Posts made by SparklesTheClown

@Jaunt I'm not an "insider" either, actually I have no idea what it means to be on the inside (I guess I -have- TS'd a lot of people). But it's pretty clear that you and @Thenomain keep going in circles of intellectual-sounding aggression. It's like you guys are having a super polite British argument. One of you should stop engaging because it's not really getting either of you anywhere except frustrated.

I mean, my investment in this place could not be lower, I'm just bored and felt like participating as a productive member of internet society, which I'm only saying to illustrate the fact that I have absolutely no stake in defending the community. But what I'm saying is, you're being aggressive too. @Thenomain mostly seems like he's frustrated, as he's typically pretty professional, which I imagine is because you keep being pretty mildly aggressive.

You're somewhere in between micro-aggression and passive-aggression, like not even a subtle amount. You're going through basically the cycles that @Miss-Demeanor pointed out. Right now you're in the high-road cycle. To be honest, I have no idea what the fuck you guys are even arguing about. It just seems like you're both wasting steam being aggressive to each other, while people could be doing something productive like asking me to explain the comprehensive history of Alvin and the Chipmunks, which I learned two days ago for no reason.

I have no stake in anything, it's not my hill to die on, and I have no idea why anyone is doing anything, but I'm definitely not misinterpreting the pretty obvious cycles of the argument. If you truly are taking the high-road, then do what you said you're going to do, and focus on OR related posts. If you think @Thenomain is being aggressive to you for no reason, then stop engaging with more aggression and keeping it going.

Though, fyi, @Thenomain being aggressive for no reason is entirely out of character. I don't claim to know him all that well or anything, but I find it highly improbable that he's pissed off and shitting (Thank you dictionary, for pointing out that there are two T's in shitting) on you for no reason. I'm not generally one to victim blame, but there is no victim here. Going through cycles of aggression and defense, and high-roading, is at worst trollish behavior, or at best really poor communication.

Weird, I've never seen Thenomain angry before. I spent like a whole month or two trolling WORA by expressing my inner-most thoughts, and I never even saw him get angry once >_>.

My current obsession >>: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_and_the_Chipmunks%282015_TV_series%29

@Thenomain said:

Pathfinder? Thanks no. But in the tradition of Nuku I do wish you guys the best of luck. Let us know if you guys go Kickstarter.

I will! And thanks!

Someone should make a game based on the new movies, then we can pose about all the inconvenient lens flares we now deal with in everyday life.

So like, I know a lot of you guys are more WoD types, but I thought I'd take a break from being an internet person to say that I've been freelancing on a project. I can't talk about it in detail, but Aethera is basically a third party sci-fi Pathfinder game that we're working on. There are a lot of previously published professionals on our team, and the project lead has done all sorts of stuff. Me personally, I'm one of the newbies, but it's been an interesting learning experience.

I thought I'd share links to what's currently available. I'm not in charge of releasing any of the information, so I can't tell anyone anything that isn't in those links, unfortunately!

http://www.aetherarpg.com/

https://twitter.com/AetheraRPG

https://www.facebook.com/AetheraRPG

The coder was working on making a game with the new edition of Exalted. I know fuck-all about Exalted, but I know that was the basic plan. I'm not sure if this is the game or not, because, again, I know fuck-all about Exalted.

I know that coder pretty well. They're genuinely really nice and stay the fuck out of drama whenever possible. Sometimes I wish they didn't help -everyone- in the universe and take on way more work than someone should be doing for free, but hell, as far as MU* coders go, they border on goddamned saintly.

@Cobaltasaurus said:

One of my Midnight Pancakes did not cook all the way through. There is nothing sadder than the taste of pancake batter at midnight.

Midnight Pancakes sound like something one eats while using Kavinsky as mood music, in a dark room overlooking the neon lights of the city.

@Bobotron said:

@HelloProject
As someone who was a long-time staffer and player at M3 and player at MCM, I'm curious if we ever crossed paths.

Looking at your playlist, I think you're unfortunately before my time on both games. But I added all of my most notable characters to the list now.

The earliest I played M3 was like 2007, as Elec Man, and it wasn't for a super long time. Earliest I was on MCM was 2011, my first character there being Sasuke Uchiha. Currently I'm active on M3, the game has changed -significantly- since I first played. Lots of stuff going on, and it's Halloween soon, so there's always a big Halloween event.

@Thenomain said:

@HelloProject

My legitimate gripe about Skype on Windows is that if I single click on a chat, it does not change focus on that chat, which means if I start typing I end up filtering the chats and not chatting. The Skype for Mac team knows what I mean.

The ads in Skype are pretty inane, but that is probably a marketing decision and we know that all Microsoft marketers are pure idiot.

Haha that is literally my friend's primary job, so I figured she'd be the one to poke.

Also yeah, I hate that single click thing too. There's so many significantly neater ways to do it >__<.

@Thenomain said:

Skype on Windows ... advertising Skype on Windows? Skype advertising anything? What is this madness and who do I ask to get fired because of it.

I'll speak to my friend who works at Microsoft. (I'm actually not joking)

@AmishRakeFight It's more an RPing name I came up with shortly before I started playing MUs (I used to RP in chatrooms and Byond Tabletop a lot). I wasn't all that good at coming up with new characters, nor did frequently making new characters register as a thing that mattered when I was younger. I was used to like, the wild west of RPing outside of MUs, where people frequently had an OC they played everywhere and no one really batted an eyelash.

After a while I started to use the name for a particular character who I just liked playing a lot, but it was kind of a creatively lazy borderline self-insert that I retired.

These days I'm out of the habit, I don't use the name for characters anymore. Now it tends to just be an internet handle for me, and I have a -lot- of different OCs.

I didn't name any of my OCs or FCs in SRT, MCM, or Mega Man MUSH, since everyone in those circles already know where I'm playing and such, so there's very little chance of the information being useful to anyone. I guess I'll update the list with those when I stop being lazy and tired, just for the sake of doing it.

edit: Added.

So, on the topic of a reputation system, I realize that we've been talking about numbers a lot, but in a MU*, things can be a hell of a lot more experimental and dynamic.

I read Thenomain's post about ranking and voting not working due to people bitching, which, yeah, I get it. I think the inherent flaw in this sort of influence system is using numbers period. What does that even mean? "I have 20 influence!"

Alright, I'm sure there's some sort of chart or whatever, but it doesn't really tell people anything at all other than "This person is allowed to do X things and order X people". So, my proposal would simply be to entirely do away with numbers entirely, and make an actually -meaningful- influence system.

I believe that there could be two numberless pools, let's say an +info-like pool that anyone in particular organizations or factions can take a look at, access depending on if they would be able to know that information about someone.

For every given org/faction, you would have a fame and infamy pool. Based on how particular characters perceive what your character has done, they'll add, say, a short paragraph (enough to be descriptive) describing this. A person will be able to write -both- their character's negative opinion and their positive opinion, considering that people tend to have both.

Now, there are limitations to this. I believe that a character's perceptions should -only- be added if they tell those perceptions to other people ICly. They cannot add things that they do not want to be ICly known. The other limitation is, those perceptions -must- be based on things that the character has actually done.

You can't add "Alice thinks this guy is lame", why does she think he's lame, what did she tell people to convey this guy's lameness?

The flip side of the system is that people -will- know who said what. Shit gets back to people, this could have consequences for the person -saying- that stuff. And that doesn't mean you can say stuff in a scene and not expect it to get around, because other people can say what they -heard- someone say. Of course this would possibly have some sort of rumor tag? And, again, it wouldn't be anonymous, it would get back to the person who told it to begin with, as this is a system that charts public information.

Anyway, based on all of this, people could decide what they think of you based on what they've heard, as what they've heard is right there in a convenient list. And makes perfect sense due to only being readable by people in the same organization where the reputation originated. Staff or GMs could also add epic shit that everyone would know regardless of if they're talking about, like, "Jim totally kicked a meteor and saved the city".

Using this system, they would also be able to much more simpler determine who should be moving up in whatever IC ranks, who's getting out there and doing stuff with a variety of people, etc. This system doesn't really benefit people who stay shut up in their rooms.

Obviously this is just a suuuuper rough draft of a system, but I think it'd pretty cool in some finalized form. And obviously if you use this kind of thing in, say, WoD, there may or may not be bitching. But hey, I've said before, if you let "This would never work" or "Players would never go for this" stop you, you can't progress. You've gotta take chances with new and experimental things, and proper implementation goes a long way in forming the response.

I've played like 100+ games, there's no fucking way I can remember or post them all. I'll post common names first, since I've had very distinctive names, chances are I was that person on whatever game you're thinking about. This will be horrifyingly disorganized.

Until recently I went by Magnes on a lot of games, because I was an uncreative hack.

I also used Amadeus a lot.

While I never had a character as such a name, in a certain circle I'm often known as Brick. I only answer to it because people insist on using it.

I've also been Wesley Wilson in a few places.

Places I can somewhat remember playing, but there's significantly more:

Magnes @ A Split Infinity

Arai @ Angelic Layer MUSH

Magnes/Wesley/Alister @ The Reach (Alister was a terrible character, I apologize)

Amadeus(A Lion)/??? @ Windy City

Amadeus/Jay/Nicholas/Eugene/Nim @ City of Hope.

Kon (Staff) @ A Bleach MUSH whose name I forgot (I left when it opened, fuck that noise)

Magnes/Amadeus @ Heroes Dreams Rebirth

Magnes @ A bunch of failed DBZ MUSHes

Magnes/Leonardo/Amadeus @ X-Men Movieverse

Magnes/Amadeus/Mortimer(Aka Warren)/Rasheed/Leroy/Frank @ String Theory

Wesley Wilson @ Scion: Monsters and Moshpits

Magnes @ Some Sailor Moon MU* whose name I can't remember. He could turn into a girl.

Magnes @ Cowboy Bebop MUD

A bunch of random names (Magnes and Apex a lot) @ A bunch of DBZ MUDs.

Magnes @ Lots of random MUDs in general

Someone I can't remember @ Towers of Jadri

Levian @ Shang

Azrael @ Star Crusade

Noh-Varr (The one who didn't quit the internet to become a monk) @ Comux, Universe Unlimited, HeroMUX

Magnes @ Edge of Midnight

Jason Todd/The Professor @ Endless City

Amadeus @ Four Color Comics

Magnes @ Galaxia

Magnes @ A fuckload of comic MU*s, really. Most were terrible so who cares.

K9999, brief newer Kyo Kusanagi, briefly Demitri Maximoff @ Match of the Millennium

Magnes @ Those Pokemon games run by Alynna

Alister @ Ruptured Assumptions

Nim @ Tenebrae (Briefly)

The Professor @ X-Men: Flame of Darkness (The only Time Lord, as far as I know)

Vegeta, Orphen, Jin Saotome, Thor, The Joker, Deadpool, Wesley Wilson, Bridge Carson, Steven Universe, Zero, Sasuke Uchiha, Hiei, Rock Lee, Monk Lee (There's more, but these were the most notable) + Sonic @ Multiverse Crisis MUSH

Elec Man (2007), Homura Atsuki, A bunch of random Robot Masters, Orochi Oshiro, Ben Kavinsky (Currently), Radical Riot (For like five seconds), Joko de Lagos (Currently), Hien (Currently) @ Mega Man MUSH

Samson J. Drake, Jin Saotome, some guy whose name I forgot @ Super Robot Taisen

Sonic @ World Tree

People might know me at varying degrees of maturity, since I entered the hobby at like 17 years old, and was in a bunch of non-MU* places before that since about 14. If you hate me, it's perfectly understandable, I'd hate me too when I was younger.

Oh shit I accidentally quoted Ghandi. So that's where I heard that.

The scariest stuff I've ever seen in MU*s were not in WoD games. Honestly I've never really experienced any particular horror in them.

I think the most emotionally intense games I was ever on were X-Men Movieverse and String Theory (The Heroes game). Characters, both established and new, died at pretty dramatically appropriate moments in a lot of plots. The deaths were typically planned, but they were always kept a secret. There was an air that people your character loves could die, it made everything way more emotionally intense.

You wanted to be involved in plots to try to make the world better, you genuinely felt that you wanted to protect people because if you -did- save someone from dying, you might genuinely be altering the course of losing that person. It didn't feel empty, the dark moments didn't feel forced, and I felt like there was a legitimate emotional investment. It's not just about death, it's about feeling an emotional connection to the world, like, the world is alive and you want to interact with it.

When a world feels alive, when it feels like you can go out there and actually change it, like investing in it isn't just an empty roadblock of GMs being overly protective of their world and plots, then it can also be scary. When people have a reason to care, they also have a reason to be afraid. You can't expect to run something in a cold, lifeless shell of a game, and also expect people to be as invested as they could be if the plot actually mattered.

Of course, that's not really the GM/ST's fault, that's more about how well staff works with STs (and vice versa) to run meaningful plots.

Also don't suck at writing basic horror, that's pretty important too.

@WTFE said:

Tell me more of how you're blocking things here, @HelloProject? If the board can't do it, maybe outside tools can!

I was talking about the sliding banner thing on the OR site. NoScript was blocking it, so I couldn't see it at first, so I was seeing if that was why Thenomain can't see it.

@Thenomain said:

@Jeshin,

I cannot find this text on the front page of your site. All I see is "October contest coming soon!".

I couldn't see it at first, I had to enable OR on NoScript. See if you're blocking OR.

@il-volpe Oh I see.

RPI MUDs are my favorite MUDs, I just have trouble determining the quality of them without sinking way too much time in. Maybe that community will be helpful.