Best posts made by Ghost

To be completely fair...

I would buy more Apple products, especially their laptops, if they were:

1. Compatible with gaming

But more importantly...

2. Their more expensive products (ex: laptops) weren't built so heavily on a product plan that is basically: "You cant upgrade that machine but you can replace it for $3000+!"

The OS, technology, security, performance, and everything about Apple is fucking solid. They dont make stupid decisions that make Windows leak security like a sieve. Unfortunately, I can buy a gaming PC/laptop for less than 1500, a "check mail and Mu" PC/laptop for less than 600, and since I don't so a lot of video/sound editing from an investment perspective Apple simply doesn't make sense. Most Windows machines all fit into a "timeframe of technology" that allows for upgrading as upgrades arrive until the firmware requires more drastic changes (new kind of ram, new technology not designed for the motherboard or new motherboards not compatible with the casing).

When it comes to magic, or the Force, or whatever <insert energy> is, I think that when writing it up, the most proper baseline is to try to cover some of the WHY factor.

Why does it exist?
Why can people touch it?
Why does it behave the way that it does?
Why does any of this matter to the setting at all?

All too often in homebrewed settings, the WHY is placed after the creation of some kind of PC or NPC that's important to the story. The character the writer has in mind is created and the WHY is tailored to make the ends meet to explain what the character is capable of, and not the other way around. This is an important distinction.

If you create the magic first and answer the WHY first, then you can create characters that fit into the setting based on the understood rules of your magic.

If you create the setting around a character or a pair of characters (and the powers/things you want them to be able to do), then you're doctoring the entire world to wrap around ways to explain the character.

The world itself should take precedence in front of the characters. Always. After all, characters are many and tiny in comparison to the universe they inhabit.

Had an idea.

3-6 people get together on voice chat of some kind, WITH BOOZE and each take turns reading from the best fan fic ever, MY IMMORTAL, as if we are a group of poets honoring the majesty of Chaucer.

Competition is an issue.

In this format (MU*), for the most part, everyone understands that on some level, players are in competition with each other. The golden nugget in this hobby is relevance. Relevance equals scenes. Scenes equals roleplay. Roleplay equals not logging in and sitting on your ass for 12 hours waiting for something to happen when you could have been playing Mass Effect.

I think it's really important, that in many cases, antagonists may not always be antagonists. That the intended story of the antagonist is to upgrade to antihero. If the intended story of the antagonist is to be an antagonist, then it should be assumed that there will be an event. If the intention of the story altogether is the fight of good versus evil, then the antagonist player has to understand that it's the prerogative of the majority of the playerbase to defeat said evil.

I'm a chronic tabletop GM. I'll share with you my playbook on creating npc antagonists for my players, because I think this method should be applied to MuAntagonistPCs

1. You exist to give other people something to fight against. Expect this.
2. Other players will want to defeat you. Expect this.
3. Players will want to defeat you ASAP. Plan accordingly. There's no sense in creating an antagonist and think you have this great long-term idea in mind, then get hit with an avalanche of dice, and then have to use GM-fiat or GM-magic to keep the antagonist alive because they devoured your NPC before the good shit you had planned could be unleashed.
4. Be a bad guy and bully the characters, but not the player. Everyone wanted to see Daniel LaRusso kick Johnny's ass. High five them when they kick your ass.
5. STEAL from great examples. Darth Vader, Dark Helmet, Every Michael Wincott character he ever acted (caw caw bang fuck I'm dead). Find the things you love in villains and share that love with your players.
6. Most importantly: Understand your role in the story. Your role is to provide conflict, and conflict ultimately requires trials, tribulations, and resolution. Your antagonist could be a short-lived one or a long-term one, but if he/she is a long term antagonist, it will be your job to provide little victories against your antagonist along the way to make it worthwhile.

If you explain that this is your mindset to the players, OOCly, they will appreciate having something to fight against, so long as you're fair and appreciative of them.

Never. Ever. Ever. EVER. EVER forget to OOCly high five them for the attention they give your antagonists.

Happy "Whoa, turns out my coworker is a Furry" Day!!!

@Arkandel Care or not, I was just throwing my two cents in.

Human element or not, it's not going to change and a certain amount of the behavior can be very high school to me. There's risks and cliques and drama and unethical windbags and people who think their opinion holds more weight than others. It's really just people grabbing the mic out of Jerry Springer's hands. It is what it is and what it definitely is, is not to be taken too seriously.

Coming to this place for validation is a bad idea.

So disagree with me or not, it's just how I see it, and I think this place is better used for small talk, figuring out which new games are around, and minor amounts of networking, because on a long enough timeline the human element requires it turn into a redneck mama joke battle Royale of human social bullshit.

@wahoo Yanno...

...a good/concerned citizen might identify this car in the fire lane as a risk to the safety of their neighborhood and report it, lest it result in an obstruction that could keep a fire truck from saving lives were there an emergency.

Wouldn't want good people to get hurt, yea?

@Shlappy I get ya. We see it with celebrities every day. You're one misspelled word or accidental implication away from having a mob on your doorstep demanding you be doxxed, fired, excoriated from society, chased to everywhere you rp, and boycotting MSB all because you have a difference of opinion as to what constitutes as an apology in what you thought was a simple, casual discussion.

It's smarter for you to moderate the forum, not participate much, and enjoy your rp without fear of a difference of opinion stamping you as persona non grata and having it infiltrate the main reason you're in the community in the first place: To seek roleplay and creativity with relatively small amounts of harassment.

I can't remember who said it earlier, but they were right. Discord and Skype? Oh, cut and pastes would get people banned from games and reveal the shady underbelly of PVP harassment and shit talking that permeates this hobby. I wish I'd kept logs. I'm very well aware of some people right now, or in the past, involved in untrue accusations about myself floating around just to arm cliques against me and lock me out of RP over petty stuff.

It happens. It's real. There's some fucked up, behind the curtain shit going on, and when I witness it (per my earlier comment about how when someone talks shit about everyone but you, that it means when you're not around, you're being bad-mouthed, too), nothing makes me want to keep distance more.

New Star Trek with Pine in development.

Hope they bring back Jaylah and do a Chekov memorial

@faraday I don't think that's what people want. I know that's not what I'd prefer, but there is an unspoken MSB board tai chi about how you post an opinion, with which language, or how strongly you feel about it to avoid the dogpiling.

You? Hah. I don't know how you do it, @faraday. I try to type like I talk in real life. I try to be the genuine article and sometimes that means my inflection gets lost in the text-translation, You've always maintained this sort of constructive, even-handed approach on the boards, even when you've flat out disagreed with me on some topics, and I respect the level of respect you treat people with. You seem to be a very nice person and it shows. It's like you have Professor X's delivery and I feel like I have Wolverine's. Having said that, do you sometimes reword statements to remain diplomatic and avoid getting stuck at the bottom of the dogpile?

You may be more naturally eloquent than I am in your board posts, maybe you type on these boards precisely as you talk in real life, under stress or not, but I do know my more "less diplomatic, more blue collar" writing style on these forums has gotten me into unexpected dogpiling on more than ten occasions, and I put my success rate of being to talk my way out of it somewhere around 45%

I still can't get over just how good The Mandalorian is.

So glad that Rogue One style Star Wars storytelling didn't die with that one movie.

To be honest, I think @faraday has the right idea. Without an open attempt to bring people together, the sense of "I love this hobby but everyone I rely on to provide me with it can go fuck themselves" with simply remain. It's too easy to break people down using this medium. The Hog Pit alone seems to generate negative behavior in some people on a Pavlovian level.

I, 100%, support the creation of an anti-Hog Pit board. A White Lantern to the Black Lantern board. A negative, alternate universe-turned positive environment where the posts are intended to be truly constructive, positive, helping each other out, and not in that "Jamie, I love you, but constructively you'd be less of a cunt if you'd stop..." way.

About 4 months ago I had the bright idea of opening a grieving/apology/disclosure thread where I thought it might be healthy for people to use it as a means to get some weight off of their shoulders or apologize to people for any of the 750,000 ways communication gets cross-wired in this hobby.

It took about all of 10 minutes, if that, before it turned into a grudge fest of bitter, unethical people I used to RP with trying to use the thread as a means to attack me, an argument as to what constitutes as an actual apology, and a bunch of negative dogpiling.

Maybe if some of y'all motherfuckers held your social gathering in an environment lined with pictures of cute kittens and free hugs, some of you would be less prone to spend so much time correcting each other and trying to find common ground?

I say, fuck it, it's worth a shot.

(Disclaimer: And no, I'm not going to discuss that apology thread or partake in the topic being derailed into the Ps and Qs of what happened there. I chose to not defend myself on that thread because doing so would have taken away from the point I started that thread. The Ps and Qs aren't important, though had I chose to defend myself it would have been ugly and stupid, so I chose against. Please stay on topic. The apology thread, in itself, is an example as of the latent negativity and culture of dissent.)

Re: Square

There's very little underwriting involved in Square, and Square takes a lot of risk on transactions, so their requirements are punched up quite a bit. Generally speaking you can't use Square as a business without an EID or Tax ID. There's also Square Cash, but these services generally require some form of bank account to wire the money to after the card is swiped.

1. It's very unlikely that someone with access to Square plus a compatible cell phone with internet plus a bank account are so needful that they can take their panhandling game to the cyber-networked level. Once bank accounts and tech get involved the upkeep and fees go up.

2. BEWARE OF CARD SKIMMERS. What you SHOULD be asking yourself is this: "Do you really want a panhandler on the street (who would be difficult to find or contact if a decimal were misplaced in the transaction I.e. 200.00 instead of 20.00) use a device to magnetically scan and record the content on your debit/credit card's magstripe?"

Card transactions are about trust. Trust that the consumer has in the person processing their card transaction to not steal information or misuse the transaction, and trust the merchant has in the consumer that the card isnt a forgery or other form of identity theft.

There is no way in Hell I'd let some rando panhandler on the street swipe my credit/debit card into a device that isn't easily attached to a known business entity that I could easily get the law involved in the event of fraud/ID theft. Card skimmers are devices used to record the data on the magnetic strip with the intention of later selling them or using them in fraudulent online MOTO (Mail Order Telephone Order) transactions where the merchant cannot easily confirm the cardholders identity.

@Miss-Demeanor That sounded like a very shitty day, I sympathize.

When someone wants to know the positive/negatives of a game, the source of the review is important. You don't go to Vegan websites for reviews on Omaha Steaks. People with negative outlooks and negative behaviors blow shit way out of proportion and tend to do everything in their power (on these forums) to make a place in which, by definition, they might have been inconvenienced into a place that boiled their beloved pet rabbit. Then the voyeurs and people who love to get to throw rocks, too (titillation) hop on the dogpile, and in the end, it really wasn't so much a constructive review as it was just a bunch of people taking their negative shit out on a place.

I'd put the accuracy of airing actual grievances or criticism on this forum at around 10-15%

I, personally, would rather hear the good then receive some straight, emotionless details on what the game's challenges are. Usually the amount of log activity, or logs themselves, are a good indication of some things, whereas taking a 2 week test drive of a game tends to be FAAAAAAR more accurate a review with FAR less subjective propogandist bullshit.

@Darren said in RL Anger:

For the record, he wouldn't have gotten a cent out of me even if he had not
had a brand new iPhone because I don't tolerate panhandlers.
Every time you give money to a beggar, you make the lives of everyone that
lives, works or otherwise frequents the area, a little bit worse by
validating their behavior.

@Thenomain NO, YOU CAN KEEP YOUR +1.

As far as that other thread goes, I don't have an actual complaint per se, but was more tying in that experience into the greater topic at hand. I read back through it a few days ago because someone +1'd a post of mine after 5+ months, and at some point every now and then someone posts something like: Well, I'm not going to post an apology for something NOW, seeing how people are dogpiling on people trying to follow the spirit of the thread"

I think some of the more constructive threads follow this format:

• Constructive topic! Let's be constructive.
• Someone posts in spirit of topic
• Someone corrects poster
• Poster retorts
• Dogpile begins
• Ten posts arguing semantics
• People shy away from posting about constructive topic
• Personal attacks
• What were we talking about again?
• Attempt to re-rail topic happens
• Someone corrects poster
• Poster retorts
• Dogpile begins
• Ten posts arguing semantics
• People shy away from posting about constructive topic
• Personal attacks
• What were we talking about again?
• Attempt to re-rail topic happens
• Repeat...

@Ganymede said in Why We Don't Make New Friends Anymore (Or Creepers Do Creepy Things):

@Ghost

I don't want to make it sound trivial, but have you thought about opening up your own safe group?

Not trivial at all. My friend beat me to it so there's definitely an alternative, but its just crazy how common this is.

Its pretty easy these days to create FB groups and just rendezvous to another meet up club. Most gamers who want to play Azul and Catan will show up in a heartbeat. So all is well, but a bunch of drama and some people feeling tired of having to find new game spots that didnt suddenly become fronts for other stuff.

My buddy says it best: "It's totally great to have a Fetlife community have a gamer subgroup, but when you do it the other way around youre always gonna make some people uncomfortable."

@Misadventure My instincts tell me that this idea would end badly. Subjectivity is wielded like HellHathNoFuryNapalm(tm) by some of these people.

Like the time, after getting yelled at via pages and being let in on some very personal, unsolicited marital issues (and tooooook a step away from the person because I cannot(will not) be held responsible for so much RL well being of, really, a total stranger), was accused of: Purposefully making her fall in love with my character and then sociopathically breaking her heart, on purpose, for my enjoyment

Yeah, let's give people unfettered, subjective player reviews. I get that some people are hurting, some take the hobby more seriously than others, and some can take it or leave it, but I think, in the end, such a thing would just be used by the subjectively jilted to fuck people (they want to scorn) from finding rp.

Getting very sick of personal drama on a RL scale with my gamer friends.

Out of some 30 friends I got some that are always fighting with someone and it's never their fault. They're never working on mending bridges and always making the fights public, yet also always claiming that they're justified in being entirely shitty to people. These spats expand to a new 2 or 3 people every month and I'm starting to have to consider voting them off of HANGOUT ISLAND because my 28 or SO other friends are sick of it, too.

It's stupid. Out of a bunch of fucking D&D gamers and board game nerds, people still buck for that "coolest person at the nerd table" status; like they're any better than anyone else playing CATAN or some shit.

I guess I should count my blessings, though. RL has better ways of handling this behavior than MU clearly does.

Recognizing when someone a lifeless troll fuck joins in on a 'Mildly Construtive' topic to discourage the OP and fuck around with everything is constructive.

Here's constructive for @bored : if you're so triggered into not trusting people and have all of these big opinions about rude people in the hobby, then act like a mature fucking adult and don't BE one of the people you claim to hate. You came into this thread to troll, to promote your 7th Sea preference, and sprinkle shit all over someone else's idea until they had a panic attack, said fuck it, and abandoned their creative work that didn't have shit to do with you.

Immature troglodytes like you are the reason people get all kinds of squicked in this hobby, or on these boards, and I hope a bear shits in your mouth.

That is fucking constructive. Fuck that guy.