Best posts made by Roz

I can't believe I was off of MSB for that long and there are NO new posts. I mean, honestly.

@Sparks said in Things We Should Have Learned Sooner:

@Scorn said in Things We Should Have Learned Sooner:

"It's okay to say no."

Why do I sense like half of my friends staring pointedly at me?

Shitty players will abuse whatever system you give them. If staff is good and responsive and deals with shitty players efficiently, then it doesn't remain a problem.

@rook There are giant industries dedicated to designing UI. Like. I have a hard time wrapping my brain around this idea that it doesn't matter how approachable and user-friendly a program/application is. Like. Sorry, that's a ridiculous idea. Ease of use has a huge amount of influence over whether a person picks something up.

The standard MU* UI is weird and confusing. And no, it's not just weird and confusing for people who ~want more pictures~ or something, and that's a pretty patronizing way to frame it.

MSB is not any sort of indicator about barriers to MUSH, because we're all already here. We already made it past the initial hurdles. The truth is that there is tons of text-based RPing online far beyond MU*. It's on Tumblr, it's on Skype, it's on Facebook messenger, it's on Wattpad. There's a huge audience for the kind of RP we do, and our platform is actually better for what they're trying to do, but it's just hard to get into MUs* because, as I said, our UI is weird and confusing. You can't even get to issues of culture until you get past that hurdle.

I mean, I'm not saying that I've done a formal survey, but I am saying that I've staffed on a game where we specifically did a lot of outreach to non-MU* RPers and we listened to a lot of feedback regarding what people struggled with. And a lot of it was eye-opening. And we also found a lot of really awesome RPers that we were able to help past those initial hurdles to get them engaged, but those hurdles were real and intimidating and I'm not just making them up.

@ganymede Are you for real? Do you mean the DMs that other user instigated, the conversation they started, and that they returned to several times, hours later, after the conversation had ended? Are you absolutely serious right now?

@sunny Holy shit. Upvote for solidarity and support, for the record, not upvoting the situation.

I think there's a pretty big difference between "running PRPs" and "being a good faction leader or approachable PC who makes active efforts to facilitate the stories of others instead of just their own." You don't have to run PRPs to be a good fachead.

@ganymede I think Unbreakable is one of his best films.

IF THE GIFS GO, I GO </very serious threat>

Realizing that you've let someone treat you crappily for a fair amount of time while kind of making excuses for it. While you are such a vocal proponent for healthy boundaries and expectations for how you let people treat you!! God it is so frustrating.

@thatguythere I'm just gonna say that I think you're going to be in the minority on this one. I mean, your comparisons don't even make sense to me, but that's neither here nor there. I think that most of the regular posters on this board are going to say there's a community aspect to it. The classifieds are not about having an actual conversation. If we were nothing but ad posts with no replies, we'd be the classifieds.

Also men's business wear just has more layers and is overall warmer and the thermostat is generally set in deference to that.

I think it would be fair to say that there are both people who don't think Auspice should be a mod who are nitpicking every action and also people who don't think Auspice should be a mod but who have stated so pretty civilly and respectfully.

@Darren See, that reads to me more like people were the most desperate for essentials they absolutely needed that they'd end up stealing if they didn't have another way.

As to the fashion/clothing thing: there's a weird thing I've noticed where "system that exists that offers some sort of benefit, however minor" suddenly equals "this system is necessary to use to WIN." Which really doesn't have to be the assumption. The idea, as far as I can see, is to build different systems that appeal to different interests and also to give different types of characters some coded areas to use their skills.

Unraveled on Polygon - Hilarious video game ridiculousness

Binging With Babish - Cooking! Cooking things from TV and movies! A smooth, appealing voice!

Lindsay Ellis - Insightful, funny, and thoughtful reviews of movies and other pop culture things.

Jenny Nicholson - Insightful, funny, and thoughtful reviews of movies and other pop culture things. Bit less academic than Lindsay Ellis, bit funnier (if you like her style).

Pop Culture Detective - Insightful and thoughtful reviews of movies and other pop -- oh I have a type, don't I--

@the-sands said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

@roz said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

If the game itself literally describes the skills in a way that is contrary to how the game is being played, it's not a newcomer building a sheet who has made the mistake. It's whoever came up with the skill descriptions or the staff/playerbase for playing against how the skills are written to be used.

If a make itself literally describes the skills in a way that is unsupported by the mechanism then it is whoever can up with the skill description that is at fault. That is the simple case with WoD.

Now if you need to assign any blame further than that is it fair to put it on the people who realize that the description is nonsenese? Because that is exactly what is being implied. Do I feel a little bit bad with saying 'it's the newbie's fault for not realizing that what was written was wrong'? Yes, I actually do. However, if you ask me to chose between blaming them and blaming the other people who realized that what was written makes absolutely no sense then I'm going to chose the newbie.

If somewhere in the book was written the description 'the ultimate weapon known to man' for the light pistol do you blame the other players for looking at the stats and saying 'no, I'm going to chose this other gun instead'? While it is understandable how the new player made the mistake of thinking that the light pistol would be the best weapon possible they still should have looked at its stats are realized such a description simply made no sense.

I think that blaming the newbie for trying to follow the direction of the source material is incredibly shitty and really indicative of some of the attitude that comes out of WoD games that makes so many of them so incredibly unfriendly to newbies.

fuck every version of outlook

@surreality I'm sure. My big objection in this particular argument isn't really about the system. It's about the attitude of "blame the newbie for not knowing the 'common sense knowledge' that WoD vets have."

So I was a junior in college. Dating a really sweet guy. He came with me to visit my parents at some point. The tough thing about bringing your SO home to visit your parents is, of course, how do you do the do. I was like 20 years old, I wasn't gonna NOT do the do.

So Sunday morning was kind of a SAFE BET, because my parents were off at church. Do is done, everything great. He tosses the condom in the trash can in my bedroom just for a second with the intention of, well, taking it out to the big trash can outside so that no one accidentally stumbles on used condoms. Because that'd be awk! We lay down and cuddle and chat for a few minutes. Like, this was a decade ago now, but honestly I thought it was all of 5-10 minutes. We start getting up, getting dressed, etc., and he goes to check the trash can.

The condom is gone.

This is very strange! We have no idea where a used condom could have run off to. No one else is home. Wtf happened??? He searched through the trash, nothing. This was just a bitty bedroom trash can, too, not like a gross big kitchen trash can full of stuff. IT WAS A MYSTERY.

Fast forward a couple weeks. Maybe just a week or two. We're back at school, I'm hanging out in my boyfriend's room. My cell phone rings. It's my mother.

She informs me in a delicate, dry voice that she came across the dog chewing on something. Dog owners will know that feeling of seeing your dog chewing on something you can't quite make out that they don't want you to see, so she of course went over all, "Kayla what did you get this time?" And she found something that I imagine she, who had her tubes tied after I was born and who had a hysterectomy ten or so years ago at that point, had no seen in a good, long time.

Yup. The used condom.

Anyways she told me in a sighing voice that I was lucky she found it and not my father. And requested that I please refrain from getting busy in their house.