Best posts made by peasoupling

As much as I like Fallout, and as much as I would love a game set in a time period closer to Fallout 1 than 4, playing the immediate aftermath of the bombs just wouldn't work for me.

Honestly, it just sounds kinda depressing.

But also, the pseudo-50s-with-robots society is just weird and vague enough that I'm not sure what even I might play. I feel like it'd be more like apocalypse Mad Men, with more robots and possibly fewer gender issues, than anything recognizable as Fallout.

But it's original and we could use more of that, so there might be players for it.

@Tyche said in The Work Thread:

@GreenFlashlight said in The Work Thread:

Yeah, I won't take shots at anyone trying to help, but I'm really suspicious of how basically every story I hear about the Australian fires frames it in terms of animals dead and contains no mention at all of the effects on the indigenous population. It makes me think there's a horror going on there we're not being told about.

The only article I could find says they are pro fire.
Australia fires: Aboriginal planners say the bush 'needs to burn'

PS: The article says no such thing.

@pyrephox said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@sunny I think that accuracy can vary across experiences. PCs like yours or mine are some of the most socially powerful ones in the game in a way that other characters can't easily match, in many cases. One of the most powerful Duchies in the game can have a very different experience as a social character, I think, than a random Iron Guardsman or a Baron in the hinterlands. At least in part because staff IS very good at letting us use the organizations that we're heads of, and use the non-combat resources we have to affect change.

In at least two of my PrPs, there was no combat whatsoever because the agitated mobs with pitchforks were defused thanks to social characters. The combat PCs ended up having relatively little to do other than accidentally almost rekindling the whole situation. Which would also be fun! But these were PrPs, designed as background local color for the world-spanning battles between good and evil. The scale was deliberately smaller. Maybe there should be more of that sort of thing?

I fully intend to, some day, roll charm+seduction at some wildly inappropriate life and death juncture, but I don't really expect my combat character to ever play a major role, even after I invest more into social stats. If she ended up trying to conduct diplomacy with a lost elven kingdom, it would be a sign something has gone seriously wrong somewhere IC. Which would also be fun.

In part, I think it's an issue of scale, and the very structure of +events. If you're expecting a thing of enormous importance to happen next Tuesday, you'll grab your heavyweights, whether that's combat or social or whatever.

@gangofdolls said in San Francisco: Paris of the West:

Out of curiosity, what is the approval wait time averaging?

This is probably going to vary a lot depending on which Template you're doing. My application was approved in less than a day, but I made a Sin-Eater, which doesn't have 20+ apps waiting to be approved, like Mage does.

Xapham spent quite a bit of time trying to work me through Keystone creation, so I can see how trying to give each app individual attention would result in longer waiting times for those spheres that generated a ton of interest.

@Tinuviel said in The Work Thread:

@peasoupling said in The Work Thread:

@Tyche said in The Work Thread:

@GreenFlashlight said in The Work Thread:

Yeah, I won't take shots at anyone trying to help, but I'm really suspicious of how basically every story I hear about the Australian fires frames it in terms of animals dead and contains no mention at all of the effects on the indigenous population. It makes me think there's a horror going on there we're not being told about.

The only article I could find says they are pro fire.
Australia fires: Aboriginal planners say the bush 'needs to burn'

PS: The article says no such thing.

They're pro-fire in very specific and controlled circumstances.

Not pro-thisfuckingfire.

For the record, I would also like to state that I am also pro fire, as well as pro tool use, language, and ceremonial burial.

How I typically stat characters: Well, I look at the descriptions of skills in the books, I look at example characters, and I try to figure out what would be reasonable for a character like mine to have. I will fudge this a point up or down, within reason, to bump up skills I feel would be useful, or in the case of CoD if I have to hit some prerequisites or something, but the keyword is within reason. I am not a newbie, this is just how I roll.

How I don't stat characters: Calculating the average expected outcomes for specific rolls given my stat and skill combinations and deciding I want a character who succeeds 70% of the time at shanking people in the ear. Because kill me now.

Sometimes I then realize everyone is way better at critical stuff than me and that STs are probably setting challenge levels in scenes based on that, so I very grudgingly start bumping up stuff I don't really feel like my character should have, and kinda hate it.

+bbread 1/17 (Changeling Cap)

"My goal is a cap of ~25 until I can get an Admin/STs to relieve some of the stress of all this fantastic magic."

+bbread 1/18 (Mage Cap)

"What that means is that we are past what should be feasible to provide everyone the level of experience I'd like to, and until I can fill out the ranks of Staff, I can accept no more mage applications."

@SinCerely I would need a slotted spoon, for accuracy!

Updating with my latest attempted characters, not counting the many who collapsed in Chargen!

I'm still looking around. I kind of want to try new things but, also, I am very lazy about learning entirely new settings and systems.

I may try to make a new character on the Descent if I can figure out what.

@faraday said in Spotlight.:

But setting aside the whole "they all got killed" thing, I do think that being one of the few pilots in the rebellion who get to participate in the final epic battle against the Death Star is a "special" thing.

I don't know! Sometimes I think I might prefer playing a janitor with a real chance at meaningfully affecting the cleanliness levels of the Death Star than playing a pilot who is basically just set dressing in a battle they have no real chance of affecting in any meaningful way, other than by exploding prettily against a backdrop of stars.

@SinCerely said in The Crafting Thread:

@peasoupling said in The Crafting Thread:

@SinCerely I would need a slotted spoon, for accuracy!

With the little holes in it???

Yes!

Not really. Though some are very pretty!

@cobaltasaurus said in peasoupling's Playlist:

@peasoupling said in peasoupling's Playlist:

Arx: Leta*, Maude

MAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASECOMEBACK!

I had to ask them to retire her because I was gonna do another OC, which I never did.

She'd be miserable anyway, poor Maude, let her live out her retirement in peace!

@faraday said in Spotlight.:

@peasoupling said in Spotlight.:

It really does depend on how far we stretch the analogy, I guess. Is the battle solely dependent on Luke's rolls? Does anything change at all if Porkins actually takes out those tie-fighters?

It really does, and I'm not meaning to tunnel vision on this particular analogy. But I think it's useful, because it deals with the aspect of having realistic expectations.

Let's say that 12 people show up for the Death Star battle MU scene. I think it's utterly impractical to give all of them Luke levels of impact. But if only one of them gets the killing blow on the Big Bad, does that mean that everyone else is just window dressing? And how many Epic Big Bads can you really expect a game to have, if you expect staff to spread the Hero Time around?

Well, I don't need to play Luke, at all. I'd probably rather not, most of the time. So I'm not really asking who gets the killing blow, that's not so much the issue for me, unless it's always Luke.

My question is: Is it even possible for one of the other ones to get the killing blow? If not, can they make it easier for Luke to get the killing blow in a meaningful way? Can they mitigate negative consequences, reduce losses, whatever? If not, then no, just participating isn't special at all. In a movie, having a few lines is all you need, but in a game, if there's no chance to affect the outcome beyond your own personal existence, you're not so much a secondary character, you're an extra. And that's never special.

@Apos Well, there is a map of Arvum front and center on the Arx site. Sometimes room descriptions are like that, just to help everyone kinda be on the same page. Every now and then, when the stars are right, it's even relevant to RP. Usually it isn't, but sometimes!

Updated. I should actually have some time for RP now, if not for the bestest of reasons and not the most active and intense RP at all times, but still, I'll be trying to pick Abby back up and just started a new character on NOLA.

I'm still looking around and fiddling with the possibility of creating characters elsewhere, but I'm bad at MU*ing, so... suggestions and wanted stuff welcome!

@coin said in Spotlight.:

@peasoupling said in Spotlight.:

I don't know! Sometimes I think I might prefer playing a janitor with a real chance at meaningfully affecting the cleanliness levels of the Death Star than playing a pilot who is basically just set dressing in a battle they have no real chance of affecting in any meaningful way, other than by exploding prettily against a backdrop of stars.

I am not going to read farther ahead but I want to ask if this reference is on purpose or if you just stumbled right into basically a dig at how someone in maintenance can become the hero of the galaxy because, uh, fucking Finn "Sanitation" FN-2187.

Just sayin'.

It was totally an accident.

It's a lovely time of year to be on immunosuppressants!

I've had a few. A couple of times I actually started the characters married, or in on-off relationships. The latest was over a RL year, but the characters couldn't actually get formally married for IC Lords & Ladies reasons, but it was a marriage as far as my character was concerned.

In non-roster games, which is the majority of games I've ever played, the main issue can be if the other player stops playing or idles out without closure. A couple of my IC marriages may have technically lasted RL years, but hardly count for that reason. In one case, it made my character pretty much unplayable, but that was a very specific situation. I still don't regret it, though. The RP and the character arc leading there wouldn't have been possible without it.

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

@peasoupling I will confess. I didn't know you could peel beans. But I don't make a lot of soup, etc. I know you have to soak dried beans, and that's about it.

You can. But it's insane, which is why no one's made that soup since my grandma died.

People do have RP preferences. There's even code for that. So, sexual RP preferences may also come up in discussion. It's a thing. This doesn't necessarily mean a discussion of my personal kinks, though. My character's sexualities, preferences, hangups, etc, vary from character to character anyway, as do the sorts of things I think would be fun to explore with that character. Sometimes there's a sharp disconnect, but the RP can be fun without being something that personally I think is particularly sexy. It can be awkward and uncomfortable, endearing, funny, there's all sorts of emotions in play besides horny.

Squicks and limits, though, really are helpful. They're also helpful in non-sexual RP, but sexual RP is understandably more sensitive.