Posts made by Pandora

@krmbm said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

Also, I don't think a "vocal few" people who want the board to be made out of rainbows should have a greater voice than the "vocal few" who appreciate having a place to call a spade a flaming piece of cunty spades.

Listen, I don't know if there's something specifically wrong with your genital area (there are all sorts of antibiotics these days, best of luck) but how about not using the word cunt/cunty as an acceptable mud-slinging insult when that's actually precisely the sort of shit that will get you slain in the Hogpit.

@tragedyjones said in Interest Poke - Fallout Canada:

@pandora said in Interest Poke - Fallout Canada:

@tempest said in Interest Poke - Fallout Canada:

Yeah, you really need to focus on how ethnically diverse the setting is, when it's going to be 200 years in the future after a nuclear war devastates the entire planet.

It would make sense actually, especially from a Vault standpoint, to have a wide range of diversity. If a small group is meant to repopulate the planet, a genetic spread is vital.

That isn't actually what the Vault's were for.

Regardless of the government experimentation purposes, they were advertised as safe havens for people in the event of a nuclear holocaust, and the point of saving people is the continuation of the species. Plus, the G.E.C.K.s were intended to help the inhabitants create a viable civilization in the post-nuclear world after the All Clear signal is sent, meaning there was at least some intention for them to do that. So circling back to my original point, yes, that was at least partially what the vaults were for.

@tempest said in Interest Poke - Fallout Canada:

Yeah, you really need to focus on how ethnically diverse the setting is, when it's going to be 200 years in the future after a nuclear war devastates the entire planet.

It would make sense actually, especially from a Vault standpoint, to have a wide range of diversity. If a small group is meant to repopulate the planet, a genetic spread is vital.

@apos said in Heroic Sacrifice:

People will tolerate catastrophic losses no problem as long as it doesn't undermine how they picture their character, but if you basically ever suggest their character is less cool than they think it is, a lot of players will fight that to their dying breath, and would way rather be banned while throwing a meltdown of epic proportions than take that.

This right here, 1000x. Not that I'm advocating for anyone having a meltdown, but this takes me back to Firan, where if staff decided to come at you, you were better off hoping for a quick death than jail --> the public shaming --> speeches --> eventual grandiose execution. Because it's your story, and having it dragged over the coals in the 'wrong' direction is way worse than simply having it cut short.

Incentivizing taking the backseat can quickly become problematic in more ways than one.

For example, there are many, many players that eschew the limelight. They enjoy taking the backseat, they don't ever actually want the limelight. So you pour rewards and XP onto these background characters...and they never die because they don't take the big risks, and they get more and more powerful/rich because they're being consistently rewarded, but they aren't inclined to use their power in any meaningful way, so you get these non-confrontational dinosaur-minions becoming the living shield of whoever is their buddy, disincentivizing anyone from going against them because conflict leads to Ser Gregor Clegane showing up.

Secondly, you wind up with multiple avenues for humble-bragging, which I'm sure at least some of you agree is the worst sort. There's the 'Even though it shall cost me my life, I humbly invoke whatever punishment it may be to valiantly smite the dragon and save the day, worship me from here on out because I'll be dead afterward and I need you to give me praise and pet my head a lot first.' And also the 'Staff sucks because the only reason I didn't stick my neck out in that plot was because they said they wanted people to be in the background, I have (insert long rant about dice and modifiers here) and could have EASILY done (X thing, where X could have resulted in death/dismemberment) way better than So-n-So, and they totally didn't notice me not-doing-it (along with the other 20 or so people that didn't do it).'

And then there's the simple fact that in games with risk, it's much easier/safer to not stick your neck out, so there's already a lot of hobby-wide not-doing-anything-unless-it's-a-staff-run-plot anyway. So you wind up with people not stepping up to do anything even more than they already don't now. If there's a dragon to slay and 10 people show up and none of them want to lose life or limb so they all want to be the person supporting the hero but there's no hero...what then. Or if one does step forward, gets killed, and the other nine make off with the treasure's riches... that might work in tabletop, but people usually aren't playing MU*s to be cannon fodder.

That was a lot of naysaying. Let me sum up by saying, if you want to incentivize people, reward the behavior you want to see. Reward content-creation more heavily than participation. Reward group-efforts. Don't make Losing the new Winning, make cooperative, compelling story-writing the end-goal, and foster a community that shares that goal. And when I say foster it, I mean it. Shout it from the rooftops when players have done well, because more than XP, more than money, what players want is to feel appreciated.

So as to not piss on the parade else-thread:

Yet another edition of Vampire the Masquerade. Fueling no doubt another deluge of WoD cookie-cutter MUSHes this year. It's like reinventing the wheel over and over again & it's literally not hurting me in any way but it's still irking my nerves.

1. I'm very outspoken, to a fault - one I have no interest in changing, online.
2. I'm shy (around strangers) offline.
3. I give most everyone the benefit of the doubt upon first meeting online.
4. I cannot help subconsciously assuming people are possibly racist before I get to know them offline, this is the direct cause of point 2, alas.

In my opinion, who you are online is pretty much who you'd be in real life if you didn't have to deal with real-life people on a day to day basis. If you piss off people on a game or website or forum, you can always find another. Piss off the people at the local farmer's market, and who knows how far the next-closest co-op might be. Hassle.

I hate being angry. I have a bully's personality; I'd quite like to hit (repeatedly) people that make me angry. As an adult, I tend to refrain from actually doing it. But when I'm annoyed to the point where my fingers itch because I really just want to smash someone's teeth into the back of their throat, that's what I really hate. Being angry.

@jinshei I just linked my amazon.co.uk account to my twitch account for the kooky Chocobo reward on FFXV, so it definitely works. Just log onto twitch.tv and click the crown icon by your name and click 'Claim Offer' if you're like me and can't find where to get started, as choosing any one of the offers sets you on the same path for linking Amazon-to-Twitch.

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.

My only on-screen MUSH-marriage was on Firan, my character that loved someone else was thrust into marriage with her very young cousin that acted like a child which wasn't funny despite people making jokes about it. But he could be mature when he felt like it, as he explained ICly, which at least eliminated the skeevy aspects but it was fairly miserable for both participants ICly, even if the player was a sweet person for the most part & we both tried.

And then he allegedly killed my character.

All future married characters were married before I took them off the roster, was not going through that shit ever again.

@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.

@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.

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.

@roz Go ahead & do what? I don't take any issue with MSB being modded; it doesn't affect me & I don't find any of the mods to be so unpleasant as to make their new job duties somehow detrimental to my time on MSB. Just because I shrug about people wanting mods doesn't mean I am going to storm out with my cape swishing from my shoulders because they're here and doing what people asked them to do. Please save your snarky, misplaced gifs for something relevant.

You people wanted mods and now you've got them. As a red-blooded American, I will never understand the desire to want authority over my head, but it's not like MSB being modded will ever stop me from being the asshole that I am so it affects me in almost no way whatsoever. Why some of you are going for @Auspice's head I do not know, so far she's done nothing so egregious as to warrant this pages-long debate over her fitness to mod, but posters gonna post. I'll say this though, the same as we say about any game in any other thread - if you don't like the staff, leave.

@auspice I like his hazing style.

I've got so much to love right now I'll get it all out in one post.

1. My kid is not only incredibly well-behaved, sassy, smart, adorable, and clever, she's also tested her way into being moved up a grade. Children are loud, messy, and expensive but they're so worth it; like the Holy Grail of Steam Achievements if you play your child-rearing cards right.

2. After many months and many thousands of dollars, my immigration woes are over and we've got our visas - SO LONG, TRUMPMERICA. Course, I still have to deal with Theresa May but at least she's not orange during winter months and her tweets don't make my child cry.

3. I'm moving next week, which means missing Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving, but my family has made the decision to have Thanksgiving a day early to make sure we get one last authentic Turkey Day feast. I'm no fan of Columbus but if you got to eat like my family gets to eat when the moms, aunts, and grandmothers get together in one kitchen, you'd be lining up to give thanks, too.

@thenomain Agreed. It's good for playing after a long day at work, and requires way less effort than getting the whole group together for Divinity 2.

So, I'm currently obsessed with the 'Lords of Waterdeep' digital boardgame on Steam. If anyone here plays, let me know.