Posts made by mietze

Whenever I have staffed, regardless of genre or era, there were always a multitude of people who were very keen to tell me I was wrong. Even about stuff that was clearly posted. Or that I was wrong about stuff I didn’t even say.

I have never made one of Van’s recipes I didn’t love and she has even helped me fine tune some of mine in the IP. Her beef pho recipe is to die for. You can shortcut some of the cooking time but it’s worth doing it exactly as written. She has a great chicken one too. This is formulated for the instant pot, but you can just do whatever method you like for stock prep.

http://foodisafourletterword.com/recipe/instantpotbrisketpho/

Now that I know how easy baked Brie is to prepare I’ll probably have one or two every game night! It’s fun to experiment with what you put on it too, though thus far brown sugar has been hard to beat.

@bobotron I could see it happening if he called in while very ill or drunk or something. THough you'd think after the 2nd or 3rd time the boss or Chris would double check the number.

I hate seeing appliance newbies being shit on. I've had my instant pot for a little over a year now, but I am a member of the company sponsored FB page because for awhile it was nice to get recipes and crowdsourced help with conversions, ect. Of late it has devolved into some poor excited new person asking for where should they start/admitting they're a little intimidated followed by immediately 30+ people jumping on them with OMG I'm so tired of reading a post like this every time, people are so stupid! Well...then don't be part of the company page, dummy! Join Instant Pot Experts Only or start a fb group for that, and leave the newbies alone.

Though I will bitchily say that seeing so many people post their plans about putting their PRIME RIB ROAST in a pressure cooker made me die a little inside, like I do when my mother orders a filet mignon well done.

@cobaltasaurus salt is my weapon of choice! The kimchi soup depending is pretty healthy albeit chock full of salty fermenty goodness, but pho broth is extremely lovely deceptively fatty and salty as hell. :). Homemade broth of any sort are my kids’ go to comfort food that’s not junk food so they hang out like vultures when I’m making pho stock or any other kind and I have to fight them off enough so there’s enough for dinner dinner.

Also the good fake cheesy kale chips are full of fat and nuts! The vegan ones tend to be the most unhealthy.

Do you grate the zucchini/yellows raw? Not a fan of them cooked but I like them as crudités, don’t know why it never occurred to me to put them in a salad!

Kimchi soft tofu soup. I keep all the ingredients on hand mostly and I have it once a week sometimes more or make at the kids’ request.

Fresh baked crusty bread

Gummy coke bottles

Pho

Kale chips with lots of vegan cheese powder and tumeric on them.

Chocolate chip cookie dough.

I used to love Doritos, my anger eating item of choice, along with this local popcorn that has dehydrated crunchy jalapeño slices mixed into it but lately my tastes have changed and so I’m all about the soondubu.

If we are not dated, how do we know we’re not expired.

@thenomain
At least it’s not called “Well, Actually...”

@deadculture

I think it’s an interesting problem. Maybe generational could help. The only truly generational game I have had tangential experience with (did not play on it but know many who did and enjoyed) was Firan. Was there more of a sense of truly world altering stuff there?

I think most games I’m directly familiar with, since they take place in 1:1 time, are easy to have awesome shifting events...but the scope of the game is a blip of time and not focused on a very wide spectrum.

But I think it would be interesting to see a wider scope of play. I wonder how easy it would be to incorporate the influx/exodus of players and PCs over time (and the usual issues of new folks feeling like they missed the boat on being able to affect things—though I could also see it be a new opportunity to weave people in as time moved on more rapidly?). Would the usual problems be minimized or amplified?

It would be an interesting experiment!

I think it’s important to point out that it’s possible to be “not leadership material” as a player and be perfectly lovely and an awesome RPer with great intentions.

It’s just that perhaps they get overly stressed/avoidant with ooc unhappiness with others or overly involved.

Or they have a mental or physical illness that requires unpredictable and/or sudden and/or lengthy downtimes.

Or they take stuff very personally even when it’s low volume, and feel like they must/should please everyone all the time, and when they can’t do that they will become reactionary.

Or they are not very organized and/or aren’t good at building a support team of others.

It’s possible to not be a bad or selfish player
but still be a poor choice for a fachead. And there are many great rpers who are much better support than leadership not because of personal failings, but RL time commitments or personality.

I don’t know. Is there anyone who has gamed (mushing, mmo) for over 5-10 years who also enjoys the ooc community of things that doesn’t know someone or of someone who endangered their RL partnership or ignored rl problems in favor of escapism?

I probably know of at least 4+ divorces, 3 unplanned pregnancies (one by someone different than the current rl partner), many job losses, many severe relationship problems, many self-medication with games not drugs, getting involved with severely abusive people who were fine LTR but not so fine in person, etc.

It surprises me that it’s taken this long to be seen as a legitimate problem for some folks. I don’t like “addiction” being used for everything. But we recognize gambling/spending/sexual behavior/many other non-drug addictions so I don’t see why gaming can’t be one of them.

@arkandel yes, and I have seen people humblebrag about what a great leader they are/were when I know for a fact at that time they bragged about how they tried to shut out people they didn’t like from plot stuff or whatnot, or didn’t see how they made people very uncomfortable with their not so well hidden animosity.

But. When it works it works. I just think it’s a hell of a lot more hidden work to get going on both staff and player side than our idealism about player autonomy suggests.

I think the problem is that it can be a good way to do things, and most people have seen a good leader they aspire to be. Or think they were.

Also, not to generalize overmuch, but it’s my experience that mushing people are generally pretty cocky and kind of egotistical when it comes to their caliber of RP/should’ves. And they like to complain and bitch about...everything.

I think that is why you often will hear whining of the first order about “what do you mean I could never be <position>?!?! Well what am I supposed to achieve then?!?” Especially when those positions aren’t defined in the first place. I also think frankly people get bored of PvE especially if there is no or minimal accessible staff STing and so they like having a pc leader to beat up on icly and oocly.

I realize this is super uncharitable, but I really can’t explain enough how stressful being a non-staff leader can be because of the boredom nitpicks and beat ups. Including from, again IME, STAFF PCs who don’t lift a finger to help with giving people something to do or to help answer pertinent @mail or whatever but are happily playing along badmouthing icly and sometimes oocly.

I think pc leaders largely are desired as foils. But it doesn’t work out well for anyone concerned and contributes to a really bad, negative atmosphere on a game.

Yeah I think that’s the difference. Staff does need to be pretty involved, so it’s not a timesaver. I do think it can be enriching but without that support it’s just probably more potentially troublesome than it is valuable.

@faraday

Yes, I’ve seen it work out very well but it’s certainly the exception rather than the rule. It also depends on what level of leadership too. In my experience most staff don’t want to do the work to create the environment or upkeep on it, while still wanting to say for some reason they have player leadership. Which is why it often becomes a train wreck, either with shitty leadership or players going full crazy ooc asshole on good leadership players until they leave.

Report to whom? Sounds like grandpa is a Swedish National in Sweden. It sounds like the rest of the family is aware and hates it (and the older people probably suffered socially for it). There are still Nazi old folks living in Germany. The collaborators through Europe couldn’t/didn’t go anywhere most of the time.

Ack.

In the case of not being able to rp your +sheet...this is a fact of life on a mush. This is also why ic position with ooc activity and expectation components must be clearly labeled as such. Yes, it’s uncomfortable to say “I see you’ve applied for x, but you’re not what we’re looking for,” but I think it’s better for the game in the long run if staff is willing to do that AND they have a exit strategy for people who need to be removed. Sometimes people seem great but are very not. Sometimes a noob can grow and thrive in the role. Clear expectations and clear removal won’t make it easier when you have to (because it sucks all round) but it allows you to take a chance on people and salvage things for the rest of the folks if someone who seems great turns out to be an inappropriate one.

I think each of these scenarios is very different.

In regards to IC leadership, I think the onus is on staff to put forth some effort and a) think about what is it they want from having ic leadership vs npc and b) using those thoughts to come up with clear guidelines to be published. Ic leadership has a strong ooc component to it usually. This should not be an unspoken expectation but a very open one. What are the staff’s behavior expectations oocly and icly? What are the activity requirements icly and oocly? What recourse does the leader have from staff to get help in dealing with oocly nasty people? (Because there will be some and perhaps many). Are there any restrictions on activity (person may not join every plot scene, can’t run those in which they star, whatever it is...name it.). And lastly there should be a very clear expectation of timing for dismissal and ideally an advanced directive in case of AWOLness.

I feel staff owes it to the game, the General players and most importantly ic leadership players to not be vague and to exert some leadership of their own before someone is handed a very visible leadership role. This should never happen randomly—no one should ever be pressured into taking on a role with fair or not some degree of ic/ooc crossover responsibility without informed consent.

I suspect many people will disagree with me, but having served in this capacity time and time again, sometimes very admirably and sometimes shittily, I think if you want to attract and keep quality player leadership you really need to put support structure in place.

In regards to subordinate/dependent play, I view this much like a D/s relationship (I know boo hissssss). Unhealthy people don’t talk about stuff and it’s often extremely fun in the beginning but quickly turns into a train wreck. It’s my opinion that the dependent pc is as if not /more/ responsible for generating fun for both and for not becoming a stupid liability without consent. Want to play a fuck up ghoul who’s constantly creating problems for your vamp? Please be sure you have the vamp player’s consent for that as play that she wants to engage in regularly. Or if you want to be a fuck up but don’t want to RP consequences or even have them, be sure to disclose that pre-sealing the deal. Because unless both people are ok with this, you’re going to be a very poor fit. Don’t want sexytimes/must have them? Disclose. Need things to be exclusive? Disclose—directly. Many people don’t want to do the ooc discussion. Sometimes that works out great, but most of the time that’s a hot ticket to idling out or unfun drama. Just because the pc is dependent doesn’t give the player an excuse to be. You must be prepared to be able to not rely on a single person for all your mush fun usually unless you want to smother that person off the mush. And again, it’s a great idea to talk IN ADVANCE about ooc exit strategies in case of not clicking or mushing time availablity change or AWOL.

@arkandel said in Hobby-related Resolutions/Goals for the coming year... ?:

Play again.

My goal as well.