Best posts made by Ghost

I have this d20 pre-Saga Star Wars RPG book that has 100 adventure ideas in it. I still use it, or something like it, to keep ideas fresh. I will roll a d100 and make it work.

One thing I might ALSO suggest is getting some spreadsheets together, or use Google sheets to share them with staff, that contain similar concepts for your roles.

Guards/Security
Command
Medical
Engineering
Agricultural
Etc

Make a list of as many 1-week or more plot ideas for each group. Example:

Medical
1 - a flu sweeps through the ship
2 - an NPC breaks a limb and something worse is discovered in the x-rays
3 - an NPC goes out into the wilderness and comes back with an unknown sickness that must be researched, potentially quarantined, etc

Then, on a fixed timeline, roll some dice to randomly select weekly plot ideas, make an IC report from the Captain (or whatever) and keep people roleplaying. Keep them from being comfortable. There's WORK to be done, and they are not guaranteed to pass each test. Sometimes the guy in quarantine needs to die to give them something to obsess on being ready for next time, or reach out to command, guards, and agricultural staff to try to find the source of, etc.

With a good Playerbase, this'll keep em busy

@Pandora said in RL things I love:

@Ghost said in RL things I love:

@Pandora said in RL things I love:

@Ghost 1. You're a terrible person.

2. I'm literally watching this with my bestie right this second.

Yeah we're about 9 episodes in. It's not bad, although I wish it were more grim dark. I think Somerhalder might be underrated.

I think his eyebrows need to win an award for best supporting character, they are so expressive.

Finished it. No spoilers, but the finale has me more excited for season 2 than I was excited for season 1.

Haha this would never happen, but here's a hyper-focused game setting:

EVERYONE HAS SLEPT WITH YOUR CHARACTER

One player is the proverbial lynchpin connecting every other character in the game. The player, a disease-free, mild-mannered employee of a boring job, recently wakes up from an unspoken brush with death to find two key things to be true

1. The only characters he hasn't slept with are NPCs
2. He can't remember any of it.

This is where, in my mind, the game becomes more fun for the other players. Thru roleplay and other plot models on the game, this one character would come to learn that he/she has slept with:

• A Mobster's wife
• The Chief of Police
• A former Dallas Cowboys Quarterback
• Whoever the fuck the Betty White PB is
• A vicious Black Panther activist...and their spouse. Separately. Secretly
• A serial killer
• Three members of an underground sign-spinner crime ring slash cult that ties to an ancient entity that sleeps beneath the city, waiting to be awoken
• A shape shifting alien who performs on the side as Spider Man at children's birthday parties, who is mad as hell that the character won't acknowledge a potted plant as his/her child
• An entire collegiate women's volleyball team, who has since split into two teams: one team that wants to kill him/her, and another team who wants to save his/her life
• Nunchuck Ministry Squad(tm)
• A sentient human-sized sewer rat who works for the mafia
• A clown/mime Renaissance Festival enthusiast who chooses to identify as Wolverine from the X-men

@Auspice I know. it's so fucking unfaaaaaair.

By rote of weird habits like fact checking I could wade in and dismantle their platformy bullshit and fight it out until they're in a corner and resulting to stupid arguments like: You voted for Obama or SomethingSomethingClinton. But I don't. Why? Love.

I just wish I could find some telepathic way of making them understand that I'm not dismantling their confidence-tied importance on being some kind of FOX news analyst because I'm playing love first, and that since I'm sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner as a neutral elysium that is free of posturing that it is important they do the same.

But then...hes my dad, he's turning 70 soon, my other brothers are narcissistic/selfish fuckwits, and I'm not sooooooo...

But then my mom goes and says something like: "I dont agree with this person. I dont even like them. I hate it. But I vote for them because I'm loyal to my party..."

"Heh. Politics. Love you, mom."

Seeing as how I've used FS3 and your log cleaner(and think both are great), if anyone can pull this off, it's you.

Go 4 it.

@Auspice It is. That and what's the reward for "winning" those fights? Awkward silence?

@faraday One other concern: IP/Licensing. I know the last place I heard of being slapped with a cease-and-desist was a Matrix MU around the time the Matrix Online was about to release, but I sometimes wonder if the reason we don't see a lot more of this(because, let's face it, some MUs have a LOT of copyrighted material that isn't creative-commons in stored +help files, etc) is because the actual internet-side presence of this material isn't where it's stored.

I'm just throwing out things I think that may be relevant to the creation of said environment. It would probably be safest to use FS3 or other creative-commons IPs.

@Rinel YOUCANDOOOEEET.

I'm cramming for a test right now, too. If I get the cert I'll need x hours of training upkeep per year, too.

Please accept said telepathic offering of intense study and focus vibes NNNNNnnggg!

Anyone remember e-Feds? Online roleplaying sites where you roleplay dice-based professional wrestling matches and roleplay the drama surrounding the make-believe wrestling television programs?

I just read that WWE has, at times, sent cease-and-desist letters to online e-feds where their copyrighted characters were being used.

No Rey Mysterio for you.

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

This guy is currently arguing for complete automation of literally all pleadings.

...wut

@Cupcake I would play the ass out of any game that puts my character into a Valkyrie

Quietly rooting for my buddy to find love.

I got this buddy who is(?) in the closet. Its one of those things where everyone we know KNOWS, and for all we know HE KNOWS (he probably does but it just isnt public stuff because hes in a very "dude man bro" job).

Dude is fucking adorable. Always smiling. Always has good jokes. Never seen him angry. Always offers to pick up the appetizer. He's basically a cub that looks and talks like the guy from Tucker and Dale:

Sober: "Oh yeah, dude, I used to dig trenches an shit. Yall wanna shoot some pool? My ass just sitting here playin minecraft. Later I gotta take the truck up north n' help someone uproot a stump from their lawn."

A few dozen beers in: "Dang, man, you got strong shoulders. We should all just cuddle and watch some Walking Dead or some shit..."

So one of my first wishes for 2020 is that he finds the wuv. Guy is a sweetheart, Reuben as hell, and deserves a solid thing. Also, because me and the 3 or so other friends he flirts with are taken and my girl is like: "Hah. I love that guy. Hands off mine, buddy."

I agree with this sentiment. Without occasionally kicking over the sand castles in the sand box and ruining everyone's progress, it's not possible.

In the Walking Dead, they were forced to leave the prison, then Alexandria went from a nice, suburban burg into a tribal war camp.

Maintaining a survivalist feel on a MU is simply not possible while there are players holding the my story attitude. The genre, by definition, requires survival, and survival (as a word) infers that failing to survive is a possibility.

Roleplaying needing to find food to survive is a meaningless effort if you have predetermined that you will find food and everything will be okay until you decide to roleplay a scenario where your character is at risk...but will ultimately be fine in the end.

I've read the costs of going Vegan in the US to be somewhere around $17/day to $200/month per person.

The problem with this in the US is that you can get 9 burritos for $9 at Del Taco. The "dollar menu" at McDonalds(or any fast food place) is simply more economical for families with lower wage constraints.

@surreality Well, yeah, a good GM doesn't go:
"You went to go break up the mugging outside of the bar and he was hiding a sawed-off shotgun in his pocket ROLL INITIATIVE, FUCK YOU YOU DIE."

I always like to approach GMing as finding ways to feed entertainment to the players. Entertainment isn't always this huge degree of risk. Risk ebbs, flows, and doesn't always involve death. One of my favorite playbook options is to avoid a TPK (total party kill) if group combat goes bad and have them wake up in a cell, or in a strange hotel room, or somewhere else. It's like playing with a beach ball. Keep it in the air as much as you can, but let them be prepared for the risks when they decide that it's time to strap up with weapons and take on a hive of vampires. Even then...being captured is an option.

@faraday I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm not. Where my head is at in this discussion is that "people that enjoy the dice/rpg style of risk with xp who view the dice-assisted risk experience to be thrilling because the outcomes are not predetermined or railroaded, up to and including character death" don't necessarily mesh well with "people who want to tell a story and want to control the risk via story intention, but ultimately be in control of the outcome."

You're right, there are equally valid styles of play.

It's just that when you have one population of people who believe that the game is about risk, character sheets, and dice rolls, and another population of people who believe that the game is about what they decide the outcomes to be, then stuff gets awkward.

One crowd won't agree with the "never rolls dice" crowd deserves the rewards.

The other crowd doesn't want their characters or story risked to dice rolls, and doesn't want to be forced to do so to move the story along.

So my point is: Figure how it's going to work going in, make it clear to your players what kind of game it is, and draw in your target audience. Don't leave it vague. Put it in the "news" or "policy" articles. Just...whatever you do, don't let the players figure out what kind of game it is after they've become invested in it.

Edit: And it is probably very obvious, at this point, which style of play I think balances fairness across the playerbase. Dice tend to put everyone on the same, weighable odds. The more free-form approach, which I prefer in certain kinds of settings (but not all), runs a greater degree of risk in terms of dispute/story resolution turning into a nightmare where you need to find out what everyone wants on the pizza, who doesn't get their favorite topping, who does, and who gets stuck eating the crappy salad.

How about we keep this thread to the OP's topic of food, cost of, etc and keep all of the race and privilege talk to the politics board or a separate thread?

I'm 100% interested in talking about food, veganism, eating on a budget, etc.

I'm -1000000% interested in competing over who best understands privilege and racial issues while trying to discuss veganism, food, and eating on a budget.

Edit: Shit. I just read @Arkandel first post and it says "social" issues. Looks like I am understanding the thread wrong. Carry on. Without me, alas, but carry on. But I think a non-political thread about eating on a budget, diet support, etc (not connected to the mental health thread) thread would be cool.

When character death isn't a viable option, then you're playing the rpg with cheat codes. It sets a potential expectation for NPCs, bad guys, sometimes other players, but not for your character. I mean, even from a point of artistic integrity, for the people who prefer their story>game, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I've also learned that fried rice (shrimp, pork, vegetable, doesnt matter) and egg drop soup is both the ultimate DEPRESSION meal and the ultimate HAVE A COLD meal.

Hot. Filling. Reheats well. Reasonably priced.

@Sunny saying that I get it, but don't entirely believe it makes for good playspace are two entirely different things. I get the motivation behind it, and think it works very well in some non-dice playspace like superhero MUs where people go in with the expectation of diceless task resolution. I just believe that going through the task of getting a book/PDF to use in generation of a character, or using a system where task failure up to including rules about health levels, hitpoints, and character mortality, are running a weird line when adding in the element of players feeling that the results of those tasks need to fit to their liking. Seriously. Stop it with the trying slow-burn forum tactic of trying to paint me as some rules Nazi.

@faraday Cool beans. I'll pull it back a bit. We've already derailed the ass off of this thread. I would also like to note that I'm not a PKer or that guy that would join a game and scream and bitch on channels about players who have their own viewpoint on how their character works or how they think a story should go. Each game has their own view on how this should work. I'm just trying to say that when you have two camps of players getting together with differing views on whether or not the danger-level of the setting applies actual, quantifiable danger to their characters, then there will be problems. I just needs to be defined up front. That's all. Sync it up.

@Roz Not...Exactly. I'm waxing philosophical about the concept of is it really a dangerous setting if every player decides on a personal level whether or not they choose to ignore that the setting is dangerous at all? In the sense of running or maintaining a fair play space where players are expected to have their characters interact, you inevitably end up with some characters written as if being entirely unafraid of things like laws, death, personal injury, etc because the player seems to understand that there's really only risk when they choose for it to apply to them. Immersion suffers as a result. Sometimes it ends up with different groups of players seemingly playing by two sets of rules. GMs have to judge each case as it comes along. I know some people are very staunch about "this is my character, my story", and the want to write that story is reasonable, but the game element of rpgs is where sheets, dice, task resolution, hitpoints, failure, and death and dying chapters comes in. So not non-consent death, no. I'm saying non-consent other stuff, too, including just how much the setting applies to their characters and whether or not everyone is playing by the same set of rules.

Roleplay is great. I love it. It's fun, but if we also design these games to have that game element, then we should be clear about how it's intended to be used, and how it applies to people's characters whether they consent to things going their way or not.

Not everybody can win. We go through sooooo muuuuch shiiiit on these games with people getting upset because they want it this way when someone wants it to go another way.

I'm. Just. Saying. There's. Dice. For. That.

@Tinuviel said in Depression Meals:

@Wretched said in Depression Meals:

Chinese Buffet

@Wretched said in Depression Meals:

Too much sushi

Um.

Oh you didn't know?

In the US Chinese buffets include: Chinese food, sushi, pizza, corn dogs, spaghetti, troughs of gravy, and they'll pour that shit into a bucket all in one gloppy mix and you can just...feed.