Best posts made by Roz

@Thenomain said in Game of Bones:

@Roz said in Game of Bones:

Guys, did you hear that Serenity MUSH had a video ad?

Er...yes?

You were the third one to mention it.

Fucking giant universities.

I've been taking classes at NYU to get a professional certificate in my field. The classes were great, I did great in them, all A's, great time.

Soon after finishing my last class, it disappears from my records in their online systems. (All your classes are always there when you check your grades, just some are blank until your grades are posted.) I email the school to be like, uhhh this class disappeared from my online records in the system. ???

They email back to be like, oh here's a PDF with instructions to check your grades!!!

Thanks, NYU.

I think of "minor bugs" as ones that are noticeable but don't significantly impact a player's ability to play the game. The things described by many players sound like they significantly impact their ability to play the game.

@surreality Yes, totally. I'm admittedly reacting to a pet peeve of mine which is the sort of "MU*s = WoD games" that tends to be pretty prevalent on MSB (as it was on WORA). But I wasn't arguing that there is always setting info to read and players should just read it. That part is 100% true.

@Ganymede said:

Man, I miss Leonard Nimoy.

Man, I know. That one hit me hard.

One of my co-staffers is the biggest Starscream fan of all of us because she loves terrible trash characters and she's totally wistful that she can't play him in the theme we chose, but now she's gleefully NPCing him for a plot. FOR ONE BRIEF SHINING MOMENT she gets to play the king of trash.

I honestly think Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is one of the best shows on television right now. It's incredibly intelligent and it does some serious deconstruction.

@sunny said in General Video Game Thread:

Soooo, how about that queue boss?

(ffxiv)

I have never felt so lucky to be EST. I finished the MSQ on Monday and I’m still reeling.

I've actually got a character in a really successful, long-term poly relationship. I'm sure it helps that the other player is one of my best friends and that neither of the characters is at all prone to jealousy. The bumps they've had in their relationship have had nothing to do with their being poly, but rather the sort of things that would still be issues if their relationship were monogamous.

@evilcabbage said in Armageddon MUD:

@ganymede

emphasis of the word. would you prefer i use are? that works too. i'll do that.

that is not what quotation marks are for and that's not what it means to use them

For any CEG fans who like fun analysis videos, Bagels After Midnight has some great ones! I've enjoyed them.

@too-old-for-this said in General Video Game Thread:

@testament said in General Video Game Thread:

Makes me wonder with buying Activision if Microsoft is going to run afoul of anti-trust laws because this could be considered an monopoly.

Nah, there's too many other developers still out there.

There's a lot of developers, but I imagine it's still going to come under a great deal of scrutiny (which several journalistic outlets have called out) due to the huge size of the purchase, which is generally going to indicate a large market share. Not saying that it'll cause the entire deal to fall through, but I think there's going to be a lot of talking and investigation before it's all said and done.

I'll certainly be happy if Kotick is indeed ousted, and if having new oversight forces them to do more to address the huge array of cultural issues and abuses. But, in general, I don't think consolidations of this huge size are often good for industries.

@Arkandel said in Indicating Discomfort in a Scene (online):

@Rook said in Indicating Discomfort in a Scene (online):

In any sampling of MU*ers, I think that 1 out of 20 is a dirtbag for any of the following reasons:

• racist beliefs, subtle or overt
• sexist beliefs, subtle or overt
• hidden need to dominate/ruin others in the name of 'fun'
• someone simply looking for sex/rape/BDSM RP, no matter the theme of the game, or even discussion leading up to.

Devil's advocate though... we are playing charcters, too. So for example I would like (well, in general, I'm not saying I want to ) to be able to play a racist character without being racist myself.

So how is that done? How do you play out villainous values without being branded a villain? What's the mechanism of introducing discomfort in a way that serves the plot without it taking over that plot?

I very much want you to hate my character but I'm not keen on being hated.

I didn't have the impression that Rook was talking about IC behavior with his list.

@thugheaven said in Armageddon MUD:

@sunny That goes back to those things happening to you, but not because you’re new.

The point is that new players are going to be way more prone to making these mistakes because they're still learning. We know it's not "because they're new," that it's because they flubbed an IC thing, but they flubbed the IC thing because they are new.

@thugheaven said in Armageddon MUD:

@meg

You don’t have to, I know what I said. In this very clear example, I clarified it right now. There seems to be a misunderstanding there. Now you’re saying a player might feel embarrassed that they made a mistake and they would like a retcon on the whole dialogue?

Yes, on a lot of games, people would do that, because it feels silly to them that their character would say a dumb thing that makes no sense.

@ortallus I love Sense8 with the power of a thousand suns. I know at least one person on here hates it because they always make a point to talk about how awful they think it is when it comes up, but I can't remember who. BUT I LOVE IT.

Finn/Poe for life

Rey/Finn/Poe also for life

I find that having a general game philosophy for larger scenes that becomes part of the culture. An old game I staffed on had a great forum post about surviving large scenes (although it was focused a bit more on GMed scenes/plot scenes than general social scenes) that tried to basically make recommendations to encourage certain beneficial behaviors to become game culture. Things like

1. Always always always tag your pose.
2. Always tag the names of the characters you are talking to/posing at. Big scenes are not the time to use descriptor shorthands. Always use names.
3. Highlight your character name client-side. That way, it's easier to pick out when people are posing at/about you.
4. Keep your poses brief, specific, and to the point. Big scenes are the time to toss out the paragraphs.
5. Use the rule of 3 for pose order. Don't ever try to keep a strict pose order for big scenes (which we defined as 4+ people). If three other people have posed after you, you're probably good to go. That said, be sensible and keep an eye out. That said (again):
6. If you're in a GMed scene, do NOT pose a second time until the GM has responded to your pose.

Of course, all of those are things that only work if you can try to instill them into the game at large. From a more personal approach to what helps me survive big scenes:

1. Don't try to respond to everything. Find a cluster, something of interest, and engage those characters directly. Think of it like a big party; you're not responding to every person there, or even AWARE of every person there. You're probably finding a smaller clump of people within the mass and interacting with them before moving on to another clump.
2. Don't do the thing where you pose at another character and they don't respond in their pose and then you pose about how rude they are for not responding/how they must hate your character/etc. Most of the time, people just missed your pose. It drives me crazy when someone takes it personally that I didn't see them pose at me in a scene with like ten different people. Just let me know I missed you!

In general, I prefer smaller scenes. There is a sort of art and magic to big scenes that work, especially social scenes. (Plot scenes have a sort of common purpose and focus that provide an easy driver.) I've had some fantastic group social scenes over the years, but they're a bit of a blue moon event. A ton of fun when it works out just right, though.

@thugheaven said in Armageddon MUD:

@roz And that’s when you say “I didn’t know I can’t read. Can we retcon that?” Players would retcon it, no problem.

@thugheaven said in Armageddon MUD:

With that in mind, what you do and don’t do in character is responded to in a manner of ica=icc. Since there isn’t much ooc communication, how would the other player know that you were unaware to bow to them?

So you have two alternatives:

1. You can break character and say “I didn’t know I was supposed to do x.” Most people would allow you that take back. There are still players that wouldn’t though. And that’s because ica=icc. It’s like Dark Souls remember?

@Coin said:

@Arkandel said:

@Coin Of course I want the show to be good. But if it's good, yet it's not <X>, then call it something else.

I guess I'm just not a purist. I think a story can be told in different ways, or different stories can be told. Also, maybe I'm just super tired of having to worry about whether or not something lives up to its name. It's not a legacy, man; it's a comic book. I can't bring myself to care very much.

I don't know that that's really fair. There's a big difference between being a purist and feeling like an adaptation should follow the general core of its source material. Purists are generally the ones who are complaining that an adaptation doesn't follow every beat and plot point of the source material. You say that a story can be told in different ways, but I think the point is when it's a different story altogether.

I'm not much of a purist: I actually enjoy that sense of adaptation and how the story can be better told for screen. I think Game of Thrones has had some really fascinating adaptational changes, some of which I think improved upon the original. (They tend to put known characters together instead of introducing new sideline characters, such as having Shae serve as Sansa's maid instead of the practically-nobody in the books, or introducing that brilliant note of tension with having Arya serve as Tywin's cupbearer. It keeps the characters we care about interacting. On the flipside, there are some changes I disagree strongly with, but those are usually about scenes or plots that I'd object to in any medium, a la 'how many new rape scenes can we introduce to this show.')

On the flipflipside, I haven't been able to bring myself to watch the new Lucifer show because it looks so wildly removed to anything the comic was about. I'm not talking about plots as much as I'm talking about sort of core character beats and themes. I could be totally wrong and it's just bad marketing, but eh.

@ganymede said in FCs on Comic MUs:

@roz said in FCs on Comic MUs:

You don't have to run PRPs to be a good fachead.

What you said here brought up two comments, not directed to or at you directly, Roz.

How dare you. You may only post in response to me!

First, this is very true. Good faction heads are hard to find. Staff should not be quick to make these fac-heads staff because this converts them to staff, which entails different duties, obligations, and responsibilities on top of usually-unwarranted extra scrutiny. Pro-tip: do not convert good fac-heads to staff unless absolutely necessary.

Good facheads are a FUCKING PRECIOUS COMMODITY. And it often tends to be a thankless job. Please support your facheads when they're doing good fachead things. And yes, it's very precious to be able to have players who are good at this and can do it who are not staff.