

@too-old-for-this said in Good TV:

I know that he's a very well-trained actor and I have no doubt his range could extend to both, but I still struggle to see Ol' Crazy Eyes playing Superman. XD

He already has.

@fatefan said in Suitable system for a gritty fantasy game:

I jokingly posted "Ill Met in Novigrad?" in another thread about games we'd like to play on, and it's made me realize how much I, like some others, would love to see a dark and gritty fantasy (non-Lords & Ladies) game, whether it's based on the Witcher, Lankhmar, or whatever.

So, I find myself wondering what sort of system might work to support the development of one.

Worked on a dark fantasy setting to use CoD/GMC's system. Stumbled after Mage 2.0 came out, because it really fucked with how I wanted to do magic.

L5R is nice. Earthdawn is nice, but the game is strongly-tied to the setting.

@rightmeow

I think it is common, but not exclusive. I am pretty neurotypical and I love music when I’m doing anything.

But I am also a cat, so —

@Bobotron said in WW released Dark Pack guidelines:

There's a tizzy in the LARP world over the reading of it and the fact it implies you can't take donations or charge a site fee. My reading of the text explicitly relates to the 'your material' term, at which point charging a site fee is charging for the communal access to hotel space, not 'your material' (IE: the game). Your thoughts?

The thrust of the provision is to ensure that the licensee does not commercially benefit from White Wolf's IP. At the very least, White Wolf is saying: if you use our shit you can't profit from it. This is important, as White Wolf needs to be able to demonstrate, in the event it gets into an actual IP legal battle, that it took reasonable, appropriate steps to protect its IP.

If you take donations to operate the site? I can't see White Wolf taking issue with that. But there has to be a nexus between the site fee charged and the actual cost to operate the site. Charging a site fee of $25 may be inappropriate where there are 100 members, and the LARP is generally run through player volunteers.

@boneghazi

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

If it's breaking a rule or creating an unfriendly environment, deal with the actual problem.

If people being obnoxious pricks sometimes with others is an offense to be banned, I'd have no players left.

While I don't like or see the need for an OOC Lounge, I know others like to use it to meet others OOCly and chat, so I'd leave it. I'd create a Quiet Room for people that want to idle peacefully, but be available by page to others who may want to specifically RP with them. And if the chatting gets tart or combative or abusive, then just fucking deal with the abusive shits as if they were abusive shits, no matter where.

There's people fucking dying in South Sudan, and this is what we're wasting our times with.

@too-old-for-this

For me, the weird part was the refusal to allow a co-signer not in bankruptcy to affirm and take over the debt. That’s a no-brainer.

There is no reason not to employ a system similar to what we have in the United States. All parties to the complaint are known, as are their allegations and claims. All decisions are public, as are the findings, the reasons for them, and the consequential rulings.

I've heard staff opposition to this. To that, I respond: if you are incapable or unwilling to express your reasons for a decision that detrimentally affects another, then you should probably not make that decision.

I've heard player opposition to this. To that, I respond: if you are incapable or unwilling to deal with the consequences of making a complaint, then you should probably not make it.

Staff don't need to be transparent about how they come up with policies. But they do have to be transparent about how they decide specific complaints of conduct, against them or between players. Without the latter, all support is based on supposition and imaginings.