Posts made by peasoupling

I feel like a lot of post-Apocalyptic stuff tends towards some kind of reskinned Western (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, because I would also like to play on a Western game). But some really do lean more into what that means, thematically, than others.

What i like is all about small communities trying to survive, hopefully thrive, while figuring out what they want to be like, and how the world might make that difficult. Rebuilding engines is boring, rebuilding society is what it's all about. And also being basically a cowgirl but, like... with spiky cars, or a mohawk or something.

But also, I don't really like settings where the apocalypse happened yesterday. I like it when characters have been born into it and it's a fine line between looting and archeology.

@Pyrephox said in Where to play?:

I'm enjoying Gray Harbor. It's active, modern horror/fantasy that isn't WoD and has a laid back, semi-sandbox style. There's metaplot and plot to get involved in, but you can also just do your own thing, including supernatural things, without trouble. People are nice, staff seem sane, and I've had fun.

It IS in beta, so don't get too attached to stuff as the system undergoes some tweaks and expansions as things get shaken out in play.

Website

I'd second this. I haven't gotten really, really into things because I've been busy lately (and my character is a bit lacking hooks, but mostly the busy thing, because the other thing is totally workable), but it's been fun so far.

@TNP I'd say take one of the potential companions to start with, if only because the story then involves your character in more personal and unique ways that you can't access while just having them as a companion. And you can play any of the characters as any class and tweak them to your heart's content anyway, so you're not locked out of any specific playstyles (undead might count, but you still have one undead option).

@Jaded said in Good or New Movies Review:

Which leaves me thinking, "It's a kaiju movie. Fuck the humans."

It worked for The Shape of Water so you may be onto something, but the logistics concern me.

Or, you know how people steal traffic signs to hang on their wall?

Like that, but for Nazis.

@A-Meowley said in Recycling characters:

@peasoupling said in Recycling characters:

Of course, the first time around, that character became unplayable during her very first scene, so I feel like I'm entitled to actually trying to play her.

I feel like there's a story here...

Monster ate her legs.

I'm currently sort of remaking a character (same PB and same generic concept, backstory details change because I don't remember the first one exactly and it's not quite the same setting)

Of course, the first time around, that character became unplayable during her very first scene, so I feel like I'm entitled to actually trying to play her.

@Admiral said in General Video Game Thread:

Welp, Mordhau is already done. In that short amount of time, the game has been overrun with people spamming hateful, racist, nazi bullshit in the chat and votekicking anyone who complains. It's just... a real mess. Someone must have advertised the game on T_D or 4chan.

Beyond the usual online gamer toxicity, medieval stuff is like catnip for right-wing extremists.

I do recycle names, inspirations and PBs, but only separately. If I make Sam the one-eyed archer on one game, elsewhere I may play Sam the sorceress or Mildred the one-eyed archer, but not both.

I generally don't mind it if other people do it! However, if it's a character I'm very close to on one game, having it pop up almost entirely the same on another where I'm playing something else might feel kind of strange? I'd worry I'd start getting them mixed up, at least.

As long as my boat captain can have a parrot, I guess I can work with an eyepatch instead of a hook for a hand!

They do seem to be restricting some things, like an excess of strip diner tattoo parlors, which make sense, but in some cases I'm not sure I get the reasoning behind it. Mechanics, for example, are closed. Independent working mechanics with their own shops, sure, but what if you want to make a character to get a job at an existing shop? I'm not sure how many there are, but some of these restricted concepts seem to limit the possibility of forming crews or having a filled out workplace.

It doesn't really bother me, since I've no idea what I'm making and the more they narrow down my choices the better. I continue to suck at making characters, so!

But also, in spite of the above, I've had fun playing a rare and weird character type and have people going 'WTF' at them and try to puzzle them out. But she did have a wiki that listed her mortal job and hooks, it just didn't include any kind of information about her supernatural status.

You could restrict wikis to things like common, publically available information and hooks, because I personally find those really helpful. Meeting people in bars or public parks all the time as a default can get old.

And I have a vampire on a VtM game, but my character has no way of telling if someone is a vampire IC or, generally speaking, any information about them, so things get a bit... "Gosh, crazy weather we've been having, uh?"

@Testament said in General Video Game Thread:

SUPER HOT TAKE: The Legacy DLC from DA2 may in fact be better than the vaunted Lair of the Shadow Broker from ME2.

I feel like this depends on whether or not your Shepard was romancing Liara.

I feel like I probably like DA2 best, because it's a more personal story. DA:I is the worst, because the stakes are high, but only generically high. Your character has no real personal stake in the actual plot, up until Trespasser, and mostly if you were (trying to bang) the racist egghead.

But then I kinda also enjoyed Andromeda more than ME:1-3 in some ways, for pretty much the same reason. If you compare the whole trilogy, sure, your character has a lot of personal stakes in stuff, largely because of the relationships you've built along the way, but if you compare ME:1 to ME:A I'll take the awkward kid out of her depth over Jane "Badass From the Start" Shepard. But that's me.

@Cheesegrater said in General Video Game Thread:

@Ganymede said in General Video Game Thread:

I don't have to worry about ID theft on MUSHes, generally-speaking.

On the other hand, my copy of Stellaris has never asked me if I had to get naked during my school physical.

There are mods for that.

@Pandora said in Historical MUSHes:

@peasoupling said in Historical MUSHes:

@faraday said in Historical MUSHes:

What about something that just flat-out didn't exist, such as a female soldier serving openly (i.e. without disguising herself as a man) in a front-line regular unit of the Union Army?

This cuts both ways. If you have female soldiers serving openly in front-line regular units of the Union Army, I can't play a female soldier disguised as a man. Not really.

I upvoted this because I see where you're coming from, but there's a loophole. If there are female soldiers serving openly and being treated with disdain, and my female soldier is disguised as a man and reaping the benefits (respect, dignity, worthwhile assignments, remaining unmolested, etc) of her assumed masculinity, there's a story worth telling there. Will I stand up for these other women? Will I join in on the misogyny to be part of the boys' club? Will I sacrifice my pride as a woman to protect my cover as a man? And so on.

That is kind of what I was trying to get at with "Not really." You could absolutely play that, and there's a lot of potential for interesting stuff there, absolutely, but I'm not sure it's still the same concept in some meaningful ways (at least as far as MY personal reasons for liking the concept go).

But yes, I was more making a general point about rebel concepts having nothing to rebel against. And you can't do rags to riches in a post-scarcity sci-fi socialist utopia.

@faraday said in Historical MUSHes:

What about something that just flat-out didn't exist, such as a female soldier serving openly (i.e. without disguising herself as a man) in a front-line regular unit of the Union Army?

This cuts both ways. If you have female soldiers serving openly in front-line regular units of the Union Army, I can't play a female soldier disguised as a man. Not really.

I think some of it does go back to the difference between "if this was rare, it's not historically accurate" and "if this was possible, it's historically accurate".

Of course most people in a medieval setting (depending on the setting) were probably peasants who never left their village. And women were generally under pretty heavy restrictions regarding what they could and couldn't do. And a lot of people who went on adventures died of exotic intestinal diseases.

You can have two very different games based on the exact same setting and, even, the exact same vision of the setting, if on one game, that's all you can play, and on the other game, those are the NPCs.

I mean, if you look at it that way, no one wants authenticity in modern settings either, they want to play a romanticized version of the modern world, full of sexy billionaires and heroic cops and thieves with a heart of gold and creepy serial killer cultists, and hardly anyone voted for Trump except possibly the serial killer.

You could have a game entirely staffed and played by people who did their PhDs on that particular time and place and it still wouldn't be historically accurate to anyone's satisfaction. Especially their own. Which they'd let each other know, vigorously!

Beyond that, you do have people who go "well, this was pretty uncommon, so it's historically inaccurate" and people who go "well, this happened once, so it's historically accurate" and people who go "we have no evidence this was impossible, so it's historically accurate". And, of course, "well, this sticks it to the libs, so it's historically accurate".

But even if everything is historically inaccurate, some things are more historically inaccurate than others, and in different directions. So staff would still need to decide what exactly they're going with, what their specific vision for the setting is and how rigidly they want to enforce it, regardless of whether they call themselves historically accurate or a medieaeval fantasie.