Best posts made by HelloRaptor

Ginger Pride Event - 2016

...

...

@Luna

@HelloRaptor Lol! Have we played together before?

Yes, those are all from logs.

No, I don't actually remember who you played anymore, I just saw the bit you quoted about faking disconnects if bored by TS and started thinking of all the lulzy ways to fake a disconnect while making sure they knew it was fake because lol.

@Derp

More successes = better success was not really how it was intended to be

Which is kind of counter-intuitive given things like the combat system, where 4 successes is absolutely you 'doing better' than 1 success is, or contested rolls where the lady with 7 successes pretty objectively 'did better' than the guy with 5, etc.

Also the shit where you only get an exceptional success on an extended roll if the very last roll you make is Exceptional is just arbitrarily dumb. That's not really related to the rest, just something that always annoys me.

@Coin said:

@HelloRaptor said:

@Coin said:

Fanfiction communities are open to being read and criticized and experienced by non-ficcers.

Remember the other day when I was picking at you for using easily nitpicked language?

Well, fuck you for returning the favor, asshole.

I meant they are public enough that anyone can go and criticize, not that they are open to criticism as people.

Jerkfase twatmonkey.

Bookmarking to read your post later, too blurry from tears of laughter still.

@TNP said:

Is there a good site to read up on the Ascenscion War? I could google, of course, but it's the 'good' part I'm asking about.

Though having read the wikipedia entry for Dark City and Tomorrowland, I'm probably not the audience for this game as much as I loved oMage. But that's also why I'm curious about the setting. I never read revised.

I'm kind of confused here. You loved oMage but don't know what the Ascension War is? There's no sarcasm to my question, nor criticism, I'm just not entirely sure how to reconcile those statements, or answer without telling you a bunch of shit you already know (??).

The tl;dr of oMage is that belief shapes reality. Mages believe things more strongly than non-Mages, which is why their individual beliefs hold more sway than an individual Sleeper, or even a sizable group of them. Bob Sleeper says that's a rock, Joe Mage says it's a piece of bread, Joe's probably eating bread tonight regardless of what Bob thinks.

However, reality at large is more or less on Bob's side. A rock is a rock unless some enterprising mage says otherwise, after all. Once upon a time it was because there were seven billion Bob's who all believed that and kept the status quo. Whether there are still billions of people somewhere, or whether reality is just coasting on intertia, is something people will probably wonder about in game (I have no idea).

The Ascension War came about when a bunch of sciency-minded mages thought it was balls that Bob was stuck with rocks while Joe could have bread whenever he wanted it, and went about starting to codify their magic and science in such a way that it was such incremental improvements over what people already had, that those Sleepers began to buy into their bullshit magery. This went hand in hand with actual science shit advancing, something Sleepers were able to get in on as well, which only further snowballed shit in favor of the science-minded folks, who later became the Technocracy.

The Ascension War is just the phrase used to describe the conflict between the major Paradigms involved. In oMage up through Revised it was essentially The Traditions v The Technocracy v The Nephandi v Marauders (sort of). The Technocracy represent the status quo, the Traditions represent the remaining mysticism and shit in the world, the Nephandi want to just break and/or shit on everybody's toys because they love playing in shit and everybody else should too, and the Marauders nobody really knows (that's not true, we sort of know, but not everybody agrees with it).

At one point or another the War ranged from very cold to very hot, depending on which book you read and whose perspective it was written from, but presumably in the current setting open, armed conflict between factions is probably not the best idea since... you know. Floating space bubble city. Nobody wants to pop it. Except some contrary motherfuckers who are going to post how they'd love to make characters who would decide to pop it, but don't be that asshole.

@The-Tree-of-Woe said:

One of the best counters to D&D style hoarding I saw was in the Mongoose Conan RPG. If players started hoarding treasure, the GM could call "High Living," which means that the PCs spend all their money on expensive inns, expensive drink, and expensive men/women.

I know nothing says enjoyable gaming to me like the GM telling me what my character does with his stuff.

So many games would run so much smoother if players would just stop insisting they should make those sorts of decisions.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

@HelloRaptor said:

There comes a point where you need to bite the fucking bullet and move up. The number of times I've talked to companies that have perfectly viable (maybe not perfectly, but still viable) modern alternatives but don't want to spend the money or time to train people to use them, is just infuriating.

My first job was at a weekly newspaper that still used dial-up Internet service. I used to beg to go back to my apartment to do anything online, where I could use my cable modem.

I love how people are like... shocked and awed that there's still dial-up internet service at all.

@TNP

In oMage - 1st ed, volume 1, whatever you want to call it, the Ascension War was in the process of happening between all the factions.

In Revised things had sort of gone poorly for everyone. The Technocracy abused their 'SCIENCE!' card when they used an orbital platform to essentially laser-nuke an Antidiluvian from the sky, and Bob-The-Generic-Sleeper kind of went "..buh?" The backlash hit the Technocracy hard and seriously wrecked their joint. There was some kind of detonation of another explosion in the Shadowlands or whatever they called where Wraith was set and the whole thing blew up more or less.

This resulted in the Avatar Storms, which were basically fragments of souls and avatars getting swept up and cutting through the Gauntlet like a sandstorm full of sharp glass, cutting off the world from most of the outer realms where all the mage factions had been keeping their Too-Old-And-Powerful-To-Live-On-Earth people, essentially snipping the head off a number of hydras and cauterizing the wounds. The Technocracy and Traditions both lost a lot of the more powerful and stubbornly set in their ways leadership and it had various ramificatins for both factions.

In particular the Computer-dominated Iteration-X was suddenly left without said domination, or the leadership who had been so indoctrinated, and underwent a pretty radical change of focus from replacing the human body with technology to augmenting it. Fewer robot-limbs-just-because-stronger-better, more power suits and enhanced tools, with an eye towards designs Sleepers could accept, etc.

@Tempest

P.S. I did have to admit to finding it a little bit laugh worthy how there's been absolutely no balking at the idea of mages tearing a city out of the ground and floating it into space and maintaining everything needed to sustain it there, while also keeping the entire populations brainwashed. Very poignant glimpse into why so many people complain about the powerlevel of mage.

I'm pretty sure if you were to take stock of shit NPCs have done in wod stories for the sake of creating/sustaining/whatever a particular plot device, that would hardly seem even the craziest thing to come out of oWoD.

As far as a lot of it goes, it's probably better to think about it less like giant overriding effects and more like tons and tons of little ones all being managed by the AI or whatever it is.

On a side note vaguely related to that last bit, there's two things I always balked at not getting more play on MU*:

• Werewolf essentially says that the Numina listed for spirits are just guidelines, and plenty more exist.
• Mage explicitely says that, and further goes on to elaborate that the best way to emulate this is assume that if a mage can cast an Instant version of a spell, somewhere there's probably a spirit with a Numen or Influence that does the same sort of thing.

Since MU* staff are basically paralyzed with fear at the idea of improvisation, it's not super surprising this never really comes up, but it is pretty sad. I got endless amounts of shit for having a Fetish that copied the effect of a Spell Cloak to hide my character's magic items from Unseen Senses, and that's not even strictly a spell, just a level 2 Prime ability.

It does make Spirits a lot more potentially dangerous and useful to werewolves. It also makes that stupid Spirit 5 spell that lets you just give a spirit any Numen you want it to have even stupider, but it was already broke as fuck even for Mage, so whatever.

@Arkandel said:

@HelloRaptor said:

@Arkandel

One of my many rules of thumb is that if I ever need to 'keep logs of everything' what I really "need" to do is stop playing that game.

The fuck? What kind of arcane programs are you bitches using to MUSH with? It is trivially easy to set up automatic logging. It takes all of a minute, if by a minute I include the rest of setting up a new MUSH world in your client.

You actually thought my problem with that was technical? That I didn't know how to autolog everything? Tsk!

A bit of hyperbole to make the point. Setting up autologging requires no more effort than flipping the lock on your door when you leave the house. Doing so doesn't necessarily constitute any degree of paranoia, but it's something that requires functionally no real effort and might potentially be useful. Saying that the day you're so paranoid you're locking your door is the day you're looking for a new place to live is likewise a pretty weird sentiment.

Not too long ago I was asked if I had a copy of a news file I wrote for mage years ago, because they remembered it'd been funny but to the point they wanted to make. Took me about five minutes to find a search term, but I was able to pull it up and pass it along. Nothing to do with paranoia, it was just useful to have an archive of all the things ever. And again, it costs a trivial amount of space, and my mushclient is installed in a folder that syncs across computers so even if I crash I don't lose everything. I guess if my house burned down with my desktops and laptop in it, but then I'd have bigger problems than a lack of logs.

If people don't want to log shit, more power to them, but every time this comes up people act like it requires some degree of technical skill to set up or as if doing so would be an act of paranoia, and neither is really the case unless you're really, really technically inept or already paranoid.

@thebird said:

@Arkandel
So excited.

I dunno if I'd say I'm excited, but I'm defs interested in what they do with it. While I didn't like the first book all that much, I liked a number of those that followed, and have generally found the setup of the world, it's lore, history, magic, etc to be pretty cool.

My housemate despises it because she can't see it as anything but a Tolkien ripoff, but even when I read both as a kid it never really felt that way to me, even though as an adult there's obviously some easy parallels to make. But then there's easy parallels to make between Tolkien and basically any epic fantasy that came after him.

I think the burning question on everyone's mind is whether @EmmahSue and @Glitch will allow playable, Awakened dolphins as PCs or not, or if they are just assholes who hate fun.

@Miss-Demeanor said:

Both and mechanic. Same stupid bonus to dance-related rolls. Having played a Dancer for years, I can tell you just how little it actually comes up. >.> Or matters.

Needs more Persuasion Spec (Seductive Breakdancing).

Don't really like what they'r e doing with Gotham/Metropolis in terms of them being immediately adjacent to one another now. I realize they're both modeled after New York(ish) but ennnnh. I always preferred to think of them more like New York (Metropolis) / Boston (Gotham).

I don't have a problem with the palette or tone, though. Batman and Superman have both taken that tone before (hell, Batman has lived in it for decades at a time), as have some of the retreads of their direct conflicts, so it works for me.

Keep in mind that I'm a heathen who not only loved pretty much everything about Man of Steel, but thought the end with Zod was basically epic and spot on. It wasn't the first time Superman had killed someone, not even the first time he'd killed Zod, so people griping about that always seemed way off base to me.

@RDC

If it's not worth making a rule against, it's not worth discouraging, in my opinion.

...it's been a while since I read anything just really, really stupid, so I've been waiting for the dam to burst. Thanks for leaping on the grenade, RDC, you're a real mensch.

@Ganymede

Remember how we all bitched and complained about how stupid the Autumn Mantle 1 bonus was relative to every other Mantle 1 bonus? That's applicable here. The Dancer Kith is shit.

So, like, House Rule it, you nobs.

Right. ;D

Hell, even if you just changed the first line to 'A Dancer gains the rote quality on all Athletics rolls, as well as adding his Wyrd to any Expression, Persuasion, Socialize, or Subterfuge rolls where movement would help. If a Dancer purchases the Parkour merit, they do not need to pay for the fourth dot.'

Annnnd done. Dancers can leverage their mastery of physical movement and coordination on Athletics rolls even if they aren't explicitely dancing, which has a pretty wide range of uses in and out of combat. Yes, they could use the Rote action on Athletics for throwing things or archery, but getting either of those isn't difficult with Professional Training folded into the normal list of merits (and no longer 'just for mortals', fuck that was stupid) and there's rules limiting how useful it is blah blah blah.

You could in fact play a Dancer kith who completely abhors dancing anymore (something the general writeup on Kiths indicates is totally a thing). You'd miss out on part of your Kith bonus, but still make use of what it drilled into you, just like an Author could refuse to ever write another story, but can still read anything in any mortal language. Honestly the handful of Kiths with more narrowly defined Blessings that don't include at least something like this, really should if they're serious about it being totally normal for Changelings to disdain the specifics of their Kith.

For instance, the Nightsinger Kith is already pretty good, but is entirely restricted to singing. Instead let them use their listed ability when speaking as well, but make it resisted by Resolve+Composure instead of just Composure, and the Condition fades Wyrd minutes after they stop talking. You've opened it up to concepts where the Nightsinger who once loved to sing now rebels against the idea of performing after what was made of her, but can still leverage the power of her voice. They'd be better at it if they sang, by far, but not completely denied a benefit of their Kith by choosing to do what the game says is not uncommon to do.

I just woke up so there may be implications to the shit I'm throwing out there that I'm not seeing in terms of rules interactions, but the basic point remains: Supposedly your Kith can be something your character totally rebels against, but that shouldn't be the same thing as it becoming mechanically useless (or so narrow in scope it might as well be, in the case of the Dancer's silly 'where movement counts' clause), so those Kiths with such strictly defined Blessings should have them widened a bit or allowed to be used in a less potent state as well as what's listed.

@Misadventure said:

I hate the art about seeking the Kryptonian DNA Archives. Having million if not billions or trillions of sequences in it, it would have to be stored in a holographic form, by which I mean that any small art of it can recreate the whole. Otherwise storing it in the blood is asking fr it to leak out, or be eliminated as the cells renew.

Blood. From Kal-el. Like the kind left on their spaceship floor early on,. Like the sample that could have been taken peacefully then.

You clearly don't have a firm grasp on how DNA-data encryption works. Not that you can be blamed, since it's make-believe.

Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of having to know all the ins and outs of the character's mind before I've played him. Some of the template specific ones are really irritating if you're making a brand new member of whatever, too.

@VulgarKitten said:

Also, even when there are logs pretty clearly showing one thing was said, and another thing was done? It's all dependent on a non-corrupt staff to care, which, of course, doesn't always happen.

How does this relate to anything to do with logs? I mean, everything is dependent on a non-corrupt staff. If your starting point is corrupt staff, you're already in a shit place.

@2mspris said:

@HelloRaptor said:

@2mspris

And while it's intended to use for a MU

whistles innocently

chooses to disbelieve

Yes, this is your fault. I hope you're pleased with yourself! <j/k... mostly.>

@VulgarKitten said:

One more: the fact that cuddleup.com exists. I wonder how legit this is!

I suppose I love that my skin didn't actually crawl completely off my body and down a drain somewhere to hide at checking out that URL.

I love that I don't remember my dreams, because they will be haunted.