Best posts made by surreality

Continuing in the theme of 'am an enemy of joy':

• Alts are permitted.
• No sphere caps.
• No special-restricted-app-only character classes. If staff or staff's buddies can have a PC of it, so can absolutely anybody else.
• Alts are tentatively capped at 5 (it will not go lower than this, I'm resisting suggestions for higher as well but it will not go lower than this) with the usual CoI rules in place. You can only play one of any type of thing, unless it's a Mundane Human; you can have five Mundane Humans if you want, provided you stick to the CoI rules you have to stick to anyway. You can say 'fuck the humans, they suck!' and play five different kinds of fish people if you want.
• Actual historical figures are not allowed as PCs but may be referred to in backgrounds. (I got raided by Blackbeard! I lost a drinking contest to Mary Read! Etc.)
• Backgrounds are actually not required, since it only asks for a brief overview of the character and what you want to be doing with them! ...but you can write one for extra starting points if you feel like it. (This last added simply because I knew the moment I mentioned backgrounds someone would ask.)

p.s. In totally unrelated news I am really kinda disturbed that there was a chart I could reference about fish sex so readily available.

@mietze I'm counting MOOs, too. My first year was MOOs, Ghostwheel and Cybersphere.

@bored said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

In general, the hobby has very little faith in 'staff picks who gets to play the speshuls.' Clearly even @surreality is somewhat aware of this difficulty, given her above clarification on who gets what (that makes your whole comment pretty unnecessary and a very big derail - good work!)

That everything is open to everyone has never been remotely secret or obscured.

That game I rant on about doing as much as possible to take power out of staff's hands, and make sure the only staff only info is alts, IP info, the resolution of plots in progress (by players or staff), and complaints to remove as much of the power disparity between staff and players as possible? Yeah, that'd be this game.

That game I rant on about being open sheet? With all sheets on wiki, where if and when anybody changes any stats on it, absolutely everyone can read the page history and see if there is any funny business going on? That is this game.

Yeah, totally how shit goes down when somebody's keen on playing favorites: make absolutely everything as public as you can so if anybody has something shady on 'em, the whole world can see it.

And no. I was not joking around about mermaid sex, because frankly the initial gif thing came off pretty rude and dismissive in combination with all the negativity. I gave an answer because sooner or later, someone else was going to ask again, and like I said, I prefer to only answer something once whenever possible.

I am also still not buying that it wasn't an accusation. If it was a concern, you could have asked a question about accessibility instead of slinging that shit. No, I didn't ask @Ganymede to bring it up. No, I still don't buy your logic. That the guy who pulled this (confirmed, btw) is the one upvoting you there? Should maybe tell you something about how you're coming across.

It would be kinda fun to make a timeline post, somehow, somewhere, and let people post their start year.

Maybe a poll with a bajillion options.

@bored Fine. I'll go point by point on this.

1. I've been yammering on at length for about a year or two now about working up a wiki-based system that would, because it's the way wiki works, provide incredible measures of transparency. Essentially, even XP spend logs would be visible, since every change to a sheet would be viewable by all and sundry. I also really like the idea of creating tools that enable players to access to and ability to add to all of the game info other than the specific resolution to plots-in-progress, because nothing sucks harder than 'no you can't run that cool thing you put a lot of thought into that would be piles of fun for a bunch of people because OMG GAME SEKRIT THAT CANNOT BE DISCLOSED, because this is the ultimate in suck. I get yelled at about this enough that I figured this is not exactly a mystery or secret to anybody.

2. Cool!

3. No, slut-shaming isn't the concern at all. People are absolutely going to go there, and... honestly I genuinely just don't care if, when, or how they do. There's a 'don't be a slut-shaming douche' policy file on the game, but the bigger and more important file on the game is 'please do not make us ever have to care about what TS you or someone else is having, it's not our business and if you're not one of the people typing it it is probably not your business either'. Will there be notes on how/if/when/why various non-human things reproduce? Probably a sentence or two. It can be summarized pretty easily: there's one kind of fishypeople that has a snowball's chance in hell at interbreeding with anything human because they're the closest to still being human themselves, but it's still a pretty slim chance. This is the Lovecraft stuff in total: the concept of something akin to the Deep Ones bribing a human society with shinies for broodstock and slave labor. Translated, that means this location is 'the most recent place where the thing that directs that shit decided to go about it', but since it was a few hundred years back by now, there's already enough of a population of the fish things to self-sustain for the most part and as that happens, the inter-compatibility drastically fades. (This is also because the first time somebody goes all 'sweet and precious human hybrid merbaby d'awwwwww' all over the channels and drags it into every scene on grid I might actually have to shoot myself in the head; we only have airsoft guns in the house, and that would take a really long time to accomplish the desired end.) That's the sum total of the Lovecraft inspiration, other than the really old mer-things that are, after thousands of years of this crap, really pretty good at making shiny objects that are useful to bribe us greedy humans with. No end of the world, no giant tentacle gods, no Cthulhu (unless @Coin still wants that as a staff name), no Misaktonic University, no Necronomicon, just that vague concept, which is a variation on the Innsmouth/Merrow/Deep Ones theme without any the other Lovecraft universe dragged screaming and unwelcomely along with it.

4. I'm fine with that explanation. I'm also a little frustrated that the first words posted were 'hey, I am not crowdsourcing all the things, please don't do that here, when stuff's ready to be discussed I will happily post that' and immediately... nope. Since part of what I'm doing right now is trying to determine, specifically, how to write directions on the various wiki forms so they'll be as fool-proof and clear as possible, this is especially discouraging, really. Do you all know that? Naw, but dang, if somebody says, "I am focusing on specific questions and am not interested in everybody's universal game wishlists or demands for how things must be or all is lost", it is pretty irritating for that to be more or less the first pile of stuff that appears. Have I been my own worst enemy in this thread somewhat? Sure, and I'm cool letting that stand and letting people draw their own conclusions. It is also a case of 'being your own worst enemy' to completely disregard things like the above, because usually, if someone says, "I am not prepared to go there, when I am I will let you know," and you still go there? You are, actually, being somewhat disrespectful of what's being asked (which is not a good sign) and potentially being a self-important 'I'm an exception, clearly' sort of dick. When this behavior occurs on a game, or pretty much anywhere else, there's a reason people roll their eyes and groan, why it makes everything take ten times longer than it needs to, and why it makes what should be happy fun exchanges of ideas an exercise in frustration and annoyance. This is like going to the annual business budget meeting and insisting that before anybody can get down to brass tacks of discussing ideas to improve the budget, everybody needs to get their uniform sizes for the company softball team to the guy in the mailroom that's going to pick them up next week. Conversation will wander where it will, but don't be shocked if the people trying to discuss the budget at the meeting just sorta stare at you with an irritated squint.

5. If we're going to talk about paranoia? The assumption that staff is going to give a pile of perks to their friends before there is even a game or before there is even an actual staff is pretty high on the list. Here's the quote: "(and everyone will be magic whatsits unless you make them snowflake staff-friend only)". Did it ever occur to you that there might be magic things human characters can do that fish-things can't? 'cause that's a thing. Or that there might be drawbacks to being a fish-thing that not all players may not feel are worth it? 'cause that's a thing, too. Nope, just the race to all the cliche assumptions. There is a reason it is annoying to have the worst assumptions slung around, and have to sit here for hours on end trying to say, "Uh, no, there's no Cthulhu... " because that shit is being slung around so much and so on when I would really rather be getting shit done so it can be shown to people and the actual issues with the actual material can be addressed, not this fear-based mental construct of what it surely must be or entail. If you can't understand why that's annoying, I can't help you, and you can keep calling me defensive, paranoid, desperate to be popular, or whatever else.

6. Nope. But when the person who decided to upvote your attack posts is someone who has admitted to actively trying to harass me over the past few days? Maybe that's something to take into account when it comes to how you're coming across. (The moment I mentioned it, he apparently upvoted more or less every other post in the thread -- seriously, that is a bit more the target you're looking for in terms of people being hyper-reactive to that sort of thing. Also, frankly... creepy as fuck.)

7. If I was worried about that, I would have deleted this post instead of saying, "I'd really appreciate it if this could be locked, I'd delete it but if people want to review this thread and decide I'm an asshole because of it for some reason, it should be left on the record for them to do so." Definitely the behavior of someone desperate for approval and afraid of criticism, to be sure. (Again, with the accusations and assumptions, though. Dude, seriously.)

@Arkandel The 'wave' around me when I started was mostly people playing from college.

Not everyone actually had a computer in the house in the mid-90s, and could only ever play from the school's computer lab, which is a completely alien reality for a lot of people today.

Many, once they graduated, never turned up again. By the time they could get a computer on a fresh grad salary with loans to pay back and their new adult rent/mortgage, who had the time or even really cared any more (in their cases)?

@bored said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):
...I think three and four might be swapped, I dunno, eyes crossing at this point. I am tired as hell, because all forum whatever aside, this week is special, so I'm just going to stick with this:

6. That's nice. I believe that he was upvoting me in lieu of downvoting you because that option doesn't exist and the internet is full of trolls and dicks. But creating any sort of equivalence between me and your stalker because he happens to upvote my post? Yeah, no, fuck that noise and fuck you if you're essentially likening me to some sexual predator.

That wasn't what I was in any way trying to imply. Dude was never any kind of sexual predator, just a very mean-spirited troll. There's a link to his trolling craziness... somewhere in scrollback at this point.

"The person who seems to think fucking with me for sport thinks your posts are super awesome, maybe think about that." is as far as that goes. Zero sexual anything about anybody... at all. Not even pretend fish people. As in: the person who has been a trolling asshat for sport thinks you're doing a great job right now. I am not alone in reading things... not so kindly here, in your posts, either. I dunno, man. 'Maybe check your tone some if abusive trolls are cheering you on and you don't intend to be coming off as accusatory and hostile' is something I figured was clear enough on its own without getting into any psycho-sexual stalker territory. (In all seriousness, that is not a subject I have any desire to go into with anyone this week in particular including close RL friends and family, and would not be bringing it up even abstractly here, least of all for some vastly misplaced hyperbole.)

And quite frankly? Yes, you're annoying the shit out of me today because instead of actually getting to work on the game, I've had to spend a pile of time playing whack-a-mole addressing all of the worst case scenarios and fear-based assumptions you keep shooting off like you filled a potato gun with buckshot and pointed it at the thread. This is the kind of stuff I am talking about:

@bored said in [Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed)]

I'm not sure how personally hyped I am on aliens and Cthulhu (it's overdone to hell and always = vague world ending plots which are basically the stupidest plots)

@bored said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

'What is that, lieutenant? (pronounced with a suitable British f)'
'Ah, sir, I believe it's a small band of fishmen riding seahorses'
'How terribly uncouth. Very well, you may fire when ready.'
'Jolly good, sir.'

I dunno. Then there's what someone already mentioned about it basically being a proven MUSH law that you cannot split up your playing population so I don't know how you have PC versions of any of these things that aren't just traipsing around town with everyone else, also leading to the above.

@bored said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

Even if everyone is a werefish (and everyone will be magic whatsits unless you make them snowflake staff-friend only), well, then its a game about werefish.

@bored said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

I started off saying you'd likely have me as a curious player despite the flaws, I don't know that anything I'm saying is mean or nasty. I don't know how I'm saying that your game is doomed to fail (I'm pretty sure I've literally implied no such thing anywhere). This is getting to 'simply cannot criticize at all' territory.

...seriously. Buckshot. I could keep going here, but I think maybe you'll begin to see my point. Every one of these things you are flinging out there as a 'truism' not only either is not a truism, or is just a worst case scenario about content. Notice none of the 'I don't like it!' stuff is singled out here -- because, hey, cool, that's fine. @il-volpe said as much and notice how that was fine? Because he wasn't firing off the insistences that everything's going to be end of the world or trite bullshit or Cthulhu or or or or or or or or... and so on. Buckshot made of hand-wringing worst case scenarios, which tend to be things that need to be addressed in some fashion, because otherwise, people assume, 'oh, yeah, that again', whether that's true or false, and then everybody just assumes and nobody ever reads.

This is not being defensive. It is being annoyed as hell that instead of waiting a little while to see what the thing is and how much that sucks, you seem eager to begin a bashing based on what you assume it will be and the worst aspects of all of those things. This sticks me in the position of badly explaining shit on the fly that I've already had to budget 2-3 RL months toward getting down in a draft form that I think will be ready for a rough review, and that is a shitty position to be in.

There's a reason I asked folks to not go galavanting down those roads yet: they aren't even leveled, let alone paved, there are no maps or street signs, and the best answers anybody's going to get on those subjects are going to be about as useful as the directions you'd get mumbled out in broken English in a heavy accent by a drunken old coot at the gas station who uses the places where things didn't used to be as their landmarks. (Read: good luck getting anywhere with it.)

Bash it to bits based on what it actually is with wild abandon if you want to. Seriously. Sledge at will when the actual information is available.

Slinging shit around because of what you're afraid something might be is crap, though.

Edit: FWIW, this is totally nothing compared to what I expect when people see the wiki. Anybody who likes minimalism, yeah, there'll be a second minimalist skin for it, but holy shit will the minimalists hate me like burning for the default. It is seriously apt for the baroque era to the extent that its nickname is 'baroquen'. (Read it out loud if you gotta.)

@Arkandel I will still grudgewank you in spirit for derail (not really but I'll say I will if it helps)?

The only actual front page art (other than a lot of gilded picture frames and an old map background image) is this, which is people-less. So that at least is safe!

...I hope? I suppose if someone had a very flowers and friendly lovey dovey family sort of workplace the skulls might be troublesome, but there's no nudity. Would not recommend browsing while running a daycare, however.

@Arkandel I'mma just say: I want that island. Like whoa. That is all. And that outfit on said island was entertainingly Sith Lord. Which should not be spoilery, for there are many islands and many outfits, but it may provide a giggle if someone hasn't seen it yet, for when they do, because the one I mean will be obvious as hell.

@bored said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

OK. I clicked through the one link you gave and skimmed a couple lines and there was something-something about rape (and his handle is shang related).

REAP, not rape. That is not a typo. Dude would create a character, play for like... two days, then +suicide the character only to repeat the process (endlessly) for like... years. So he got the nickname 'the serial REAPist, because he... kept reaping his characters over and over again. Like it even says in the damn post.

And quite frankly? Yes, you're annoying the shit out of me today because instead of actually getting to work on the game, I've had to spend a pile of time playing whack-a-mole addressing all of the worst case scenarios and fear-based assumptions

I haven't made you do anything, you're spending your time as you choose. If you think I'm just a troll, the proper response is to ignore me, which you've failed spectacularly at despite numerous opportunities. You've re-engaged once I've stopped at least twice (including very start of this whole thing). And if I'm 'forcing' you to address issues... sorry that the hobby has issues? I didn't create them, and I hate to break it to you but you'd have to address them at some point anyway.

No, because It's seriously hyperbole.

You quote me 4 times without finding even more than 3 actual complaints. My 'buckshot' approach boils down to: 1) I don't like aliens/Cthulhu.

And if you had said "I don't like aliens/Cthulhu' instead of 'it's always end of the world plots and Cthulhu (when the latter isn't even a thing)', not a peep. Nope, you went to assumption land.

2. Cthlulu spawn are probably going to be most of the playerbase which takes it further away from the setting for me.

Which, again... the C word is not present. Further? Again, not what was said, and it's right there in the quote: suggestions of staff favoritism or that nobody would have any reason to bother with anything else.

3. Don't split your population (which, again, is good advice and not a hostile criticism.) The funny thing is you've actually addressed all these issues pretty well, and if you left it to that, your thread wouldn't be such a tire fire.

And if people didn't begin with completely ignoring what I asked folks to focus on and didn't insist that a single bar that not every character on the grid would access would be an enormous problem, maybe we wouldn't be here.

This is not being defensive.

I'm sure.

No, I am annoyed as hell.

It is being annoyed as hell that instead of waiting a little while to see what the thing is and how much that sucks, you seem eager to begin a bashing based on what you assume it will be and the worst aspects of all of those things. This sticks me in the position of badly explaining shit on the fly that I've already had to budget 2-3 RL months toward getting down in a draft form that I think will be ready for a rough review, and that is a shitty position to be in.

There's a reason I asked folks to not go galavanting down those roads yet: they aren't even leveled, let alone paved, there are no maps or street signs, and the best answers anybody's going to get on those subjects are going to be about as useful as the directions you'd get mumbled out in broken English in a heavy accent by a drunken old coot at the gas station who uses the places where things didn't used to be as their landmarks. (Read: good luck getting anywhere with it.)

Bash it to bits based on what it actually is with wild abandon if you want to. Seriously. Sledge at will when the actual information is available.

Slinging shit around because of what you're afraid something might be is crap, though.

Re: all of this since you're basically saying the same thing a bunch of times:

Look. I get that it's unfinished, but you chose to show off your unfinished project.

I specifically and explicitly did not show off the project, and stated so clearly. If I was showing off the project, you'd have a link to the wiki. You do not.

I asked three questions based on a series of general criteria, the end. You have not been shown shit other than a logo image, you rampaging jackass.

Honestly? Fuck you, and fuck this.

@Ghost oh sweet jeebus I actually choked on a muffin at that

@Ganymede The logo is up on imgur there if anyone wants it for anything; grab at will. The wiki and MUX have a backup, but they're already otherwise gone.

I was already on my way out the door after the friend jacking me around six ways to Sunday for months, and I'd hoped to get the game theory stuff and whatnot done, up, and available before checking the fuck out to hopefully leave something useful behind, but really, I have no patience for the kind of bullshit going down with all the crazy assumptions and failures of reading comprehension.

If anyone wants to read that as an inability to take criticism, please, have at -- criticize what @bored imagines it absolutely definitely was so totally going to be all you like, or, you know, how much of a cunt I am, I guess -- but I am seriously just done at this juncture.

@Arkandel Agreed. This is not, like, a general announcement to make.

I can see saying that in not-all-caps or something to someone who keeps trying to talk to you about it and you're like, 'er, I don't watch that and am not into it, so I dunno what you're talking about.'

I've been like that about anime series friends of mine will not stop yapping about, re: "No, I really don't know what you're referencing, 'cause I'm not watching that, y'all." but, y'know, politely and one on one an' shit.

I realize it's, you know, downright silly of me to ask that anybody respect my wishes about anything, but if you could take the discussion of your 7S game dev to a thread of its own, that'd show at least a minor smidgen of class. Thanks.

@Ghost Have I mentioned lately that I love your SO? Because I do. And that's just from stories and some briefly overhead stuffs thrown into a convo once. That woman is solid gold.

@bored And oh so many things that weren't.

@Ghost As much as I used to joke that I would have sworn that Ancient Cat understood English, I...

...she demanded to be referred to only as THE IMPERIAL OVERLORD.

What? She literally would not respond to anything else, like most cats. 'Your Majestic Imperial Overlord' and swear to gods that creature would start to purr like a motor before deigning to look at whoever had said it. It was like, 'yes, supplicant, that will suffice to warrant my attention, you may proceed to address me further'.

@bored What was that about nobody getting up make up the rules in a thread? <head-scratches> I know somebody was going on about that somewhere...

I expected 'Deadly Class' to be complete bullshit and garbage.

I am pleasantly surprised with the pilot.

It's gonzo. It's somewhat surreal. If you can't deal with 'over the top', skip this one. It doesn't seem to be as impossibly absurd as Wanted, but it seems to lean that way.

It's set in the 80s and not only hits on many modern critiques of the flaws of the 80s, but does it in a way that doesn't flinch away from the characters having some of those biases, too. (It appears to be trending in a direction that suggests these biases will be addressed, rather than glorified.)

I want to see where this one goes.