Best posts made by Pandora

The Shame Game on MSB is pretty amusing as long as you don't take it too seriously. I participated in a thread in the Hog Pit and through nothing but trying to explain my points of view wound up at like -124 reputation. Having a differing opinion on MSB is something to be ashamed of then? YMMV. So I joked with a friend that if I just posted agreeing with people for a few days and offering very little of substance or worth to any conversation, I'd recoup those losses within a week.

It took 4 days.

My conclusion really is that MSB doesn't really care if you reform your wicked ways, it just kind of wants you to shut up unless you agree with its many talking heads, because dissenting opinions are bad and shameful, k?

I really, really like to argue. I like the occasional debate as well, but I really like arguing. MSB satisfies that itch for me. It's rare I venture out of the Hog Pit, there's only so many conversations about cookie-cutter WoD games I can read. But that said, MSB is a good place for people of all walks-of-gaming to come together and hate on each other while packaging their griping as constructive criticism. That or to post logs of people they used to be friends with but who don't like them anymore so they're terrible people now. YMMV

A game is 'doing it right' when it doesn't wind up on WORA/MSB. That said, I think games that voluntarily advertise on MSB are very brave and open-minded, though they should keep in mind that they'll be attracting a specific sort of crowd that is heavily biased toward 'The Way We Do Things Just Because It's How We Do It'. I enjoy MSB for what it is and for reasons I mentioned earlier in the thread. But I'd never voluntarily bring any game I play to anyone's attention here; my internet life has been very peaceful this year since the MU I play primarily isn't on MSB and most people there either don't know what MSB is or are scandalized/terrified by what they read here. So to that end, MSB does serve a noble purpose, it is a deterrent against abuse because if you're bad you wind up here.

@Lisse24 I'm all for fashion combat and who-wore-it-first or whatever Arx wants to do, social stats used to affect the world around the characters is what I mentioned in my post.

There's a difference between 'The NPCs say my scandalous vomit-green dress is hotter than yours' and 'I rolled the dice now tell me about your ties to the demonic horde while we prep the executioner's blade, traitor'.

If you want people to RP in public, dynamic places code is a godsend, I believe.

So many good public scenes hit their stride and then peter out because many can't handle too big of a scene, but obviously a good scene is going to attract more people. And so what started out as quality turns into quantity. The ability to create a place on the fly and have people in Discussion A be able to join 'A crowded table' while Discussion B is 'Around the Dead Body' with anyone able to target just their own group for the most part, but also able to send an emote to broadcast to the entire room when necessary or for anyone that hasn't joined a place yet, it's great. The shy ones or the wallflowers can move themselves to 'A spot along the wall' and be joined by the other socially challenged visitors where they can happily out-awkward one another without being overshadowed by the current going-ons of the day.

And then once the histrionics have died down and the blood is cleaned up and Oktar Nosharik is gleefully counting up his bribes, the dynamic places disappear once empty and life goes on. No @digging or tacky furniture objects necessary.

@rnmissionrun Yeah the last thing I'm looking for is yet another run of the mill sci-fi game based on this book or that comic using X, Y, or Z codebase. If I wanted zero-effort generic sandbox plug-n-play, I'd be taking up space on a WoD game.

@ganymede said in RL things I love:

@sg said in RL things I love:

I'd argue coworkers should know what their coworkers make, especially in fields where pay is negotiated.

I'd argue that this as well, and in general.

Conventional MBA wisdom says that you should not discuss pay. This is because you don't want co-workers to be jealous of one another. However, this is also how corporations get away with disparate pay rates.

Conventional M.Sc. in Economics wisdom says that you should always discuss pay. This is because all labor should be making the same wages in order to properly apportion costs. However, if you do this, you cannot cut costs by providing minorities or women lower pay rates, thus giving greater profits to higher-ups.

See how this shit goes?

People need to talk about their pay rates because it is absolutely unfair that Sally does the same work as, but receives less pay than, Sam.

This happened at my job not too long ago. As part of their 'Great Place to Work!' initiative, they raised the starting pay for my department. Well, that starting pay they were offering was more than what some people that'd been there over a year were making, and we only found out because one of the new hires off-hand mentioned it. Word got to HR and they were quick to announce that everyone was getting a raise accordingly, but if you don't talk about these things, anyone/everyone can be screwed.

I'll throw in a vote for Magician, and a vote against WoD as a system.

Garden Paws is the most fucking adorable thing I've played this year, and there's so much to do from gathering to crafting, quests and farming, etc. All while being ridiculously cute little animals with oversized heads. It's multiplayer with fun Twitch streaming integration as well.

After several months of waiting for a visa response from immigration, I get an email that says a decision has been made.

...But the email doesn't say what that decision is. So now my ulcer is lighting me on fire as I sit and stew and can do nothing but stress and worry all weekend while waiting for them to send me my documents next week. This is cruel and unusual.

Got naked, rolled on her stomach, looked back and said 'Kiss me.' all demanding-like. He kissed my character's shoulders, got an impatient look for his efforts. Kissed down her spine; her back arched - better. He finally kisses her ass cheek and that's what I'd been waiting for. Rolled over, pulled on a robe, and told him she was merely interested in seeing if his actual ass-kissing was more interesting than his repeated attempts to do so publicly for favor. It was not, and he was dismissed.

Never pestered me trying to suck up and put others down to make himself look good again. Maybe he learned a lesson, maybe I just pissed him off. Doesn't matter, I thought myself very clever and laughed about it for days. I'm still laughing now and it's been years. Where does the time go.

S.O. got this for me when the base game went on sale due to the new expansion & I find myself unexpectedly addicted to the fun hunts and collecting all the cute little pets. If anyone is interested in playing, I'm only rank 4 so fairly close to the beginning; gimme a shout.

This is why everyone should shut the fuck up and let me be an asshole.

Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you. Unless I beat your ass with a book. Words do not hurt unless you have been conditioned to let them. This is why children say the darnedest things but then they're taught shame disguised as couth. And while I appreciate the thought and intent behind censorship of all the bad-wrong words, I firmly believe it is doing more harm than good, feeding into this false sense of being entitled to niceness, then causing people to fall apart when that expectation is inevitably shattered. People are way too anxious, stressed, and socially stunted today, I posit it has something to do with the utterly impossible social expectations of never ever saying or doing the wrong thing at the wrong time because someone's feelings might get hurt, coupled with the fact that hurting someone's feelings has been made into the world's greatest evil act, so even accidentally sticking your foot in it makes you a Bad Person.

Stahp it.

@arkandel said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@pandora We'll clarify once we know ourselves.

I'd rather not have super detailed rules because that leads to people trying to play rules lawyer with them - the idea though is that it's an ad thread. An one-line negative review such as "I tried it and CGen took too long for my tastes so I left" is probably okay, but a 3-page long heated debate on it isn't.

What do you expect to find in an ad thread? Think of that.

The best solution is probably what several people have already suggested; one post, editable by the game's staff/owner with links to other posts in the MC or Hog Pit categories. The one thing I'd miss then is the chance for folks to ask quick questions directly ("are FCs more powerful than OCs?", "do you allow custom Bloodlines?", etc) to gauge if the game is right for them.

Not sure tempting people into signing up for the Hog Pit to get the gist of a specific discussion is an entirely stellar idea, but that's just my two cents. Not that I'm saying every negative comment will wind up in the Hog Pit as opposed to the Mildly Constructive thread, but it's the responses that make up a thread's designation; plenty of perfectly civil and constructive things are said in the Hog Pit every day because that's just where the conversation is.

Work from home they say, the day before Animal Crossing comes to Switch & the Final Fantasy 7 remake comes to PS4. Sure, I'll "work" from home.

@insomniac7809 said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

So people can say mean things because they have the right to say mean things, but the people who say those people should stop saying mean things should stop saying the people who say mean things should stop saying mean things?

Yes.

(No, of course not.) The link name is clickbait. I do think if people spent less time trying to make assholes feel bad for being assholes and more time focusing their efforts on people affected by assholes we'd all be better off. The guy in that video has some great work on bullying and how to stop bullies that I think is super useful. Assholes will be assholes, people have to be stronger. My daughter got physically hit in school today and tells me 'I didn't hit him back because I'm a pacifist' so I'm pretty sure I've completely fucked up something, somewhere along the way. Hence my being up at 3 in the morning looking up shit about bullying and also the laws on beating the hell out of other people's third-grade sons.

Animals. Milking cows, gathering eggs, breeding horses, all that.
Farming, but not that Firan logistical nightmare, plz.
Herbology. Skill checks and whatnot for making healing poultices or poisons for weapons, etc.
Card games. More Blackjack than Poker, only because I like card games of risk more than card games of skill.
That Firan version of RISK was how I wasted many, MANY hours/days/possible real-life weeks.
Singing/Dancing. Hit or miss, some people hate coded songs/dances, I liked them.

edited to add: Cooking, of course. It'd be nice (but not necessary) if cooking was less finicky than other types of crafting, if just because food objects wind up being the most frequently needed, unlike jewelry or shoes, for example. So a system where 1 egg provides 1Food to a pantry, and 1 cow provides 50Food, and 1 chicken provides 5Food, and so on, but recipes just call for X amount of Food, instead of A, B, C ingredients mixed under moonlight with just the right amount of fire, blah blah blah - just as an example.

Every tiny little thing about the FFVII remake has been making me smile. Anyone else getting all up in the NPCs personal space to hear their conversations?

The couple in the slums arguing because while she was supposed to be at work in sector 8 and he was supposed to be at an interview in sector 1, they were both cheating on each other at the time of the reactor explosion and got caught where they weren't supposed to be? Made my day.

This is how you do a remake. All the extra conversations and exposition are amazing. And hearing the NPCs talk about food shortages and how ugly people can get when there's store rationing going on really hit home for me, as the stores in my area are limiting customers to 2 of any item and only one cart & it seems ridiculous how selfish people can be in even quite civilized places.

@auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

If I ask for advice and say: 'I've already tried X and it didn't work for me'

MAYBE DON'T SAY 'JUST TRY X'

If I had a dollar for every time someone said 'I've already tried X' but there was either a typo, a syntax error, an inclusion or exclusion of brackets, etc... I'd have a lot of dollars.