Posts made by surreality

I have been seeing the same stylist since I was 13 (and I'm now 45, y'all) for exactly this sort of reason. (She's only like... 5-6 years older than me.)

My standing orders are: 'we dye it whatever wacky colors we're gonna dye it, and just trim off what can't be saved'. It has no style to speak of, and is just a long mop that eventually layers itself while shit breaks because I live in ponytails, but once it's rainbow green, too much 'style' just confuses the issue anyway.

If it got hacked to chin length, I would likely murder someone, because I would look like an extraordinarily grumpy five year old chainsmoker or something, and that's just all the nope in the world.

I'm sorry, y'all.

(@Aria, I think(?) you're localish, so if you want the name of the lady I see, I'll pass it along; she's awesome and literally right over the state line by less than a mile if that helps any.)

I'd go with about 25 starting, +10 possible incentives, then just run with uncapped activity.

Or a fairly high cap for activity, since it sucks to earn something and get NOPE'd, especially if the earning is because you're STing for others.

This is where it often hits caps fast; it had a chilling effect on people running plots once they hit the cap that would pile in events at some times of the week, and sometimes players would get uberscrewed because a staffer was slow to process their Plot Rewards job, and it'd loop over to the next week's allotment, more or less double-denying them something they actually earned.

It tends to be the daily, in 2E, that really gets things going screwy -- and fast -- unless it is so, so much smaller than it's been most places. (At which point it's just easier to drop it completely.)

Then if you have people getting up to monster levels, it's because they're active as hell themselves and/or running things for others, and they're earning it by doing more than just being a butt in a seat, which is the kind of atmosphere it's never a bad idea to encourage.

@zombiegenesis I would almost suggest 'start highish, drop automatic daily completely, allow for gain through beats' but I am likely way in the minority on that.

@zombiegenesis It's a one short TV show season series -- so a pretty quick watch. You could easily get through it over a weekend.

I am tempted to scream, "NOOOOOO!" to 1980s Los Angeles because I would really be tempted to play there. OK, who am I kidding, I definitely would.

Could also be convinced to vampirate, but that might be getting into some of the old 1e/hr bloodline territory.

Edit: For why I talk about 1980s Los Angeles so much, check out the series 'Wicked City'. It's not supernatural -- it's actually about a serial killer in the 80s on the Sunset Strip. But damn, does it nail a great gritty WoD vibe.

@arkandel So many times, for me, it's a picture. Just a picture. A face, usually. (Edit: And I usually run across it when just browsing around for something else entirely. This is super annoying 'cause it still happens in 'retirement' and I whine at myself a lot about it.)

I couldn't really describe the process, because it's not really any sort of question and answer session going on in my brain, unless it's happening at such blinding speed that I miss it.

I just see a face, and metaphorically speaking, it hits some magic button the back of my head, and boom, I'm having a Zeus-grade migraine and something not so clever as Athena is whining in my face about getting my ass into CG right now, whaaaaaat's the hold-up, typist lady-person?!

The questions tend to arise in situations or in response to external questions -- either circumstances in a scene, someone asking the character something, or even a CG question -- but they're just... there, boom, rolling right off the fingers without really having to think about it at all, because they're natural and intuitive.

Even before the 'nawp, not feeling it' of the past year, I have gotten to the level of 'old and crabby' that I won't play something that doesn't sproing into being like this in my brain, because things that haven't, er, sproinged this way just never worked anywhere near as well anyway.

If I had to describe it in simple terms, it's like recognizing a picture of someone you know really well -- just with the imagination running at sonic-boom inducing speed instead of the eyes.

@arkandel If this happened to anyone in my time zone, we deserve it for being up at 5:30am with nothing better to do than putter around here.

...like me. <cough, shifty-eyes> The hell, insomnia?!

@taika Oooh. There's a brand of paint that works, too -- and some colored patinas. (Check sculpt.com for the vista patinas, we them. They work on stuff that's been painted with the metal coating paints, so it's nicely matchy.)

@taika That's kinda what I'm looking at. I don't do traditional maille at all but I do a lot of linked stuff and the color (and the matte on the titanium) is incredible with the kinds of colors and combinations I like to use. (I patina the shit out of raw brass and copper chain a lot, too, for similar reasons, so it was the next step.) And I lurve lurve lurve the 'anodized' hematite beads, and it all just blends in super neat ways.

I did a bunch of stitch markers designed to go on those 'add a bead' bracelets, so I was looking into doing some byzantine or box chains that'd be small enough to hold the beads (and the markers), but in the teensywee titanium and niobium links, for rainbow effects (or even just color) like you're describing. Even doing it not as a single dip but doing each 'step' along the dial in a small batch to make a gradient seemed like it'd be worth doing, and while it'd be a $$$ product in the end, well... so are the mass-produced ones, so.

@taika ...I should probably not tell you about the 'omg I finally fulfilled a decade-long dream and got an anodizer! ...that I have not even had the chance to set up and use yet. :|' thing. <cough> (Damn almost dying thing reallllllllllly kinda screwed up this year's plans and schedule!)

@aria I probably shouldn't tell you about the pumpkin spice caramel popcorn at Trader Joe's, huh? <ducks and runs>

+1. Redshirt PCs are awesome.

They're also a great option for casual players, or new players who want to try out various spheres/factions on a game before they find a group they click with timewise/stylewise to make a more permanent PC.

It's especially dumb 'cause in the case of things like policy files or house rules for an existing system and such, I have literally never seen somebody in this hobby say, "NO, YOU CAN'T HAVE THAT!" if they're asked.

@taika I have the same problem (and light cube box thingum, it sounds like -- sort of like a solid popup hamper they charge you 20x more for?) with the website thing. I have a domain! And I am sure I could wiki the hell out of that shit to lead it over to an etsy thing!

Website has a couple hurdles, though. Workspace is BWAHAHAHA limited, so photo space means setting something up for a couple days, doing it in bulk, then repeating the process again. The photo kits take up so much more space than my room has to spare on a permanent basis since the box itself is small, but the lights with the umbrellas and whatnot actually have a notable footprint, which might mean just... waiting to store stuff up, giving none fucks about hauling boxes and furniture around in here, and taking over my mother's dining room table next door for a week or so every few months. I have thus far avoided that option since my usual shake of the mental magic 8-ball approach keeps popping up 'not advisable' on that one, due to the level of whining that ensues even if I need to spray things out on their porch outside in recent years. That, and I just fucking KNOW I would hear, "Well, while you have everything set up, you can get pro-quality shots of all of my hundreds of old pieces I don't really actually intend to try to sell much anymore anyway, too, right?" because of course I would. -.- (Note to self: "Perfect 'this is how you use these, Mom, it's super simple, just watch and you can use it yourself to get the shots you want!" evasive maneuvers over the winter. <Mission Impossible theme starts to play in the background>)

The other hurdle is... we want to set up with etsy through their whatever that does physical/online credit card processing, so we can just use their square (it's the same as an independent one, BUUUUUUUUUUUT it also tracks your inventory so if you sell something in person it removes it from the website so you don't get screwed by selling something twice; it alerts you if you sell something on the website while you're off at a show or whatever, too, so you can pull it from the table -- that is worth throwing them the paltry pennies they'd want per sale to me, for real). Guess what's really hard to do when you still have a pile of medical bills, though... (You need a constant balance of $XXX usually in whatever bank account they're using for it.)

The part I hate most though? Coming up with names for shit. No, that pair of earrings is named 2017-L110 2 of 5, and you're going to find it clever or keep mum about it!!! <cough> A couple special bits get names, but they tend not to be names one would repeat in public. We have several pieces sharing the name 'Oh, That Thing' and 'That's the Little Bastard That Took 43 Hours', 'Fussy PITA I-XVI', 'That Used Up the Last of Those Beads!', 'Oh, YOU' and similar. <shifty-eyes>

Some day, when I get off my butt and am tinkering with a game project again, it will eventually maybe even get done, but I will have forgotten to remove some random jewelry name generator object from it and people will wonder what that bizarre little code utility is that spits out crap like 'Whimsy Cloudscape' and 'Sonoran Sunset' and so on, for seemingly no reason. (My dye teacher's husband made some kind of die-roll chart or something for this for them years ago for the same reason, and I find that just hilarious and awesome. They'd pick an apt color name, then just yank two other words off a random list. It was kinda brilliant!)

It's one of those times I can't help but think 'it is only because I have been in this hobby so long that I can even keep track of all of these fussy, fiddly, WTF-laden moving parts of bureaucratic bullshit', so help me.

I should be able to get shots of the booth, though! I was admittedly happy 'cause some of my yarn is the background for one of their ad posters and mailers this year, but, er, while I'd love to share that with all and sundry, it's also plastered with, y'know, specific times and a place where I'm definitely absolutely going to be and as much as I love y'all, you never know who's lurking. I can post it after the show, though!

If folks are somewhere near northern Delaware are for some reason into craft shows, I can send you the info. It's not as great a show as it once was -- it used to attract some really big local names known nationally back when we started with it -- but they have some pretty cool stuff. Tragically, I have a feeling a better sales pitch here would be, "It's right around the corner from where Lucifer first appeared on earth in Supernatural, fellow geeks!" because it is, and that never, ever stops being funny to me.

@tinuviel This is kinda the way I look at it, or did for the place I wanted to do.

Ideal? Aim for 'Black Sails' (which isn't super accurate, let's be real here, but it also isn't Xena). Expect 'A Knight's Tale' grade results, and be content with that as an average, 'cause then at least if there are anachronisms of some kind, they're being turned toward people having fun with it and creatively wedging that shit in there instead of just fudging over the stupid by wrapping everything in burlap and calling it a day.

@tat Agreed on this; copyright doesn't actually handle ideas at all, it handles the form the implementation of those ideas takes, for the most part.

ETA: @Apos Oh, man... if I got riled any time I saw my wiki code credited to someone who is absolutely not me, I would have had a Scanners moment or twelve by now, so help me... it just would have been my own head exploding.

@tat The last time I tinkered with it, it had the <verb> <preposition> <target> format. I know people have changed things since to allow mush-like commands, but that all came lonnnnnnng after I last played around in it. I know the folks that did Truelands did a ton of conversions along those lines, at least.

@tinuviel You really want us all to prove how dumb we are, don't you. DON'T YOU!!!

<cough> Ignore me. I still have mental scars from watching what happened on a game set in Hong Kong many moons ago.

P.S. Would still consider crawling out of retirement for a WoD game set in 1980s Los Angeles. This may just scare someone off the notion, though, I realize this.

@admiral If Cybersphere, I think they had most of the same code (originally, at least), too.

The ghostcore was available somewhere, but it'd require an unholy pile of hacks to run like a MUSH or MUX.

Coding in MOO was actually easier, I always thought, than MUX. The built-in error checking and tracebacks helped a lot on that front.

User commands ended up more complex and wonky-feeling, though. The 'more natural speech' approach ended up more complicated rather than less. +attack <name> ends up being easier than attack <name> with axe for some reason.