Best posts made by Lithium

@Arkandel <insertsillynamehere> is now accepting Druids only! We are based off the Warrior series of books by <whateverthehecktheirnameis>!

My problem with RP servers is that there is usually a /wealth/ of theme that is awesome and cool and can be made into great lore abiding guilds, and then you get stuff like that.

I used to play on RP only servers because I had /hoped/ the environments would be more mature and less toxic. I was unfortunately wrong on an epic scale on that one. So now I play (when I do) on regular servers or I have to turn off every channel beyond tells and guild.

@ThatOneDude said in Alternate CoD/WoD Character Growth / XP Systems:

I think the issue here is when talking of caps the examples used are games that are built with a cap in mind. When we talk CofD and nWoD and WoD and others that don't have a cap built in it doesn't seem warranted. In my opinion as seen through out.

My point through all though is if there is plot/story/challenge then most of this other shit doesn't really matter to most players.

Captain Blowhard ( @Thenomain ) brings up a valid point above about using more skills, this is for real something that should happen. Nothing makes a low level player that is generalized look more badass than when he can get that "single" success that's needed on a variety of rolls that test his skills/abilities vs the POS PC built to drop a ton of raw dice on firearms that can't climb a rope, or escape in a foot chase.

With that nothing is more fun than being challenged in RP. That moment when you know you have to roll 5 dice to avoid certain doom like: Escape out of a window before being spotted by the monster creeping through the house. With CofD what's even better is getting a fail and making it dramatic for the story. So when I bomb that roll my PC then will have to take the hit and fall to the floor making a ton of noise... Now my PC needs to get up (one round) and figure out how to deal with the monster that knows where he is by the sound made (+1 beat sucka, thank God I'm not capped and can use it to beef up X skill later with the other beats).

I have ran into this a fair bit but it's more a problem with how things are /ran/ rather than the characters or XP itself. Especially in the modern MU* world where people are so concerned about getting things finished /fast/ that they throw away the possibility of allowing the PC's to /fail/.

Scheduling can be a nightmare, but if something is multi-part then only people who can make the regularly scheduled parts should be participating imho.

Players should have a chance to fail, and it should have repercussions in game and to the characters. So many games everything is the carrot, everything is dessert, everything is with a cherry on top that it makes it so there's no challenge, rewards lose all meaning, and I have a really hard time remaining invested.

So GM/ST's should make use of those oddball skills more often, let other stats and characters shine, but it seems to be something of a lost art on many games.

Bravo to those who still challenge players without just adding more bad ass opponents.

@SG said in RL Anger:

@Vorpal said in RL Anger:

Mr. Genius Stage Director has known from day one that, due to the configuration of the two theaters we’re singing in (there’s no pit, apparently), the orchestra has to be on stage. And stage left. And yet this goddamned m*@$&@#*er still staged the damned thing without taking that into consideration. The result is that 80% of the cast can’t, at one point or another, establish direct eye contact with the conductor.

So, as someone who doesn't know much about music, is this a big deal? Whenever I watch video, the musicians are all staring at their sheets while the conductor flails about, his movements not really matching anything that I can detect.

Imagine that you are in a play and you are waiting for your queues for your lines, you are listening to the stuff being said, and you know you need to do a certain thing at a certain time but then all of the sudden you're in a sensory deprivation tank unable to see or hear anything relevant to what you need to do, but you /still/ have to try and do your job which is to perform your role on time.

Essentially the singers /are a part/ of the orchestra when it comes to Opera, their voices /have/ to be timed and tuned the same way as any other instrument must be to harmonize properly. If one of the three key pieces is off time, it's bad, if all three of them cannot get their queues because they don't know exactly when (They aren't being conducted, that's the conductors job, to keep the orchestra in harmony and timed right otherwise you'd think the musicians would just read their music, but their sheets don't have all the timing information on them, it's just the notes they play and in what order but not, precisely, when to start or stop) they are supposed to do their thing...

It's the equivalent to the highschool play where everyone comes on and yells their lines out at the same time in one chaotic mess.

@surreality You're missing my point and kind of making it at the same time.

There are already so many people who WILL NOT participate in something if it risks the loss of character. Worse is when they will lose their character and then whine, bitch, moan, and throw such a tizzy it gets retconned or devalues the whole thing by default.

The problem is they aren't not picking their battles, they're /choosing/ to fight in /every/ battle and /not/ accepting the consequences if they should lose their character or the ST's will run something that is uber violent, but lo and behold, nobody is ever at risk.

I also am not saying that EVERY GAME should be a life or death situation, just that in some games, especially 'horror' games such as any version of WoD or Cthulhu or several other horror based games then 'Death' needs to have teeth. Conflict /needs/ to be scary because if it's not, then it loses all meaning and we get super hero Deux ex Machina type of stories that have little to no real reward because there was no risk. It's just: Let us bloat up some sheets, for no good reason at all.

The reason WHY you see so many FPS mentality players now is because of the lack of character loss. This is why having character death /matter/ is so important.

@TNP That's because it is no big deal.

@surreality You're taking what I said to extremes I did not say.

I never said every fight has to be life or death, kill or be killed, and that a player should lose a character every single time there's a fight.

Just that it has to have some weight rather than the zero weight that is so common now.

Does every scene have to be mortality induced adrenaline rush? Gods no.

But... if your goal is to get information from the city council and some idiot goes in guns blazing, then swat should ventilate them, or they get dealt with by their own faction, or whatever.

People often escalate any scene to physical combat because they feel that way they are using their dice and sheets or because it's what they were made for and they don't want to be 'useless'.

If those types of characters are allowed to run willy nilly with /zero/ repurcussion... it's even worse.

@Thenomain Then quit fucking defending that hostility Thenomain.

EDIT: You're so focused on being /right/ that you don't seem to give any actual fucks as to the feelings of others, you're putting it off on /me/ as if I am somehow the problem. So fuck you Thenomain. You 'Win' because I am sick of your nonsense. I explained, MULTIPLE TIMES as to why it is something, and you just fucking discount it entirely.

You're disingenuous to the extreme, I find it /amazing/ I ever once respected your opinion at this point... because I can't respect your opinions or modes of 'discussion' on this subject.

I hate the idea of RP'ing before a character is approved because I hate the idea of retcons. Retcons are always a worse case scenario for me, I'd much rather just nuke the problem person/character after the fact and move on while saying: No more of this.

There are a number of games that allow RP'ing before approval and I think it's kind of silly, why would you be RP'ing when you don't even know if your character is going to be approved? Maybe it will without any changes, but you don't know that. Maybe there's a core or even a small element to your character that gets denied or need to be changed and then the character plays totally differently?

That kind of RP is like... Fanfic.

@Thenomain You're not doing that, you were presuming there was hostility when there was none and in so doing not only discounted much of what was said, you marginalized it to the point of saying it was meaningless.

I refuse to believe that you are not intelligent enough to know that when you deflect away from a topic of discussion in what appears an attempt to change the topic into something else, how that is rude, and offensive to the topic at matter.

It puts forth that the topic isn't worth discussing lets talk about this other thing instead, it shifts the focus from one topic to another. THAT is OFFENSIVE.

It marginalizes the original topic, by taking discussion away from it. It changes the focus to paint the original topic as a false problem.

You're smart enough to know this. This is why you are being disingenuous. This is why I am so pissed off at you right now. Because you know better, but instead you're dismissing it out of hand as only being offensive to 'some' people.

Guess what @Thenomain it /is/ offensive. Just like sexual harassment is offensive. Just like any negative activity is offensive.

It's /offensive/ that you find sexual harassment and abuse of others an 'interesting' cultural phenomenon also.

If you were so twisted in a knot of concern and stress you'd have realized that @TNP has ALREADY posted /exactly/ how you were derailing the thread, and how the hell can you possibly say that "What someone else thinks is offensive isn't the problem".

I literally have no words to explain how fucked up that is.

If you don't want to 'be engaged' by me, then figure out a way to block indvidual users, or ban me, or whatever else you feel is necessary to do but don't act like you get to tell me not to respond to what is absolutely bullshit.

@Wretched There is a difference between "Wrongfun" and "Not following the Rules" or "Not following the Theme". A game generally has a set theme, that theme enforces a set of rules by which everyone has to follow in order for the game to follow a reasonable path. The part that people tend to forget is this:

Not all games are meant for all character types.

Not following the rules on Wyrd (the example used above) is to me just as egregious a problem as trying to app a Space Marine in a low fantasy setting.

When you make a game world it has a theme that needs to be followed to be part of the game world, such as: No guns, No space ships, No time travel, No Magic, No whatever. People need to follow that in order to be a part of the theme of the game.

I see this a lot on roll20 and D&D games, people wanting to app special snowflake races and classes that aren't part of the main books even when the DM says: I am only allowing stuff out of the players handbook.

Honestly, if a prospective player can't be assed to follow the rules that are clearly written then imho they don't need to be playing on the game. Which segue's into another gaming 'truth':

Not all games are going to be fun for everyone.

If a game doesn't match up with a players idea of 'fun' then the game isn't meant for them and they should be reasonable about that fact and either try and find a game that does match their idea of fun or try and come up with a fun character that /does/ fit the world.

Right now I am /fiending/ for a crunchy Super Hero game. I'd love a game based off Hero System, Savage Worlds, Aberrant, DC (Mayfair games version) or the like but they are few and far between. The only HERO system game I know of has jumped the shark severely, the only Aberrant game I know of has a tiny player base and the XP is very fast so new players literally cannot compete, the others don't exist to my knowledge. So I am left with trying to find something that works for me on those games that do exist, or not playing.

@Thenomain I am sorry too. I am not perfect, I can get frustrated, and part of why it was so painful and frustrating is because most of the time I value your opinion very much. It hurt, and I couldn't remain calm anymore given the subject matter.

I'm tired.

I'm frustrated.

I've already been attacked physically and socially and mentally over this...

And people wonder why 'we' don't speak up and talk to people. Even those we trust sometimes.

@GirlCalledBlu I don't think random 'new' people are really finding MU*'s at all. They have zero real exposure to them and no way to really know about them now.

Back before MMO's really took off like Ultima Online and EQ the online gaming community consisted mostly of chatrooms on AOL, IRC, and stuff like that until someone found a MU*. Usually it was through word of mouth, friends, etc that got someone into the hobby. Sometimes it was through searching for webpages on a book series, or game, or whatever that brought up a MU*.

In this day and age though there's really not a /lot/ of new blood, and those we do get are probably gained from us bringing a few new people in now and again.

@Ide Let me know when you figure that out, because I survive on less than 1K a month at the moment and I actually make BETTER than minimum wage.

@GirlCalledBlu It's a lot easier if you first find MUD's honestly because chargen is for the most part automated. That's how I got my start, I found a Wheel of Time MUD and played that, then found an RP MUD and then found MU*'s and left mud's behind.

Today though with video games being what they are we're kinda like HAM radio fanatics in the world of cellphones.

I hate supposed 24 hour restaurants who end up closing down for a couple hours every morning because 'Their systems are down' and always at the SAME TIME. You're clearly not a 24 hour restaurant you assholes, you're a 22 hour restaurant! Why are you always 'down' when it's my lunch break?!?!

@GirlCalledBlu There was about a half dozen WoT MUD's back when I played them. There was a kind of quiet war going on between them as to which was the best, some still had original DIKU areas and such in them and others were full blown. I might have played Moment but I don't really recall. The one I played a lot of was Mirrors

@Ganymede Agreed. I am looking forwards to Luke Cage as well, not so much for Iron Fist. I would have preferred them to have changed Danny Rand to something other than generic whiteboy01

Reading a book doesn't make anyones opinion any more or less valid than anyone else's.

All opinions are worth exactly as much as anyone is willing to give them worth.

All opinions matter more, or less, than someone else's depending on who is hearing the opinion and who is saying the opinion.

Just have your opinion.

There is zero need for justification.

Your opinion will be judged on a person by person basis, possibly with up or down votes or replies.

If you're afraid of your opinion being judged, don't voice it.

@Vorpal So make Danny Rand Central/Native/South American, or something else. I agree that there is to an extent, a Kobayashi Maru when it comes to casting. Especially when it involves tropes /but/ on the other hand it would still be cool seeing something other than white washing.

I am not saying Danny Rand is being white washed with the current casting, he was created as a white guy and so it is being true to the character design to make him a white guy.

It would just have been /interesting/ to see Danny Rand as something /other/ than a white guy. Just like I would have loved Dr. Strange to have been Italian (He just screams sexy italian in his art to me) instead of a brit but...

Long story short: You can't please everyone, it's impossible to do so, take a stand and stick with it. I can applaud that.

Will I watch Iron Fist? Sure I'll give it a shot, I'm just not as invested/interested in it as I am Luke Cage, or Daredevil Season 3, or The Punisher, or Jessica Jones Season 2.

@Vorpal said in The Shame Game:

@Lithium said in The Shame Game:

@Ganymede This is a fallacy.

We can /try/ to not weigh opinions based on our feelings but that's a lot harder than it seems, and I'm willing to say that I believe most people can't do it. Not really. See Trump.

I agree with @Ganymede in this- I think you are wrong, to an extent. Rational thought and objectivity aren't automatic, they are volitional. Everybody can, in fact, do it. Most choose not to, mostly out of habit. Being rational is not something that comes automatically, it's something that has to be forced and practiced on habit consciously - excellence is not an act, but a habit.

Actually no. Not everyone can.

I get this all the time from my girlfriend and family, I sometimes assume that /everyone/ should be able to do the things I do, because they are easy to me. I just don't get how some people find Algebra is hard when I did higher tier math in my head.

Not everyone /can/ do the things you do, and I think that we, as a hobby group, probably do a lot of things easily that other people can't imagine. Like creative writing. Like thinking like other people do. Like taking the time to consider different view points.

Because we are Role-Players. We are Gamers. We get into the heads of other people all the time.

Most people don't do that. Most people can't fathom doing it. This is why most people cannot be objective when it comes to weighing opinions.