@Packrat Yep, they took the old truths and interpreted some of them in a way a modern audience would best understand (and find fun). For a game that isn't intended as an accurate historical simulation, I think that goal is the right tone to strike for a fun space.
@Sponge As for the plastic models, you can also use metalcoat on them pretty nicely, which is a lot less expensive in most cases than recasting. Check the metal coatings on sculpt.com for some drool fodder along those lines.
I haven't used them myself, though I keep planning to -- I have a pile of shells to attack with them in my case I'd like to coat and patina -- but I would imagine you could do a lot with those. One of them even allows for burnishing and buffing, which is pretty impressive when you think about it!
Edit: I'm up to my neck in yarn and stitch markers at the moment. Oh god. One week until show. Big show. Many people. Head, meet desk. One year ago I went to this show, saying, "Huh, I wonder if I could get some things to play with dyes on!" and this year I'm selling stuff through my teacher's booth. 
"Slow the fuck down" is apparently not a part of my destiny in this lifetime.
re: theme and setting elements, I'm kinda reading this as "not actually the Xavier school, but a reasonable analogue thereof" and similar -- I am sleep deprived as hell so I might be missing something, but if that's what's being suggested, awesome. If it isn't, it's what I'd suggest.
@Coin That deserves a rousing HELLS YEAH!!!, man. 'cause I feel you on creative blocks, and all the cheering on getting past them. 
Robotech is maybe the one sci-fi setting I could oomph enough to play.
Sure, my hair is green now. I may or may not have wanted to dye it that color since I was a wee little tyke because Miriya was my heeeeeeeero, though. <cough>
My mother may or may not mercilessly tease me for it, but when I'm 50billion feet tall some day, I'mma get my revenge!!
@Ghost said in Where's your RP at?:
@surreality Well, yeah, a good GM doesn't go:
"You went to go break up the mugging outside of the bar and he was hiding a sawed-off shotgun in his pocket ROLL INITIATIVE, FUCK YOU YOU DIE."
But we're not talking about tabletop here, we're talking about players interacting amongst themselves. Sure, they can be something a ST or GM flings at someone. I've encountered these in players running into things other players are doing more often than any of them being GM'd, however, by a pretty big margin.
You're right, there are equally valid styles of play.
It's just that when you have one population of people who believe that the game is about risk, character sheets, and dice rolls, and another population of people who believe that the game is about what they decide the outcomes to be, then stuff gets awkward.
One crowd won't agree with the "never rolls dice" crowd deserves the rewards.
The other crowd doesn't want their characters or story risked to dice rolls, and doesn't want to be forced to do so to move the story along.
The problem here is that you're still addressing only the extremes.
OK, fine; that solves like 5% of the times this crap comes up, well done, how about the other 95%?
How about the time players want to run a sparring session that they agree in advance is going to be non-lethal and for minor damage only, and roll that exploding dice moment that would otherwise put someone in the ground? Are these people unable to play a game properly when they ignore the final roll and cap it to a hospital stay instead for a serious but unexpected wound, in accordance with the mutually desired outcome for that scene? Most RPG systems don't account for combat style sparring, or do so very poorly and in hopelessly unrealistic ways. It's not a big deal at the table, since this is rare as hell, but it's a fairly common M• scene to have that absolutely involves dice and actual consequences.
So much of all of this could apply to so many people around here I am not even going to guess re: subtext/target/etc.
@Miss-Demeanor said in Where's your RP at?:
@surreality said in Where's your RP at?:
@Miss-Demeanor said in Where's your RP at?:
@mietze I think you might need to double-check here, hun. Nobody, until you, was talking pvp. Character death in plot or prp is generally at the hands of NPC's. Consent isn't just about player versus player. It goes for accepting inherent danger in dangerous situations... as ST'd with NPC's.
I have been talking almost exclusively about PvP scenarios, and they absolutely happen.
I'm not saying they don't. But I was absolutely not talking about pvp (specifically, anyways), I was talking about character death as a whole. I refuse to base an entire discussion about character death solely on ONE aspect of it.
Except you seem to be willing to go along with the trend of insisting that people who might favor a system that allows for death, but also favor that if somebody wants to show how badass they are, or if a GM wants to have an example of how dangerous an antagonist is, they target an NPC instead of a PC to show the PCs how shit just got real rather than plowing through three PCs at random, they're more folks who just can't handle anything bad happening to their characters. Which is utter bullshit. Seriously, you invoked a meteor or piece of frozen airplane turds falling out of the sky for no reason to smash a character flat as something people should be cheerfully embracing. No, not everybody feels that way, and no, that does not make them immature little self-centered jerks who don't know how games work. I do not actually recall, for example, a 'chance of random rocks-fall-everybody-dies' chart anywhere in WoD, so it is pretty safe to assume this would have to fall under the banner of 'sometimes bad shit happens', but completely ignores the fact that 'bad shit' comprises a lot more than random death by shitcicle, and if someone decided this was the kind of bad shit they were going to pull out of nowhere to knock someone's character off the grid, that person should maybe not have the authority to do much on that game any more. (Though there could be one, because jesus do they ever have everything else.)
@Ghost, you're sliding down the slope here on the unplayable thing, too, using the worst examples as an excuse to discount all of them. Knock it the fuck off, please. You're smarter than that shit.
The answer to these people pulling drama is simple as hell: "OK, sorry the game isn't for you then, you should go." In that case, if they leave, that is their choice, not someone else's, and yes, that's pretty relevant. "I left because I couldn't have my shiny!" is not reasoning many people are going to empathize with. "I left because I didn't want to play a character that was <in a situation I find personally uncomfortable and was not enjoying>," is a mature choice, and takes responsibility for making that choice. If folks feel that strongly about the thing, this is their option, and they should use it. If they're whining about it as a bluff, call that fucking bluff and tell them to get on with the getting on.
I had forgotten how much I enjoyed the various installments of 'The Arya and The Hound Show'. It is one of my favorite examples of the 'best of enemies' dynamic in recent memory, and the show doesn't exactly lack for examples of that one.
And seriously, anybody who thinks PK is the only answer or best option at all times to resolve a thing should probably watch those scenes, possibly on repeat loop, maybe for a few weeks.
@Arkandel said in Politics etc.:
@Gingerlily said in Politics etc.:
The trick of it seems to be finding a system that isn't too cumbersome/doesn't feel like a grind, and yet also fosters all of those things people seemed to love so much. Balance etc, but it's not yet clear to me where that balance lies.
I mean the system absolutely helps. But there's a... relationship between the MUSH, the mechanics and staff that helps shapes the culture, and there's nothing more important than that.
Policy and how things get done staff-side is as much a system of mechanics as any RPG mechanics are, and all of these things need to work hand in hand to foster the whole. Otherwise, you end up with policies that hobble game mechanics, or code that makes the policy impossible, etc. A good implementation considers all of these things as part of a whole, as interconnected systems that necessarily must work together to support one another.
I keep sayin' this and people call me bonkers for it, but, essentially: yes, this, a hundred times, this.
@Arkandel Dunno if I agree with that. The typical argument I hear for it has nothing to do with OOC grudges, and is essentially the "drop back, nuke the site from orbit, only way to be sure," approach. This is typically because the PKer in question isn't especially interested in that avenue of character growth and considers the other character to be an interference with the story they want to be telling instead.
Not everyone considers conflict an interesting storyline, a fun challenge, a compelling obstacle to overcome, or a an opportunity for interesting character growth. (Being fair, not every conflict is any of that, though this is quite rare.)
I think that's dumb, and you think it's dumb, and probably a majority of posters here think it's dumb, but I think it's a mistake to expect that this is a universal perspective on games. On the more generous end of the spectrum, there are far too many folks with tunnel vision re: the story they want to be telling for this to be immediately evident to them; on the less generous one, you have folks who do not care about what experience anyone else is having or wants because they are so focused on their story being told entirely their way.
This has been an ongoing project as part of the bigger project, as a resource for folks newer to the hobby or just in general. @Auspice's poll inspires the post, in part, 'cause I'm a forgetful hag that forgets to post inquiries like this.
What terms can you think of that you've run across that are unique to the hobby? Any that have been particularly opaque? Any you've heard used a lot?
There's actually a reason for this -- some terms get used in different places in different ways, and that's pretty relevant. For instance, games I've played, sanctioning a player means punishment of some kind has been administered; in other RP communities, the same word means the character has been approved for play. That's a pretty huge difference that could easily trip people up.
This project may or may not be completely stupid, and I'm doing it either way and don't really care much if people think it's stupid. If you want to argue that, by all means, have at -- but I'm a lot more interested in what terms you think are useful or should be included on such a list (preferably with the definition you've associated with it, which is especially useful, since like the sanction example above, the different meanings can be included and if that unconfuses so much as half a dozen people from freaking out about a term with such contradictory meanings, well, it's not like I have other things to do with my time at the moment).
I think we must read those things differently. I can kind of see where you are coming from but-- If I said 'don't call people Satan' is a basic enough bit of etiquette, would it have the same implication to you? That I'm saying you have to be offended by being called Satan?
When someone goes on to the academic thing, it doesn't sound like a polite recommendation any more. It's less 'don't call people Satan', and more 'I shouldn't have to haul out the bible to explain to anybody with a brain why they shouldn't call somebody Satan'. There's a definite note of condescension in there, let's be frank about that.
@Meg I do think there was a sense of disbelief or skepticism expressed by some people that someone could be living in America in 2017 without realizing that cunt is considered a really nasty thing to call someone, which I could see further extrapolated to a point of "you must be offended by this."
^ That. Thank you.
Anyways, I'm still going to land squarely in the camp of "someone objected strongly to being called a cunt and the real problem in that conversation was the people who insisted she shouldn't take issue with the word." Not the people who then had to defend their right to be offended by a word that's considered highly aggressive by a lot of the country.
By the time I hopped in there, 'yes, this really is extremely offensive to some (which I continue to say is absolutely OK)' had, really, been covered. At that point, it was the predictable 'but my buddies say it and I don't mind!' and 'don't you know everyone agrees that's rude!' were browbeating each other.•
But, yeah, etiquette rules in the Hog Pit are kinda... uhm. I've had nasty shit said to and about me in other sections of the forum even if they don't involve specific tense terms and that is not just me, almost all of us are in the same boat about that, having the same experience.
If somebody says, "Hey, that's really over the top to me," it is the decent person thing to do to not do that to them, for sure. It's... not the specific venue where I would expect people to default do so (have concern about offending or not) so far as the board goes. All the other sections? Yeah.
• My sleep schedule's wonky as fuck lately, y'all. Seriously. I'm still testy and unslept and hazy-brained due to the dental surgery and painkillers and lasered gums and la la la oh god why do I taste nothing but sour bacon. My tact is absolutely not working well, and my clarity is worse. This isn't an excuse for anything, just a general advisory in case something doesn't seem to make sense. Just, y'know, ask or something, and I will try to clarify, because I'm not actually trying to offend anybody here today or anything. As it is I'm like 'whoa' on the run-on sentences that cross over like cat's cradle still. (Am not sure if it is making this discussion look better or worse than it is, but wavy wavy text is super trippy.)
Add me to the people who loathe &afinger with the burning flames of a thousand suns going supernova at once. That is only mild hyperbole; I really despise &afinger.
I finger people for the usual reason: "Oh, who's that?"
Entirely too many self-important morons think this is an excuse to do any number of things from there:
Demand to know what you found fascinating about them. (This is especially funny when they leave it mostly blank and there is nothing whatsoever to find fascinating. Besides, if you already knew enough about them to find them fascinating, why would you be checking basics like +finger? Pfft. Idiots.)
Strike up the world's most long-winded conversation about shit you could not possibly care less about even if someone was holding a gun to your head and demanding you give at least one wee fuck. (Again, especially annoying when there is nothing interesting about them whatsoever or no commonalities there.)
Start screaming "STALKER!" at you if you +fingered them once before a month ago and had simply forgotten. (Again, usually because they were completely uninteresting.)
People actually using +finger constantly to be stalky fucks and trigger your &afinger to make you feel watched. (A game played often enough on the aforementioned Shangrila that there's mention of not fingering someone if they have you on +ignore/etc. in policy.)
...I may not be entirely rational on this point since I find the above so needlingly-peeve-inspiring, but I see absolutely no positives whatsoever gained from &afinger. None. Not a fucking one.
Weirdly, I find the fact that any of this argument is happening at all to be a pretty positive sign. As in, in ye olden days of WORA, objecting to being called anything (including any given slur half the time) would just get somebody dogpiled and everyone doubled down on specifically calling them that as much as possible for as long as anyone could be bothered to remember to do it.
If nothing else, it demonstrates a fairly significant difference between MSB and ye olden days of WORA. A good one, I think.
@Rook said:
@Cobaltasaurus
I am unsure why you think my idea of what AFINGER is, is off. Now maybe on the WoD games, there is no literal &AFINGER attribute that the +FINGER code parses and emits to the +fingeree, but on other games, that is exactly how it works. If you are attributing AFINGER as a built-in emit within the code of the +FINGER command, then it isn't truly an AFINGER in the sense of the rest of MUSH/MUX attributes that get triggered on actions (@asucc, @adrop, @adesc).I am not sure why:
- &AFINGER me=
- +finger code that will not parse functions within AFINGER attributes
- +finger/silent
will not work for solutions to your point 2.
The examples I've been giving aren't just from WoD games -- they're from a pretty broad range, unfortunately.
While I could list at least a dozen more examples downsides to having &afinger, I haven't seen a positive presented as to why it should exist in the first place.
'People are shy' as a 'positive' is actually encouragement of very poor behavior, and a fallacious understanding of the command and its actual purpose, that leads to much bigger problems down the road.
One should not need a +finger/silent command to be unbothered when they check publicly-available, player-volunteered information.
This is a cultural problem that ultimately, code is not going to resolve with a notification; keeping it will 'aid' shy players and the aggressive, obnoxious ones in ways that are simply not aid. Removing it encourages players to speak up to their interests actively in the case of the 'shy'. This is important, because this is not a passive hobby, it is an inherently interactive one. If someone is too shy to interact without an automated notifier pinging them that someone felt like seeing what public information they listed about themselves, what happens when that person gets no further feedback? Are they going to become any less shy or any more confident when the person does not pursue any further inquiry? Highly doubtful.
Edit: A much more useful switch option in this case would be to have players be able to use something akin to +finger/noisy if they're seeking attention in return or want it to be known they're looking over whatever it is. Leave the rest of us in peace, for mercy's sake. HR's example of "You were just looking at me!" below is spot on.
@kk Stay classy keeping up with the personal attacks and grudgewanky bullshit while everybody else has generally been talking like grownups, I guess. I'm not the one who brought it the fuck up.
P.S. This isn't the a game-related forum, genius. This is the 'RL Anger' thread, where this topic is abso-fucking-lutely appropriate.
@Arkandel Ideally, you can build a framework to consistently crowdsource ideas and additions not just at the start, but throughout the progress of the game.
That framework is just one hell of a lot of work, since it not only includes mechanisms for doing it functionally, but clear and understandable examples and guidelines for doing so. None of those things are at all easy to construct effectively in a way that doesn't invite the 'too divergent a notion of what is/isn't possible or is thematic' problem in for tea and crumpets on the regular.
@Ghost And the only ammo permitted will be random image macros, monkey poo, movie/television quotes, and 4 sided dice to use as caltrops.