@ifrit said in Favourite Quote (Inspirational or Otherwise):
snip
Two of my favorites, also from Sir Terry, one from perhaps his most well-regarded, Night Watch:
As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up.
And from Thief of Time, one of his less-beloved, but one that holds a special place in my heart:
WE MUST DO WHAT WE CAN.
"And if that doesn't work?"[...]
THEN WE DID WHAT WE COULD, he said, UNTIL WE COULD NOT.
Since you linked me here...
So I'm not gonna dismiss the concept out of hand. The classes are crazy flavorful, and the concept has a good bit of appeal.
but
The game as designed, I think, doesn't lend itself especially well to the MU* format. The rules system is pretty clearly designed for more-or-less constant monitoring and arbitration from the Master, assigning difficulty, advantage, and disadvantage on a case by case basis.
The intended playstyle is also gonna have to be tossed out for a MU* format. The game as it exists is designed for a pretty straightforward narrative arc: the personas are dragged into Die, and they need to agree on whether they go or stay.
Making it into a MU* seems, to me, less like using the premise and rules and more like inventing a new game inspired by Gillen's RPG. Which could be a cool game!
@deadculture said in MSB, SJW, and other acronyms:
After all, that's what 1984 is about, the totalitarian point of view in which the potential of a word to hurt means it has to expunged from the lexicon outright.
That is not what 1984 is about.
@auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
I woke up with Christina Aguilera's Genie in a Bottle stuck in my head.
...I probably hadn't thought about that song in fifteen years, and now it's in my head too. So. Thank you for that.
@Tirit said in Artificially Slowing Character Growth:
First personally and in experience I've had I don't think players being at different rates matter much unless it comes to PvP.
I kind of disagree with this, just in that characters in fiction and RP are always defined to significant degrees by their capabilities, and since 99% of interactions are between PCs, capabilities are always going to be experienced in terms of how they relate to other PCs.
That is, if I want to play a character who is "Good At Swords" or "Good At Books," being "Good" is only going to be perceived as "Good" relative to other PCs on the game. If I'm rolling in a baby PC who's supposed to be good at swords but the extant "Good At Books" PCs have racked up enough CP that they're incidentally as good or better at swords than I am, my PC actually sucks shit at swords no matter how they compare to theoretical nameless faceless background NPCs.
Personally, I've come to be a bit less enamored of the whole "character advancement" as an inherent part of RPGs in general. I get that it's baked in deep, but I think that a lot of games (especially MU games where the PCs represent a much broader swathe of the population) you don't need to have every character at the start of a bildungsroman.
I don't want to ignore either the game dev opportunity of "CP for doing what we want people doing" carrot or the "number go up" fun for players, but I do sometimes think that at least some games would work better with "start with enough CP to make the character you want and stay right around there" design philosophy in general.
@Thenomain said in MSB Peeves:
I do not understand why people get up in arms about pop/soda/Coke. Except that "Coke" is a proper noun and should not be used as a collective noun.
Now excuse me, my allergies are making me sneeze my head off. Hand me some kleenex while I google a remedy.
Someone who says "pop" sounds like they're going to meet that cute boy/girl from third period at a diner to split a banana sundae in 1956.
Calling it "coke" is dumb because I need to clarify if I actually mean a coke or if I mean something else to get the kind of soda I want. That doesn't apply to "Kleenex" because the only people who have ever or will ever give a shit if their tissues are Kleenex-brand are employed at Kleenex's marketing department, and it doesn't apply to googling things because a) it's a verb, no one calls Bing "a google" and b) obviously I am using Google.
On the "said" business: you probably don't even need to do that much. You're already sticking it in the middle of a pose that is identified as your PC.
I do try to do the same in prose writing. Like,
Zed wrapped her arms around her stomach, eyes staring at the ground. "I, um. Ate Cody," she said.
Vs
Zed wrapped her arms around her stomach, eyes staring at the ground. "I, um. Ate Cody."
It's still clear who's talking, and I get to end the paragraph with the wham line. The value of "said" is that it doesn't call much attention to itself while identifying the speaker, and if the speaker is clear, you don't even need that.
@shincashay What I want to know is if they photoshopped Judge Oompa Loompa just for that bit, or if they already had it handy.
Not sure which would make me happier tbh
Manager, I like you. I do.
So if you're gonna ask me to cover your shift with just enough notice to catch forty winks, don't come at me with "do you want overtime" (I don't, particulalrly; I want to spend my day off watching Netflix in my underwear) and don't tell me that District Manager asked you to reach out (every condescending micromanaging word out of DM's mouth is like nails on a chalkboard to me). Just tell me your flight's delayed and can I do you a solid.
Is there functionality for a 'report' option from users? Something so that people can say 'yo admins, I think this post breaks the rules' without publically announcing it in the thread?
It would be used to flag posts by people reporters dislike, but it might be a better option than threads falling into "no you shut up" spirals.
@packrat Why would she want to get down? She is tallest of everything.
@auspice @Aria has discouraged me from letting Pavel be ShoulderCat, because her shoulders (being considerably less broad) don't keep him up as well, and when he starts to slide his claws come out for traction. We compromise when I carry him around like a baby.
@egg said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:
(By the way, I am also a working adult with an alleged life, just like everyone else in the hobby.)
A lot of us weren't, back when we started. That did make things easier.
@aria His name is Vanya. About five years ago he was diagnosed with FIP and given weeks to live. We declined euthanasia at the time, took him into the bedroom to give palliative care away from the other cats, whereupon he... made a complete recovery.
He is currently on my lap and biting at my chin.
@gryphter I mean, speaking as an unpublished would-be writer and a cishet white dude...
...and with the important caveat that you're not committing some mortal sin by sticking to your demographics in pretendy funtimes...
The overly pat, often-repeated aphorism that "the trick to writing women is to write them as people" is pretty much entirely correct. The basic sentiment applies more or less across whatever demographic you're talking about.
Like, yes, different people have had different lived experiences and that shapes their outlook and personality. Of course, a cishet white dude who grew up in a rural town and joined the Marines is also going to have a different lived experience than my nerdy suburbanite upbringing, but that never seems to carry the same sort of stigma, or the same perception of an unapproachable divide.
So, sure, consider the character's identity in terms of how they'd act. But if I'm handing out any advice, I'd say to err on the side of underdoing it versus overdoing it if you're in doubt. Like, try to avoid the pitfall of worrying about whether a character's portrayal is sufficiently female/ queer/ ethnic, worry more if you're overdoing what you'd think of as "typical" for the demographic.
And I'm trying to avoid sounding condescending with this next bit, but, like... we all know people outside of our demographics, right? Like, as a cis white guy, I have a mother and a wife, at the very least. I have friends and coworkers who are women, gay, black, various combinations of the above. I figure most people can say something similar! So try to draw from that, instead of basing our portrayals on fictional characters based on other fictional characters based on stereotypes by straight white dude authors. (There's also the option of drawing from fiction or nonfiction by members of the demographics. It's out there!)
I mean, there's nothing wrong with considering things like women's pockets or men's discomfort with physical proximity. But you're probably better off glossing over it than you are getting lost in the weeds about that sort of thing.
@Sparks Shit, even the garbage retail/food service jobs I've applied to have a "is it cool to call your current job y/n" box.
@Ganymede said in MU*, Youth, and LGBT+ Identity:
@Auspice said in MU*, Youth, and LGBT+ Identity:
I have absolutely seen (on here, even!) complaints about non-<minority> players trying to write said minority's experience.
But was the complaint, for example, "this non-queer player is portraying a queer PC" or is it "this player is making a caricature of a minority PC"? I think these are two different complaints.
I think @Tinuviel is more making the point that "non-queer player portraying a queer PC" is well and good, "non-queer player trying to focus their portrayal on the Queer Experience" is likely to be cack-handed and tone-deaf.
