Best posts made by Lisse24

@wizz Maybe, but it comes with all the downsides of multisphere WoD games including incompatible rule sets and misaligned power dynamics, a fractured playerbase, a bevy of confusing house rules, etc. If you want to play multisphere games, they are out there. I, for one, look forward to more single sphere games.

@Ganymede said in Whatever Happened To Star Wars MU*s?:

@Ghost said in Whatever Happened To Star Wars MU*s?:

If anything, I think MU could do well with dice systems that aid in RP decisions over hard dice systems that are black and white to target number pass/fail. Trinary systems are great.

The thing is that, insofar as scenes without a storyteller may be concerned, FFG presents a problem. For example:

"You pass, but something happens in the scene that complicates the scene."

Well, what is that complication? It's not clear from the rules. A storyteller is in a position to tell players what that might be, but what about when it is player-and-player, as one often finds in social situations? I can see players hitting this result and feeling uncertain or uncomfortable in making the call when all participates are essentially at the same level.

I like FFG a lot, but I can see what it would turn off a good number of us.

I played FFG Star Wars in a TT setting, where the GM often had us determine our own drawbacks and benefits and it was a problem then. At one point or another everyone in the group was flailing around trying to determine what was appropriate. In a MU, this could have easily turned into an hours long discussion, since you wouldn't necessarily have a GM right there, pushing us to move on.

We're hiring a new position at work and so we decided to list out all our responsibilities so we could figure out what we wanted to shift around.

What I got out of this? Holy crap, I have a lot of hats. No wonder I'm always feeling as if I have no bandwidth.

@arkandel I was thinking of adding an option like: Game does not use XP, Game does not have a grid, etc. So people on games that don't use that system can opt out, but still force the choice for people from games that do use the system.

@A.-Meowley My general rule of thumb is that I try to respond to one thing/player/group and to offer one new thing. If I'm attempting to be subtle, I'll offer a subtle hook and a blatant hook and let the player choose which. I also adjust my pose size closer to the average pose size of the room. If everyone's posing pages, I'll pose a little under a page. If they're doing paragraphs, I do a paragraph.

Labeled a tab in a shared spreadsheet in capital letters: DO NOT EDIT. Labeled the other tab, EDIT HERE.

Guess which one people made their changes in. Go ahead. Guess.

@deadculture said in MSB, SJW, and other acronyms:

I believe that speech should always be unmoderated and that social admonishment will take care of course correction, if necessary.

Coming from a place with actual limitations to what they call freedom of expression, down to and including the very necessary element for freedom of speech called anonymity, I find that calls to moderate and squelch 'undesired speech' in any way is like adding a ball and chain to one's own ankles.

Because the goalpost of what's acceptable will keep moving, the more you call for said moderation, until it's 1984 (see my forum avatar) and Big Brother is watching you for signs of Oldspeak.

I think there's a vast difference in moderating the ideas allowed in speech and moderating the type of speech that is allowed. I would never, ever be for the former. No matter how idiotic the idea, I think everyone benefits from having it aired. I think society is increasingly suffering from it's refusal to do the latter.

I think in order for discourse to be really free, in order for everyone to have the same chance of getting their ideas heard (although not agreed with), then you have to limit personal attacks, the spreading of false information, and the use of purposefully inflammatory language. How this applies to MSB, I don't know, but I do know that people need to free themselves of the illusion that unmoderated speech equals free speech.

Additionally, I'm not for blacklisting certain words. As another said, words are words. They in and of themselves are (mainly) neutral. However, I do think it's reasonable to moderate the way in which words are used and when someone asks me to not use a certain word as a negative descriptor, it seems only basic decency to comply.

@Auspice said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@mietze said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@Arkandel I think what people are trying to get at is that, just in case you've never been fat or struggled with significant or stubborn weight loss or haven't experienced losing weight and then regaining or other things like that, those comments really aren't anything that they've not heard before, usually spoken in a very condescending or dismissive way.

As I have had to say to doctors and other people in my life during times where I am heavy (I've been all over the place as an adult), "I'm FAT not STUPID thanks."

And as others have said, and doctors who specialize in the treatment of obesity can tell you, it's actually NOT that simple. So unless you want to hurt the person, I really honestly would advise not telling anyone that. It's okay. Someone else has already told them, trust me.

This. So much of it.

I've been told 'just count calories!' so many times.

You know what I've found?

I usually don't meet the 'amount to lose weight' calories in a day. I just looked up a calorie calculator. OK. Amount to eat per day to lose weight: 1924.
Amount of calories I've eaten today: 1534.

And weekends are pretty high intake for me since I'm sitting around the house with the free time to cook. Most days would prob be closer to just 1000.

But I've gained weight over the past year. I haven't lost it.

Calorie counting, in my world, is a fucking laughable concept.

One study calculated that the average woman with PCOS doesn't lose weight without medical intervention unless she reduces her caloric intake to about 800/day. So if you're having trouble, it's not just in your head! It's a legit problem for us. Take inositol. See your Dr. about metformin.

@kay said in New Project?:

I'll give you an outlier. How about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Augustine,_Florida

Living 30 min drive from St. Augustine, I can vote for this. It has an interesting vibe. There's a small, high-end historical district. There's a touristy-beach area. There's wealthy areas to the north and south of the city along the beach, and there's a lot of really sketchy areas. It's one of the few places in the state where you can find affordable housing close to the beach. I mean, I wouldn't trust the safety of those houses, but still.

Bonus points if you emit the Holly Jolly Trolley rolling by the historical district with cheesy Christmas songs every 5 minutes in the holiday season.

ETA - I'm tired of massive games. More single sphere please.

@eye8urcake said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

I was hoping to have good well better I guess news to post here but...

Baby Isla was born at 159p Pacific time on 12/31. She had managed to pass some stool before, during or shortly after birth (right in the middle of birth South Lake Tahoe lost Internet and cell service for hours and hours so I aged 20 years stressing on WHAT IS HAPPENING and lots of other stuff happened so I'm not 100% on which which apparently makes a huge difference) so they were hopeful about her intestines at first.

Then my daughter fed her and it didn't go so well and rush imaging showed there's definitely a blockage so they've taken the baby to NICU and put her on IV and some kind of stomach vaccuum to get the stuff she ate out (so the obstruction doesn't grow) in preparation for surgery.

If all goes well she may be sorted out and healed enough to be home by February.

Does anybody know if (hospital in NV, residence in CA, if it matters) since she was born before 1/1 the deduction starts over or if it's on the 2019 one?

From one NICU family to another - YOU GOT THIS. The NICU is scary, especially at first, but the doctors there are the best in the hospital, and so are the nurses. Let them do their thing and just focus on being there and being present. Even when being there is taking turns rotating who is bedside and who is in the waiting room.

I got tons more advice, but none of it is important right now. Just be there.

When you're dealing with a fairly tricky situation OOCly and ICly and one of your MU-friends ( @fortydeuce ) totally steps up to the plate and helps you navigate through it.

Really, all the praise to @fortydeuce. I was about ready to toss up my hands and stomp off into the night this afternoon before she took charge.

Holy crap.

This describes me. It's a thing? When other people say they picture something in their mind, they see an actual picture?

@tempest said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

@meg
Why does a game like Arx not have more system guides?

Nobody really tells you how to /use/ any of the systems. Sure, they'll tell you "enter this command, and then do this, and you get X". Nobody is telling you 'oh yeah, you need to do x, y, and z, to actually get much out of doing this thing', even though most of the not-new players know that stuff.

I don't know if it's because the game is "competitive" or what, but people seem incredibly inclined towards keeping the 'tricks' they learn about the systems to themselves, and the only way to learn these things as a new player is "just go run face first into the wall 20 times until you figure it out".

Yup, this is one of my beefs with Arx. The systems are so complex and so indepth that unless you're willing to devote a ton of time into figuring them out, you'll always be outgamed by a person who has the time to do all the math and figure all the things out. It's like playing a game like Axis and Allies, it's not for you if you just want a casual play.

I recently made a very, very low-level char, just to poke around again and see what's going on here for a bit. RP has been fun, but I did ask around for help with understanding the new market/haggle systems. I got, "Look at Help haggle and help broker." Yup, I see those they tell me ... nothing. They tell me nothing. Since I'm trying not to get dragged into the ultra competitive, negative/toxic side of Arx, I just shrugged and went on my way. Someday, I'll be bored enough that I sit down and work out how those commands go.

Which brings me to the other thing that keeps me from ever fully committing to Arx again - the general atmosphere. It's not healthy. Just look over at the other threads. I think a lot of this is due to competitiveness and I think the game would overall benefit from tamping down on the number of scoreboards it keeps and making it easier for individual players to do and access things without having to go through gatekeepers.

I'm basing the latter on the comments in the other thread about HoHs being bogged down in messages and work RP. That's not healthy for anyone involved. It's not healthy for HoH's to have to do stuff instead of pursuing their own RP and it's not healthy for members of Orgs to have to go through a third party to get what they want. A lot of it is due to having a hierarchical social structure, and a lot of people want the political play, I guess, but I also think it's contributing to a lot of the feelings of frustration and resentment, which there obviously are.

A local bookstore is allowing online ordering with curbside pickup.

I've been wanting to play a char that owns a scrap yard for a while. This seems like the place to do it.

Late 20s/Early 30-something who left for college, then came back to help the parents out in their scrap yard. Family was big into spiritualism, questionable natural healing methods, etc. Of course, she never believed that all until, you know, now.

Hit me up if you want a connection?

Several weeks ago, I sent information on a virtual field trip we were hosting to our communications team, so they could add it to our weekly email of upcoming opportunities and advertised on our social media accounts.

On Monday, I noticed that no one had signed up. I checked in with comms. "We advertised it," they said, "There just must not be interest."

Maaaayyyybbeeee, I thought, so I checked in with the volunteer who was running it. What did he think, did he want to pull the plug? No, he said, maybe a class will sign up last minute.

Then, between 4 pm yesterday and this morning, we went from 0 sign ups to 4 times our current capacity. Leaving me scrambling to deliver what we promised.

I went back and checked all our communications channels. It had not been included in anything before 4 pm yesterday. Not a tweet. Not an email. Not an instagram post. It's supposed to happen 2 pm tomorrow.

I'm a bit peeved.

It occurred to me today, not for the first time, that I tend to get antsy when a scene lasts longer than 2 1/2 hours.

When you think about it, this makes sense. I have about three hours after getting settled in for the morning and before having to do lunch. Ditto for the afternoon and in the evening after supper. When a scene hits three hours, I start to think, 'I'm hungry,' or 'I need to go to the store.'

You also generally need about two hours to get into any real meat and then see some sort of resolution. If a scene is much shorter than that, you'll probably just end up spinning wheels.

In general, I also just loose attention when something goes longer than three hours, even if there's nothing pulling on my attention. I dislike sitting that long, it gets uncomfortable. I want to get up and go be in a different room doing something else.

Now obviously, there are factors that affect this. If a scene is really engaging or if I know and plan ahead of time for something to take really long, I can stretch out my attention longer. Likewise, if the scene is kinda a dud, or if something else is pulling at my attention, I don't last nearly as long. Also, sometimes things can be resolved more quickly or may take longer to discuss, but in general, give me about 2 1/2 hours of RP and I'll be satisfied.

So, question to you all: Do you have an ideal length of time when it comes to scenes?

I love having outside presenters come in for PD webinars. When it's crappy and everyone is bored, it's so less stressful for me, then when I need to present the content myself.

@BobGoblin You have some good points here. Lack of activity is a killer for MUs. I don't care how many characters you have connected, if I can't actively find RP, you're MU isn't active. I also think you hit on the heart of the matter when you say, "I've grown bored with games where I lounge RP around waiting for a staffer to maybe run something"

I think this is largely because players do not have easy access to plot. In many cases, they may not even know what plots are happening on the game. You need to have an easy way for players to see what's going on and to get involved in it. I love Arx's +plot system as a basis for this. Arx has several other commands that give players easy ways to get involved with and interact with plot that are also worth looking at.

Conversely, if you depend on Storyteller driven plot only, there will come a day when things grind to a halt, and return to what you're discussing above. Relying on ST-driven plot is inherently unsustaiable. The plot needs to derive from the game itself and have conflict as part of the system. Your game needs a way for players to drive their own plot, so that it bubbles upwards from the bottom and is not always imposed topdown. For example, coded blood scarcity on a Vampire game can give players something to spin their wheels over while waiting for the next plot action.

I do not believe that a module-plot system will resolve the issues you're talking about, because in the end, the players are still waiting around for someone else to do a thing.

A few other things:
1 - MUs do not give people reasons to interact. When designing a game, I think you have to think hard about what you're doing to push players towards each other and how they will find each other. Downtime costs, unique roles, factions, territory disputes, etc. All play into this.

2 - Games are designed in such a way that discourages activity. OOC Rooms, while popular, incentivize sitting OOC, by making social interaction available while doing so. They also disincentivize going IC, because doing so means players miss out on essential community building and social interactions. Chatting OOC is very important to your game, but don't let it get in the way of RP. Allowing people to make more alts than they can keep moderately active fills +who and +where with characters sitting idle and obscures where RP is to be found. This creates a culture of sitting idle, even among players with only 1 or 2 alts. Allowing players to accrue too much XP creates a game where a character can feasibly do all the things themselves and doesn't need to go to other characters. Limiting XP encourages specialization and keeps dinosaurs from souring the game for new players.

I hate the fact that I can't have a different opinion of how to do something, or offer an unvoiced viewpoint without couching it in a million different conditionals, lest I be seen as 'difficult' and 'intimidating.'

I hate the fact that even though I'm a highly educated individual with an area of expertise that none of my coworkers have, I'm basically expected to be an automaton and produce exactly what my coworkers would, if only they had more time.