Best posts made by Ghost

@Lotherio Yeah, my Rancid, Offspring, Ritual Device show where Eric Melvin showed up was at the Ranch Bowl.

RIP the Ranch Bowl

@Tinuviel said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

@Ghost said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

@Tinuviel said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

@Ghost said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

@Tinuviel said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

@peasoupling said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

Like, seriously, some people's writing throws red flags all over the place.

Surprising nobody, I am often made uncomfortable by the writing of others.
Unfortunately staff frown on my constant reports regarding the Oxford comma and ending sentences with a preposition.

What, are you on?

In that sentence, the comma has turned 'on' into an adjective so it isn't a preposition anymore. Fail.

So you're saying that you prefer the comma before, during, or after?

Fuck you.

This is totally what I hoped to see when I started this thread.

warmfuzzy

Anyone got any good superstitions they actually live by to share?

I'll go first. I work IT. A long time back someone brought in donuts for a code release. The release became a nightmare. No donuts? Release was fine. Bagels? The release was a nightmare.

We now actually have about 30+ people with a solid no circular breakfast food on release day rule. No lie. People will be mad at you for bringing bagels or donuts when it's showtime. Young people, old people, management, atheists, evangelicals, it doesn't matter. This is a thing.

@buttercup Sharing that was very brave and I admire that you followed your ethical compass to post this. You are absolutely right that grooming happens in this hobby, and people should always remember that even someone you've known (in this hobby) for years could really just be presenting an idealized version of themselves to you that contradicts who they are in real life. These people could be sex offenders, convicted felons, or could even be simply lying, catfishing, or grooming by means of "friendship".

These people are strangers, and everyone should be mindful of how much exposure they provide these strangers. Sometimes just a little bit of information is all it takes to regret it.

Thank you for speaking up.

@Derp Why you bringing me into this, dawg? I been away quite a bit, now.

@mietze That's amazing. Like...by virtue of being prepared for it, it's kept you safe from it so far.

I think a big part of the problem here is that there's no real right of way. The person who wants to opt-out of specific content often still wants the scene to progress; they dont want to STOP roleplaying, but instead want the content to fit within their guidelines. However, for people wanting specific content, there's an unspoken line where that's reasonable, but they dont feel like they should be forced to alter their preferred content to the whims of other okayers.

In short, there's a reasonable factor that someone playing vampires wants sex, blood, and rock and roll isnt truly required to alter their content because some player doesn't want to do that, but doesn't want to be left out of roleplay.

Opt-in is a great idea, but it only works under the assumption that players will accept being left out of scenes that they dont opt-into. RP on a MU isnt an entitlement. You can make the argument that in a perfect world everyone is welcoming and wants everyone' input, but the reality is that some games/scenes just aren't what a particular player is looking for and it isnt everyone else's responsibility to change for them.

This is why I dont play on Shang and avoided some other games.

I wanna keep Wrestlemania spoiler-free for a few days, but seriously...

...who the fuck hates Bret "The Hitman" Hart?

The guy is beloved and...

I can think of a dozen wrestlers that might have people in the crowd thinking FUCK THAT GUY to the point of being dumb enough to rush tackle them even with some odd 30 200+ pound wrestlers and former MMA fighters nearby, but Bret and Natalya?

Which lame-brained fan had enough of a beef with THE HART FOUNDATION enough to be willing to get their face actually punched in by Braun Strowman and Travis Browne?

@Auspice said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

@Ghost
How would you propose to handle situations wherein someone was uncomfortable and too scared to even use the command, but once they finally do, they express that they want to retcon the entire scene?

Add into the policy that the +xcard has to be pressed during the scene. The xcard is designed to stop content going-forward, not retroactively. All ret-conning has to go through staff, anyway, so it should not be used as an unmoderated retcon device.

By the time a player wants to retcon the whole scene, staff are gonna have to get involved anyway. +xcard is a tool designed to give players agency DURING those scenes and it should be reinforced during said retcon request that the xcard is their tool for doing so when the content presents itself.

Proceed with likely exhausting retcon conversation as normal. Which is why in my policy suggestion I wrote it as a PRESENT TENSE PRESS tool

6'8", 385lbs, 10% body fat.

No one sane wants to put themselves in a situation where that would be willing to actually hit you.

ETA: From what I understand, Strowman is still a pretty good guy, so I'd still rather fight him than Mike Tyson. I'd get wrecked, but my chances of walking away with my life are higher with Strowman.

@Sunny said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

@Kanye-Qwest

I just want to know why it bothers him SO MUCH that people are talking about addressing this issue. Like cool, he doesn't want the people who need a tool like this on his game, but there are plenty of games that actually do?

I think on some level it's not insane to worry about misuse of social control mechanisms baked into a game or its code. I think it's reasonable to be concerned. Granted, I happen to be of the opinion that that xcard system I suggested would help identify bad actors on both sides, but three+ people have questioned how to protect people from its misuse. Misuse (and whether or not every place/player can be trusted to use concepts like this in good faith) is a concern.

@Paris said in Faceless' Playlist:

@Ghost Presence 5 darkling or tunnelgrub or something, prurient perfume or whatever merit that was.

Mark my words, the rest of the MU community will rue the day you told me this, Paris.

Update: The dude who attacked Bret is from Nebraska.

He's one of my people. Fuck.

@Meg said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

you can be disrespectful while writing things respectfully. it's like how everyone dogpiled on faraday when she started talking about wanting to make a new MU* codebase with more web integration. she asked for opinions on doing that, but instead, everyone was like 'oh god you shouldn't do this at all it's horrible'. and sorry, that's not a respectful way to interact with a topic about ways to implement it.

"East coast people got a mean way of being nice, and west coast people got a nice way of being mean"
-Nathan, who makes my coffee. Wise man

@Finn

Tardis.

@fatefan I've heard that these guys are tied to or using a similar system as Shadow of the Demon Lord, which was crunchy in tiny ways that built up.

Downloading the core rules to see now. I'll probably back Lancer for my collection, though.

Another WoD peeve.

In the LARP scene there was a term: "Rare and Unusual"(RU). It was for the things in the game that were so rare and unusual that STs had to police how many were allowed/in play or else there'd be 50 of them running around because they're the cool, new thing.

My stance: If you are incapable of making a Ventrue Camarilla member interesting, then you are not a good candidate for RU characters. You should not be allowed to supplement lack of creativity with RU.

Unfortunately, with online/LARP WoD players, the constant drive for interesting by character type decision is a known bad habit. Many players seem to try to make their characters stand out by being these creative sheet-level decisions and not due to character personality. IMO nWoD only made this worse by adding some 6+ levels of configuration complexity.

To steal a Monte Cook'ism...

oWoD: "I am a Ventrue Camarilla member who..."

nWoD: "I am a CLAN, BLOODLINE, 2ND BLOODLINE, SECT, SUBSECT who..."

Not that oWoD didn't have bloodlines and its own set of RU corner cases, but oWoD seemed to regard RU system-wise as flaggable, whereas nWoD seemed to embrace it.

Anyway, a peeve. Not making fun of anyone. It's just that every time I see "My character is a Kinfolk Mage Thinblood Half-Ghost Changing Breed Rabbit who is a member of Task Force Valkyrie and is 1/5th keuijin" I kinda go "Yanno, if this character were so interesting, they'd be just as interesting as a...Toreador. All that salad on the character sheet is neat, but IMO misses the point and further promotes WoD being about super weird and RU configurations."