Posts made by Karmageddon

Berklee School of Music at EdX
I haven't taken any of these courses, but it's Berklee, so I'm confident it will be worth your time.

@Kanye-Qwest said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

But they are the sexy, tricky Mediterranean-flavored people.

But they don't have Jensen Ackles, which, really, we all know is the true reason Velenosa loathes Valardin.

Thank you for the reply, @Apos, and for keeping it in mind. The comments of @Tempest, @lordbelh, and @Auspice definitely underline some of my concerns regarding imbalanced representation and any system that can change an organization's standing. It just doesn't feel like a level playing field.

As an aside, I'm also not a fan of +task. It stresses me out, and I feel as though I have to do X, whatever X may be, Y many times if I don't want my character to fall behind or be ineffectual. It also makes me feel that I am not pulling my weight in my organization because I am not adding tangible-in-numbers value. (For the record, the other players in the org are totally chill and not guilt-trippy in the slightest. If I want to +task, cool. If I don't, also cool. There is zero pressure from them.) I realize that the system is still being developed and will ultimately be revised -- including, as I understand it, having Stats and Skills factored in -- but it feels icky to me in its current incarnation, and I subsequently wish it did not exist.

@Apos said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

If any system we add in spectacularly explodes in a horrifying display of imbalance and regret, we'll try limit the damage as much as we can to keep a consistent play environment, but hopefully we can avoid many retcons. Systems remaining to be added in will be primarily dealing with automated coded systems for controlling domains/armies, dynamically generated exploration rooms and GM commands for players running plots in them, social combat, and agents (npc minions).

Speaking of imbalances, the +roster census, for lack of a better word, does concern me. The number of characters with fealty to Velenosa is approximately twice the number, if not a little more, than Grayson, Redrain, and Thrax each have. I'm not even talking that there are more than 40 Velenosa PCs taken off the +roster vs those taken off the +roster of other Houses. I am talking about how there is more than double the number of Velenosa characters, period, than three of the other Houses. Even Valardin comes behind with 11 or so characters less than Velenosa. Unless it changed within the past few days, Thrax doesn't even have 20 characters chargenned.

I realize that some of those Velenosa probably are not Staff-made characters, although I have no idea how many qualify as such. Nonetheless, I feel the lack of equal representation needs to be resolved, especially with influence and resources and whatever systems. Just by sheer numbers, Velenosa has an unfair advantage. And even if it's just that a lot of people want to play Velenosa, there still is no excuse that the other houses have significantly less characters created.

ETA a word I forgot.

@Tinuviel, I think what you meant to say was: Screw the rules because, I'm Charles Dance.

I really, really wish that the Supernatural episode The End hadn't been a one-shot deal.

@surreality said in What Do You Collect?:

@tek Remind me to pick up a few Chick Tracts for you from the magical Exxon megaplex we always stop at on the road to Florida. They're extra special, and they almost always have a broad selection.

The ultimate Chick Tract: Dark Dungeons.

Once upon a time, a good buddy of mine apped Marcie on an Amber-themed game. In the app, he wrote that she totally faked her death to have real adventures with my character, who was one of Florimel's kids. Good times.

Are you looking for something like Pixlr Editor?

@surreality said in The 100: The Mush:

I'mma just go on record and say that having spoken to both of them generally on and off, both @Ghost and @tek are both pretty cool people, explosions or not.

They might well could be. I'm only commenting on what has been presented in this thread. I'm under the impression that they both mean well, but that doesn't change how they've presented themselves or how I've interpreted those presentations.

@DownWithOPP said in The 100: The Mush:

@Ghost said in The 100: The Mush:

Use these words...or else.
You hypocritical twat.

And there goes the moral high ground.

It never was there to begin with. Speaking as someone who regularly gets hung-up on semantics, I agree that there is a spectrum of abuse and that @Ghost's use of the word wasn't incorrect even if I feel that only some, but not all, he's been railing against meets my definition of abusive in an online environment.

I also agree that @tek said some shitty things, which she seems to have recognized and apologized for.

Since then, however, @Ghost waltzed back into a thread he said he was done with (good thing we have no shortage of salt for all the margaritas we have to drink now, AMIRITE?) to get all rabid the moment he saw people were coming to his defense.

For someone who claims to be well-adjusted and not caring about online bs, he's really failing in demonstrating that.

@Ghost said in The 100: The Mush:

@Kanye-Qwest Don't be like that. I have said repeatedly that staff should definitely RP on their own games and enjoy the work they've put in. I'm just saying that staff shouldn't pigeonhole the entire game to being about their PCs and need to understand that by opening a place of RP to the public, there is an unspoken expectation that the roleplayers that they have opened a play space for are joining the game to matter.

By matter I mean: beyond assisting staff PCs in being the big heroes, and not being unwittingly delegated into being supporting cast characters.

People join these games to get camera time, have arcs, and feel like they're causing an impact on roleplay, not to be listed in IMDB as "Guy in Coffee House #3"

My stance is that people who open MUs who do not understand this aren't really supporting their players, but instead duping people to log on for hours a week to support their fun.

I agree with you, @Ghost. I also fail to see how this is applicable to a sandbox. Repeatedly, in this thread, several posters have accused @GirlCalledBlu and @Seraphim73 for running sandbox games that they pass off as public games. So now, when @GirlCalledBlu and @Seraphim73 finally open a sandbox, they still get heaps of shit.

In an ideal world, staffers on any game would be cool and would make sure all their players are having fun. Also, in an ideal world, any player who was having a miserable time would just cut their losses and not get so damn hung-up on how it didn't work out. They wouldn't stick around, gnash their teeth, whine, and complain about the abuse they chose to continue to endure -- and I say that as someone who has gotten unhealthily attached, on more than one occasion, and who is hideously embarrassed about it because, hey, I know better, but eh. Feelings are a bitch, and pretendy fun times have a habit of becoming too damn serious when RL is shitastic.

Also, speaking as someone who has little contact with the outside world, I believe that you mean well, but you come across, at least to me, as a patronizing prick when you say things like:

It's cruel for some of these people (not myself) who put so much effort in or have very little other contact with the outside world, and I don't see anything wrong with joining a game with the expectation that staff intends for players outside of their control mechanisms have an effect on the game.

"Some of these people" don't need people like you to be their so-called champion while you backhandedly point out that you are oh so well-adjusted. Which, by the by, your recent rants in this thread make it very clear that you absolutely are not.

@Auspice and @Vorpal, I'm wishing you all the best during such a shitty time.

Pointing out facts is now being buried up someone's butthole.

Stating that players who may feel shafted are fully capable of expressing their feelings is being salty.

We're living in a meme culture.

You must be really bored, @Ghost. A lot of this thread was people lambasting @GirlCalledBlu and @Seraphim73 for not just running a sandbox game, and now that they seemingly are running a sandbox, there's still a bunch of hate.

I know a handful of players who played at the 100 who give zero fucks that the Fifth World re-opened. Some of them are bummed out that the 100 closed. Some aren't. None of them have any interest in playing at the Fifth World.

For someone who didn't play at the 100, though, you're awfully keen to talk about a cut or whatever. If people who played at the 100 are upset by these recent events and their timing, they certainly can express that discontent on their own accord. They don't need a player who never played there to take up the mantle for them. I mean, seriously, when has any player ever needed someone to bitch on their behalf? Especially someone who isn't directly involved.

@surreality, I mean this in as non-creepy a way as possible: I you so much, right now, and want to give you ALL THE PIE and ALL THE CRAFTING SUPPLIES. Even though I can't get past how I feel that the guy playing Michael 2.0 makes the think: That's a lot like what Jason Alexander would look like were he younger, taller, fitter, less bald, and less talented. When I'm not being reminded of James Mardsen, Scott Wolf, Skeet Ulrich, and Vincent D'Onofrio. Can his face be any more of a pastiche?

And now I got to the part when KITT became a Transformer. WTF? >.<

And now I'm at the scene you referenced and, KFC JFC, the bint didn't remove her metal jewelry. XD

I think the most lulz part is that the weblink classifies the show as classic tv.

ETA: Damnit. I even see a bit of Chris Pratt. Which is kind of fitting being that he was rumored to be attached to a Knight Rider feature film that I think is still just a pipe dream.

Damn. Now I regret not watching the horribad reboot. YouTube, so far, has let me down. I may not have found that "hot rod" episode, but I found this reaction gif, which I consider a solid win:

@surreality, I learned that there is going to be a Magnum P.I. sequel. Part of me is waiting for NBC to take another stab at a Knight Rider reboot.

What else should I be? All apologies...

You're welcome, @Thenomain.

@Thenomain said in Tulpas or Roleplaying?:

There is a TED Talk that I wish I could find about the depression that sets in after you're successful. The speaker, who I believe may have been Anne Lamott of Bird By Bird fame, talks about how the Greeks used to have the Muse, and Household Gods, and other such things. These would allow them to externalize their successes and failures, to have a place to put such thoughts that weren't squarely on their own talents. She argues—I believe successfully—that having an external allows us to accept what happens because it's not strictly our fault, nor our responsibility to repeat the act.

That sounds quite a bit like Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk Your Elusive Creative Genius.

People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons. The Greeks famously called these divine attendant spirits of creativity "daemons." Socrates, famously, believed that he had a daemon who spoke wisdom to him from afar.

The Romans had the same idea, but they called that sort of disembodied creative spirit a genius. Which is great, because the Romans did not actually think that a genius was a particularly clever individual. They believed that a genius was this, sort of magical divine entity, who was believed to literally live in the walls of an artist's studio, kind of like Dobby the house elf, and who would come out and sort of invisibly assist the artist with their work and would shape the outcome of that work.

So brilliant -- there it is, right there, that distance that I'm talking about -- that psychological construct to protect you from the results of your work. And everyone knew that this is how it functioned, right? So the ancient artist was protected from certain things, like, for example, too much narcissism, right? If your work was brilliant, you couldn't take all the credit for it, everybody knew that you had this disembodied genius who had helped you. If your work bombed, not entirely your fault, you know? Everyone knew your genius was kind of lame.