Best posts made by Ghost

@Wretched So hot.

Your arm is so long, homes.

Anyway I'm not THAT bad. My bruise is almost gone, but its in the...elbow-pit?

@Julia-Cornelia said in We Need a Game Set In the Roman Empire.:

As an aside, I'm glad we've reached that point in MU*ing where we can finally start calling people out for being misogynistic

I'm sympathetic. I've occasionally rolled up female characters because the character just reads better to me as a female. I approached MU as a writing experience, and I'm not much into TS.

Every female character I have rolled up has resulted in a truckload of uninitiated, unsolicited creeper flirtation and nagging, pressuring, etc. I've also ran into situations where I got the impression that my char was being taken less seriously due to alpha male on scene needing to own the dominant role.

Oh. Yeah. There's misogyny.

@Rinel said in Should Rinel become smol birb?:

You're implying I'm not going to be first in line for a SKY PIRATE WIZARD MUSH.

ETA: Dibs.

+7000

I made a thread that was so spicy it got locked. IN THE HOG PIT.

+50,000

@ixokai To each their own. I'm just that guy that is of the opinion that part of the problem on far too many games are that there's very little harvesting and a whoooole lot of old, tired, ancient character nonsense.

On a lot of these games it's just plenty of ancient characters with sheets so maxxed out that they've started to have to take stuff like Skill Focus: Underwater Taxidermy, and far too many players are comfortable doing really stupid heroic things IC on the belief that your character will never die until you choose for them to die.

Creating a new character every season is attractive to me because it would be challenging and keep games from becoming stale.

Should I aid in this process in saying that way back on WORA everyone agreed that if someone actually succeeded in getting a thread in the hog pit locked down for being too hot that they would receive the honorary title of smol birb?

I remember that. You remember that, right, @Auspice ?

Personally, I'm a fan of Mutants and Masterminds and MARVEL Superheroic (MWP). I know there's MU systems for those floating around somewhere, but the games I've seen using those have had minimal success getting stood upright.

In the meantime, I suggest people check out @ZombieGenesis DC game.

@dvoraen You know what's smoler than a smol birb?

A subirb.

Be careful what you ask for. There have been post-apocalyptic and zombie-themed games that have come and gone. These games were plagued with four major issues that, IMO, eventually caused them to go belly up:

1. PLAYING HOUSE: Since these games tend to run the theme of "everything has gone to shit", the logical direction is to "make things not shit". The result was less a survival scenario and more of a "community building RP sandbox" that eventually resulted in plenty of scheduled yoga lessons and movie nights.

2. I GUESS I'LL SCAVENGE?: Problem two. When everything is shit, you don't have shit, but after 10 or so scenes of picking through houses, gas stations, and Wal-Marts, you end up having shit, and players who have shit are not often keen on losing shit. Refer to problem #1. When they've based their character around being some kind of sheltered post-apocalyptic horse whisperer, having zombies eat their horses has a negative effect on their RP.

3. HIGH DANGER, LOW MORTALITY: Why should we let a setting filled with a severe lack of medical supplies, flesh eating undead, and lack of sanitation impede the survival rate of our characters? On one such game, cancer was diagnosed, operated on, and eventually cured without much electricity, access to imagery machines, important medicine, and proper tools. In this case, the game took place 20 years after the fall of mankind, and the surgery was performed by someone who didn't have such specific training. Unfortunately, the setting, in itself, is a massive Miley Cyrus wrecking ball to the 4th wall. The suspension of disbelief simply will never allow these settings in a MU format, with players having such an avoidance to character death, to make any form of sense.

4. OMG ASSHOLE CHARACTER: The last, is something I've seen first hand. With characters like Negan and the Dixon brothers from Walking Dead being so popular, players inevitably make characters that are designed to be hard to get along with. Ten seconds later comes the roleplay response of "I don't trust him, he shouldn't be here" followed twenty seconds later with "my character wouldn't spend time alone with that person, so I can't RP with her/him". When the logical concept of survival means excluding people who are "edgy" from the survivalist community, due to a logical assumption that dangerous people are bad for survival, then you end up with whole groups of characters excluding people who don't follow the "nice guy/girl, doesn't cause problems" flow. Then, refer to problems 1-3. People get excluded from roleplay, are shunned because of the larger community ideal that argument roleplay isn't fun, and then they're left with...more scavenging scenes.

Not to rain on the parade here, but when it comes to these genres, be very, very careful what you're asking for. Unless the status quos of MY STORY or I DON'T WANT TO LOSE MY CHARACTER loosens up a bit, I wouldn't suggest a survivalist/post-apocalyptic/zombie setting for the community as a whole.

@Auspice Don't wrongfun me, you monster.

@GangOfDolls

For the record, I wasn't critiquing that there WAS yoga, just that as I understood it, the town in No Return became so sheltered at one point that it was getting near Gilmore Girls Star's Hollow levels. I apologize if you felt slighted by the yoga mention. I don't know you, and it wasn't about you. Just about...the setting and stuff.

I'll let the topic get back on track nao

@surreality Yeah the guy who faked an illness is basically dead to us. I mean, we rallied people that didn't even know him to help for a good cause, only to find out it was a big lie and he wanted tattoo money.

Finding out they're bilking (when they don't have any money to treat themselves) is disappointing. I would respect: "Hey, I dont have the money but I'm asking for donations to pick up the ps4 game because I wanna play with my friends". I wouldn't buy a $60 game, but I'd chip in $5.

Finding out we just got our friends to give them money for a lie is unforgivable.

So we pay closer attention these days.

@Misadventure All Flesh Must Be Eaten has a very brutal firearms combat system, but guns are scary and I somewhat approve of it. One thing that I do love about it, is that it allows you to design your zombies. Is it "one bite equals dead", or "one bite and there's a chance" or "multiple bites and there's still a chance"?

That's one method. When I ran it, tabletop, I would pretty much always have a zombie grab in one turn, then try to bite the next, which usually left ample time for other players - even the player who was grabbed - to wrestle free or save the others before a bite was attempted, and even then, there were save rolls made against the zombie infection.

In the end, after someone was bitten, he/she was kept under observation, and the stamina rolls were made in private to leave the players with a sense of drama until signs of sickness did, or didn't, settle in.

I made ammunition and gas supplies that needed to be tracked. I incorporated conflict resolution when coming across certain bands of other survivors, and other groups of survivors were antagonists. There. Would. Be. Risks. The risks weren't insurmountable, though. Social/leadership skills could be used to sway the opinions of even the worst raiders. It wasn't "they're bad guys, so you're screwed". Everyone has a price, wants, needs, etc. Negotiation was a thing.

I presented certain options with degrees of difficulty and let the players determine whether or not it was worth the risk. If they decided not to run into the zombie-infested Wal-Mart, I gave other opportunities to find food and supplies with lesser difficulty, but those lesser options yielded less bountiful gains.

Most importantly, I kept introducing problems. Sure, they could wall up an area and try to make things comfortable, but just like TWD, I'd keep throwing things that would require them to exit their comfort zone. INSULIN IS LOW. Strangers come by. Zombies approach. Food is needed. The crops aren't growing. Someone comes by begging for help.

If I got the idea that the players were just content to go "No thanks, I'm gonna stay back behind this wall where everything is safe, where I've got a small farm and plenty of security." Then, eventually, storms would come, or a long winter, or and npc would hide a killing bite, and throw a monkey wrench into the whole goddamned thing.

Survival games are about an inability to secure lasting, meaningful resources, and just like TWD, the likelihood of the majority of the starting cast making it to the end of the show is low.

To ensure that the proper sense of risk/reward matched the setting, I would require the use of dice. Sometimes you cannot convince people. Sometime you can't shoot a zombie through the eye from a hundred meters out with a compound bow to save your girlfriend.

The bitch of the survival setting is that you must place yourself at risk to place yourself in a state of well-being, but that state of well-being isn't going to always last forever, so the job of the GM is to keep the genre relevant. Give them survival. Make them fight to survive.

(Sorry about the potential tl;dr)

@Auspice said in The Work Thread:

@Sunny said in The Work Thread:

Office365's web interface now lets you 'like' emails and things. I made the mistake of ranting about this (having likes in a professional environment) to my coworkers...

Yeah. My boss 'likes' every email I send her now.

ETA: I need to clarify. It is all in good fun.

iOS lets you 'like' text messages.
My recruiter does it (she's a very bubbly, perky girl in her mid-20s so it's fitting I guess!) and it throws me off every time.

I found this out while buying my house. My realtor would "like" messages, and it would resend the ENTIRE text back to me.

Ex: I texted "hahaha cool"

I'd get a text that reads:

NameOfPerson liked "hahaha cool"

A+nnoy+ing

(She's on iOS and I'm on Droid)

@surreality All my love, too.

I'm just going by this: game: a form of play or sport, especially a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck.

I think you're misunderstanding the holistic point I'm trying to make, so let me recalibrate.

• If we are opening playspaces to support players in writing novels, stories, etc about characters of their own design, where they get to decide what does and doesn't affect their characters (to maintain their enjoyment of the space), then we should come out and say so.
• If a playspace is using WoD or another game system as a system, and the game system is holistically important to task/risk resolution, then it needs to be stated up front that the entirety of PC story direction will not be decided by the player, but at times, by the dice.

There are thousands of ways to resolve a task, ranging from humiliating failure to heroic critical success. I'm NOT saying that death is always on the list. Using TurboTax doesn't include death as a failure option, and I'm not saying that it's not a game unless you can die using TurboTax.

What I'm saying is that if it IS a role playing game, the one that uses the dice and the books, then task resolution may not always go the way the player wants it to.

Philosophically, if all of the characters, per the genre or setting, are expected to be at risk (let's use zombies as an example), and you have twelve players using the system with the dice (because that's what they had to do to make a character sheet, use the dice, system, etc and when they fight zombies they have accepted a certain grade of risk to whether or not they get to finish that character's story how they want OR the character's story ends in being eaten alive) and then another eight players not using dice, but roleplaying fighting through hordes of zombies, having already predetermined the outcome...You're going to end up with a disgruntled Playerbase.

I don't care if death is a super constant option.

I'm just

Just

Just

JUST saying that in terms of risk and how much is game vs how much is telling your story, that the entire player base should be playing the same game and that it's best to be very clear about this up front.

I have a preference. My preference, I feel, keeps things fair and I enjoy the titillation of not knowing whether or not my character will succeed. That's me. That's me. That doesn't have to be everyone, not everyone has to be me.

My earlier examples about zombie games and survival, I feel, require the game aspect or else the setting doesn't read right.

@Auspice Star Wars. Hagrid is a bitch. Chewie is a boss.

@Catsmeow Agreed on sending this to another thread.

Constructive answer: No. MUDs are highly automated and focused near entirely on dice rolls. They were the text based predecessor to MMORPGs where the main point to MUDs is running onto a grid, killing automated mobs of monsters, rushing back to your dead body after being resurrected, and roleplaying MUDs incorporate some RP space to roleplay alongside the grinding environment.

MUSH/MUX are more flexible and have incorporated more tabletop RPG systems into their environments. These can be used by the book (-10 hitpoints equals dead because book says so) or more fluidly (let's focus more on the story, less on the system), and the culmination of what I've been discussing is on the philosophy between those two play styles on MUX/MUSH, how to keep it fair for everyone, and how to make sure the rules used for the setting match the setting.

TMW you're moving and find the romantic, shirtless Jean-Claude Van Damme pics @auspice left for you.

IMO, many antagonist MU players play it like a trope. They put on a goatee and an eyepatch, say ya cunts! a lot, and antagonize other characters, but still assume this weird stance that they shouldn't suffer any ICC for their behavior unless it's a consequence they approve of. Players of antagonist characters tend to get upset when socially or politically they become uninvited, avoided, etc.

To make matters a little worse, some of the my story society tends to avoid difficult characters on an OOC level, which bleeds into IC.

Here's my playbook for playing antagonists:

• Keep it IC. Always.
• Disclaim. If someone pages you to ask, explain that it's all part of the show.
• FOR FUCKS SAKE, BE WILLING TO ICLY SUFFER NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES. The whole point to playing an antagonist is to adopt the role of devil's advocate, a low level villain, a pain in the ass, a bad guy, etc. If you're making a character designed to generate conflict, it is a MUST that you are willing to give the people you're antagonizing a victory.

There's two sides to every fight. If one player refuses to roleplay their character as having lost at all (I.e. despite being fuck-pummeled in a fistfight, the loser laughs and walks it off), then not only is it poor rp, but it's cheesy and shows a lack of ethics. Ethics is important to playing an antagonist, and when the other players know that you're ethical and fair about it, they're far more likely to get in on the fun.

Oh, and also?

• Be realistic. No one is 100% antagonist. Somewhere deep inside is a reason for said antagonism. Antagonists need allies, friends, people they confide in. Antagonist players need to leave the option open for some level of being tamed. Logan started fighting for mutant rights after being a raging dick to Cyclops. The angry beast can make friends, love them, protect them, even if it's in this big ugly shell of a guy who says ya cunts! a lot.

@insomniac7809 said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

"House" is a play on "Holmes" being a homophone of "homes."

god dammit

Psst.

The Lost Boys was a retelling of Peter Pan, too.

@Arkandel said in PC antagonism done right:

Now... Here's a more overall question for y'all.
If a game allowed players to pick their own level of required consent then, in the context of this thread, would you also adjust characters' IC advancement accordingly? For instance would you give someone who picks PvE engagements only fewer resources per week (since they risk less) than someone who's opened the door to conflict? Assume PC death is out of the question here to make things more clear.

I see nothing wrong with a risk-based model.

I've been on games where people didn't want to bother with the war, the combat, and in some cases the central theme to focus on roleplay around things like horse breeding and tinkering with mechanics, but never wanted to be involved in anything violent or risky at all.

It's fair to the players who risk their characters, take risks, and reach for the golden ring to get better rewards than the players that just want a social playspace to RP out whatever; boyfriends, horse breeding, coffee talk.

I don't think that providing these rewards to the players who take risks requires any psychotic policy or system, either. It's simple:

• Event #24 involves risk
• Event #24 has an XP bonus for completion and potential gear
• If you don't attend Event #24, you don't get it.