Best posts made by surreality

Locked into anything as a forever would suck. And any age group being a sole focus is... I can see how it could work for some places based in a high school, a college, or similar tightly-focused setting. (I mean, heck, a game based in a retirement home for superheroes could potentially be neat as hell on a variety of levels, on the opposite end of the spectrum.)

If it's just <town>, though? Meh. Let people play the age they want, within some sensible limits. (For me, that's just 16+ so it doesn't exclude the possibility for 'stupid teenagers' from a generalized 'everybody in town'.)

All the for pics of black kitties on Halloween. (Happy Halloween, y'all!)

One of the furballs we're looking at to hopefully adopt is a black kitty, and she's adorable. We've been waiting to hear back from them to find out if she and her even poufier adorable sister are still with them. Fingers crossed!

I'mma just go on record and say that having spoken to both of them generally on and off, both @Ghost and @tek are both pretty cool people, explosions or not.

@Seraphim73's approach to creating crews for T8S is actually ideal for the pack problem in a MUX setting: establish pre-set, open-to-join packs with territories, a specific scope and theme/focus/founding intent, and you can have the large, sprawling packs described in the books that are factions on the game, but are NPC-led at the alpha level.

You end up with border squabbles (which can be awesome) but less active land-grab territory PK crusades (which are way less awesome), you have active and ongoing potential for team-ups for crossover focus area issues or regional concerns, and you have the kind of internal politics (which are realistic and can be compelling as hell) that are far less likely in a 'we're all buddies so let's make a pack!' environment.

@Miss-Demeanor said:

is prepping for Spooky Empire's Halloween con in Orlando Last time there was Tom Savini and Bill Moseley... this year, there is original Fright Night cast reunion AND RHPS cast reunion. And George Romero is a staple there. Every year. God I love getting to talk to all the people I have watched so many times. still clings to her Moseley and Savini autographed pictures Malcolm McDowell, Tony Todd, Neve Campbell, Julian Sands, Skeet Ulrich, the creepy dead twins from The Shining... its shaping up to be an EXCELLENT con this year.

OMG... so much envy. That sounds amazing.

@Sunny said:

That being a grownup means when I have a really, really bad day...I can have ice cream for lunch, and nobody can stop me. HA.

Eating ice cream in a bubble bath: the thing your parents would never let you do there's actually no good reason not to do (provided you have plastic bowls and/or don't drop all the things ever), and a million good reasons to do you discover the moment you do it. It's like the official cure for a bad day.

Happy good thing: OMG I finally tweaked that stupid wiki code bit that was driving me bonkers. There's always that onnnnnnnnnne thing that is just crazy-making, and once it's hammered into sense, everything suddenly seems to go so much better.

@lordbelh First, thank you for reading that as intended -- which was genuinely not meant as an attack. (That's genuinely appreciated, zero snark.)

I won't rehash anything from there beyond 'I think there are other trade offs that balance things out provided there are ethical folks who endeavor to be self-aware and have good check-and-balance folks around them', which I think will also be helpful for this thread.

And we're on the same page about spotlights; IMHO, good leadership = giving as many people as possible (no matter who they are, and I mean that in the 'friend or foe, ally or enemy' etc. sense) the chance to let their characters shine. That does include staff -- but there is an element of sacrifice there in that I feel 'if somebody else wants something done or is equally suited to the spotlight, best practice is to give way to the player'.

Once in a while, if you've never had 'your turn' (which should have the same time/importance or lack thereof/etc. as anybody else's) it's fine to step in, but really... that's best suited to 'I'm off doing a fun thing over here with a few buds that is absolutely not game-critical/metaplot/a major mover of game action/etc.', which absolutely everyone on the game should be as empowered as possible to do, on their own or with outside help, and they should be provided as many tools and as much support as possible to do so.

@ganymede Exactly. I wouldn't suggest that approach for anything other than a werewolf-only game, to be honest.

It's not mentioned to try to pitch it -- I don't think anybody should expand their scope beyond where they want it to be, no matter what that scope is -- but as a comment on the tangent about how werewolf just can't work period on a MUX.

(@Scorn and I are on and off kicking around something like this using that approach, but so very slowly and as a 'mayyyyyybe some day'.)

Surgery checkin went... meh? Four of six posts are aces, better than expected.

The other two, not so much. Not a real shock since this is where they splintered the bone all over the place doing the extractions. They had to remove them to ideally see if the bone will heal over in order to redo them later.

If they don't, it's time for bone grafts.

Painkillers are warranted when people yank metal out of your skull and abrade bone. They are not happening.

On the upside, no painkiller frenzy.

On the downside, that shit exists for a reason, namely, serious fucking pain.

Ow.

@Lotherio said in Historical Mu* - Looking for interested Staff:

@deadculture said in Historical Mu* - Looking for interested Staff:

I recommend 'Lions of al-Rassan' as a source, by Guy Gavriel Kay.

I'll check out the book, but if it goes to alt'earth then I'd prefer just more original, just fascimile of the time and location with idealistic view and romanticized over accuracy and inaccuracy.

I'll second this recommendation. For what it's worth, that book was quite literally impossible for me to put down once I picked it up in a way no book has been before it or since. (It is very sneaky about cliffhanging its chapter breaks!!!)

One of the things I've watched shift drastically over the years -- it's one of those pendulum issues in the hobby that seems to swing from one extreme to the other -- is how people handle bad actors on games.

We know, collectively, that there are some toxic folks in the hobby, or folks who commonly demonstrate some exceptionally toxic behavior for whatever reason. (Some of these reasons may be more understandable or sympathetic than others, but that's a separate issue, and this one has plenty already. The reasons why may be good fodder for another thread, but aren't meant to be the focus here.)

How would you define or identify bad behavior?

How much bad behavior would it take for you to identify someone as a bad actor (rather than 'the average person who screws up sometimes and generally will feel bad about it when they realize that they have done so, and try to make it right')? Does it have to be a specific sort of behavior to cross this line?

How do you feel it best to handle known bad actors (by your own definition as above, there's no need for broad consensus that someone is problematic, ex: Spider/Rex/Elsa/Custodius/etc.) being allowed access to a game at the outset? Pre-bans? Pre-bans for some, new chance for others? New chance for everyone?

If -- either because they were allowed on under a new chance principle, or snuck on, or never realized they weren't welcome in the first place and just showed up -- a bad actor appears on the game, how do you handle this? This is from the player, staff, and general perspective (if they're the same for both). This can be anything from 'ignore it' to 'ban instantly' to 'keep an extra eye on them' to 'avoid them' to anything else you can think of.

As staff, how do you want players to handle this? As a player, how would you want staff to handle this? (Not actually the same question as above.)

Do you have concerns that the presence of a bad actor on a game will inspire bad behavior in others? (This can be through following that person's behavior model, or starting a gossip circle, or spawning arguments somewhere that spill all over the game, etc.) If so, at what point does this become an issue in its own right, and what do you do about it?

This is in constructive for a reason; please keep this in mind! While examples of bad behavior are very likely going to come up, this is not a place for specific call-outs re: game behavior; please try to provide examples without naming names if you can. (Doubly helpful, because not all of us have direct experience with any of the various problem children in the hobby, so knowing the bad actions really is more important than knowing who the bad actor is.)

I know the hoops I would have to jump through to get a square. We have to use my mother's for our business. We still have medical debt/etc. and while that persists we don't qualify, and I fully understand why that's the case even if it bites me in the ass.

That person may be borrowing someone else's also, so I'm not going to jump to conclusions here.

If not? Their bank account and financials are in better standing than ours, which we've been working steadily for years to fix at this point so we can do this for our business.

@deadculture said in Historical Mu* - Looking for interested Staff:

@Lotherio Trust me, Lions of al-Rassan is everything you need, bundled in a setting. It's a great read, too. Has all the romantic parts you want to put in a MU loosely based on upon the Reconquista.

Seconding this. This book holds a special place in my heart for many reasons. It was the first of Kay's books I read, and any time something is 'the first of', you know it had to be good. (The other bit is such a wild and crazy tangent it'd scramble brains, so I'll refrain. <snerk>)

@ghost said in Bad Actors, and Bad Behavior (extended):

We can all agree that a doxxer, stalker, or sexual harasser is bad, and no one likes to be made fun of, but if we're going to discuss negative behavior and the poor ways that people treat each other on games, we should probably ask ourselves if by dragging people's characters, wikis, and descriptions through the mud, are the people doing this not being bad themselves?

This is what the last question is about in a nutshell, yep.

It isn't as much about the forums, though, as it is about behavior on games. Plenty of people engage in the forums but aren't on any games at any given time, and plenty of people -- great and terrible -- are on games and not the forums.

The forums vs. games convo really isn't really the intended focus here, though as much as how to handle things on games is, and the forums are no different than any other game-external communication mediums (skype, discord, facebook, voice calls, etc.) in that regard. 'Using out-of-game communication broadly' is a factor, yes, but this isn't a thread intended to be in any way about forum policing, and I'd like to gently steer away from that one. (There are plenty of existing arguments about that elsewhere on the boards, and I don't see this coming back from that frequent tangent if it gets too deep.)

@wahoo I think people -- anyone, literally -- should use whatever tech they can.

This specific piece of tech, however, comes with an indication of a certain level of means and access to stable forms of untouched money/etc. and that's specifically noteworthy.

There may be similar 'questionable' variants available out there that are indistinguishable to the casual observer or are less regulated, and this would be a security concern for me personally.

Can help, but still out of town and useless until Monday at the earliest. (In novice finger typing land until then.)

@ixokai said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

Social is more nuanced then 'can aim and fire a gun'. Social involves a lot of particulars. I've had more then one woman or utterly incompatible character try to seduce a gay character of mine in the past: I'm not joking, not making euphemisms. I've had a lady roll seduction on my queer ass.

This is always a good example. (Not trying to single you out here.) How differently would you react if, instead of that character trying to get in your pants for info, they sent an NPC (or a PC they convince to do it) to get into your pants for info that's male?

I'm betting hard that there's a much better chance of you being willing to go along with that (which would be the same for most folks, I'd think).

That high social score should inform female seductress 'this isn't going to work due to improper equipment, I need the right tool for this job to get what I want' just like high firearms is going to inform ace sniper that a twig and the word 'bang' isn't going to blow a hole in someone; they also need the right tool for that job.

The problem is rarely purely a matter of agency, it's a matter of how much more agency is removed in the way many people handle social rolls, and have historically handled them.

@JinShei YEP, that is familiar. I end up getting that, too. Thankfully, just with the catnip mouse... (she's caught a real one, so it could have been worse?)

"OH HI, YOU'RE AWAKE NOW, WE CAN PLAY!"

@faraday That's actually taking it a step further along the same principle, really.

The point I'm making on the whole isn't a 'this is how you fix it', but a 'this is the most broken aspect of this people have to confront'. Namely, people don't even get to the different kinds of guns point. When it comes to social, they want 'point a stick and say "bang"' to accomplish the job for them, when that's something we'd consider completely absurd (even if we thought any gun would work for any shot, we know we at least need a gun).

@JinShei Considering that adorable pup, I can't blame you! I'd be won over, too.