Posts made by Ghost

Ghost (the band) has been crazy interesting to follow.

Papa Emeritus 2 was very much so a religious hardliner with a perverse side. Like the sexualized Aleister Crowley figure. Creepily spiritual, lover of women, lonely old man, but somewhat 'conservative'. The music had more chanting hymn themes with him. Lots of Latin:

Il Padre
Il Filio
Et Lo Spiritus Malum
Omnis Caelestis
Delenda Est

Papa Emeritus 3 was a play on charismatic Christian leaders appealing to the younger audiences. He stopped wearing the clerical vestments and replaced them with stylish hair and jackets. Songs like "He Is" were a direct play on modern Christian hymns used by megachurches.

So I can only wonder if this next Ghost album, with Emeritus Zero being elderly, will go back to a lot of chanting, Latin, or maybe some kind of harder approach.

Breaking News. A few weeks ago, in Sweden, Papa Emeritus III was detained from the stage, and has been replaced by an elderly Papa Emeritus Zero.

For these reasons I am very happy that Todd Bertuzzi is now retired. He should have never had his indefinite suspension lifted.

I don't mind losing a character now and then, too

One alt should work fine if the scope of the game is tighter.

One alt on a game where everything is open (all marvel/dc chars) might leave Star Lord all alone in space while everyone plays at Xavier's.

But if the scope is ONLY mutants at Xavier's, one char should be more than enough.

@ganymede said in FCs on Comic MUs:

And this is my stance because no one has ever provided me with a satisfactory answer to the question: "why do you need to play more than one feature character on a game?"

You don't.

If you're not capable of finding plenty of RP on one character, taking up another character might seem like an answer at the time, but it shifts focus from character A to character B. The end result is less focus on a character who wasn't already fulfilling your need for RP and taking more attention away from it.

I'm a strong believer in the ethic that if you have 20 characters across 4 MUs, you're only able to focus 1/20th of your creative energy on any given character, and thus you water down the experience for the people you play with.

@sg said in Looking for potential staff for a Colonial Marines (Aliens) game:

@misadventure I particularly liked how they named their skill levels. I remember a month or two ago on Ares, there was a discussion about what to name the levels and it seemed nobody could really agree, but Aliens had very clear names that made sense.

@Ghost I think a game like that would translate well to an automated mush environment. Though, that might be more mud like than some people like.

Edit to add:

Holy shit..

That's a character sheet that screams EXCEL FORMULAS

@misadventure yeah I seem to remember the aliens RPG as being very table and ballistics heavy. Closer to Twilight 2000, like many of those uber-mathy crunchy systems games of the 80s.

@kanye-qwest said in FCs on Comic MUs:

Or you could maybe disallow all OOC communication, like an RPI?

XD.

This would do great things for the community.

@ganymede said in FCs on Comic MUs:

Too fucking bad? People clamored for alts on RfK, but the absence of alts was one of its best policies.
Many people have disagreed with my point of view, but I believe that players need to invest in their characters more. If you cannot get your PC into RP for whatever reason, switch PCs. Keep trying, or don't try, whatever you choose.

I'm 100pct with you on this, as well.

Especially on games with rosters or FCs, if you're having trouble finding RP or getting into a character, the answer is to drop the FC and make a different one.

There's a menagerie factor when it comes to FCs on hero games. When someone has an interest in dropping a character, they have to question whether or not they could get the character back if they want to return to it. So you tend to see a lot of I'll hang onto this FC and hope I can do something with it, but I don't want to get rid of them while I'm RPing with my active character...just in case.

This inevitably leads to FCs being played just enough to meet activity requirements, but are largely on the back burner.

@tempest said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:

Why haven't @ghost and @The-Tree-of-Woe delivered our X-Men only MU yet?

Hey, I have enough RL and work that I'm not a solid staff candidate. I'm about 2-3 days per week musher, not that 6-7 day musher.

I tend to have a lot of game ideas and could definitely support someone standing up a game, but a 2-3/wk headwiz just isn't a good thing.

If anyone wants to put this together, I suggest opening a post to recruit people for the project.

@autumn Hah! nice

There's a novel series where a cult begins to worship the aliens. They present themselves naked to their queen, ready to be purified...and then freaked out as facehuggers began taking them down.

Sometimes you pray to the wrong god at the wrong time.

@jennkryst Every xenomorph begins as a xenomorph in disguise.

@bobotron said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:

@faraday

So it's down to staff to remind people 'hey, these are things you can do if you're not a hit it; they're there!' You'll never make someone do then, but FFS, when did MU*ers get this f'ing passive?

Hey, mushers can be a sensitive bunch. You'd be surprised how many people don't get involved in things because they don't think they're welcome, or that they wouldn't fit in. I think people honestly worry about cheesing off the GRRRCOMBAT!!! people by trying to insert non-combat into their combat scenes. Cheesing people off has a way of thinning out your ability to find RP until sooner or later you're left writing monologues.

So I think it wouldn't hurt for staff to remind people that there's room for non-combat types in certain situations when it comes to fight scenes.

And let's not forget that technically some fights don't bother to stop and ask the person getting attacked whether or not they're a combat type.

@fatefan Not gonna lie. I'm heavily considering it. Actual consideration. It's not like we don't have every resource possible for help with FS3.

@cupcake That's a hill worth dying on. I'm not going to fight you on that at all.

Confession: I say "Jesus Christ" as a response to things so much IRL, that it's really hard sometimes roleplaying on a game where Christianity isn't canon. I can't roleplay on a Dungeons and Dragons MU and say "Oh my jesus fuck what the fuck?!?!" as a response to something.

As a result, I find I'm saying "Jesus Christ" less as a curse in real life. So, hey, progress maybe?

@bobotron Wow, thank you, I'm suddenly seeing it a bit more clearly.

I mean most of the Colonial Marines in the movie were assholes, but they weren't all heartless. Many of them were mercenary, and even though they were merc-like, they still patted Newt on the head, or didn't want some kid to get killed.

You can be a mercenary hired to do a job and not go all Apocalypse Now Evil with it. They still took their queues from their officers and the Corporati who set the mission parameters. It's part of the job, and so long as the stories don't push hard limits (like genocidal behavior), the reality would be "Fuck it, put the kids and their daddies on the transport back home. They were stupid for trying to homestead on government property, anyway. Once this job's done I got a barbecue and a beach full of hot people for leave in six weeks, and this cash is gonna buy me a whole lot of tequila."

@bobotron said in Which canon property/setting would be good for a MU* ?:

@ghost
You'd have to have some sort of good economic/IC benefits system, really. It's why real life PMCs are the way they are; they get paid TONS of money to do the job.

Vacations, money wired home to family, finding yourself some Arcturians...

That's a good way to angle it. The kind of personalities involved in being in a PMC for money would likely weed out a lot of "I'm doing this for the betterment of the universe" and result in a slightly more mercenary mindset.

@lithium said in Which canon property/setting would be good for a MU* ?:

@ghost I would actually play a game with FS3 if it were an Aliens setting world... I like the colonial marines angle a lot.

The thing I really liked about the idea when it crossed my mind was the corporate soldier setting. In canon, the military was outsourced to private corporations, so a lot of these soldiers were being yanked around by Weyland-Yutani to do soldiery stuff, but under the dystopian guise of corporate control of political policy.

So the setting wouldn't have to be CONSTANT aliens and/or predators, but could also have this element of:

• "We were sent to Gradis-54 to reclaim a mining operation from armed rebels" (Who were, in fact, seeking independence due to corporate greed)
• "We were combat dropped into a hazardous wasteland to provide security for corporate officers while they installed a strange lab..."

I think the trick, though, would be writing stories that didn't constantly end up wanting to make the players shoot their corporate bosses, you know? Weyland Yutani are assholes, so the storylines of where the marines go and when would have to be carefully crafted to avoid that.