Best posts made by Ghost

... I'm sorry that you don't like that we closed a game that you were having fun on because it wasn't going our way.

EDIT:
... I'm sorry that you don't like that we closed another game that you were having fun on because it wasn't going our way.

In DA:O I got a dwarf and an elf to have gay male sex.

Ferelden took a big step towards civil rights that night.

@Kanye-Qwest Don't be like that. I have said repeatedly that staff should definitely RP on their own games and enjoy the work they've put in. I'm just saying that staff shouldn't pigeonhole the entire game to being about their PCs and need to understand that by opening a place of RP to the public, there is an unspoken expectation that the roleplayers that they have opened a play space for are joining the game to matter.

By matter I mean: beyond assisting staff PCs in being the big heroes, and not being unwittingly delegated into being supporting cast characters.

People join these games to get camera time, have arcs, and feel like they're causing an impact on roleplay, not to be listed in IMDB as "Guy in Coffee House #3"

My stance is that people who open MUs who do not understand this aren't really supporting their players, but instead duping people to log on for hours a week to support their fun. It's cruel for some of these people (not myself) who put so much effort in or have very little other contact with the outside world, and I don't see anything wrong with joining a game with the expectation that staff intends for players outside of their control mechanisms have an effect on the game.

@tek On a human level, I empathize and think what you went through is horrible. I, myself, was never subject to similar things but some very, very close people to me have been and I've been a part of their ongoing support engine.

Having said that, I get that you're triggered, but it's not my responsibility nor your entitlement to get rude with me when I type abusive when you would prefer that I typed unethical.

I chose a word. You and I are both adult and mature enough to understand that I wasn't equating it to sexual abuse, nor belittling abuse victims on purpose.

Knock it with your shit, wtf.

Harambe was alive in 2005, which makes 2005 better than 2016

@Arkandel Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Comic Books tend to stretch the bounds of their own canon far, far more than most fantasy settings do:

SuperMechaWolf? Oh, he didn't die, well not really. The first time his head was crushed, that was a clone put in place by Dr. Defenstro. The second time, he was resurrected by the Crystal People, but it turned out that was another clone and that all along he was in Dr. Defenstro's underground dungeon. Then he broke out and FINALLY met up with his one true love, WOMAN-WOMAN, and got shot with a Apollyonite bullet, which killed him...

...but then in "Shadows of the Underpass IV" it shows how he went through hell, then heaven, and was given a second chance by God provided that he come back and focus on fighting racial injustice.

Personally I think it's sad that this person isn't being given the opportunity to attempt roleplay with updated behavior.

I'm not a friend of hers, nor do I role play with her, but all patterns aside, there are people in this hobby far more deserving of scarlet letters on the loose who don't suffer the same degree of scrutiny.

I, for one, refuse to partake in this witch hunt behavior.

@Packrat said in Lords and Ladies Game:

Apparently I do it wrong then, none of the characters I played on Arx ever ducked anyone, I figured that even if here was no social stigma to sexy times it would make any eventual political match come across as much more convincing and effective an alliance if they got the impression they were special, etc.

My name is @Packrat of House HOUSENAME and I'm fucking NO ONE, but I'm supposed to be fucking WHOEVER MY DAD TELLS ME TO.

You can update your character post-political marriage.

@Lotherio said in MSB Peeves:

@Ghost said in MSB Peeves:

Sadly, the amount of time I lived in Nebraska is now less than the amount of time I have lived in <REDACTED BOILY AS FUCK SW AMERICAN STATE>. This leads me to question if I still qualify as a Midwesterner.

It's over after this, we in Nebraska are gonna sign the separation papers after you questioned it.

I'm sobbing uncontrollably knowing that I will no longer be allowed into Hy-Vee, Runza, or Big Fred's.

Good stuff. So good. I miss the last 2 so, so much.

@Derp said in Westworld:

@Ghost said in Westworld:

@Derp ugh I'm so far behind. I'm still at Samurai season. I keep getting derailed but the promos for this season make it look like I've missed so much good stuff.

Dude you have. Get caught up and we'll gab!

Sounds like a plan. I think we got derailed once by one of the star wars series and never circled back around. I'll get watchin.

I finished Destiny 2's first raid this weekend...

It was like this for about 20 hours across 3 days...

Then...all of the sudden...

If they could only extract the brain fluid of someone at the point of beating a Destiny raid (for the first time) and turn it into a pill form...depression would be cured.

You have to do the parts in order until you beat it once, so here's the approximate # of tries it took for the maybe 6 different teams I played with across the weekend until finally beating Calus.

• Part 1: Royal Baths (25-30 tries)
• Part 2: Royal Gardens (50-60 tries)
• Part 3: The Games/Obstacle course (10 tries)
• Part 4: Emperor Calus (30-40 tries)

But I did it! GO FUCK YOURSELVES PEOPLE WHO DID IMPORTANT LIFE WORK, HAD SEX, OR IMPROVED YOURSELVES OVER THE WEEKEND.

@Thenomain said in New Superhero Game Looking for Staff/Feedback:

@Ghost

I’ve been told before that you simply don’t do things like that on superhero games. The system may make it possible, but it breaks the theme of ... well, the entire superhero genre if you use your powers to do things like that.

Wild Talents straight up says “don’t do that”. You can do that. One game (maybe also Wild Talents) creates a system where losing your hero focus means increased negative effects.

I can throw a coffee mug across the coffee table into someone's face if they do this on tabletop night.

But I think if MU* has taught me anything, it's taught me that if you don't outright come out and say DO NOT DO THIS, you're gonna get an app for it and your player will argue it into the ground.

By the way, for those of you who weren't around to figure out what happened to the trash bin fire plot...

@reimesu Second-in-command the Bake-Off. It's so relaxing and Noel is my spirit animal

OMG the skin color selection is displayed as a difficulty slider. So the darker the character's skin is, the higher the difficulty.

LOL: "This wont affect combat, but pretty much every other aspect of your whole life."

Oh, wow. You guys totally made the X-men/Brotherhood game idea.

I'll be stopping by.

Why not just store the instruction string as a parameter in the command's code and then have the help command query the code for the parameter and print it out?

Edit. Derp. I read back. Looks like that was covered.

Hey, IT guy here. I've posted in the past about the technical dangers of MU in terms of other topics, but for those not aware, I thought I should write a little blog post.

1. ALL MUs that aren't using SSH are essentially unencrypted

Telnet (created in 69) uses TCP port 23. It sends unencrypted data across the TCP/IP network (internet) containing a clear, readable transmissions of all characters sent/received from the MU.

In 1969, this beast above was the most powerful computing system in the world. It went for a whopping 2.3 million ($23mil+ adj for inflation)and had an awesome memory availability of 982 kilobytes (just under 1Mb). A modern 20 dollar burner cell phone comes with 32GB storage, which is essentially 32000Mb, and 32,000,000 Kb).

That is how fucking old telnet is. It turns 100 in 2069 in 45 years. It predates modern cocaine use.

2. The difference between "data at rest" vs "data in transit"

The difference initially is obvious. Data "in flight" is in transmission and "at rest" is when it is stored, but what does this mean for your firewall/vpn/Etc?

AT REST DATA: All of your firewall/malware/virus protection typically is by device (laptop/cellphone) or handled via software on your router. THIS HELPS KEEP PEOPLE FROM HACKING YOUR MACHINE AND PULLING DATA OFF OF IT. This is data at rest. You have provided a "fort" for your data that is hard to get into.

IN TRANSMISSION your data becomes vulnerable. Like any important piece of mail (like your tax return) you want to mail it knowing that it is safe, won't be intercepted, and won't be acted upon by people the piece of mail isn't addressed to.

In-transmission data is quite simply the most dangerous part about the MU hobby.

3. How can unencrypted data over MU be dangerous?

Telnet protocol is insecure, and if a malicious MUer did or didn't have staff privileges (because the MU is insecure and the data is unencrypted) they could...

• capture/log all transmission data, both personal and roleplay including sensitive personal information
• use the established telnet connection and hacking wares (that are so obsolete that they are easy to obtain and can be used by kids) to manipulate what they can on your machine through the telnet protocol session you initiated on connection.
• Session snooping is simple. At the router level I can block port 23, but I can also log all data transmitted via telnet for my viewing. This puts TS MUers in a serious danger zone if their spouse has any tech skills. It could be done without even touching your laptop.
• If the MU staff or site hosting is not secure from MITM attacks or session snooping, then a malicious user could implement telnet snooping across all users of the mu hosting provider, and the existing use of telnet protocol makes this a constant threat.

So while the data is "in flight", it leaves YOUR network, is out in the open, and is then delivered to an "at rest" state on the MU server, you should keep these things in mind:

• MU hosting and MU staffing is an entirely unpaid, amateur effort
• Most game staff are not IT professionals, and even if they were the only true answer to safety is SSH...which requires additional purchases (certificate authority) and authentication protocols most MUs don't use (or have staff who would know how to implement)
• All data on the server is technically the property of the owner (not the user) with no existing legal recourse if the MU is infiltrated.
• The assumption that your private pages and roleplay is truly private is an absolute farce

(By this I mean...you're RPing or discussing potentially personal things over an INSECURE protocol on an antiquated BBS service owned/ran by a stranger with only "social damage" incurred if they're caught snooping your pages/rp, and at a certain level of privileges other staff would never even know if it was happening to them)

• NEVER give your address, phone, banking, fullname, general location, business information, etc over pages/chat in MU even if you trust the person because THE DANGER ISNT YOUR FRIEND, BUT THE SERVICE/PROTOCOL YOU ARE USING.

So with all this in mind, it's far safer to RP using discord or even Facebook chat windows, because at least those services have encryption, terms of service, data collection standards, and security baked into the format.

Really...anyone who knows this stuff when you don't is a potential malicious actor, and MU players seeking that free entertainment are pretty much at the mercy of the budget/hostingSite/protocol selection of the game-runners. There's no "policy" that fixes this issue, nor does a promise have any value, because the game site and protocol are pretty much wide open.

Now, you may read this and say "ennnnhhh...I doubt BubbaCliqDude or OPPCannotDie (whoever your fave/least fave MUers) have the skill, desire, or talent to fuck around with telnet" Don't think this.

Because literally anyone connected to any MUer, any malware/Trojans they have allow their malicious entity to snoop their telnet session that is using an insecure, open pipe of data from source-to-site (your transmission), then site-to-target (they receive). Both users have approved the connection and Microsoft is more than happy to let that approved connection do whatever it wants unless properly configured. Which...proper configuration in this case would be to disable telnet protocol altogether, which would kill your ability to connect to 99% of MUs

(note: every card payment taking service in the world is banned from having telnet protocol enabled on all windows machines. If telnet on any machines causes a PCI audit rejection, they could be contractually rendered unable to perform any transactions until telnet protocol is disabled across all machines)

THAT is how fucking bad telnet is.

@Arkandel said in Best (PnP) RPGs of 2018?:

A villain is defined by performing villainous acts. If they happen to not be to your liking then don't buy the product, but this trend of actively campaigning against products - or writers - because of the material itself gives me the creeps. It's no less than organized attempts at censorship.

Yeah, I get the creeps out of some of the growing social trends going on, most of them seem to be centered around the U.S.

It is shockingly easy right now to destroy someone's career with an accusation without evidence, diametrically opposed opposition are lobbying for censorship of content they don't like and want unchecked censorship for content that meets their approval, and the growing norm is to try to use social lynch mobs to force businesses to do things they want under duress.

It's really unnerving to me. A guy I know said that everyone involved with V5 should be (actual quote) skinned alive or at the very least chased out of the industry and blacklisted.

We really have passed the point of burning actual heretics to creating new definitions of heretic, because people are unwilling to admit that maybe it isn't the heretic that they hate, but the feeling of doing the punishing that drives them.

@enoch Keep an eye out for me heading towards the Brotherhood.

Because begging for humane treatment from the prior evolution of humanity only results in mass graves.