Best posts made by surreality

@Derp Yeah, I'm with you on things re: respecting status merits and similar. Those things exist for a reason and they shouldn't be ignored.

In the situation you're describing, though -- the example earlier re: domain is a good one.

Some of it is supported, but people don't use it. A lot could be done with resource blocking, for instance; use contacts to figure out JoeAdversary's money comes from his graft, get Allies in the PD to look into it and freeze the assets for investigation, etc.

One of the problems is that this isn't horribly action-packed or exciting, really. That said, one of my favorite scenes in The Originals (shut up, errybody ) involved having an enemy's residence declared a historical landmark and had the city claim it to gain access to the building without invitation, for instance. That was great to see make it on screen as a great social mechanic in action, and it stands as an ideal example. (Sure, it was 'gain access and then full steam ahead on the murderboat', but it's still a neat example of something we rarely see on screen or in games.)

I think we'd all join 'Get off My Lawn'.

Betty White, holding Grumpy Cat Bond-villain style, is my spirit animal.

@Gingerlily For what it's worth, I think it has meandered amongst various things.

Speaking personally, I prefer to not have 'designated' antagonist characters, be they PCs or NPCs on grid (barring the occasional monster of the week, but those are easy).

It isn't just the system and mechanics that need attention paid to their design in this regard: the factions in the game need planning as ally or opposition, and the resources available in the game need to not be big enough for everyone to have everything they want, creating the need for competition (beyond the usual 'I just want to have all the things so nobody else has any', which is a fair motivation in itself).

All of this stuff needs to work together, and you essentially have three 'core' systems on any given game: the IC realities of the game world, the game system mechanics, and the OOC policies/code/rules/support/staff mindset. This is one of those subtler truths that a lot of game creators/runners are slow to realize -- until it explodes to prominence when what seemed to be a harmless policy or house rule tweak suddenly screws a set of abilities or a character type, that then screws a faction vital to keeping things moving or balanced in some fashion, and suddenly there's an IC mess due to the ripple effect that just undoing or reworking the original tweak can't repair.

^ This is somewhere. Not anybody in this conversation at the moment, but lord, it's somewhere on the board.

@Gingerlily I used to be a mod on the big abortiondebate forum on livejournal. I have seen some shit. <rubs salve on all the scars> So I know precisely what you're saying about it just kinda being how people are on the internets.

@shangexile Thank you.

I am really glad that wasn't you. I didn't want to think it was; sometimes it is cool to know that even when things are pretty shitty otherwise, it's worth giving someone the benefit of the doubt on something. And I'm glad the rest was essentially 'unlucky coincidence'.

The folks on the forum here who have been slinging stuff around are not fun to handle, including all of that, no, but y'all are not The Great Downfall. That's not on anybody here. The way someone we both knew on Shang used to put it, and I think it's an excellent way to put it, was 'being pecked to death by sparrows'. That's kinda the scale I think of re: any conflicts going on on the forum here, anyway. So, for what it's worth, please don't put that on yourself. The other people being jerks, well, maybe they'll be sad to know they aren't the big deal, either, maybe they'll be relieved, maybe they won't care, but they on the sparrow list here, too.

The actual shit going down is RL shit, most of it really bad luck that doesn't have someone to point any stabbity finger of blame at. I get accused enough of referencing anything bad going on RL as 'attention whoring for sympathy' and... no. So I rarely mention shit that isn't a trivial bitch about a shitty keyboard or a crappy telemarketer call or something else at this point, unless it's explicitly salient, as above. There is real shit with health, business, finances, family. It has been the kind of year where 'do I take a nap first or not' literally meant the difference between actual life and death, and that was when I could still count the days in 2017 on the fingers of one hand; 'pretty sure you're not going to die' didn't actually come until I could fill up both hands and had to start in on toes. (Several times since, I've regretted not choosing the nap, but I'm still here. As I mentioned elsethread at some point, that I'm still here to get in stupid arguments and make an ass of myself is a bigger and more meaningful victory than any I'd get in an argument here, or that somebody would get over me, particularly since I kinda feel that whole approach is pretty dumb, and perspective is a thing.) Ultimately, I'm not just thrashing around in a flail about meanie heads on the internet not loving me enough or something derpy along those lines. Most of it I don't bring up for the same reason I won't out somebody else's RL shit: privacy counts for something, and it's just not relevant around here (or ideally should not be).

When I knew shit was going sideways I stepped out of games because I was not going to risk blowing up at people on games, period. I don't want to shit on anybody's fun RP times that way and could not guarantee to my own satisfaction that I wouldn't potentially do that. I figured I'd work on a project off in the corner for a while and talk to folks here, and, well... everybody knows how that went, and I realized quickly it was not a time to tackle that project, either. It was, essentially, not time to be asking for input about something I care about if I didn't want things to go horribly wrong, which is pretty clear in hindsight. I still think the ideas are good and if I ever can get my groove back I'll pick it up again. Maybe people will trust me enough to come play, and maybe they won't, and I know that's ultimately on me no matter what anybody else may have said or done; if they don't, maybe the structure and setup will be useful to somebody else when it's done, and that would be pretty damn cool, too.

So, lots of empathy on shit getting worse. I am sorry to hear that because, damn, dude. Nobody deserves that. Even if I'm pissed as hell at somebody, I don't want their actual life to suck. I can say we're in the same boat there in a lot of ways.

Anyway, textwobble is kicking in hard. Going to STFU for a bit with stupid horror movies and knitting.

Be good to you, man. No bullshit. I'mma just say that you are often too hard on yourself and this is where a lot of stuff flows from. It is OK to be good to you. I hope, at least, somebody typing that out loud might help, even if just a little. I still think you deserve to be happy, for whatever it's worth.

@faraday That's actually the biggest difference I see between here and WORA. Here, it's ideas and actions that get grilled and shredded, and usually with nowhere near the levels of vitriol common to any incarnation of WORA. WORA, it was people, full stop.

Perfect? No. But an enormous change for the better.

@Meg Hate to say it, but when I'm getting dogpiled and every mound of insults slung in my face is upvoted to the heavens, it's pretty clear that behavior is being cheered and lauded, not merely deemed acceptable. And, again, I can't even fucking apologize to someone without being a pile of shit for doing it. Doesn't exactly incline me toward being terribly apologetic or forgiving.

@shangexile ...yeah.

Guys, uh. We are treating each other like humans and such. There is zero need to dogpile him; please don't. What he ultimately did was hard, and it was a good thing. Anybody angry with him on my account, please be aware that very awkward fence is trending toward mending, and that I would sincerely appreciate it if people didn't pour fuel on any perceived fires in that regard. He's not being a dick right now; please do not treat him like he is. Let's maybe try to let the few small decent human beings gains going on survive, at least in this case.

I would be grateful, and grateful enough I will go fuck off for a while and STFU, ok?

I keep in touch with the original 'Jaded Gamer' from time to time on facebook. (I am almost never on facebook, so it's kinda rare.) In the last few times we spoke, a while back, he wasn't happy with where the original thing went, because it seemed like the monsters that had once been held up for exposure? Well, everybody else became monsters, too, as things went more than a little too far. I agreed with that, and still do.

There's a difference between talking about something shitty that someone has done, and endlessly fucking with that person because of it, and the old WORA had more of that going on that a lot of people could stomach. There, however, calling it out was just painting a target on one's own head.

Not so much the case here. Logs of "Look at this stupid rule on this game! Ha ha ha see how I trolled them about it?" do not get a warm welcome here, and for good reason: actually fucking with people just because you don't like their decisions or choices is not cool, it's not justified. Discussing the stupid rule here is a different thing entirely, particularly if it does not dissolve into personal attacks on an individual. We have plenty of folks who seem totally keen on personal attacks anyway (I've fallen into that trap myself, usually 'omg wtf with your reading comprehension?!' kinds of shit, which is about as far as those kinds of things go here anyway). We do not see things like the old picture of Jessica Rabbit in her underwear, drunkenly passed out in a hallway with her legs spread and propped against the walls, which was the kind of personal attack WORA was famous for.

Agreed with Gany on this one.

It's one of those questions you can't say no to without being the bad guy, and those suck.

Like, I get shit being derailed for actual emergencies, but that doesn't strike me as an emergency.

And, really, in an actual emergency, nobody's stopping to ask if anybody else is cool with dealing with it, because the need to deal with it is self-evident from the jump.

@Gingerlily said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

@surreality

It is great that that exists, I hope it takes off.

Agreed that people have different opinions on what bashing is. I know what mine is, but I also know it is not shared by any kind of majority. I feel like it can't be that hard to figure out...we have to offer feedback in other areas of life and generally I feel likr most people don't start with 'Bob you are an idiot, everything you do sucks probably because you are just a worthless, pointless person' That is really crass, implies a major lack of reflection or emotional regulation on the speaker's behalf, and provides no feedback that Bob can use. As we have visited before in this thread, what we often witness here is not an attempt to give feedback but to trash talk those who we feel wronged us or generally dislike for the sheer pleasure of it.

I really do not see much of what you're describing here at all. Maybe it's just because that was absolutely almost every exchange on WORA, and it is pretty dang different here.

And I say this knowing I have a raging rant of venting right here: http://musoapbox.net/topic/1472/confidence-vs-egotistical-bullshit-the-claim-game-overcompensation-invulnerability-pissing-contests-cults-of-personality-name-dropping-and-so-on?page=1

...and nobody's named there. Behaviors are called out with zero punches pulled and a heck of a lot of vitriol, but I could probably rattle off a half a dozen offenders there for each as all are hardly unique, so they aren't vaguebooking specific targets. It's probably one of the meanest posts on the forum, and what you're describing is simply not at all there.

@Derp Irony: this is hydrocodone. Which knocks normally people flat to snooze off whatever. Me? Nawp. All the awake all the times. So glad yesterday was the last of it. I'mma sleep all tomorrow if I can. Dumbest biochemistry ever.

@Thenomain That's how I feel about HERO, pretty much.

@WildBaboons There should also be a 'I love making characters places then never get around to actually playing them' faction.

I ended up doing a fair bit of this trying to get interested in something before I gave up, but I know a few others have mentioned really liking the idea of coming up with a character and building it, but then kinda hit the grid and suddenly everything's a bit meh.

@ThatGuyThere I would abuse that to hilarious ends.

I would absolutely turn them into henchmen, just to see the day they wake up to realize: "OMG, we're the bad guys, guys!"

I am sometimes a really horrible human being.

@tragedyjones When the fluffbutt requires that (she needs one this year 'cause it's hot enough) we refer to her as 'Cator', after 'Ator' of MST3k 'Cave Dwellers' fame...

...because in addition to the mane and flufftail, they usually leave the big fluffy moon boot feets.

@Lisse24 The wiki thing is mostly what I've been doing; getting all the frameworks built for stuff. Ideally? I want people to be able to add their own odd creatures and creations (not for actual character classes, but just weirdness out there for NPCs and critters and so on) and crazy lore/etc. for the world and building all of the guidelines for that along with the tools to do it has been a huge job.

I still think it's downright impressive there's already implications of staff corruption and favoritism for a game that doesn't even have its actually game system finished yet, but I guess I am trying to break new ground. (Not sure 'get accused of favoritism before there's even a PC parent finished' is the ground I wanted to break... )

The primary reason I'm asking focused questions is because for the most part, with some folks pitching in with code help, or 'could you skim this and make sure it reads like English' asked of a random friend once in a blue moon, this is a one (wo)man project at the moment. It is a fuckton of work. I simply do not have time to derail into abstract theories on grid design for a full day to satisfy hand-wringing re: an issue that is never going to have an answer that pleases everyone anyway if this is ever going to actually get done to the point that things can be posted for that level of nit-picking and argument.

Much eye-cross, much migraine.

Seriously, the old farts faction should have an image of Betty White, in a rocking chair with a shotgun, and with Grumpycat on her lap, Bond-villain style.

I am way too lazy to photoshop this, but I hope someone does, some day.

Final clarification on grid design, which is not changing, if this is a deal-breaker for you, please move on:

I refuse to consider a single fish-only underwater bar as something even slightly detrimental to a game, which was the initial example provided. No, that example is not something I see as a problem, not even the tiniest of problems. Were this example a genuine problem of some kind, the very idea of a faction-only or sphere-only hangout would be anathema throughout the hobby, and yet they're everywhere, and serve a functional purpose.

I'll happily go on record to be clear: some areas will only be accessible or readily accessible by certain character types, members of certain factions, and so on. This is and has been the case on every single game on which I have ever played save for Shangrila and Akashat, and even Shangrila has some faction-only areas in which others are not permitted or are not permitted without a faction member escort.

The vast majority of the grid can be used at any time by the vast majority of characters without any fancy hoop-jumping involved.

@Meg

edit: and nobody even has to feel bad about using some old guy's pic -- apparently it's a special effects prop for something.