Posts made by skew

@TNP said:

I've used both Zenni and Eyebuydirect. They're excellent. I need a strong prescription and they'd cost me about $400 getting them at a store nearby. At either place I can get them for less than $150. Anyone who needs glasses should check them out.

Zenni was great! I do like them, but as I said, they process in 7-10 days if you do a rush. I highly doubt anyone will need glasses in the same week... but if you break your only pair, you might! 39dollarglasses can do a same week turn around for under $100.

And yes, @Bobotron, do it! Eyeglasses prices are horrible. They are blatantly and shamelessly inflating the price. It's only as bad as mattresses. I get that they want $200-$700 for designer frames. It's a designer product, you're paying for the latest fashion, the style, the name, etc. The cost of lenses, however, is where the problem is. I figured this was due to cheap Chinese knock parts. I know that my Zenni glasses were made in China, and the lenses were plenty cheap, so it made some sense. But this latest time around, I'm getting lenses that are coming from a registered brand name, using some of the latest technology. Plus, this latest pair of glasses is being cut and assembled in New York.

I'd recommend going to get a new prescription at a fairly cheap place. If you are lucky, you can talk to the person who sells eye glasses (not the doctor) and they'll measure your pupillary distance (PD) and give it to you. Sometimes, though, they only take and give you that measurement if you are actually buying things from them. In that case, there are many guides and tools online to help you measure your pupillary distance.

@Olsson said:

@skew
Nordic LARP methodology.

What's that exactly?

You tell us, man.

Don't you guys go to the spa, get all hot and oiled up, then like wrestle or something...? Or is that just Finns?

@Arkandel said:

@Pondscum said:

If he's actively logging in on other characters, and even RPing on his Sam character, he's being willfully rude and ignorant

Other than the fact he said 'okay, let's rp sometime' (which it sounds like it wasn't exactly offered enthusiastically but which can still be misleading) I don't think he's being rude or ignorant.

No matter what you are never obligated to play with one specific person. Remember, we have no reason to think he's inactive - the OP said he's playing the character with other people. Maybe he doesn't like Brigid's character or maybe he doesn't like Brigid's player but he's not doing anything wrong here other than not communicating more clearly.
...

Yeahno.

If you accept a position of power in the game, if you take on a lead role in a staff-run plot, if you make yourself integral to the continuation of the game, you are accepting the obligation to work with other PCs. If you don't work with other PCs, I'd expect you to be removed from said position, as a staffer and as a player.

Example: On Requiem for Kingsmouth (a WoD vampire game, for those unfamiliar), you were required to present yourself to your clan head, or your covenant rep, or to the prince. Meeting with the prince was very difficult on account of how busy the prince was (which isn't to say the prince was refusing anyone, simply would have to schedule a meeting out some two weeks). If you had no covenant, you were left with a clan head (and that was common). If the clan head (priscus) does not set aside time to RP with these people who he or she has already agreed to meet with, then dude's gotta go.

We are all here completely voluntary. We're not obligated to do any single thing except for what we've decided to be obligated to do. Don't want to have to RP with anyone? Don't sign up to be a leader. Don't want to RP with a specific person? Talk to staff. Agreeing to do something then not doing it is rude.

@BobGoblin said:

So there's the set up. Here's the questions.

How long is it appropriate to wait on Sam before shrugging and moving on?
Is it acceptable to develop Birgid's story and if it results in Sam's Partner getting killed because of his inaction that is acceptable?
At what point does it become an issue on the wider game scale that Sam Spade, the main protagonist isn't making the time to scene with others who need him their story lines because he's involved with his own circle only?
As an Admin, how do you address this?
As a Player, how would you address this?

1. As a general rule, I'd give it at least a week. If the player were not actively logging in, two weeks might be kind.
2. I think you and Sam's Partner (Miles?) ought to try to loop Sam in that, at the very least, you two have something planned. Again, if he doesn't respond in a week, then go for it.
3. I hate to suggest something bad, but is Sam ignoring you, or the community? If a player is in a position of power/authority/importance, I think they ought to respond to everyone, but if it's a specific player, it might be an issue that needs to be dealt with more personally. If, in general, your powerful person (main protag, leader, etc) isn't making time for others, then I would probably want staff to intervene.
4. A conversation, of course. Figure out what Sam wants, what he's doing, where his time is. If it comes right down to Sam not wanting to play out the story that his position entails, I (as staff) would try to work out a way for him to vacate this position gracefully.
5. I have been in this position as a player far more than staff, so this is a little easier for me. I would attempt to contact (as above). I would contact staff. And then, finally, if neither produced results, I'd move my own story forward without this main person. If Sam is not shunning just me, but a big chunk of the community, then there's a good chance that others will follow your lead.

I've played the waiting game on MUs a lot. It's painful, I know. I think, on whole, my experience is that those players that need time will ask for it and work with you. Those players that are simply uninterested will not. It might be a little harsh, but I expect people to respect my time just as I respect theirs. We all miss RP dates, we all have days we don't feel it, but it's just not that hard to say "Hey, I can't do tonight".

@tragedyjones said:

Dude. .. http://www.zennioptical.com.

Dude... I said I used them the last time! They take 7-10 days expedited. I needed sunglasses sooner than that!

I also love story problems.

Skew is doing some online shopping. Skew pays $142 for a pair of sunglasses and a pair of glasses. If glasses are $39 and shipping is $12, how much did skew pay for sunglasses?

Ahem.

There are few websites like these and they often start at whatever fixed price, then the glasses go up in price based on how not-ugly they are. You choose the glasses you want, then move on to choosing the lenses you want, so you can get the very basic resin lenses, or upgrade to different materials. You can then apply a tint, or buy polarized lenses. The last time I bought from Zenni, I just got tinted lenses, and the total was something like $32, but I decided polarized really is worth it. So instead of just paying the $39 bucks from this place, I ended up paying about $110 to get the high-end lenses. (I think had a $20 coupon code, or whatever!)

I'm going on vacation on March 4th, and I just realized last weekend that I never got new sunglasses for my new prescription. The old glasses hurt my eyes after about 10-20 minutes wearing them.

I went to 39dollarglasses.com on Monday, input my new prescription, paid $150 for one pair of prescription sunglasses and one pair of (back up) glasses. They should both be shipped out today, next day shipping.

All the other places wanted $350+ for a pair of sunglasses, and most of them couldn't guarantee they'd be done in time for me to go on vacation.

@Glitch said:

Do you guys pronounce it like "bitten"? Because that was a good idea, @Coin.

We had to explain it to @tragedyjones.

@Ganymede said:

I actually tell people to "pose-queue," but that's a pedantic difference. And, yes, I agree that a framework is best, which you alter as others pose. But, to be honest, I did not think I'd ever have to thoroughly describe what I was getting at, as I learned to "pose-queue" early in my career and it is instinctual now.

I've seen queuing up a pose go wrong when the person obviously write something up, then doesn't update/edit/etc to adapt to the scene. Maybe I decide my character's going to rush into the bar and yell "BIG NEWS! NEWS!". Well, if the person in front of me stops right in the doorway and looks around angrily, I better alter my pose!

That said, I'm a big fan of writing things up before it's your turn to go because I'm a big fan of MUs going fast enough to hold my ADD attention span.

Also, I think overall this is a nice list for beginners. It highlights a lot of things people do unknowingly or unintentionally, and gives you a few things to think about. I'd say most of us who post here are well beyond it, but it's not bad advice for the new player. Thanks @Halicron .

@Ninjakitten The latest WoD book (or, CofD book, called fittingly called Chronicles of Darkness) features a whole system for "investigations" that's basically meant to cover all the situations where your player is trying to get an answer, unravel a mystery, or otherwise trying to get stuff done. It includes a lot of useful ST tools and suggestions, things like "ask the player what they want to find" and means to let a roll cover what otherwise might be RP'd out. I think it's some really great suggestions and plan to utilize them.

I'll also add that @tragedyjones came up with a pretty great game policy, called "Fake It".

On the opposite end of the spectrum from people ignoring your characters flaws, you should not need to possess every stat your character does. It is perfectly acceptable to fudge reality. If you want to play a doctor, you should not be penalized by a lack of OOC knowledge. Any time a character in a scene wants to fake it, they may declare so OOC and make an appropriate roll. People should endeavor to try and take the results of the roll into the pose. This is not meant to bypass RP, just allow a little fudging of reality. If the Doctor character wants to throw in some medical jargon, don't bite their head off it isn't real world accurate.

This is something I had always factored into my tabletop RP, and I had mostly been trying to use it in my MU RP. I didn't really know it wasn't standard practice, but I'm quite pleased to see it written up clearly. I'd rather see "OOC: Okay, this is where my girl says some really complex medical jargon, then breaks it down to suggest we need antibiotics." than someone telling me how the mitochondria eats the cell to become big and strong (or, you know, something that has no actual medical/scientific backing). I find the former easier to integrate into my RP.

I am also a big fan of doing things like asking OOC. On my previous active MU, my character had a best friend who had very high empathy, but the player seemed to miss the queues in my RP to make sense of the situation. He would simply roll and ask me about it. (And yes, maybe he didn't miss anything and I just suck at RPing queues! either way, we were both better off when he rolled.)

@Bobotron So... orgy?

Finns are weird.

@Lithium said:

I even put in code so that people can set their own verification code for dice rolls so that people can't spoof rolls as the verification would be wrong and people would know without having to be set nospoof.

Woah... is that a thing? That seems totally insane to me. I know staff-side, we've insisted people roll to jobs, as opposed to just copy-pasting their roll from the log, but spoofing dice rolls during a scene? Yikes.

@Thisnameistaken Where I have often fudged is when it comes to a contested roll. Again, WoD system. I roll my pool, you roll yours, you have to beat mine or else suffer from "x". So, I'll often just give players what my roll is, based on about what I ought the power level of said monster should be.

Ex: I use a power on you, you must roll to resist, or dodge, or whatever, and I set the target at 3. My target was made up by me, then. I think it tends to work, and it's certainly overt and obvious.

I've seen it go well, I've seen it go miserably. Overall, there's been enough miserable that I have grown wary of OOC couples who RP on the same guy.

@SG mentioned (oh so eloquently) one partner telling the other what's what, OOC. I've seen that happen more than once, albeit not in such an overt situation. I've seen @GangOfDolls' situation, as well. And like @Coin just said, it's not limited to OOC couples, but I do think I've seen it happen a little more overtly when it is OOC couples.

So, in all, I guess I'm slightly skeptical about OOC couples, and definitely more skeptical when their IC opinions come to be suddenly aligned.

I also can't stand the OOC angst, anger, snide comments, etc, that I've seen an OCC/RL partner pull, when the other partner's IC persona is flirted with!

@ThatOneDude said:

@skew But in terms of the Reach, would adjusting to power level at some point be fudging or just the nature of the game?

I mean if you are a 800XP vampire searching for your foe who also in theory is an 800XP NPC, wouldn't that foe potentially have better ways of obfuscating his tracks than say a 100XP NPC? So with the powerlevel going up the difficulty goes up as well, right?

Note quite. A 800XP vampire is still an 800XP vampire. They are immensely powerful, and there really ought not be that many of them. Too many and you start to break the theme (which, yes, is an indictment of the whole high XP MU as a whole). But, besides that argument, yes I could make an 800XP boss bad guy. But that doesn't help against the mortals that stand between you and them, or the common criminals, or the police, or whatever.

I've tried to make goons that are useful and add to the story. Goons that you cannot just wave a hand and have them all perish. If you stat them up, players howl about it being totally unrealistic, totally unacceptable, etc etc. If you keep them at levels that would be logical and realistic, they cannot do a single thing at all. Mind, I'm not trying to kill off PCs. I just happen to know that most people enjoy a story that isn't a cake walk, that isn't short and pointless. Most players enjoy going back home with a bullet hole in them, it gives you a story, RP fodder, etc. Issue is... to get that single successful shot, I'm either rolling chance dice, or I have a goon that has 10+ attack dice (Which, for the audience that is not WoD-savvy, that's the max stats a human can have).

@ThatOneDude That definitely sounds like a pretty toxic environment.

I definitely always aim to make any fudging for the sake of the story, and hopefully for the enjoyment of the players, but it's always hard to say. There's those players that want to go on an adventure, and then those players that want to win. I guess the biggest issue is when you are dealing with the former, and mistake them as the latter, because they really, really want to win this one time.

Ex: You build your character to be an internet sleuth, with a specialty in finding real world locations for people who post things online. Then staff decides if they just gave you this person's address/etc, it would make the story too short, so they make your findings inconclusive. Staff has just neutered your core concept.

I think I might be slightly tainted from STing on The Reach, where players had huge xp pools and could effectively do anything. No one had just that one specific thing they were good at. Finding a spot where they failed became a matter of fudging, or using crazy powerful NPCs.

Though I missed most of the action, apparently there was a hot argument on reddit drummed up by a GM-type saying that he often would fudge rolls to enhance his story. I figured we could use some focused, constructive arguing here, so I wanted to bring the topic over!

When you are controlling the story, NPCs, etc, do you fudge rolls?

Obviously you cannot do it quite like you can in real life, where you roll dice behind a screen and lie about the results. But on my MUs, I will give people numbers to beat, difficulty modifiers I made up right then, and or simply tell PCs their powers failed, or the like. The goal is to enhance the story as I see it. Generally speaking, I will warn players before I do this that I am doing it. Even if I don't, it's not like I can really fudge the results of a roll I put on screen.

I've had players get pretty upset with me on and off over this. People who need to see the dice and demand I follow the rules. Alternately, I've had a good many players who get quite agitated when I put checks on their nigh limitless powers (eff off, mages! this is my reality not yours!). So, what do you all think?

@Bobotron You can do that in V:tR 2ed. Instead of taking a hit to your humanity, you take a new bane. Or something like that... Forget the exact details, but you could absolutely have a vampire allergic to garlic and repelled by crosses.

@mietze It was lovely. No, babe, that's not... no you... Okay yeah go get some garlic.

@Tyche I think going into the hood would be more lethal than fighting vampires. I'll pass on the whole affair.

@Alzie Oh! Sorry. I read it as a snide comment. That since you knew he was doing just what he suggested, you were repeating it back to him, to be a jerk. Apologies for misreading!