Best posts made by SG

@Sunny said:

@Arkandel said:

Fridays.

Fuck yes.

Another thing I love: Getting to call a customer support agent's supervisor to be able to genuinely say that the agent went so above and beyond in being helpful that I felt the need to call back after the call and make sure her supervisor knew what a good job she did. She said it was going to be documented and put in the young woman's file as a best practices thing, and I was assured that she would be appropriately recognized for her outstanding customer service.

It was hilariously funny though, because none of the people I spoke to in trying to get said young woman's supervisor initially believed they were hearing what I was saying correctly. I guess people don't call in to say 'good job' enough, given how startled they all were.

Hearing super posi stuff like this.

Hey gang, I'm getting a new phone in the next few days and my old android 2.2 will be collecting dust. I was wondering if it'd be possible to host a mu on an old cell phone, since they're pretty powerful compared to old 90s era computers when mushes first took off.

Has anyone done this sort of thing?

This is a pet peeve of mine on Star Wars mushes, people will hop around the galaxy like they're driving to the mall and back when it should be taking days to weeks.

I too hate staring at a timer when I'm in hyperspace, it sucks, but I think the fault is with staff for making the setting for RP galaxy wide instead of an area of space where this wouldn't be an problem. I'm in the camp that a star wars mush should take place in a single sector at maximum to get rid of this issue.

People have many problems with the movie Rogue One(all the new movies, really), but my main gripe was the last bit where they handwaved travel times that had been established in previous movies and sourcebooks. Like, is the library planet five minutes away from Yavin IV? how is Yavin a secret base if it's right next to the high security library planet?

@Jaded From the New Yorker, my favourite criticism:

The one noticeable mistake in this respect concerns the series makers’ apparent ignorance of the vast divisions between different socioeconomic classes in the Soviet Union: in the series, Valery Legasov (Jared Harris), a member of the Academy of Sciences, lives in nearly the same kind of squalor as a fireman in the Ukrainian town of Pripyat. In fact, Legasov would have lived in an entirely different kind of squalor than the fireman did.

I was talking with a coworker, and we both think this would work best as a Powered by The Apocalypse convention one shot. I think I'm going to whip up a Stalin's Birthday scenario with the skill list above.

@Rinel The second half of book one really really picks up. Book 2 is awesome, I wish my dad would hurry up with book 3, I want to read it!

@bear_necessities said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

What drives me crazy is when a staff has an NPC but that they use to be the star of a plot. No. Stop that. That is for PCs. If you want to be the star of your show, make a PC.

lol, my D&D GM does this. The guy has a fetish for his idiot rogue he played in another campaign and now that he's running one, has turned it into some sort of celebrity hero that the NPCs bring up at every opportunity. It's kind of annoying.

@Aria said in Good TV:

Please excuse me while I ugly snot-cry at The Good Place finale.

For real, though.

@Pyrephox said in GMs: Typical Player/GM Bad Habits:

No-selling character skills and abilities. I don't want or expect a single PC ability to be an instant win button on any scenario, but the times when GMs have shut down or bent over backwards to decide a character's extremely relevant skills/abilities Just Don't Work because they didn't think about them when building the challenge is kinda silly.

OMG this is so frustrating. My current TT GM does this. Like 5e, rolling above 15 is supposed to be good for many things, but he constantly only gives good info for spots or history checks with 20+. Ugh.

The janitors cleaned off all the graffiti in the bathroom stall except for the preferred dicks size survey.

I am of the mindset that 'nothing to do' is more on the player than staff.

I largely agree, but I'm also of the mindset that staff has to get out of the way of players playing.

If the staff wish to micromanage the theme of the stories, and do more than setting maintenance, then they have to be the ones driving the plots and doing the heavy lifting, and that means more than just running a few scenes every 2 months for faction/sphere heads, that means running scenes for every player who is interested in taking part.

If they don't wish to actively micromanage everything, and allow players to take the initiative, then they really have to be fairly hands off and maintain the sandbox. Respond to rules queries, tally up rewards for submitted quests and maybe dig a room or two on the grid when needed.

@DnvnQuinn said:
The act of preventing white people from entering a place based on the color of their skin is the same thing the black's fought to get rid of. Turning around and doing the same things (like your "White people harassed blacks, so...it's not bad when black folks do it to whites" suggestion above) helps absolutely no one.

I disagree. Pretty much all of North America is a safe space for straight white people. Having Safe Space areas on campuses for minorities can be really helpful for building up mental health support networks.

Yeah, what is it about telling people you have bedtime in an hour that makes them go completely off the rails and want to GET STUFF DONE NOW GODDAMNIT!?

Like, instead of idling all week, could we maybe do bite sized chunks every few days?

Finding out a giant fuckup is not, in fact, my fault.

Okay, so,

Alien Shores: The Mush

ARC 1: Lost In Space. Generational ship finishes decelerating after 100 years to find out that Jump Drives are a thing. All of the deeds and land titles and what not have been tossed aside because Corporations now own the system. The Earth that they left with the spirit of exploration and discovery is now long gone, it's full on dystopia.

ARC 2: Situation Critical: Relegated to the shitty planet that nobody wanted (the atmosphere converters started to fail and the company was busy with other projects), they're allowed to settle there. They get established a little bit THEN OH SHIT SPACE BUGS! WTF!?

Like Klendathu or LV426 depending on the mood of the playerbase.

ARC 3: Red Light: Survivors GTFO. Sure, Jump Drives are a thing, but it still takes months to get to a different system, and weeks to get to another planet. The survivors of the death world get to become the unwanted immigrants on one of the more established planets. It's COMMUNIST REVOLUTION TIME!

ARC 4: It Ain't Love Anyway: Interplanetary Warfare. Our SPACE COMMIES have had enough of these shitty corporate monsters and want the whole system under the thumb in the fold of their space comradship. Can they take on the system defense forces?

ARC 5: Crying Over You: The Corporation Comes Calling. In this final stage, our band of Space Commies has to fend off the fleets of the Corporation. Will they be able to contact the UN and gain independence? Or will they be crushed under the paramilitary forces of Wayland Yuanti?

I kind of want to squeeze in the silicates from Space Above and Beyond now, too.

I also just realized that ever TP I do is somehow based on a shitty 80s song names, why not make a mush based on a shitty 80s Album?

If anything, I think this iteration is more community building than anything. I don't know if I've actually played with any of you before, since WoD isn't my jam, but it's a good place to bounce ideas around.

Even in my table top game there's only one player of the seven that I run a game for that is consistently interested in following up with RP hooks, the rest just kind of stare blankly until another encounter happens. Or they make combat monsters that are incapable of finding clues, which is equally frustrating.

Things have gone a lot more smoothly when I just railroad them to whatever. I've even started making CHOO-ChOO noises when I do it. I've come to the conclusion that most people just want to hang out, have a few laughs, and roll dice a few times a month. Gone are the jr high/highschool days where you could play every day after school and put together intricate plots.

Shower beers.

There is a lot of love for Deadlands out there, and Savage Deadlands is great. I use their dueling rules for other settings as well.

The next time I do Star Wars for my group it will be with Savage Worlds. I just have to make a Sabaac deck for initiative!

1. This is tough. I think it's more about pose wait time than the length of the plot. Like, if one player consistently takes 10 minute to type one line on their turn in combat, that's too long, especially when they had 4 other players each taking 5-10 minutes to do their turn. I think this is what keeps me from going back to Shadowrun, I really liked that game, but jesus, driving from one side of town to the other would be a 3 session affair.

Anyways, in most systems, if things keep going at a happy clip, I'm pleased to put in about 4 hours before my back starts aching.

2. I think if you're doing a combat in a non automated game, you can count on one hour per player. If you're throwing a plot twist at them, double it. FS3 throws these estimates out the window, because things go so smoothly, and you don't really have to wait on Slowey McBrokenfingers typing 1 wpm to keep things going.

3. I think this would be a fantastic idea.

4. I the majority of my experiences, paused scenes never really get finished with the same roster that started them. Lots of this is on me, and my regimented bedtimes to combat insomnia, but many people only have a day or two where they can set aside 4 hours for a plot. In a perfect world, a plot would be designed in a way that people could exit without it breaking the scenario, like don't have people in an escape room or something like that, have them driving/running/riding to the next scene in the plot, someone could get stuck in traffic or something.

5. I usually do some sort of cognitive dissonance retcon. Where's dude? Nah, dude wasn't here the whole time, bad guy has wounds from ... a rough sparring session with his mooks, yeah, that's it!

Or, you know, they step on a waterslide pit trap and are gone all of a sudden. One time in a star wars mush, someone said they left their iron on or something and left a scene where we were shooting stormtroopers, I thought that was pretty funny.