Posts made by Ganymede

@Entropy

I'm still not sure what you intend to implement as a method of conflict resolution. Do you have an idea?

I would prefer a game on the scale of Exiles substantially more than X-Men or The Avengers. "Superhuman" does not always mean a super human.

@Arkandel said:

Back at the gym after the holidays. They had a pretty good personal training sessions package I'm taking advantage of, too, to work on form and possibly hit deadlifts again - which I'm always worried about since decades of bad sitting posture and desk-jockey work have done bad things to my lower back.

Double-posting.

Deadlifts blow, but there's ways to hit the small back without them. Standing shrugs with a weighted barbell are becoming more challenging than deadlifts for me, even Romanian deadlifts. Hell, standing shoulder presses do the same. Basically, do your shit standing up, and you'll start to feel it in the small of your back, especially bent-over rows.

@Luna said:

Goals? This flat white girl ass has got to do something. That something means get rounder.

I'm Asian, so you ain't got nothing on the flat-ass problem.

That said, squats, kettlebell swings, and deadlifts are going to be your friends. That's a good way to target your glutes, as well as getting a killer sweat up if you pound hard enough.

@Echx said:

Conversely, some of you may possibly remember Sandraudiga from City of Hope. (Yeah, yeah. CoH. Grain of salt. Salt block. Whatever.) For those who aren't familiar, she was Pure Breed 5 Get of Fenris kinfolk with gnosis and some other crap who apparently let herself into the Umbra for giggles to go kill banes.

I really miss that pack. Nothing says "I heart Fenrir" like having a seven-foot, 400 lb. theurge screaming at a Death Spirit: "JOIN ME OR DIE COULD YOU DO ANYTHING LESS."

But, yeah, that chick was annoying as fuck.

@Ghost said:

Or that, but if you don't agree as staff and make it somewhat clear what the theme should be, you're inevitably going to find some player complaining about your game on some online gaming site about how shitty your game is for not letting them play a sun-immune vampire who is a daytime stripper.

If I am running a WoD game, I should not have to explain how your example is out-of-theme -and-setting; it's self-evident.

If they want to put up a stink about it, that's fine with me; I'm not the one looking like an idiot.

As staff, my time is better spent running stories and communicating with the players that are in theme and setting.

@Ghost said:

Thus, it is important that all of the staff agree in the range of what is or is not important to the theme, make a synopsis of that available for incoming players to read, and then require players agree to roleplay within theme.

It is practically impossible to do this. This would require staff to imagine the range and breadth of goofy shit they will have to encounter. It is more reasonable to simply inform players that staff may have to call you into a meeting if they feel you are RPing outside of the game's theme and/or setting, and may remove you if you refuse to abide by the directions and/or recommendations they provide.

@Arkandel said:

What are your ideas? Not your goals or aspirations, what is your system to achieve them?

Again, this.

@tragedyjones said:

I got a couple more nuggets I can drop after lunch.

Is that an unintentional double-meaning?

@hedgehog said:

But, but...Bob Jones University and Liberty University are both kind of colleges, sort of. If you're delusional.

You say this as if attending any university means you are educated.

@Ghost said:

I clicked "X" on this girl a little while ago, but man...the degree of post weight loss self righteousness has been high.

Well, you can't fix stupid.

@tragedyjones said:

If they have a low Intelligence and/or Academics, they probably do not have a grasp on literary quotes.

You know, a lot of pundits on Fox News and militia representatives can quote the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court case law.

@Coin said:

That third party (staff) is also part of the game and can also be included while still keeping to a collaborative playing scheme.

I used the word "interference" precisely and deliberately.

Players can keep staff in the loop. And staff may want to be in on the loop. Frankly, as staff, I don't care if people are spying on one another so long as they are doing so with the other's knowledge and understanding.

Folks need to learn to play with others as much as they must learn to play.

@Arkandel said:

Hm, what occured to me is we're providing no way for someone to spy on a place rather than a person.

I.e. "I'll be obfuscated in Joe's Bar tomorrow night between 6-10 pm". How is that to be fairly facilitated?

You can use softcode to do it by setting a DARK object in the room that records poses.

Personally, I take issue most of the time to code and procedures that would distance players or inject staff where it is unnecessary.

If we agree that MU*ing is collaborative, then we should promote policies that foster collaboration and minimize third-party interference. I understand the concerns, the preferences, and the occasional anomalies, but, for the most part, my response to such would be: "suck it up, princess."

@Arkandel said:

It seems like a neater way to do it and can spare staff the headache of doing it manually.

But it doesn't spare staff the headache of having to code the command. I don't see much of a benefit for the effort, but if you're willing to pull this together, good for you.

It will not be something I demand from my coders.

@Arkandel said:

I don't see how you don't see the timing issue. I explained it above, how did it fail to meet your criteria?

You could meet the criterion of actually raising a timing issue to start with.

To give an actual example, back on HM I had a couple of players spying on me. I don't know - to this day - just what means they were using but staff asked me a couple of times to detail what my character was doing "between 4 am and 5 am last night". I had no honest idea, so I erred on the side of caution and assumed a scene I actually had two days earlier happened in that time frame so that my answer wouldn't sound like a cop out ('Theo was watching cartoons on the TV').

First, "I'm not sure" is an answer, and a reasonable one. Second, most methods of spying have some sort of resistance or contested roll. Third, the players could have, and should have, come to you first.

In fact, that would have been my approach as staff. Like this:

Spy: I want to spy on Arkandel. I'm using my Goggles of Google to do it. What do I roll?
Me: Did you tell Arkandel that you intended to do so?
Spy: No. I don't want him to know I'm doing it.
Me: Well, not knowing what Arkandel has been doing or what protections he might have against spying, I cannot advise you as to what to roll. Maybe you should talk to him about it first?
Spy: But I don't want him to know!
Me: Too bad. His PC won't know, but you could save yourself time by just going to the source.
Spy: You're missing the point.
Me: No, I'm not. I understand your point. If you don't trust Arkandel to not mix OOC and IC awareness, then what makes you think you can believe anything he tells me about his PC's activities?
Spy: Uhh ...

Like that.

@Arkandel said:

Your goals are noble but you're focusing on them rather than on the means to achieve them.

@Entropy

This.

Do not worry of fairness. Someone will accuse you of being unfair. Maybe you are, and maybe you aren't, but it is largely situational. Further, it is more important to have a fair outcome than to be a fair person.

Many of us have been down this road before. There is a large difference between being fair and acting fair. The first is a matter of perception; the second is a matter of judgment.

@Arkandel

I don't see any timing issue, unless players are limited to spying via an Obfuscate Code.

I find little difference between a request for information via spying and a request for information via investigation into a PC's background. I see no burden in asking the target PC's player for that information, and, if there is an impasse, seeking staff intervention to, as you put it, make everyone's IC lives a little more interesting.

We want to be able to trust staff to handle conflicts, but if we cannot trust fellow players to be trustworthy and cooperative then we have other, deeper issues to contend with.

@Arkandel

I'm ambivalent.

As staff, I should be able to ask a player what their PC is doing during the period on which another is spying on them, and expect to be given a truthful answer. As another player, if I choose to spy on someone, I would like to think they would do the same. Maybe we go through some rolls to see if I'm successful or not, or not if we can agree on it.

@Thenomain said:

I think this kind of code is worth exploring, and since it's public I don't think it counts as "spying".

I concur that this is not spying, but for what reason was such code popular? I cannot wrap my head around why anyone would use it.