Posts made by Ganymede

@Derp said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

Call it victim-blaming if you want. But if people are so invested that they can't see what long-term damage it's doing to them, and are unable to walk away in favor of something healthier? Yeah. That's a problem.

Sure.

You know what, though? It doesn't cost me much to listen to people.

I make a lot of friends that way on games. It's not that I actually care more than what might be in the moment, or as a human might be concerned about another human's suffering. It's part of the empathy chip that I had installed in me not too long ago, and have since brought under my control.

In my 20+ years of playing, staffing, and being in this hobby far more than I ever wanted to be, I have found it easy to separate the chronic problem-makers from the genuine problem-sufferers. Even so, I have found that the chronic problem-makers aren't bad people either; some of them just want someone to talk to. If one were to argue that there are actual very few reprehensible people in our hobby, then I would counter that by saying that there are very few people that actually practice the profession of victimhood. Some players are simply more sensitive or more anxious or more paranoid than others.

My concern as a lawyercatbot and a Scion of All Wisdom is that the very few reprehensible people can do considerably more damage to one or many people than professional victims. In my experience, professional victims sow discord and chaos, but do not stalk or threaten others. Comparing them to the people Surreality and Sunny have had to deal with? I'd gladly take 100 professional victims over 1 creepy stalker.

Professional victims grate the shit out of me, but I will gladly step on the necks of any stalkers that know another player's RL identity and are following them. That bullshit is fucking wrong and disturbing, and we need to stamp that shit out. Accusations of the same must also be taken very seriously: a false accusation can ruin someone's reputation in our hobby, and should be dealt with swiftly and unmercifully.

In my Mod Voice, loudly: if you feel threatened or stalked on this board, please bring it to our (Arkandel and I) attention immediately. Arkandel and I agree on few things, but we absolutely will not tolerate stalking. We may request that you help us understand what's going on, but we promise you -- I promise you -- we will take that shit very, very seriously.

@Rook said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

I know that you think that this is shocking (if you are not being sarcastic or facetious), but it is much more common than you might understand. It happens a lot of WoD/CoD games that I've tried joining. Make a new character and make some page-contacts, looking for people who might want fresh RP in their circles, and almost every time I get asked who I am.

I haven't been asked that question since Denver by Night.

Otherwise, I concur with you. I'm not shocked. I can see from +where and +who how gaming has changed since when I first started.

I don't know what this has to do with masking or not-masking oneself.

@Ghost

Any corporate executive that cares to use "synergy" as a euphemism for a "layoff" might as well use the term "Cleveland Steamer," because that is far more connotative.

@Ghost said in RL Anger:

Calling a layoff a synergy is like saying that OJ Simpson ended his relationship with his wife.

Not really.

A synergy has nothing to do with terminating employment.

Murdering her is a way to end a relationship with your wife.

The City of Dayton, right now.

Also, this song, which was the inspiration for one of my favorite characters.

@Sunny

The important thing is that we establish that you are older than me.

@Kanye-Qwest said in Our Tendency Towards Absolutes:

no thanks, i'm good

philistine

@Sunny

As I expected, we were always in agreement.

@Ghost said in General Video Game Thread:

Someone recommended it to me because it's cross-platform. It's...not bad, but TBH it's coming across to me as a "highly repetitive Fortnite-styled overgrown microtransaction cell phone game version of Monster Hunter: World".

You lost me at "Fortnite."

@Auspice said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

Remaining the distanced, stand-offish person who gives nothing of themselves only works to an extent. And that extent is: people stop interacting with you in return. Because you're weird. You're sterile. You're suspect. You feel wrong and awkward and untrustworthy.

People interact with me a lot, but I don't really give much of myself. In my 20+ years, I can count on my hand the number of people who actually know me, and I'm happy about that. (I consider Sunny the person I've known the longest RL (what is it, like, nearly 20 years?) from here, and Caryatid as the closest.)

As Arkandel said, I am, and likely will always be, just Ganymede here and abroad. And I'm fine with that. I don't Skype, I don't chat over the phone, and I don't like sharing very personal parts of my life. Sure, I do sometimes, but not enough that people casually remember me as a feline robot.

That aside, it was very nice to receive a compliment from a staffer who knew me only as Ganymede. And I sometimes get recognized as such.

@Sunny said in Our Tendency Towards Absolutes:

Augh, yeah, but we're talking about people electing to not get involved with plots, not a scene. Scene consequences = ok. Consequences for not getting involved in staff plots = oh hell no.

I see your perspective, but isn't any staff-run setback plot a "consequence for not getting involved"?

On The Fifth Kingdom, I recall that the players never mobilized to address a certain threat, and that threat ended up becoming more dangerous. We scrambled afterwards to address the threat, and all was good. The threat wasn't personal, but it was "global" insofar as the player base was concerned. I don't think you'd consider that a "consequence for not getting involved," would you?

Because I agree with you that staff shouldn't make playing feel like a chore. I am 100% percent behind that. But at the same time, if the players succeed at everything then where's the risk that enhances the feeling of success? Villains sometimes prevail, and that's not a bad thing at all (see, e.g., The Empire Strikes Back).

@Lotherio said in Poll: Do I enjoy this hobby more than I don't?:

Like, I thought I had seen it all a year or so ago, then @Ganymede decided their char wanted to build a defensive wall on a game to help defend against clans of Ulster. The RP and even prepping combat for a wall in FS3 was fun. The RP lasted a few sessions, then the combat started by having rams under turtles attack the wall (two vehicles for those familiar with FS3); which lead to a medic on the wall taking splinter (shrapnel) damage and the group rushing to figure out how best to help so they didn't lose the medic before the main fight.

I had the most fun with a PC in a long time doing all of that. The Fifth Kingdom had this neat feel of "we'z all gonna die so let's kill as many of them as we can take" set in a fantasy world similar to our own. It was like BSG, but with swords and sieges.

You make a good point, though, about seeking new things. That's why I joined Sometimes a Great Notion and Empire State Heroes. I want some new experiences because, for a year or so, I was enjoying very new experiences playing FS3 games. I enjoyed every moment of it.

And I finally broke into a superhero game yesternight with an excellent session that was sadly cut short because a tornado blew through my backyard.

Still, all good times. That's why I still enjoy the hobby. One day, I'll probably go to Arx, but I don't think I can handle a game like that right now.

My city is in a state of emergency.

There’s fallen trees and sheet metal everywhere.

I live in a suburb, and the strip malls look like disaster zones.

My Aldi!

Lexus RX 350.

That aside, I should be grateful. There's no damage to the vehicle.

But there is debris in the neighborhood that doesn't belong. We've got aluminum siding all over, but none of the houses around here have aluminum siding. Found out that there was substantial storm and tornado damage just half a mile south of here.

Dodged a real fucking bullet.

I bought a new car this weekend.

A hail storm just ripped through.

Shit.

@Tinuviel

@faraday said in Poll: Do I enjoy this hobby more than I don't?:

Is it too late to change a vote?

You sound so British right now.

@Coin said in Through which lens...:

While I often try to keep a backdrop of the game's general genre, I find that MUing is very flexible in that each scene can almost have its own genre, though of course genres that have more to do with character attitude rather than setting elements are much easier to change into "subgenres" within the game's main one.

I concur, but write separately to add.

I find that mixing genres can be tricky, and sometimes jarring. When I was playing on a Lords & Ladies game, I was hoping for a darker, more noir setting than expected, and I did not get what I was looking for. When I was playing on Fallen World, I played my PC through the lens of being a "superhero" as opposed to a "mystery solver," and that was nominally more successful. I did not get as much grit as I wanted in BSG:U, but I ended up with a lighter, more comical take to the war stories, and that seemed to work quite well with Fox Force Five.

So, it does depend, but having the wrong lens can make an experience dissonant.

@Pandora

To be fair, it may be reasonably argued that lawyers are, in fact, poxes on society.

@surreality

Villains are always more interesting than heroes.

Of course you aren’t a villain for protecting yourself, but even if you were neither I nor any reasonable person would find fault with your decision.