Best posts made by Ghost

Please also understand, my point in all these questions isn't "look at the big brain on Brad", but more "what identity information do we divulge merely by logging in and playing?"

My evolved ape brain just thinks IT-style when it comes to this topic:

• Determine what personal information you give simply by logging in and playing.
• Determine what personal info you're willing to give outside of the necessary.

I apologize if I derailed, but given what I do for a living I figured the tech side might be interesting info for some people.

@Lain I fucking loved House of Leaves. Big thanks to @Auspice for recommending it.

I've done a shiiiitload of GMing, online and in RL, and here are the things I tell anybody who asks about GMing.

1. NEVER write a beginning, middle, and an end. This always creates railroads and forces the players to end the session your way. Instead, write a beginning (I.e. setup), keep in mind a few ways the middle might be approached, and also keep in mind a few ways the end of what is presented in the beginning might be met.

In any game, the GM is the referee who gets to play every single character in the setting except the PCs, but the PCs are the star of the show. It needs to be about them. This advice goes not only for a single night of gaming, but for a campaign altogether. REMAIN FLEXIBLE, because it's not about your story, but the gaming group's fun. Never simply walk players through your story. Bend. Flex.

2. NEVER make your character or favorite NPCs the focus of a scene/story. NEVER run sessions involving your own PCs.

MU players can be notoriously bad about this, but so can tabletop GMs. I've played tabletop superhero games where the GM put a ton of detail into an NPC cop and voila, the cop saved the super heroes every scene and the game became a false front for his cop NPCs origin story. Likewise, on MU, some game-runners and players seem to always run game sessions involving background/scene elements central to their characters, and it's always such a bummer. If you're a GM, be a fucking GM, not a hybrid.

3. ALWAYS make players throw dice. Players learn bad roleplaying habits over time, and RNGesus saves.

Players will almost always hive-mind through pages and table antics, and only a small population are cool with failure as an option. To avoid metagaming, roll their perception checks for them behind a wall of secrecy, and tell them what they perceive. If they roll their own checks and roll a 2 on a d20, they almost always assume failure, so the hive mind adjusts for that failure. Also? Not everyone can succeed simply because they want, and the G in RPG stands for game. Dice keeps decisions/success/failure a result of the game and helps avoid complaints of GM favoritism. NEVER get into the habit of hand-waving dice checks for anything that could potentially fail. When you do that, players will focus all of their energy to convince you that they succeed, and it all goes downhill from there.

4. NEVER fudge dice for or against the PCs. If you don't want your players to fake dice rolls, then neither can you.

So long as pass/fail isn't a matter of favoritism, even if it means a character is knocked out of combat, then things remain fair. If you don't let your players fail, they will get spoiled and get huffy when they don't win. If you fudge rolls, then you're railroading, and when the time comes for someone to lose, they'll take it personally. Other side of the coin? If you fudge dice, then don't be surprised if players start to always roll 16 or higher on a d20 to control their chances of success.

There's also a good book called [The Lazy Dungeon Master](The Lazy Dungeon Master https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ADV2H8O/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_t.iDCb5934SQ7) worth checking out. I dont agree with 100% of it, but it should make you a better GM and avoid the pitfalls many other bad GMs get into the habit of.

Just remember to be loose, flexible, and let the players explore. They'll lead you right up to the game they want to play. They'll show you what they think is fun. They'll say things like "Oh god, I just know at the end of the hallway is gonna be something freaky". Boom. Cues. Follow them. Flex in the direction the wind blows.

1.0

I'm balanced and healthy, like that Jamie Lee Curtis yogurt.

@faraday is totally right. She and I have different approaches to GMing. She's also a fantastic GM and I recommend people pay attention to her games and play them. She's probably the fairest and most balanced GM in the hobby, IMO.

On BS:U, she did scenes involving her players the right way. IF your character is in the scene, then you have to put them on equal footing in terms of screen time with the other players. She never made the scenes about her characters in the scene; her character just happened to be a part of the scene. She never railroaded her character into being the one who solves the problem, and never used scenes she ran involving her own character as vehicles for driving her character's agenda. She shared the scene and seemed very comfortable letting the room of players be the deciding factor.

Personally? If I have a character in the scene, I tend to put them in the background or not in the scene at all, probably because the temptation to make them important is real and I just prefer to avoid it as a means to mitigate the risks. That was my preferred method on Mutant Genesis.

So in that? It's good to write a story and have an idea how you would like it to end. You can plot out things ahead of time. Faraday isn't wrong at all.

My preferred way of inserting railroaded content, if needed, is to treat it like a cutscene. I tend to use a lot of movie and tv methods, because Stephen King said: Good writers borrow, great writers STEAL.

So, say I want to implement a bad guy blowing up a building as a plot element. I could create a story where the characters have a chance to stop it from happening, but if I as a GM need that building to blow up due to future plot elements for the group, I don't put the PCs in a position where they can stop it. The PCs will always want to succeed, so if I send them through hours of RP to keep the building from blowing up and then mandate that they failed, they'll think I'm a motherfucker.

So? STEAL. In this case? Batman: The Dark Knight.

Joker put 2 bombs, one on Harvey Dent and the other on Rachel. Batman thought he was saving one, but he saved the wrong one. Right?

So I'll have the characters storm the building and fight their way down to the hostages and what they suspect is 2 tons of explosives that they have to disarm. I'll have them fight down to the mini-boss, perhaps beat the mini-boss, rescue the hostages and find...no bomb. Instead they might find a TV connected to a camera feed that shows the ACTUAL target. They won! They beat a bad guy, saved hostages, and then go "ohhhhh shiiii-" as...

...the other building blows up.

Now the bad guy is the motherfucker and I get to unveil that later plot point without railroading, and have just made my players really hungry for finding that sonofabitch. Like Pro wrestling...I would have just made the players really invested in Macho Man beating the Undertaker at Wrestlemania. They didn't fail and I didn't railroad; I just gave them more plot for future gaming, and players mostly want to be invested in the story. So, in a weirdly sociopathic way, through the lens of the bad guy, I would have done just that.

I cannot understate the importance of great villains.

Having 5 "number one priority items" defeats the purpose of a "number one priority item".

I wish my job understood this.

So...looks like I'm going to be going to an event and will be seeing Pentagon Jr, Rey Fenix, and Dragon Azteca Jr. I'm freaking out. This is gonna be amazeballs.

Any other wrestling dorks here?

A friend on Facebook: "White Irish immigrant slaves were treated worse than any other ethnic group in American history, and you don't see them asking for reparations..."

Really?

I mean, really?

ETA: I'm not entirely sure that I have the willpower to address that gently. I told her that Irish immigrants were indentured servitude and had rights, unlike chattel slavery, but if it turns into an argument, I dont know if I can keep Jim Halpert WTF from turning into...

Corporate HR guidelines are actually pretty solid for this.

• Ask the person to stop the behavior. If you feel it is important, record/log the conversation and report it to manager/HR
• Management/HR may intervene as they see fit, but recording it with them or that the conversation taking place sort of immediately protects you from retaliation.
• If it persists, log it and make it explicit that you have asked the behavior to stop and request staff/mgr intervention.

It's a text-based medium. You can log your request for them to stop and leave you alone. You can even be up front and say "You're making me uncomfortable, please stop paging me, and I would like to avoid non-group roleplay with you."

Ya don't need to let staff see the log, but I've done this before and dropped a line to staff that I've had the conversation and would be submitting log/formalizing the issue if it didn't stop.

@Aria said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

PS: Dudes reading this comment? Bullshit like the above is why your girlfriend is always angry about something. The more you know. <twinkling star arch>

I thought it was because demons get in through that space in the ribs they got but we don't.

Learn summpin new ebryday.

Journal entries for that game would be amaaaaaazing

June 16 1787 Saturday

But a fornight has passed since I last had tea with Lieutenant James Hargrowe. A tall man of broad shoulder and presence, I miss him dearly. He is off to fight the undead menace, leaving me to the vastly important task of preparing poultices for those unfortunately wounded...

So...do you think GRRM will put out his next book before or after TOOL finishes their album?

It's a neck and neck race, methinks.

My spider-senses detect a hot scoop for the Daily Bugle.

@insomniac7809 Shit I got that one wrong

@Tinuviel said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

@Ghost said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

very little question or input from the policy-maker's point of view.

Which makes it all the more damning!

Hah. SO SUSPICIOUS. I imagine GH staff is well aware that talking about this decision on MSB is way more dangerous than saying what they said and letting it stay that way. Barracuda infested waters, these be.

Everyone knows that there's a 98% probability that "Too many people at once were apping amputees, so we put a cap on it to avoid there being too many amputee characters" meant "Too many people at once were apping amputees, so we put a cap on it to avoid there being too many amputee characters"

But people gotta take it as...

"First you nix the amputees, then the blacks, then the gays..."

Way more entertaining with way more opportunities for platforming when you take it that way.

Man, I am such a Lena Headey fan. She's really brought out the character and is the perfect Cersei.

I've often considered this.

What you want: Players to actually spread out role play

I think you're on to something, because I've often wondered if xp (I.e. The thing that puts one player higher than another in terms of ability/in game currency) is the right way to incentivize what you want, which is spreading out the role play. If you think about it from a certain perspective, this xp-for-HangingWithN00bs arrangement might spread out role play, but it may also be the very thing that results in Alpha roleplayers dominating the environment from the very people they're generating XP from.

One thing that I think is fair (though doesn't seem to work; I can only theorize why) is to incentivize the players who are welcoming and inclusive with leadership positions. The last thing you want is to hand a faction over to a player who only RPs with two of their friends and a close TS partner. No, you want people who are inclusive in those positions (faction heads, primogen, Lord or Lady, etc).

So it makes sense to me to say: "Hey, I know you want to be in charge ICly, but that comes at a price. You've got to show the game that you're gonna be welcoming and inclusive. The more you spread your RP around, the more you'll be incentivized with leadership. Then...you have to keep using that code that shows you're spreading your RP around to maintain it."

So, in the sense of "reward the behavior you want", this seems logical to me. You want to reward the spread of RP, and this option would reward inclusive RP with being at the forefront of the RP and further incentivize doing so.

@TiredEwok said in RL Anger:

Recently I had to have my oldest admitted to a... mental facility, for the lack of a better way to put it. I am conflicted by what I had to do. On one hand, he is finally getting the help he needs and this is going to help get the ball rolling with getting him on SSI-D, insured, etc. But, on the other hand, I miss him, I want him home, I am scared shitless that he'll be angry at me for doing this to him, scared about the medication... so many fears, still.

I know that I'm late to this, but I'm more intimately aware of this process (family member, committed, etc) than I'd care to expound upon, but I have some information that might be vital. Lessons learned are still bumpy, but this advice might save you some surprises.

1. Ultimately, if this is a minor, you will have control in terms of SSI, services, etc. If this is an adult or a minor about to transition to an adult, be prepared for a few things.

ONE: SMI will assign case workers who may or may not be good at returning calls. This could end up in SMI benefits (housing, rides, food stamps), but these things also require upkeep (you have to regularly re-apply for food stamps, for example). Be prepared for an overwhelmed person not being good at keeping on top of their own SSI benefits. Do what you can to be signed on as someone with authorization to call these people, or at the very least get and keep their numbers to assist with calling them if needed.

TWO: It may be difficult, but if you don't have legal authority to make decisions, ultimately whether or not an adult programs on SSI is either a matter of their willingness or Power of Attorney. Depending on the level of mental illness you may want to consider whether or not this is a power of attorney situation.

2. Regarding therapy...

Basically, at this point you gotta shake off the shock and awe of having to commit someone. At this point, psych are going to start talking program. Good questions to ask the psych are "What can I do as a parent to aid in the therapy?" and "What signs should I look for before seeking more help?". Most states have on-call crisis programs. Save those numbers, too. If the kiddo is aggressive, violent, or depressed, simply listening and not challenging what they say (regardless of how ridiculous it may be) is more valuable than trying to fix the problem. Psych/counseling working alongside asking psych/counseling how you can support whatever program they're on will be more valuable than actual parenting.

3. Maintaining sanity...

It sucks. It's scary. It's depressing. If you or any spouse in the situation are struggling, there are support groups for parents of kids with emotional problems. These can be wonderful, because they're adults just like you (and myself) who have this whole realm of "So what happened last week?" that you don't want to share with friends and coworkers. They can be a good support network. Crisis/therapy hospital will have information on these groups. You may also find them online.

Like anything, this stuff is one day at a time. You can only do as much as you can, and like a lot of parenting things, sometimes their safety is more important than them thinking you're an asshole. You just have to keep explaining that you do what you do out of love and are willing to listen. These things take time, and your job right now is to do everything you can to make sure you support making sure that kiddo gets the time they need to get through this.

I empathize. My last trip to one of these places was 3 weeks ago. If you want more advice, feel free to PM me. I've had to walk someone through the SMI/disability process, programs for housing, food stamps, etc (at least in the USA). At the very least I'm someone who wont judge.