Best posts made by Ghost

Or incarceration.

Plenty of people enjoy playing criminal characters, but in any given setting, the realistic risk of playing a criminal character is arrest, capture, and incarceration that may render the character unplayable. Criminal characters are typically constantly on the watch for the law, investigation, and other criminals. The risks in a life of crime are many. The risks include incarceration, death, having to go on the run, rival gangs/cartels, etc.

If the player can mandate that they do not accept the risks of any of these for their criminal character, especially when there's a law sphere on the game whose sole IC purpose is to investigate criminals, then you're basically allowing the criminal player to mandate that THEIR STORY requires that the law players don't get to decide what to do with THEIR stories.

Molly the waffle house employee mandating that she would prefer to not roleplay a sudden ISIS attack AK-47, pipe bomb jamboree in her waffle house is fairly reasonable. She wants to serve waffles and meet people. That's awesome.

A PC drug cartel leader mandating that police officer characters do not harass them ICly with investigations that could lead to the character rendered unplayable due to Folsom Prison Blues is far less reasonable.

@Tinuviel said in Depression Meals:

@Ghost Ah, of course. That explains a great deal.

I didnt believe it myself until some friends dragged me to one.

"Pepperoni pizza? Huh. Whattya know..."

They're still 75% Chinese food but it seems they're using the "crap for everyone at $12 per person" tactic. Stuff to feed the bratty, picky kid.

I've seen the term unplayable tied to a highly subjective state of my story, and this is something I think that people should keep an eye out for and be wary of.

I can completely understand when a character is unplayable because they're dead, rendered into the state of a comatose quadriplegic, incarcerated for life with no possibility of parole in a prison on the dark side of the moon, or literally turned into sentient strawberry jam.

I have heard (and seen first hand) some cases of the argument being made that a character has been rendered unplayable because an element the player demands be made available to them is not available. More or less, I've seen this leveraged as an argument for the people that do this to ultimately get their way. That, in some cases, the focus of my story is so subjective that things like not being allowed to have access to specific FBI files, a conflict resolved in a manner that benefits the character, or not being allowed to do something that no other character is allowed to do either is considered that which makes a character unplayable.

The reason I bring this up isn't to stoke any sort of argument, but is to bring into focus that there is a reasonable definition of unplayable and there is (in some cases) a definition of unplayable that is used as a leverage point to exhaust other people into giving others their way.

So, IMO, when dealing with the concept of a player being rendered unplayable, it should only apply to cases where the character itself is physically/mentally incapable of functioning. Wants do not equate to needs.

@Auspice said in Depression Meals:

I'm still so glad I broke myself of buffets years ago.

Too many days in my early twenties of getting stoned AF and going to Cici's or a chinese buffet.

Indian buffets are pretty unfair, IMO.

If you go to an Indian restaurant/buffet, then you can have everything you want (biryani, naan, etc) for $12 and unlimited plates. But if you want ONE meal (say, just Chicken Korma) then they unleash this weird TIERED PRICING payment thing that results in it coming to around $17.

Curry chicken? Yes.
With rice? Yes (cash register sound)
With naan? Yes (cash register sound)
One naan or two? OMGFUCKOFF.

@faraday said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

What I do pledge, though, is to "provide a sane, fair and friendly environment for you to tell your stories." Part of that fairness means ensuring that Fred has the same opportunities for success as my BFF Mary. I do not need to RP with him to do this. Off-camera scenes and +rolls are a thing for this very reason.

Warm fuzzies. You're a good one. You say it and you do it.

@Derp said in Depression Meals:

@saosmash said in Depression Meals:

@surreality I love that meat hammer. I bought a pizza cutter in the shape of the starship Enterprise once. (NCC-1701, no bloody A, B, C or D)

I use it for all my dough cutting!

HEY. HEY. Don't you diss the D.

@faraday said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

Man. I can't even reliably get non-TS romantic RP with people who don't get OOCly weird about it. Kinda jealous.

@saosmash is right. They're out there.

...
...
...

And some of them have quit the hobby, too.

fingergunz4everyone

If any of our forum members are in Australia and are anywhere near those fires, my heart goes out to you. Speak up if you need anything.

@Sunny said in Our Tendency Towards Absolutes:

What mutually assured destruction stuff?
No, seriously?

To be clear, I wasnt being accusatory to anyone, so with that in mind, I'll clarify.

I mean the whole "X player doesn't play with Y player for this reason, Y doesn't play with players A C T V and X". For whatever reason it is, there's a lot of players with undisclosed/disclosed ooc issues with each other that can result in:

"X player can play with A M and F so long as U and T are there, but O doesn't like M, so they don't want M coming to events, even if M and F are both friends with O..."

I think on a long enough timeline, everyone is gonna have some kind of issue with enough people that you're gonna feel like the environment is polluted.

Got into Netflix LOST IN SPACE.

I'm a Neil Marshall fan. I'm enjoying it. It's a very classic-type adventure show, like the Fraser Mummy movies.

@Sunny said in Our Tendency Towards Absolutes:

@Ghost said in Our Tendency Towards Absolutes:

I was just offering my perspective and my feeling about the absolutism topic and why I think it's a thing. I may be wrong, I may be onto something, but I'm 100% willing to help mend issues and not being shitty about it.

I think that if it were on games like you're referring to here, it would be a huge problem. I think that what you are talking about is bad, and wrong, and if it is happening somewhere or someone is doing it than everyone involved should stop. Don't get me wrong, what you're positing is TERRIBLE.

It just isn't happening? You're suggesting a solution without a problem.

We can agree to disagree, but personally...I disagree with you. I believe that there absolutely is a problem and that some people are constantly poised to write each other off, which is sad to me. I think pretty regularly we have Hog Pit stuff about how X person did this for Y reason, but then it turns out to be a misunderstanding. This isnt the behavior of a group of people with a lot of respect for each other.

You don't have to agree with me, and that's okay. It's just my take on it.

Also: Penis Man is a good example of "Fame 1" in WoD.

For now.

Since a tear I went on in another thread is partially responsible for the creation of this one, I won't be long winded.

Someone once told me (about TT RPG, LARP) that "You have one amazing experience, and then beat your head against a wall trying to meet or exceed that defining experience". I think there's wisdom in that, and I think it applies here.

There's good and bad in everything, but I think that every musher can speak a time about the "best it ever was" and are willing to go through a little Hell in hopes of finding it again. I think people may sometimes feel like others are keeping it from being "great like it used to be", and that some aggro may come from that.

I think there are some bad social habits in play (bullying, guilt engineering, false accusations, cliqueish behavior, forcing RL issues onto others, etc, whisper networks, etc), but I also think there are some very great people who still try to create fun, low-drama playspaces. I think some people are much nicer than others. I think some people can't separate the OOC from the IC (and that this has become a cultural problem in the hobby), and I think there are some people who do really well at maintaining their neutrality and focus on IC over OOC.

I'd say the issues in this poll/thread account for maybe 50% of the reason I hung up my mushing hat. I didn't feel that I could role play without having to navigate (navigate, not necessarily be affected by, but the need to always be mindful of, as well as always approached with it) OOC drama, and that some of these behaviors across the games had become too threaded into the culture to warrant continuing my search to meet/exceed that best experience. I felt that the negativity/drama could not be avoided to the point where partaking in the games always meant trying to enjoy yourself in spite of. The juice started to not feel worth the squeeze, so to speak.

(The other 50% consists of a mix of other personal issues, time constraints, RL activities, a need to try new things, etc, if anyone was curious; not that it's important or necessary information. No issues with quality of roleplay. I know some baller writers.)

@Ganymede said in The Art of Lawyering:

We all could come together and make a pretty nasty law firm.

Let me know if you need that Bird Law gap filled, but I am also willing to work as a consultant for your Bird Law needs.

Sidebar: Some people might think "WTF, going to ground, changing your email, and going with a new login persona and not declaring who you are is a thing that trolls, creepers, and stalkers do; this is wrong!"

But I think it's fair to say that if this is what someone has to do to get out of the obsessively OOC persona-war game, then I respect people doing it to get the fuck out.

After all, if they opt to get back in (I.e. tell people who they are, get involved in OOC drama/spats) then whatever benefit they had at anonymizing their fresh start would be ruined.

If you keep it IC, play fair, and are nice to people, there's no damage.

@Derp I'm talking about the highly important and underappreciated task of providing legal support for birds as clients in civil and criminal legal matters.

When a bird comes to me upset that some human shot at him or her with a pellet gun? Most lawyers would say "birds have no rights", but this is not true.

#notbeingseriousatall

Okay so my delivery was cheesy, but I think the sheer number of posts dedicated to complaining and breaking people down compared to the number of posts related to loving the hobby or working together is telling.

I think it's important to ponder it.

@Macha said in Dead Celebrities 2020:

Stan Kirsch

Richie

@Tinuviel To each their own opinion; I'm sure not everyone agrees with my every point, but it appears 38 voters feel that some shades of my point of view may be accurate.

@Alamias Wat. That's weird. Good news, but weird.

Okay then, Julie Strain is not dead. Schrodinger's Strain?