Best posts made by Ifrit

I read a really interesting series of articles recently that posited (with graphs!) that there may be a chemical component to obesity that is down to industrial processing introducing additional chemicals to our foodstuffs (one of the suggestions is lithium from lithium grease for example).

My problem is that I don't know enough about the science to figure out whether or not the argument is actually any good, or if it's one of those 'this all totally seems logical when you read it but if you do any follow up work around it the whole thing will fall apart' things. The series starts here, for anyone who's interested, but YMMV and it may be total garbage: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-part-i-mysteries/

@faraday said in The Work Thread:

There are workplaces that do this. Heck, there are entire countries that do this. It's not a revolutionary concept.

Here in the UK for example we don't have the concept of sick leave in the same way. If you're sick, you're sick, take the day off, there's no bucket of days to use up. You can self certify as unwell for an employer defined period, usually a week, anything more than that and you need to get signed off by a doctor. Your employer will pay you while you're off sick, usually full pay for a contractually defined period, most often 13 weeks, and then you are put onto statutory sick pay, a minimum amount that's mandated by the government.

This is specific to salaried workers, I don't know how it works for non-salaried workers without looking it up!

@arkandel said in Sci-fi MU idea:

@ifrit A couple of questions for you:

1. The theme sounds interesting! Do you have ideas on what your players will be able to do when there isn't staff explicitly running metaplot things for them?

2. Do you have ideas on the systems (mechanics, etc) you want to use for this?

3. Is the game cooperative or antagonistic between PCs? Do you see it focusing more on action, politics or something else?

1. This is always where I fall down on things - I have some themey ideas but not always good at actually making the game fun. Beyond Bar/Cafe/RetailRP, I'd probably want to give players fair scope around conflict management. Perhaps a board of staff-built conflicts so you can have players GMing a mediation, taking on the alien NPCs and reporting back as to how it ended. Though now I've typed that it sounds far more like paperwork-central than I intended it, and also not great for players that aren't mediation-focused.
   There's definitely space for combat as well, and I'm not averse to building/using something like @Sparks's exploration system for exploring parts of the station, or other planets for resources to keep themselves/the station going. While I would intend for the main plot to be built around the station, leaving it should always be an option to go do other things, which leaves space for a trading/crafting mingame style thing. I'm trying not to take all the ideas from Arx here, of course, but I find it doesn't do half-bad at giving players things to do without direct GM input. (And yes, I'd ideally want an +actions like system too. DAMNIT ARX STOP HAVING ALL THE GOOD IDEAS)
   I'm also aware that as a GMTer I'm fairly in the minority so having things for people not on my timezone to do/interact with will be key.
2. No clue at present. Most MUs I've played on or staffed have had fairly homegrown systems, so I'd probably end up rolling something together. I'm not fantastic at game design, but have a few friends with fingers in that business so likely would end up leaning on them
3. I'd want it to be fairly coop, but there's always room for a bit of antagonism. The theme itself leans pretty political, and I don't see it all being rosey between PCs. There could be some interesting faction interplay between those that want to learn more about their new home and those that think that the computer knows best (hell, a religion around it is not completely unpossible). Plus plenty of space for alien cultures to interact - I really want to emphasis alienness here, and not Planet Of Hats every species (These are the warrior aliens, these are the science aliens, etc)
   I know that not everyone wants all politics RP all the time either, so the idea of the raiders is to give it that sense of danger (of course that immediately illuminates a theme-hole for me, which is if the Arbiter is so important to galactic peace, surely it'd be the best defended place in the galaxy, but I could work on that). Also everyone likes a bit of engineering RP, right? "Quick, we must fix the beryllium matrix or life support will die!"

Reading back I know a lot of the answers seem vaguey - they are because I'm still fairly vague on the idea. I'm mostly just throwing it down a) in case it appeals to people and b) writing it down firms it up.

@skew Oh cool I was going to give you a shout when I got home because I kinda munged together some of that apache config...

@packrat Have you checked your browser's proxy settings? It sounds like something's trying to intercept the requests and then falling over.

@roz So much this. This is why I've come back to RPing after over two years off.

Thanks folks, some really good points raised there. I feel generally pretty positive about the idea, but know that at the moment I couldn't devote it the attention it would need, so we're definitely in the "living in my head" phase at the moment and likely to stay there for now.

Re @Arkandel's points, yeah, absolutely agreed. Have built a MUSH before (it ran for a year or so) but there were 6 of us then - very unlikely that I could do this all by myself. For the foreseeable it's probably not going to leave my head, though I might start playing around with systems in Evennia (I'm primarily a Python programmer) to see if it's something that I could work with long term.

Well if we're going with heart-wrenching, there's nothing sadder to me than Gotye's Bronte.

Both the song and the video make me VERY SAD every time. If you want to be EXTRA sad, look up the subject of the lyrics.

Behind a spoiler for those who might want to give this song a skip:
***=Sad content***

click to show

Loss of family dog

Oh no. I slipped. Guess there's gonna be a librarian then.

@bear_necessities said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

@faraday the only thing I can say is that the "big complaint" I've heard about Ares is that it doesn't work for people who passively seek RP and that some people have honest difficulties with opening up a scene that might not get used, or asking on RP request. Which... I honestly don't know how to fix for those people and it might just be that Ares games are not for them and that's OK.

Absolutely, and this is the spirit I'm approaching this in. That I really like Ares and it works great for me, but I get that it doesn't work for everyone and that's okay! But maybe there's a way to marry the two together.

I mean, maybe there's not, either, but I still think it's a worthwhile endeavour. Plus, if it got more plug-and-play stuff into Evennia that'd be cool too.

The fact that I am entirely unable to compartmentalise is irritating me at the moment.

At work I'm leading on a project that for various reasons is massively behind. This is putting huge stress on me because it's my project and I'm doing all I can to bring it in under the wire, which likely will result in working a swathe of the Christmas holiday.

All of this is fine so far. Except where it's negatively affecting every other aspect of my life, to the point where I don't want to do anything other than curl up in a ball and pretend the world doesn't exist.

@Tinuviel said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

But it can't be denied that MUDs, MOOs, MUCKs, etc all have fairly distinct cultures to go along with them.

I think this is an interesting point, and the nerd within me assumes that this is probably to do with the fact that when people who have previously MU'd and maybe staffed/coded for a game, they'll then create a game using the same codebase and some of the same people and the culture will follow along ad infinitum.

THAT SAID. I play both on Gray Harbor and Spirit Lake, both on Ares, with similarity in themes and shared players and I find the cultures completely different.

So, YMMV.

Keith Flint - NewsThump obit is the best obit.

@Auspice said in Obsidian Reverie:

@Raeras said in Obsidian Reverie:

Website: www.obsidianreverie.net
Client Connect: www.obsidianreverie.net Port: 4201

Your website isn't working.

It seems to work okay without the www: obsidianreverie.net

@Auspice I've just finished season 1 (in like a day). I'm loving it so far!

@JinShei I think someone's picked up on it and taken it off. Spoilsports.

@Carex said in Good TV:

Remember how I recommended The Magicians a few days ago?
A new season is starting on Syfy Jan 15th.
We're back, baby!!

New Season trailer

Which means I'll get it in the UK in about 6-9 months after all the relevant plot points are spoiled...

@Selira said in Resources for Self-Isolating People:

Just to be clear "The Magicians" is an incredibly dark show, and, while fantastic, many episodes have left me shaking with emotions. It doesn't pull punches, so be wary.

Take On Me will never be the same again

@arkandel Neil Gaiman has blogged about this recently - he says that he and Terry planned out the entire sequel many years ago, they'd just not had the time to write it.

https://journal.neilgaiman.com/2021/06/really-bloody-excellent-omens.html