Posts made by Ganymede

@Auspice said in RL Anger:

Space is not something I have. I've got an exercise bike and a yoga mat tucked in a corner. That's about the extent of it.

Daily Burn.

Try it. You'll like it.

@Carex said in Fear and Loathing:

If you trying to let people skip the boring parts of being a new character, that's a great goal. I wholeheartedly approve of this idea because we should always strive to tell the most interesting parts of our stories. A multi-tiered, confusing system with weird confusing names seems a poor method to do it instead of just allotting everyone an XP bonus from the get go to flesh out their abilities more. It would let people skip to the fun parts where there characters aren't as useless as a level 1 D&D character.

I honestly thought the same until I actually went there and played.

I'm no longer there due to time constraints and issues, but I can whole-heartedly endorse the place.

The key is: you have a choice. You can come in as the super-powerful cop or not. It's up to you.

Having the choice is better than not having the choice.

@Carex said in Fear and Loathing:

Looked at the Character Types page with stars, guest stars and all that then thought to myself, why would a new player want to play on a game where having over powered elites who could kill you on a whim is a FEATURE of the game? I understand that there will always be people who earn power over time, but those players tend to be fairly stable.

I thought this too, but here's how it works in practice.

Anyone can apply for a Guest Star. Guest Stars are static, and can only gain XP when a Star reaches the same XP point. Stars start with a substantial amount of XP to begin with.

In Vampire in particular, why aren't there powerful Elders?

I found the existence of Guest Stars interesting, RP-wise. All Guest Stars were clearly marked.

Still, you may not want to play on such a game, which is fine. But, in practice, Guest Stars do not make the game any more or less accessible for new players to it.

@Arkandel said in Comic book diversity:

For example the X-Men being plucked out of the past... how many stories like have we read over the years? Alternate timeline characters, characters from the future, you name it. And yet Bendis writes this particular one, Marvel promotes it ahead of time, and then you know it's meant to be significant...this time. Otherwise plot threads with about the same kind of story in them become redundant the moment you stop reading the particular mini-series in which they appear.

Dude, this only adds to my reasoning. I'm not going to stick around and see what happens if it isn't significant -- or compelling. And, frankly, I've read some storyline synopses, and they sound as if they came out of the head of the worst Hollywood hack.

The industry has hammered itself into irrelevance. But I don't feel bad for it.

@Arkandel said in Comic book diversity:

Do you think the turn to female and ethnic characters is what's hurting sales?

I'm on the side of "too many damned storylines and conflicting continuities."

Comic books were birthed from serials. Serials had one continuity. These days, the myriad of storylines makes every single fucking comic feel like "WHAT IF?" issues, Rick James and all.

@Tempest said in PC antagonism done right:

Games need XP caps. Seriously.

I'll be over here, waking up after others have been fucking woke to the shit that people like me and Ice Cream Emperor have been griping about for years.

@Alamias said in PC antagonism done right:

That happened a couple of times on TR as well. I remember the Crone getting the shaft a few times because all the territory around them got taken up by the LS, and they couldn't leave the island they were on.

For a brief moment, TR's Vampire Sphere was actually political. That was when the Prince decided to let people claim their own territory, provided they had the right votes from Primogen and Prisci. Players scrambled to get the territories they wanted and thought they could hold. And it was fun.

@Derp said in PC antagonism done right:

There should be meaningful mechanical interactions available for people who don't want to throw down and brute force their way through things most of the time.

Let me add something to this.

If you intend to have a political game, there must be meaningful mechanics for people who don't want to throw down. There also must be a meaningful penalty for throwing down.

And at the risk of being repetitious, this is what RfK did well for a time. You could see it in action: when the Invictus tried to fuck with @lordbelh, he went up and stole their territory from them, which caused the Covenant to lose ascendancy. No violence or physical force; just a well-coordinated assault with influence.

@surreality said in RL Anger:

But did it really have to be playing 'In The Hall of the Mountain King' in that super fucking creepy and always off key ice cream truck chime?!

Mm. I'd like to hear Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain" or Chopin's "Funeral March."

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

Maybe I should start a new thread titled "How to keep MSB threads from becoming flame wars."

You could do that, but you could also realize that I concur with you. Just, with profanity and shit.

@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.

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

If one likes the Earthdawn setting, though, and wants it with a tad less crunch there's the recent Earthdawn Age of Legends edition/port (found here: http://www.vagrantworkshop.com/index.php?categoryid=29) which is based on Fudge rather than whatever FASA calls their system. The die roll resolution is a bit... unique. But it's pretty accessible all things considered.

FASA's system is why you play Earthdawn. FUDGE's system is why I take power shits.

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

I like having a community on the game, but I've seen so many instances where someone takes what is meant to be a playspace and turn it into their critical outlet for whatever they can't deal with or handle in life, and just wonder if there is any way to cut that off without making people feel like they are overly policed.

I got this text from someone yesterday who said, basically:

"After taking a break from my phone yesterday, I decided that I need everyone to invest more time in their friendship with me. I can't do it on my own."

The thing is, I barely ever spoke to this person. I don't even know how the fuck they got my number; I know who they are, and I know why they could have her number, but we never hang out and I never bothered to get to know her. Because I didn't want to.

A part of me wanted to text her back and point out how unreasonably narcissistic it was to demand that any friend invest any time into anything because of your needs. Part of me wanted to shake the fuck out of this unwitting idiot who doesn't seem to realize that I don't know why she bothers.

But if I spent my life fixing the lives of people that simply demand it without payment, I wouldn't have time for the people I actually care about.

If you want to be part of a local MU* community, you don't need an OOC area to do it. How about just chatting like a normal, well-adjusted human on channels?

@Arkandel said in WW released Dark Pack guidelines:

Sometimes I feel MU* have been really pushing the envelope on the latter with their super detailed wikis, going as far as to copy verbatim the texts, effects and of course rolls of every power or special ability, for instance.

I guess so? I mean, people need to be fucking sensible.

@Thenomain said in WW released Dark Pack guidelines:

I had someone ask me if it allows for using book text on, say, a Mu*. I think the concern here was how much leniency does the word "use" give?

A lot, really. Again, the intent of the license is the important part. You could probably copy, word for word, what is in a book, so long as you credit the work (much like a citation for a paper). But if you're profiting off of that page somehow, you may get dinged for it.

@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.

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

I'd find it interesting if the premise of this thread was generally accepted by mushers. Lack of an ooc gathering place is a more rp-intensive attitude.

Your argument presumes intent over inertia.

@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.

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

I hate OOC lounges. Channels are fine.

I concur.

But I like having OOC lounges to keep the shitheads in one place. I usually stay IC all the time, so if the OOC inane stupidity is left in the OOC lounge, it makes the channels more pleasant to lurk on.

@Thenomain said in WW released Dark Pack guidelines:

IANAL. I have asked @Ganymede to read it in case he has other opinions or inputs.

It looks like a standard revocable license to me. The language is pretty straight-forward. If there are specific issues or questions, you can raise them here or with me, and I'll try to spit out a reasonable opinion.