Posts made by Ghost

We're gonna get details on this, this weekend...

Orange Cassidy is the most fun thing to happen to Pro Wrestling since Joey Ryan's dong.

Orange Gives Zero Fucks

If this article I just read is true, then Gearbox is doing something smooth as Hell for Borderlands 3.

Borderlands 2 was released in 2012. Borderlands 3, the chronological sequel, is getting relased in 2019.

Would it be slick as Hell to release a FREE DLC for a 7 year old game across all platforms? A FREE DLC for all that will be a connecting piece between Borderlands 2 and 3?

Yeah, IMO that would be PR/fan service gold.

Leaked Borderlands 2 Free DLC Pre-Borderlands 3

@Dreampipe said in Pro Wrasslin':

"Hey guys should we protect our necks?"

NJPW: "Hahaha nope."

OMG NJPW is freaking brutal.

Sidenote: AEW DoN was awesome.

A GM once surprised my SO and I (well, my SO's character, but I got to witness) with a "roofie/video camera" scenario at an IC house party in Beverly Hills.

Our "X-card" was our feet in his ass.

@Lotherio I get ya. I'm not backtracking really. I just had a bit of meditative thought over my FOURCHATA (fuckyaself, @Auspice) and wanted to throw out that stream of consciousness or whatever it was.

^ Ghost: "Social thought stuff pondering WALDEN WAS RIGHT transcendental stuff"

@Auspice said in X-Cards:

@Ghost said in X-Cards:

I was giving this some thought this morning while I was drinking my quad-shot dirty chai and listening to the radio in the car. (not an important detail).

I THOUGHT WE AGREED COLD BREW WAS KING.

YOU LIED TO ME.

I got a new thing now.

4 shots of espresso. Chai tea. Milk. Little bit of cinnamon.

I call it the "Fourchata"

Not entirely, no, but lemme spit this.

^

These days we're seeing what feels like an increase in social control mechanisms. More defined rules as to who can say what, what can or cannot be said, and who has the right of way when it comes to a disagreement regarding said social rules. Sure, societies have always had these kinds of things, but I'm noticing now more than I ever have that the number of things that I apparently am not allowed to say or have no right to do seems...more in the forefront?

No Social Dice
So, let's look at this. Mushers typically don't want social dice (and telepathy rules) for a few reasons. 1) Because they don't want creepers to use it to justify being allowed to do things that they're not comfortable with and 2) Because they don't want to be told what their character believes, wants, or has to do based on the game system. It creates an uncomfortable series of possibilities that are ultimately based around the player being committed against their will to the whims of an IC or OOC system. The x-card isn't entirely the same as people's aversion to social dice, but I believe it's in the same "spirit family", if you will.

The X-Card
I was giving this some thought this morning while I was drinking my quad-shot dirty chai and listening to the radio in the car. (not an important detail).

I think it's fair to say that the "X-Card", given the social climate, falls into the category of yet another social control mechanism designed by the eye of the beholder to want the guarantee that when they say "stop" everyone "stops". That seems to be the commonality between many of these social control mechanisms: "When I say stop, you stop, regardless of whether or not you agree with me". Because we can't seem to argue religion, race, or politics, but oh how many try to force the other side into being not-allowed to partake.

Let's be fair. The X-card concept seems to accept the fact that you will never be able to entirely guarantee that something "triggering" will never ever ever happen in an RPG, but it's a system designed to both relinquish and provide control of the conversation; yielding the "right of way" to whomever doth presseth the cross. I think with enough meditation on it, that's what it is, isn't it? It's not truly a system that addresses social communication and how to properly behave in a role-playing game (or even work ahead of time to make sure everyone's comfortable), but it's a system designed to provide a modicum of control to the person who feels (for good reason or selfish) the need to assume control of the conversational/creative behaviors of ACTUAL people.

So... (here's my dismount)

...could it be said that for the same reason people are uncomfortable with the use of social dice there could be some correlation to the reasons why they would be comfortable using the X-Card, but aren't paying enough attention to the fact that on some level the X-Card is in the same category of the very thing they hate about social dice? (i.e. No one wants to be controlled, but it's better to hold the reins than to be strapped to the wagon?)

Just had an interesting thought:

Players on games dont like "social dice" because they don't want to have it dictated what their character thinks/believes/or has to do based on a failed social check.

If the above statement is true, is it acceptable/hypocritical to promote the xcard, which effectively works like a "critical hit" social roll on the other players?

My point: RL communication is not an RPG that requires an icon on a table and a coordinating Google writeup on how to use the system.

@Cupcake said in Good TV:

@Ghost Viktor and Petra are my jam, especially after watching interviews with the actors.

Yeah. Viktor and Petra are the shit, too. Man, that finale. I was looking forward to seeing how they were gonna make it through that one thing that happened...

By they I mean Petra and Billy, who I think are a great ship.

@Cupcake said in Good TV:

@Ghost The showrunners have already announced they're shopping it to other networks. Cross your fingers.

Good, because Maria deserves better than Marcus and that dumb shit didn't know how good he had it.

@surreality I think this is a good example of something that cant be hashtagged for content and could come up in game in that "xcard this shit" way. I also think I own 3+ RPG books that have systems for this specific thing (Mutants and Masterminds being one of them) and 20+ games with systems on how to handle suffocation.

Having said that, I think this is absolutely the kind of conversation the V5 team was writing about when they suggested session 0 be a conversation about the group's preferred nogo points so that the GM wont depict it and the players might agree to simply not use it in combat.

@surreality I know

Deadly Class was one of the few newer shows that I was genuinely in love with. Now I'm gonna have to buy it on disc.

FUCK

SyFy just announced that they cancelled "Deadly Class".

That's fucking trash; that show was brilliant.

@Thenomain Yeah I mentioned V5 brought up the X-card as an option a few MSB thread pages back. That whole section of the book has a lot of good material as to how to handle the issue of content with lots of methods.

Their key one, which I really like, is at SESSION ZERO the group discusses their list of no-go points and their preferred coterie list of morals.

Those poor guys got wrecked. They put a lot of good work into how to handle extreme content, that not all aspects of canon needs to be followed, that they don't support RL monsters, and despite all that it's gonna go down in history that they were allegedly a bunch of Swedish alt-right neo Nazis who were apparently so alt-right that they created an all Islam faction, a progressive SJW Gangrel canon character, and a rogue group of women at the helm of a new worldwide Tremere sect who chose to break out of the male dominated "boys club".

There were so many interesting ways to play, some of them with inspiring progressive ideas and yet...

Anyway /rant. Entitlement thread stuff.

But if y'all can get a snippet of the chapter where V5 addresses this it might be some amazing ideas/wording for MU/wiki sites.

WoD is just altogether bad for X-carding.

• Gentry kidnapping babies.
• Bloodletting
• Tackle and neckbite for food (which some people equate to a sexual assault)
• immortal vampires in the body of minors
• Litany laws demanding wolves breed and a caste of breeding stock characters
• Vaginas Vaginae with fangs
• Smoking
• Trenchoats, katanas, tommyguns
• Dolphin guys with bang lists
• mental illness as a non-voluntary character trait (Malks)
• character death
• Theres always some sect hunting you
• PvP elements
• People hunting vampires because someone <insert xcard>'d their sister
• Every vampire character story starts off with: You died
• The WoD is not meant to be happy. People are assholes. You don't prosper in it; you survive it

D&D is far less edgy. WoD is not a great place to implement the X-card altogether, as some of these entries are jokes, but others are central to theme and/or character design.

@Arkandel Ah I read better now, thank you. Agreed.

@Lotherio That's reasonable. This isnt a problem for my RL group because we know each other well and try to stay in genre. Our house rules (that we made together) are pretty simple:

• No graphical scenes involving children
• No graphical roleplay involving sex, be it an assault or mutual (because Steve ACTIVELY roleplaying an IC blowjob on the other end of the couch from Janet is awwwwwwwks.)
• If it's weird? Ask first
• No RP that pins a PC at the whim of another to be forced to perform any house rule, graphically depicted or off-camera
• The maximum amount of time that we will discuss OOC upset is 30 minutes

@Arkandel said in X-Cards:

@Ghost said in X-Cards:

• Asking the X-Card player to leave the game due to discomfort is contradictory to the spirit of adopting the X-card "mission statement".

That has been the default answer since the 80s. "If you don't like it then don't play here".

It fixes nothing.

I do not believe that to be correct. It fixes the problem of players playing on games with content that they do not enjoy and players being forced to play games they do not wish.

All anyone can do is ask if content can be molded to their wishes, and if the playerbase does not wish to do so, they (the existing players) are not doing anything wrong by declining to do so. That's just the way life works. You simply have to accept that some games are not a good fit for your wishes, and (this is key) if the playerbase does not wish to alter the game to your wishes, then forcing them to so so would still leave you playing with people who did not wish to alter course for your sake to begin with.

• You don't go to a Catholic church and demand sermons on Xenu
• You don't go to AA and demand them not to talk about alcohol
• You don't go to a Magic: The Gathering night and demand everyone plays Yu-Gi-Oh instead

You ask. If they don't want to, then you find groups that will meet your criteria or start one of your own. It's a tried and true method that has existed for hundreds of years; ask Christianity or Satanism.

@faraday Yeah, the X-card system isnt really designed to be chopped up in some places. Sure, it says that you can take/leave as much of it as you want, but the basic core tenets that are somewhat static/necessary are:

• You tell the player that if they push the X-card, the group will deviate from that topic, no questions asked.
• Asking the X-Card player to leave the game due to discomfort is contradictory to the spirit of adopting the X-card "mission statement".