Best posts made by Sparks

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Am I surprised? No, no, I am not.

So, remember how I mentioned the Love, Death, and Robots episode "Shape-Shifters" was based on another story by Marko Kloos (the author of Frontlines), but it was a story that was never published?

Just noticed he decided to publish that one as well, even though he never wrote the series that story was meant to be a prequel for.

@Auspice said in General Video Game Thread:

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is part of this month's Humble Bundle. I already have the game, but I say this because it's an amazing game and everyone should play it.

Seconded. It's surprisingly affecting in terms of narrative and execution, plus has really quite good atmospherics; a couple of the screenshots in my wallpapers directory are ones I took in Hellblade using Ansel.

@kanye-qwest said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@sparks Barx, After the Oh Heckening

I was going to go with "After the Chickening", as I sit here watching my corgi gnaw on a chicken chewy.

This evening my writing mentor—and friend—passed away.

I've known her for fifteen years and I don't have the words for how much her friendship and encouragement has meant to me in that time. She brought me into a social circle of speculative fiction writers and fans that has meant a lot to me over the years. She was a wonderful woman with a big heart, dozens of friends, and hundreds of anecdotes to share.

It honestly wasn't that long ago that she was abruptly diagnosed with inoperable stage 4 pancreatic cancer. They originally gave her maybe 9 months. Then after another exam, they revised it down to about two months. It's been maybe two and a half weeks since that diagnosis; things went very quickly.

I take some comfort in the fact that she finished her final book perhaps two weeks ago; she'd been working on it for several years, and I know it meant a lot to her to see it completed.

Still, it doesn't feel a fair trade for her.

Fuck cancer.

@Auspice — there's only two Hellblade ones in the screenshots folder I use for wallpapers right now, but here's the folder: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/777scj72o0l3f2b/AAC4xVi4WifuUy0X-GuJN1tza?dl=0

The rest are (a lot of) Dragon Age: Inquisition, (a lot of) Horizon Zero Dawn, Mass Effect Andromeda, a little bit of Black Desert Online, a little bit of Star Citizen (I actually have more shots from that I should really throw in), some Witcher 3, a little bit of Elite: Dangerous, and (a surprising amount of) The Secret World.

(I literally just have every machine I own, regardless of OS, set to pull wallpapers randomly from that folder. The folder is just a small set of the various screenshots I've taken, and periodically I remove ones and switch in new ones from my main library of screenshot work. I also used to maintain a screenshot blog, which has some of the shots I plan to swap in or add next.)

@auspice said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

D&D is just such a big, complex beast. However, the more I think about it... It probably has a lot of database support natively, which is what I'd want if I was developing a D&D system for MU*. My biggest gripe with TT systems on MUSH/MUX is putting attributes on code objects. They get so messy.

But if you could put them in a SQL DB that the game calls? It'd be so much cleaner. And mulling... with the web portal, Ares has a lot of support for databases already. So it MIGHT be doable. I just don't know Ruby enough to say for sure, it's just more a gut instinct call, I guess?

Ares is based atop a redis database, while Evennia is based atop Django's ORM backed by either SQLite, Postgres, or MySQL. Depending on how you wanted to implement things, either would work for what you're discussing.

@surreality Thanks. I like to think she might at least be reunited somewhere with the friends who went before her, the ones I know she missed fiercely.

And I think maybe when I finish the book I'm currently reading, I'll go pick up one of her books to re-read. Just as a way to hear her voice one more time, if nothing else.

@Auspice - Must... resist urge... to restart... Final Fantasy debate.

I don't think equal spotlight distribution is feasible on large games, for a variety of reasons. I mean, no one should be excluded from having their turn in the spotlight if it comes along, but you're never going to be able to ensure every one of 300 players has a chance to shine... and if you do, you're going to run into "you got a chance to shine once, a year and a half ago, so you can't go on plots anymore", which is a surefire way to burn out otherwise active players (who are the ones who stir up RP when you aren't GM'ing).

It's hard even in individual scenes, honestly; when I GM scenes, I try to ensure there's something for everyone to do -- everyone gets an opportunity to influence the outcome, gets a chance to let their skills shine. And that can be difficult when you have a group of seven people and three hours to run an adventure for them, but still possible; it's not really possible when you're running a giant mass battle scene for 40 people and don't want it to take multiple days.

I think what you can aim for is "everyone has opportunities to influence the game world, even if it's part of a larger action". And if someone comes up with an interesting idea that fits the game world and has a chance of letting some new folks have the spotlight, be prepared to run with it.

I think the best you can do when you are dealing with 300-some players is seed storylines in 3 or 4 different places, and try to nudge people together to act on it. But if someone doesn't act on it (or misinterprets a clue/vision and heads off in some other wild direction, which has happened), the people who do act on it are likely to be the ones who play a role in resolving that plotline. Or the people who pick up the clues and run with them. But everyone should have the opportunity to do such.

That said, there is a tool on Arx which returns a list of characters who've never had staff GM attention, which gets used to try to seed new storylines to people who might otherwise be struggling to find a path to involvement. I think that's a very useful tool to have, since it helps you find the people who might otherwise be just doing slice-of-life RP and wondering how to get involved.

This is, mind you, just my $0.02 (plus state sales tax where applicable).

@Kanye-Qwest said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Ganymede my bank regularly sends me emails that say "did you really mean to tip 40% of your bill?" Yes. How many times do I need to confirm this. Waitressing as a teenager and bartending as a young adult was an illuminating experience.

That honestly strikes me as incredibly obnoxious of your bank; the whole business seems wildly unproductive whether or not they keep repeating it. It comes across almost like reverse tip-shaming: "Why did you tip so much? Are you sure you want to do this? Shouldn't you keep more of your money?" I mean, do people working service industry jobs honestly need smaller tips than the fairly miniscule amount they already get on average?

Just... yikes.

Save for theme song initiative, it sounds a bit like Vice Squad?

@ominous said in What Is Missing For You?:

Ars Magica

YES PLEASE.

@Jaded Oh, yes. The narration for that episode was immediately and quite clearly either Maurice LaMarche or someone doing a very credible imitation of him.

@Cobaltasaurus — I think it depends on the game. Smash Brothers? Mario Party? Breath of the Wild? Those I like to have on the TV. Some, like Mario Kart, I can happily play either way if I'm playing solo; local multiplayer needs the TV. But for certain other games, I genuinely prefer the handheld experience: Octopath Traveler, Pokken Tournament DX, Kirby All-Stars (no, I don't know why I prefer handheld to TV for this one), Sonic, Little Dragons Cafe, and so on.

@sunny said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

How about if you junk a dress, you can make another dress from it, but it becomes junked silk instead of new silk and it can't be used for model clothes, just wearing clothes.

This would require a not-insignificant reworking of part of the crafting system in a manner that kind of makes me cry (basically allowing multiple material types for a recipe and then having some sort of conditional tag based on what materials were used), and... well, I do want to get back to Shardhavens and magic eventually!

Finding a comfortable, durable bra is like finding a unicorn.

Sadly, I have not caught any unicorns recently.

@Sunny said in General Video Game Thread:

I just saw somebody named Chicken Nugget in an mmo I play. It brings me such joy, and I'm not sure why.

I have genuinely lost track of the number of lalafell I've encountered in FFXIV who are named some variation on "Chicken Nugget", "Chicken Mcnugget", "Chicken Nuggetz", "Chicken Mc'Nugget" and so on.

Though they were all trumped for memorability by the giant Roegadyn tank who was dressed like a chocobo, with the name "Kwehstopher Warken". (As explanation: chocobos—the giant usually-but-not-always flightless chicken-like birds used in place of horses throughout the many incarnations of the Final Fantasy franchise—canonically make the noises "kweh" and "wark".)

The most infamous clever name in the datacenter I play in, though, is "Viewing Cutscene". (When you are in a cutscene in a shared instance, your name in the party list is replaced by "Viewing Cutscene", so...)

@Cheesegrater said in Fallcoast Domain Expired:

@Sparks said in Fallcoast Domain Expired:

I'm now really curious what used to be at that address back when that strip came out.

It was the IP address of the comics syndicate that handled Foxtrot.

I thought it might be something like that.

@Misadventure said in Dead Celebrities 2019:

Gene Wolf

Well, crap. I would like to formally request that SF/fantasy authors who I respect and whose work I enjoy please stop dying for at least a month or two.