Topics created by Ghost

@Ghost I had to catch up on The Mandalorian before I let myself read this.

That is...really uplifting. I did not hate Jar Jar Binks, personally, although my favorite headcanon is that he was a Sith using a form of Drunken Monkey Kung Fu. It puts a whole new twist on everything he does. But man, no one hates like a Star Wars fan.

This one is from TTRPG; now that I've read the whole acronym and caught up with the rest of the class, you know.

Content warning: Drug Use.

***The Story***

click to show

The GM had placed us in a situation where our almost-epic D&D characters ended up Somewhere Else, where we all thought we were just college students. So suddenly, my fighter is just a kid on a sports scholarship. But there were a few secrets and things to find on campus that could give you special abilities.

Someone is summoning some Lovecraftian horror on campus. We find the summoning. This giant tentacle thing is now rising up in the woods behind campus. We have like. 5 hit points.

Enter the Druggie. She had found one of those secrets. It seemed super lame. She could jump. Really high.

And she'd been charged with finding a few "supplies" for the druggie party later.

So she turns to the GM and says, "Welp. I have ecstasy and Everclear here in my inventory."

GM blinks slowly. "Uh, yes, you do."

"Great. So I mix the ecstasy in the Everclear, shake up the bottle, jump up, and throw the resulting mess into the creature's mouth."

The look on the GM's face was priceless.

Once he'd recovered, the thing loses its mind, wrecks its own summoning circle in its drug-fueled haze, and returns to whatever reality it was trying to emerge from.

@ZombieGenesis Same. There's something very relaxing about the game while also having good puzzles and exploration. In the last few years I've really taken a shine to "lower stress" games like the Lego games or games with a "story" difficulty. I probably needed more relaxing games after being the "Soulsborne" gamer that I am.

Importing your WizardingWorld stuff was neat. Turns out I'm a Gryffindor. Huzzah

Forcing "purity" (interesting term for the topic, isn't it?) in an RPG is a slippery slope.

Sure, Genre-wise you don't want Luke Skywalker using 2022 tiktok meme examples in RP (he's supposed to be from a galaxy far away in a long time ago), but there's a pretty big line between "Creative preference" and "tyrannical GM nonsense". In the case of BofD and these two mentioned in the topic, their angle is that they view themselves to be an authority on the setting and they're literally inviting people to play content they view themselves to be owners of. So I don't get why people even bother to play that game, because ultimately it comes down to playing "house" with a couple of kids in their backyard and they'll make you leave if you're "not doing it right".

Why bother trying to be creative or create ANYTHING in an environment with someone who will tell everyone what their characters are, what they think, what they would or wouldn't do, etc?

These people are all "No" and not "Yes, and". They're not even "maybe, so" or "No, but". At the risk of sounding snide, they're literally using someone else's literary work and reputation to build themselves as an authority on the content and gatekeeping the shit out of it...and one of their preferred gates to keep is that BIPOC aren't in the ruling caste, make racist jokes, and consider black characters in the setting to be a matter of "woke cancel culture".

So, constructively, this should all be a lesson on do's and don'ts when it comes to understanding a few key things.

if you don't want people to try to create their own things and having a stake in it, you should be solo-writing it and not running it as an RPG where you falsely promote the concept of logging in to have agency over...well...anything. Yes, it's true that players/fans blur the concept behind a character's skin color as being indicative of support for ACTUAL people with that skin color. Is it a minefield? Yes. Is it 100% about the content? No. It's somewhat shades of politics, social issues, etc blurring it's way into content. Still, it's best to understand this and take at least a "maybe, but" approach.

You could create a setting where 1000 all-white families boarded a spaceship and colonized a planet, and after 200 years there are 10,000 people who have ONLY mated with people on that initial all-white spaceship, and people will STILL be like "...can I play a black character?" and your answer should always, ALWAYS be to question why the fuck you decided creatively that everyone in that ship was white to begin with. What's up with that?

@Ghost said in The Great PC Death Dilemma:

Without the "great equalizer" of PC death, player disenfranchisement grows as players will never be able to compete with older characters.

This isn't actually a problem unless plot-runners allow it to be.

A table-top GM may need to find ways to prevent the barbarian from bashing in every locked door before the rogue can have a go at it, and that same GM is doing a poor job of it if it's all straightforward combat all the time and the wizard has naught to do but run away.

And y'know, if it's difficult to come up with in-story complications to achieve this, you do have the option of putting 'This event/plotline is for PCs with n XP or less' on the announcement. I can't possibly count the number of times I've been told some plot that my PC would notice and care about and reasonably be involved in is simply not for me because of 'sphere' distinctions, leaving me to come up with the reason he didn't act. This is fine. I could do the same in keeping my nose out of stuff meant for lower or higher power-levels.

@Ghost I played that a few years ago. It was pretty good.

Changing the World Takes Time, Gentle Readers
by Judith Martin, Nicholas Ivor Martin and Jacobina Martin
Miss Manners | August 4th, 2022

GENTLE READERS: There is a disturbing trend in Miss Manners' correspondence that she wishes to address, lest Gentle Readers give up hope of a more polite future. It concerns letters that begin:

-- "When did it become OK to ...?"

-- "Am I just being hopelessly old-fashioned or ...?"

-- "Am I being too sensitive when ...?"

What follows is an example of something that was never OK. Miss Manners' field is external behavior, not internal squirming, but her concern is the implication that the victim has, or should have, given up hope of improving society.

A fourth type of letter underscores the point: It seeks a polite response to a slight, real or imagined, that the Gentle Reader already answered with a taunting rejoinder, a rude gesture or worse.

Miss Manners does, on occasion, supply responses which, though faultlessly polite, cause an offender to explode in a burst of mortification and apology. But she more often counsels more subtle responses, which, even had the reader known them when the event occurred, would not have required a fire extinguisher.

This is because the goal is not to strike someone who struck you first -- the goal is not to get hit in the first place.

This should be apparent, as even Miss Manners' most caustic advice is too late to touch a driver who has long since sped away, a line-cutter who is off offending new people out of reach of the Gentle Reader, or everyone else who has long forgotten what happened at that date, luncheon, meeting or class reunion.

It takes time to improve the world -- or even, truth be known, one's friends and relations. This is not because there are no solutions to rude behavior or because one must either accept rudeness or be rude oneself. Nor is it because the solutions proposed do not work.

True, Miss Manners' approach does not always provide the instant gratification of smacking our fellow citizens under the guise of good manners. She realizes this runs counter to a world that is impatient when the package just ordered is not already at the door. What she advises used to be known as solving the problem, an activity that Miss Manners accepts is old-fashioned, even if it is the only one that ever worked.

And just because we do not see the offenders shrivel up in front of us does not mean we have not succeeded. Who knows but that, having been shown a better way, they have not spent a sleepless night repenting?

I feel this.

Once upon a time on a game far, far, away... I had a RPing partner on a MU*. They were giving off all the indications of something being off about their patterns. They were partying harder, they were depressed, they were angry, etc. We would touch on it. I wasn't sure what to do for the longest time for many of the reasons already listed here. Then I just one day went -- Hey, are you really okay? Seriously? -- Then I went through and talked about medication and how I don't view it as something that had to be hidden. I shared a bit of my own personal story and that person ended up seeking help.

Now, it is not your JOB to do this. Please understand that. Not everyone is the same. -- My thought on it (which is personal) is that if someone is put upon my heart, then I should reach out. I would rather lose a friend with a show of concern then stay silent. HOWEVER that is just my thoughts and your choices are valid how you end up handling it.

I'm sorry that you are in the situation though.

From my perspective as a long-time lurker and very occasional poster...

This has all appeared extremely silly, ngl. That might seem dismissive to some of the people who were involved in the very heat of it, but I don't really intend it to be. Overall, the optics from a largely outside observer on all of this haven't really been great, but I feel like that starts to tread into water that's not terribly relevant for the original point of this thread, so I'll attempt to stay on topic.

First off, if you genuinely want to make MSB a positivity-focused environment, you have to understand that you're going to be fighting an uphill battle. The reputation that MSB inherited from WORA and further refined with the Hogpit isn't one that goes hand in hand with 'calm and measured discourse.' You're undoubtedly going to have a lot of people who will try to continue to foster the more hostile environment the place has been known to be for a while. It feels a bit like an Applebee's just bought out a biker bar, so expect the bikers to keep showing up for a while, either in protest or ignorance. Honestly, if I hadn't been watching what's been going on, if someone told me that MSB fractured and a new place opened called Brand MU Day, I definitely wouldn't be putting money on MSB being the one all about positive discourse from here on out.

Anyway, that's just one of the two main hurdles I see going forward. The other is that... like... You're humans, too. You are not immune to tribalism and cliques anymore than the Brand MU Day people are. Be wary of the urge to label any criticism or opinion that you dislike as being hateful or insulting. This is the internet, disagreements are going to happen and they will get heated. Think hard about where you want to draw the line and make sure you make it clear where that line is.

Mind, none of this is to say I've seen evidence of any of this so far. It's just a general warning as someone who has seen and sighed his way through repeated fractures and merges as a comic game fan. Generally speaking, I'm all for a positive environment for discourse. Once upon a time I would have thought it was impossible on the internet, but over the years I've seen a few examples of it (mostly) working so... I'm rooting for you guys, but I wouldn't say I'm totally convinced of the viability of this experiment yet.

@Admiral I have already backed at the top tier

Aviation Gin
Knob Creek 120 Proof
Glenlivet Founder's Reserve
Angostura Bitters
Insider by Oink Games
Fake Artist Goes to New York also by Oink Games
Treasure Island board game
Two nylon handcuff straps for my gun belt
A pair of gloves that you can use with a firearm

Kitchenaid mixers are what God would have made on the first day if he was a chef. I love my mother's, which is the one I shamelessly steal when I need one.

@Darren said in Modiphius/2d20:

@Ghost If you're looking for a generic system suitable for a wide range of settings/games, why not consider TinyD6, MiniD6 or even-- my personal favorite-- QuestCore?

I'm familiar with Tiny. I've done some gaming with the creators. Was just more wondering if someone tried stabbing at 2d20 that's all

@Rinel said in The Weirdest Thing I Ever Purposefully Did on the Internet:

Ffs gany this is why I didn't go into details

Commonwealth v. Gosselin.

Miles v. City of Augusta, GA. (Head to the notes.)

Work safe, but bizarre.

@ominous said in Potent Potables:

Some of us can only afford a few over $100 whiskeys, and Johnny Walker Blue sadly must be cut from the list.

$250 a bottle, and that was a deal.

I was mostly being facetious.

@Auspice said in "My Immortal" reading idea:

@Ghost said in "My Immortal" reading idea:

@Alamias said in "My Immortal" reading idea:

I...have never heard nor read this masterpiece, piece of literature, story

My Immortal

YOU ARE WELCOME

Bad

Youre just intimidated by its perfection

Ark is right. It wasnt a personal trolling, and outside of the Hog Pit we shouldn't personally attack. I make plenty of dorky comments from time to time like Tyche did.

On that note...

AKKKSHUALLY the MU code really only assists in authentication onto the game. Connection is handled at the host level, which redirects incoming connection (probably through a switch) to the specified port. From there the protocols on the host and client maintain the connection. MU code has little to do with it.

You know those cats you hear about at nursing homes and such that always seem to know when someone is going to die and will sleep at that person's side? Actually the person dies from having their soul absorbed by the cat, and the cat just chose them at random.