That Muslims are so insufferable even fucking Buddhists want to genocide them. Like it or not, this is comedy gold.

@Ominous said in World Building: What are the essentials?:

@Lain If the writer is a lazy, a set of "commandments" would work. Just a bullet point list of thou shalts and thou shalt nots.

• Thou shalt rise when any noble enters the room.

• Thou shalt always be on hands and knees when the emperor is present.

• Thou shalt not look at the emperor, lest his guards behead you.

• Thou shalt always give Duke Biganmighty a 20 stroke handicap on his golf game and let him have a do-over when he hits the ball into a water hazard. First round at the bar is on him.

That's not laziness. That's just good style in the 21st century. Just imagine if it were written in a more "literary" fashion:

There are a handful of rules that must always be followed in order to function in Not-Medieval-Yurop. First, whenever nobles enter the room that you are currently occupying, you must rise reverently. Secondly, physical displays of prostration, a la hand and knees on the ground and face pointing downward, are necessary in the presence of the Emperor. Thirdly, the minimum golf handicap for Duke Biganmighty is 20, and he gets to start over whenever his golf balls find themselves in the water. Finally, he will pay for the first round at the bar every time.

Which one is more comprehensible? I'm going to lean heavily on the bullet points.

@Roz said:

@icanbeyourmuse said in World Building: What are the essentials?:

One thing I REALLY dislike is the just spamming a link or help file (or for things based on books or what have the book/page number/whatever). If someone is asking they were, probably already looking at the aforementioned thing and does not understand.

As someone who is a habitual question-answerer, it's really not my experience that this is the case the majority of the time. (And people who have already checked the available resources tend to be fairly clear about that in their initial question.)

I will say that if the introductory help file is a 10,000 word wall of text I likely won't read it unless I really like the concept of your site. You get one thousand words of content to give me before I just start asking questions on the help channel shamelessly.

There's no shame in using modern use of language like bullet points or even very modern use of language and iconography like infographics. In fact, it's more shameful to try to describe it entirely in verbiage these days; it's not the nineteenth century anymore, so purple prose is unnecessary even when you're trying to be "deep" or detailed.

@Ominous How would one go about describing cultural mores in ways that are easily consumable?

As a player, what information do you want and need about a game world to effectively play the game (ex: be able to formulate a character you feel fits the world and knows what the characters should know about it)?

A genre, plus any details about the world that are atypical for that genre. Putting them in bullet points is ideal, with the option to go to another page to read more when it becomes relevant. Wikis are great for this purpose.

Basically, give me broad strokes that get progressively more specific as I delve deeper. The specific information is less relevant than the granularity of it, and that the broadest stuff comes first while the most specific stuff comes last.

As a player, what kind of information do you find gets in your way more than it helps you accomplish this?

Fifty thousand word historical accounts of events from the perspective of an NPC who I will never deal with in game. I should not have to spend an afternoon to find out that it's basically generic fantasy setting, except the elves have blue hair that gives them magic powers this time. You should just come out and say, "It's like an R.A. Salvatore novel except the elves have blue hair that gives them magic powers."

Not the broad strokes, either. Everybody knows you have to cover basic history, basic setting, or include a writeup of what factions are present and what they represent. This is about specifics.

The specifics don't matter, really. What matters most is how they're presented. First and foremost, you should tell your potential players what the fucking point is, i.e., what your setting is fundamentally about, as opposed to every other setting out there; "Arkadia is a fairy tale setting with dark fantasy/horror notes" is way more important to know than "King Leopold XXIV hated coconuts so much that if he smelled coconuts on a suitor for his daughter he'd have them beheaded." You want both in your setting information, but you want to get that latter detail way, way down the line.

Is it important to you, as a player, to have information available that distinguishes 'what locals would know' vs. 'what out of towners/new arrivals' would know?

Depends on if you're going to be running the game exclusively in one city or locale.

@deadculture Crafter characters are always where it's at fam

First lecture in biology, professor recommends The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker.

RPI is so based.

@Misadventure said in General Video Game Thread:

@You may need to ask others if they think so. To me the answer is yes. You reach level 70, and then start accumulating Paragon levels which you get to assign points to a set list of 16 stats. That pretty much caps out at paragon level 800. You can destroy Legendary items and save a copy of their unique power, and run one armor, one weapon and one jewelry legendary power at a time. Every power has lots of Runs to change how the power functions and what element it does if its an attack. There is a ton of potential ways to play, but there are synergies that are shared, and reinforced by class sets. They also introduced Primal Ancients, but that isn't customization.

I was thinking more along the lines of taking an already cool item and then putting a socket in it, then taking one of your socket accessories and putting it in.

Or putting in some amalgamation into your horoadric cube and having it spit out something more useful than what you put in. You could do a wide range of things with that.

It was really fun. I like crafting stuff.

@Misadventure said in General Video Game Thread:

@lain D3 with Reaper of Souls is fantastic. I believe the Battle Chest for it is like $19.99 now. It is a loot and FX piñata.

Did they bring back Diablo II's openendedness? That's part of why it was so fun for me. You could customize your items through various means. Was really cool tbh

@Misadventure said in General Video Game Thread:

Hardcore works for me because I have a seasonal group who will power level any character, and take you along to get some gear in very high greater rifts. So losing something isn't so bad, and I have peeps to play with sitting next to me.

Hardcore was pretty based since it added that roguelike effect. At least, in Diablo II. I skipped Diablo III.

@Thenomain said in RL Anger:

Can we please move this discussion to the Politics board.

Thank you.

In our defense, politics is something people do get RL Angery about. :^)

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in RL Anger:

@Ganymede said in RL Anger:

No, please, do tell.

My policy is not to feed the 4channers. Definitely don't want to tell anyone what to do but...eh, mostly I just wanted to paste the scarlet Fucking 4channer letter on this @Lain asshole. Which I've done, so.

You've got a good start, but unfortunately your post falls flat. I'll give you an A for effort this time, but if you want to say something actually biting, you'll have to go get a clue first.

@Ganymede said in RL Anger:

@Lain said in RL Anger:

Then you should read the rest of my post. We also have: literal mobs of people rioting in the interest of shutting up anybody right of Noam Chomsky for being a "Nazi," ...

... private citizens. (By the way, I've no love for Chomsky; the guy is a fucking nutjob.)

I'm glad you think that a right wing mob barging into the classroom of a Marxist professor, beating him senseless, and destroying the physical classroom wouldn't qualify as speech suppression because they're "private citizens."

... CEOs of major companies publicly threatening to fire you for voting wrong ...

... private citizens.

I'm glad you think that a conservative CEO firing you for voting Hillary doesn't qualify as speech suppression because they're "private citizens."

... and cities revoking licenses to stage peaceful demonstrations at the last minute for ideological reasons and then sending in the police to shut those demonstrations down.

... which Charlottesville was enjoined from doing, pursuant to a federal court order.

This isn't a refutation of the point. There is an active speech suppression campaign going on from the left wing. Just because there is interference going on from the Feds in some cases doesn't make that reality go away.

Literally the only way the American Left could get worse on free speech is if they were to successfully institute a gulag system. It's atrocious. Frankly, it's worrying. Its like McCarthyism on steroids.

Wait, so it's the American Left that threatened to alter libel laws?

Libel is already illegal.

That argued that corporations should have unlimited donations to political campaigns?

Corporate donations to "private citizens" doesn't preclude anybody else from speaking. It's not speech suppression, and this isn't relevant.

That sought an exception based on religion for corporations to deny equal protection under the laws?

If refusing to hire homosexuals for religious reasons is speech suppression, then I don't see how refusing to hire people for voting wrong is speech suppression.

No, please, do tell.

Modern, white Americans have no idea what suppression or oppression means or is. I'll wager you haven't had an entire branch of your family imprisoned and then killed for trying to read books that were banned by the government.

>white Americans

Says the guy who thinks corporate campaign contributions are speech suppression but revocation of domain names and punitive termination for voting habits aren't. You have no idea what speech suppression is.

But, sure. Go on. Tell me how bad the American Left is, please! Continue.

(Don't get me wrong, the American Left is stupid, naïve, and fascist on a lot of other levels, but this ain't it.)

How is rioting specifically to suppress speech not "fascist" (if by that I assume you mean "authoritarian"), exactly?

@Ganymede said in RL Anger:

@Lain said in RL Anger:

Uhm, yeah, actually, I did. Literally the only thing Soviets have on us in terms of suppression of right wing speech are literal gulags.

Do tell.

Sure, the Russians suppress dissent. And the Rohingya are being shot at on the border by the Myanmar army.

That's not in any way close to the Daily Stormer being shut down by private interests. Not even close.

Then you should read the rest of my post. We also have: literal mobs of people rioting in the interest of shutting up anybody right of Noam Chomsky for being a "Nazi," CEOs of major companies publicly threatening to fire you for voting wrong, and cities revoking licenses to stage peaceful demonstrations at the last minute for ideological reasons and then sending in the police to shut those demonstrations down.

Literally the only way the American Left could get worse on free speech is if they were to successfully institute a gulag system. It's atrocious. Frankly, it's worrying. Its like McCarthyism on steroids.

@Ganymede said in RL Anger:

@Lain said in RL Anger:

I ninja'd you.

Totally! With nothing that counters what I wrote.

Uhm, yeah, actually, I did. Literally the only thing Soviets have on us in terms of suppression of right wing speech are literal gulags. It's pretty dramatic.

@Ganymede said in RL Anger:

@Lain said in RL Anger:

In fact, they are the ones being suppressed; notice how the Daily Stormer, a semi-satirical Neo-Nazi site, had its domain names revoked on multiple occasions.

The difference between the Rohingya suppression in Myanmar and the neo-Nazi suppression here shouldn't be difficult to understand.

Keep making false equivalences as you will.

I ninja'd you.

@WTFE said in RL Anger:

@Lain said in RL Anger:

So what are you distinguishing it by? Nationality? Why don't the actions of Soviet atheists count toward one's valid apprehension toward atheism, exactly?

Tell me next time you see the Soviet Union suppressing Christians.

(Or, for that matter, the next time you see the Soviet Union at all.)

Currently in Russia it is--again--the Christians who are doing the suppression.

Using this logic, I could not be concerned about the rise of white nationalism and Neo-Nazi stuff like we saw in Charlottesvile, since they're not the ones doing much of the suppressing right now. In fact, they are the ones being suppressed; notice how the Daily Stormer, a semi-satirical Neo-Nazi site, had its domain names revoked on multiple occasions, followed shortly later by Stormfront, a similar site that has been up for over two full decades. There is an active corporate censorship campaign against anything with even the vaguest whiff of nationalism, much less ethnonationalism. Combine this with literal mobs of people who are so hellbent on silencing "Nazis" that they'll call a gay Jew who likes sucking black cocks a Nazi for the vile act of calling progressivism insane. We have CEOs threatening to fire people for voting for Trump. The only thing the Soviets have on us right now in terms of suppression of right wing speech are literal gulags.

If I could only be rationally concerned about the current dominant ideology/religion no matter how bad their history is, then there would be literally no basis at all to be concerned about Nazis. In spite of the outright dystopian approach the American Left has taken to suppressing any speech right of Noam Chomsky, I'm still simultaneously concerned about white nationalist types getting too much influence on the culture/policy of the nation.

Your standard for when one may get concerned is... I think it's a bit shallow and one-dimensional, to be honest.

@WTFE said in RL Anger:

@Tyche said in RL Anger:

My German teacher in high school was a Russian orthodox nun who managed to escape the Soviet Union where over 250,000 priests and nuns were rounded up and murdered by atheists. Given the track record of atheists in the 20th century, well that ought to turn many a Christian white with fear.

If you were in Soviet Russia you'd have a point. And, indeed, I'd be saying it with you. I'm not a huge fan of capital-A Atheists (like the Oh-So-Rational Trinity: Dawkins, Hitchens, and that closet wannabe Buddhist, Sam Harris) and their approach to dealing with the religious, after all.

You're not, however, and thus you don't. Hence, I'm not.

So what are you distinguishing it by? Nationality? Why don't the actions of Soviet atheists count toward one's valid apprehension toward atheism, exactly?

@Tinuviel said in RL Anger:

@Lain It depends on where you are and what it is you're afraid of, naturally. Though Christianity might well be bland and acceptable in the 'western' world, in many parts of Christian Africa (especially Uganda, the "most Christian nation in Africa") homosexual acts are punishable by imprisonment and death.

This is true. Are you willing to hold other religions, like Islam, to this standard, though? Is it "Islamophobia" to go, "Oh, you're a Muslim? Wow... I'm not sure how I feel about that, given your religion's ongoing ... uhm... issues."

@WTFE

Given all of this, you'll have to excuse me if I'm a bit gunshy whenever I meet someone who self-identifies as a Christian. Especially of the evangelical camp. (The tormentors in high school were Adventists.) And if you think you're oppressed because of people like us being gunshy and suspicious, perhaps it's time for you to reflect on how you (the collective, not you individually) have been treating people for centuries. Perhaps, then, you'll feel a bit of sympathy instead of whining about your oppression.

I mean, the vast majority of Christians are pretty moderate these days. How else would all those predominantly Christian nations in Europe and North America secularize? I think the fear of Christians is overstated, and I'm an atheist.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I find their proselytizing very annoying, but I don't think Ned Flanders is going to shoot me for being an infidel or anything. His opinions are just a bit kooky. Hardly a basis for fear.