Posts made by Ganymede

@arkandel said in Let's talk about TS.:

And it's this kind of thing I was hoping to discuss here - what are some good ways to approach this issue?

I would say, bluntly, communicate well. But you said that we couldn't fall back on this.

To parse it out a bit better:

1. Set boundaries: You have limits. Declare your limits.

2. Set clear boundaries: Declare them again. Be specific. Everything from "no anal sex" to "i really hate pregnancy sex."

3. Then set expectations: How often do you want TS? Is it a garnish or the main course when you come online? (Yes, double-entendre there, har har, GTFO.)

4. Then discuss what you like: Do you prefer the grinding, descriptive, purple-prose TS, or the light-hearted, fun-having TS that leads to injuries and escapades?

Outside of this triumvirate, there are my personal lines:

1. Never give out personal information.

2. Never talk about RL sex partners, past or current.

3. Never agree to chat, swap pics, or otherwise interact away from the MUSH of this forum.

@lisse24 said in Character 'types':

I struggle to empathize with vampires, even when I have a concept I think is cool.

And I'm the complete opposite, which is why we work well together. You take the normal mortal, and I play the broken vampire.

@arkandel said in Let's talk about TS.:

Yes, a lot of the answers above will (and should) essentially be "communicate well". But since our community isn't exactly renown for our skills in that area, and since the topic itself is pretty sensitive we might benefit from going into some detail here and share our thoughts.

I think this is a poor presumption, from personal experience.

Maybe I'm lucky? Maybe I'm good. I have not had a problem with TS-partners in almost 15 years. I've had TS with folks here that are considered bad eggs, even. The best partners are the ones that communicate well, but everyone that I have had experiences with have communicated very well with me.

And I have had TS with a lot of people here.

So, let's not presume our partners are incapable of communicating well.

On this topic, though, I believe that safety is the most important issue. To that end, boundaries are important, and the most important is the boundary between OOC and IC. Make your own rules, stand firm, and never, ever compromise on that.

@admiral said in Good TV:

Every network will want a conservative comedy show now.

So ... not a comedy, but a tragedy?

I concur with Sunny.

I love post-apoc games. I would play the shit out of this one and Fallout: Montreal (presuming I could get myself to play a game set in Quebec).

@lisse24 said in Character 'types':

More important than anything else, if I'm going to stick with a character for a long time, they have to feel real and solid to me.

I concur with this, and feel the same way.

I find that I drift away from characters where I don't get the chance to have them feel real and solid.

It doesn't matter their background or who they are. What matters is the situations I get them into, where I can slip into them and be them, success or not.

@roz

Right, and that's totally, 100 percent, okay.

But, as Auspice points out, if a player is sending communication from his PC to set some political situation up with another PC, and that PC's player isn't responding, it slows down the politics. This just happens: it happens on Vampire games, as it happened on Fifth Kingdom, as I'm sure it happens on Kushiel and other Lords and Ladies games.

Responding back with a simple "I'm not sure what the fuck is going on or what to do" is as much a response as any other, and is a pretty reasonable position to take on a game that just opened up with a system that is pretty rare on MUSHes. I'm almost positive that Arx had a similar situation when it first opened because I didn't know what the fuck to do, and that's okay.

The economy system could use some better documentation, that's for sure, but I complained about Arx's system similarly too.

But not responding to +mails and attempts to communicate? That's also going to cause a problem. That and +mail because, FFS, I hate +mail so much.

@pyrephox said in Valorous Dominion:

Anyone more familiar with the system have more insight on how to create social/intellectual challenges and opportunities that rely on characters' competencies rather than players' competencies (and my competence to accurately and usefully convey all the information in the scene that the players might need to make effective choices)?

I think I read somewhere that the entire point to Pendragon is that it relies on player competencies socially and intellectually. Any rolls related thereto demonstrate the effectiveness of the choices, not the choices themselves. There are some massive holes in the system (e.g., Awareness, but no Stealth?), but I'm guessing plots are supposed to unfold in a very organic way. That, and some agency is left to the Trait system, which can be a little frustrating.

@bored said in Valorous Dominion:

Go read your post. You specify 3 houses are good, and then say a 'handful' of others (there really aren't that many) are 'doing nothing.' If that's not some nasty ass bitchy vague-shade, I don't know what it is. It's also pretty much bullshit on its face as I'm fairly sure every house is doing at least something. Maybe not all of it is stuff you're privy to?

Yeah, I read that post, and I thought: that seems to be a pretty spot-on observation of fact.

It's not "nasty ass bitchy vague-shade" if the opinion or observation is based on, well, experience.

The only people that can really say otherwise are on staff, but, as far as I can tell, there are houses that are apparently busier than others. And this will continue to be the case until the houses are fleshed out.

It happened on Fifth Kingdom too.

Throttle the attitude back, man, and stop being so defensive.

@auspice

Woman, that was in real life, Ms. InstantPot.

Sue me for liking to sauté, bake, and roast things.

@auspice

Hey.

I'm, like, standing right here, man.

Maybe it will come back in a few years, and then run for ten more seasons than it should, a la Family Guy.

@rinel said in Good or New Movies Review:

I understand that in the abstract and agree with it. But the viewers' interactions with Black Americans are limited to Killmonger, his girlfriend (who gets maybe two lines?), and an assortment of children. Killmonger seems to go heavy on the AAVE dialect when he is engaging in "thuggish" behavior. At best, the movie is putting forward some sort of "Wakandan man's burden," where a fictional country must elevate American blacks through advanced technology and intervention. I don't think any of this was the intended message of the film. It just seemed like it was sort of implied in the way that the director emphasized certain things.

I firmly believe that the best scripts for comic book heroes are the ones that focus on the villain and his or her motivations. It is easy for a viewer to understand a hero's motivation, but less so for a villain. Sympathetic villains are wasted where screenwriters neglect to attach them emotionally to the audience. To me, that's what happened here.

I understood T'Challa's struggle immediately. I didn't understand Killmonger's. I think that many black Americans understood Killmonger immediately, and had a stronger emotional attachment to him. I think this was by design. For a viewer like me, however, I wish I had a stronger connection because it would have made the movie so much better.

@sunny said in Spoilers:

I don't think anyone should have "repercussions" for accidents of this nature. Intentional griefing via spoilers -- regardless of when it happens in relation to the media in question -- should be swatted (fly swatted, not the other kind omg), though I don't know what kind of consequences are possible/enforceable.

I concur with this.

I asked -- asked -- that people not spoil things, and, for the most part, that was respected. I never expected to Macho Man Randy Savage Flying Elbow Drop them for it.

What I would like to say is that some of us -- maybe most of us -- don't have the same amount of free time or disposable cash as others. Some of us hover around the poverty line. And I know, as NERDS Y'ALL NERDS we want to chitter-chatter about the things we like, don't like, and argue about incessantly, but let's also try to be considerate of others, in the vein of our recent push to make this place feel more like a community.

@rinel said in Good or New Movies Review:

What I did not like was the feeling of "African American culture bad, fictional Wakandan culture good" that I got.

I can't argue with a feeling, but I think you may have missed what the writers were getting at.

What I got was that Wakandans find African American culture "bad" because it was born out of a history of oppression. What I saw T'Challa wrestling with was Wakanda's part in that history. What I understood was that T'Challa discovered and concluded that Wakanda was as responsible for that oppression as the oppressors because they let it happen when they could have intervened and ended it.

What I object to is that this plays into neo-conservative tropes of military intervention in order to make the world a "better and safer" place. Similiarly, I too agree that foreign investment isn't a meaningful response to the inequities that exist in the nations where the United States has intervened.

The fact that we're talking about this is a very good thing, however, and it is for that reason that I approve of Black Panther whole-heartedly.

Hooray! Balls!

@faraday said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

Because when I made the first grid for BSG:Pacifica I thought it would be a fun persistent "hangout" location based on how often it actually came up in the show. Then people actually used it and it kind of became 'a thing' on Battlestar games that followed.

Right. I get that.

So, who gets to determine if a location is a fun, persistent "hangout"? The firing range didn't get nearly as much fun-time as Erin's bunk, trust me. And that was very much a hangout, along with Charlie's. But we had a firing range because you put one in.

I think, maybe, what some gamers like is, on an OOC level, the idea of having some sort of IC "hangout", as a concept, that's permanently stuck on the Grid. And since the early days of yore, players have wanted these for their PCs. Thus, they like to @dig rooms, and thereby make their mark for future generations.

I dunno, I'm just speculating at this point.

Dunno. I've been MUSHing since the early '90s so... that's pretty old too.

So that's the problem! Lemme get some Ben-Gay for you, it'll be all better.

@faraday

Why was there a Head in the ship on BSG:U?

The way I figure it, and maybe this will help, digging and linking rooms to a lot of us feels like we're creating something permanent and of worth on a game. Sure, we know that these places we make may go ka-boom if we idle out and don't reassign them to permanent builder bits, but, for the most part, these places have a sort of permanence that isn't matched by object rooms or temp rooms.

It could very well be that Sunny and I, who are, for lack of better term, really fucking old MUShers -- Twin Cities by Teatime old -- are just used to the idea of having permanent rooms on a game, rather than these seemingly-new-fangled knick-knacks and doo-dads like temp rooms and temporary RP rooms, and proxy PCs, etc.

I know that a location created via Public/Private scene are no more or less permanent in the IC world than the Head, but the part of me that cannot sever my OOC mindset, experiences, and ancient ways still finds them less permanent than a @dug room @chowned to my PC object.

So, maybe it ain't even a culture thing. It could just be an age thing.

Sunny and I are old. Really, fucking old. Like, I ain't lying, I think as quickly as zefrank narrates sometimes, no bullshit.

@thenomain said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

It's Ten Forward vs. The Holodeck.

@faraday, I think this is the perspective Sunny is trying to explain.

I respect everyone’s opinion regarding whether we moved too slowly on that thread. From my perspective, I believe Valkyrie kept things as clean as she could, and I believe the civility could have been better from the rest of us.

I’ll try to move faster in the future, but in my defense work is treating me like its bitch.

@secretfire

All God’s children, they have to die.