Which app do you need checked, @Goldfish? Pinball is vampTL, but he's off today due to a sudden RL issue worse than mine. I can look at it, but I can't make any promises as it is not my sphere, and it may need him to approve it tomorrow when he returns.
It sucks, but I'm still here, and still way too stubborn to give up. Wasn't even my bookkeeper -- long story is long, it'd ultimately cause major issues for people who deserve this ass-fucking less than I do for their amazing levels of utter generous amazingness over the past few years to do more than sigh and suck it up as a mutually-damaging screwfest made of honest error. 
Pretty much nothing I could have done to avoid it, so all of the hell-chaos is under my (least) favorite heading of 'shit that was clearly meant to be for reasons I just can't fathom yet'.
So while I'm kinda a wreck, well, dammit, those were really amazing business cards, seriously, world, WTF. I call so much foul.
The injury I'm usually able to shoulder without ever letting on, it's the insult-level-irony on top that just feels like the universe is in super-mock-mode.
I'm wondering if it's considered tacky to keep the business cards when they're indicative of a completely different sort of business, and how much I actually care either way.
A bookkeeping error on someone else's part costing me 1/4-1/5 of my projected annual income, which is more than enough to strangle my new business in its cradle.
That income having been already accounted for in expenses.
Some of those expenditures having been already made, on tools for production.
Having the tools to make the product, but no money left for the materials required, and debt from the tools on top that needs to be paid back.
Having a plan to get through it, but it requires more money and more physical effort than my body can actually take, and knowing this will cause lasting damage. Not really having a choice about it anyway.
The stress from the cavalcade of stupid above causing the old 'can't keep food down any more' stomach condition to return in full force, with an extra dose of pain.
Realizing that can't slow things down that need to get done, and that I'm the only one that will do them, even if I'm not the only one who can.
Knowing this is going to be the status quo for the next few months at least, because the business just became a totally different business and rebuilding is a thing.
All of that seriously fucking sucks, but it is not the peeve. That's just the shit that is.
The peeve: all of this shit going down between ordering 5000 business cards, and those business cards actually showing up.
There's some core stuff I still don't really know how to do on setting one up. But organizing one? There, there's ideas, dangit. 
@Rook said:
@surreality this would be great tinder for a How-to maybe? I'm interested in your lessons learned, I am sure others will be too.
It could be -- but it's one of those things that is easier to understand when it's seen in action, aside from my 'really shitty as a teacher in every possible way and bad explainer of things' problem and dramatic lack of time.
The short form: if you take a very granular approach, and use category tags wisely, you can cross-reference things in a way that minimizes a major problem a lot of game wikis have with various house rules/interpretations/general game policies/etc., namely, 'where I think something should go is not always where someone else is going to be looking for it'.
Basically, instead of making a huge page of HRs for, say, vampire, which covers how blood bonds work on werewolves and how the feeding code works and everything else under the sun, each of those things gets its own small page. That page gets tagged with its related subjects category-wise, for instance, both of those would get 'vampire' and both would get 'vitae'; when someone does a search for all things vampire or vitae, they'll be able to find them easily on that category page. The former also gets tagged for werewolf and vinculum, and the latter for code, and these things turn up in those category checks as well.
That alone is a huge step forward in making things easier to find when needed, because we don't always know what terms people are going to be looking for, as this tends to be based on why they're looking for it. A werewolf player is going to be looking for the info described above for different reasons than the vampire player, and they may be looking in very different places for the same information.
Further, the information from the short pages can be loaded into others very easily -- a lot of folks do their character pages as a collection of 'mini-pages' and load the content into the main page's framework; it works the same way. You can, essentially, easily make a page that is not just a category for all things vitae, you can have that page load in all the content from the related pages in a neatly indexed form.
The big win: edits remain consistent everywhere that content appears. No more hunting down the dozen pages where a collection of things were all piled together where the rule about XP spends for out-of-clan-disciplines maybe might have been (see above re: where someone might have thought to even put it and people coming from different perspectives/etc., as it applies to people adding content as well as those searching for it), because by updating that one granular, cross-referenced file, it updates every page on which that file is cited/loaded in.
Hopefully that made sense, and if it didn't, it probably is a good example of why I don't tend to write tutorials.
Willing to help with wiki things, if no one has jumped up to tend that task. Probably better suited to that than anything else, really. Entirely forgot that one.
There are some organizational tricks that are enormously helpful in maintaining consistency, but are an unholy nightmare to set up unless you do them from the start. (As I am finding out on Reno, whee.)
I'm willing to contribute. I tend to be fairly decent at brainstorming, plot arc conception, building, and can jobmonkey like a champ. Build/jobmonkey are likely where I'm most overtly useful.
I have enough of the higher level sphere/player management stuff on my plate already for the time being, but am fairly available enough to keep minor things like spends/etc. from creating +job clutter. I'm pretty good with grid organization and find building for grids and dig-and-hand-off-for-descing for player builds almost painfully easy (provided there's no truly weird code tucked in there that someone decides they just need, need, need to have).
I was planning to help out @tragedyjones with his multi-sphere concept in whatever position I'd be useful in, but since I'm not sure where that's going at the moment, there's a wedge of time set aside already dedicated to that generalized end.
@Sparks : Atlantis has been so much better than Savitar was I never looked back once switching over, and I'm notoriously hard to budge on anything changing ever.
Very looking forward to new things, and very glad to know you're still out there!
Isn't it? It's been like that for decades with no updates at all -- which probably explains a lot. (The last time I ordered from them actually was in the 90s and they had the same site then.)
They have many neat things, though!
@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.
@Arkandel I'm thinking of it in terms of the parameters outlined in point #2 from the original post, pretty much. 'I looked silly in front of others for five minutes, oh noes!' wouldn't get a pass and be dubbed twinking, but attempts to force someone into pregnancy through magic powers would (it's permanently-altering even if not carried through); "I don't feel like letting your character land a punch," wouldn't get a pass, while "beating my character to a pulp and leaving them in the ICU for a month for taking your favorite bar stool" would be kosher to object to.
@Arkandel said:
@surreality said:
Basically, on previous incarnations of the board, the problem of "I had a bad day RL, I want to make someone as miserable as I am by being a real jerk IC, and making sure nobody can do anything about it OOC because it's a non-consent game and they don't get a say and I get to make the other player uncomfortable/unhappy and I'm going to enjoy that/gleefully not give a damn about that other human being on the other end of this situation," came up more than a few times as a flaw in fully non-consent environments.
To be fair that's not a problem with non-consent games, and it can still happen in a consent-based MU* in the exact same way. People can be dicks without trying to kill a PC.
The 'without trying to kill a PC' point is what I'm making there. There are plenty of ways.
And it has, actually, come up. I'll reference good ol' Santiago again, and his 'I have a fetish RL I want to force people to engage in, and I have the stats on the sheet to do it, so I am going to force this on other players now.' Think of the mind-control asshats on this one, the 'forced pregnancy' creeps, the 'I had a crummy day so my PC is going to brood in a bar and wait for someone to rub him wrong so he can end them so I can feel big' sort, etc. This is the problem behavior I'm talking about.
They are a downside to a full-non-consent environment because 'if I have it on sheet I can make it happen no matter how flimsy my IC reasoning may be', and they're not an issue on consent games because OOC, you can tell them: "no."
Staff can't really do anything to the 'asshole because I can be' because you essentially have to make special rules to punish them
That is the wrong approach though. You can't out-rule assholes, or they'll just try to twist around it, and it's the players who're doing nothing wrong who'll end up being inconvenienced (or worse) by their existence.
That's actually what I'm getting at, too. If you have to write up a set of guidelines, as staff, to address one set of problems or the other (asshole behavior vs. consent twinking), it's a lot easier, as staff, to address consent twinking in a way that's easier to enforce than a more nebulous 'don't be an asshole' rule.
People can be certainly assholes in a consent environment, but the players can handle that directly without staff intervention with a simple: 'no'. The only recourse you have otherwise is appealing to staff, which a fair number of players are reluctant to do for a variety of reasons.
@Rook Yep, we're on the same page about that.
Asshole characters can be a joy; asshole players are not.
Basically, on previous incarnations of the board, the problem of "I had a bad day RL, I want to make someone as miserable as I am by being a real jerk IC, and making sure nobody can do anything about it OOC because it's a non-consent game and they don't get a say and I get to make the other player uncomfortable/unhappy and I'm going to enjoy that/gleefully not give a damn about that other human being on the other end of this situation," came up more than a few times as a flaw in fully non-consent environments.
While these folks are rare, they're out there. Even some otherwise normal folks can dip a toe into this behavior once in a while, and that's really all it takes -- once in a while -- to screw up someone else's gaming experience in a much more long-term fashion. I've found -- and further found I wasn't alone in thinking -- PK itself wasn't really as scary as this OOC behavioral pattern, since it's entirely possible to lose a character in ways that tell a good story or are otherwise enjoyable for all players involved. Further, shunning doesn't always work well in these cases as these folks can use non-consent to find means of forcing inclusion, also.
Generally speaking, while nobody really likes this behavior, it's been considered an acceptable trade-off for the benefit of impartial conflict resolution (non-consent dice and stats with no opt-out regardless of the reasoning for a situation or gravity of it) between players, primarily due to concerns about people abusing consent policies to sidestep consequences or behave like morons in an entirely different manner.
Basically, I think it's time we stop being so afraid of people 'abusing consent' that we put up with 'being an asshole OOC because I can be'.
Staff can't really do anything to the 'asshole because I can be' because you essentially have to make special rules to punish them, as what they're doing may be counter to a positive game environment, but that's really vague at best and hard to rule on consistently, transparently, and with an appearance of fairness, since it is explicitly not against the rules, but is instead a potential violation of the social contract. Conversely, it isn't too hard to write up rules about when it is or is not reasonable to deny consent, what consent applies to and what it doesn't, and what constitutes abuses of consent in ways that make the other problem one that can be managed with far more consistency, perceived and observed fairness, and transparency.
I'm not entirely sure if it would work that way in practice, re: avoidance based on choice. When someone is making a choice that affects only themselves, there's no reason for it. If you're insisting they accept the same choice, yeah, that could potentially be a problem -- but if you're offering blanket consent without expecting it in return, it'd be senseless to complain about.
Admittedly, I've only seen two examples of anything along these lines (barring the place I had briefly that was too small to count for any real data): Darkmetal with its tiered system, and Shang. I saw some avoidance on Darkmetal, but I can't say I ever saw it come into play in regard to characters the avoiding party would not have avoided for other reasons that were a higher priority than the consent factor. On Shang, I don't think I ever saw it come up in over a decade.
Realistically, what @Cobaltasaurus is describing is similar to the reality on Reno; there are subjects there left to consent. It is otherwise a non-consent game. Some level of hybridization is more common, I suspect, than most realize without it ever causing any drama. (And it may be preventing some measure of drama that would otherwise arise -- but that we'll never actually know.)
@Arkandel said:
However the threat of it, the potential the other player might in fact be a dick is a driving force in strife generation, so that the knowledge that consent would be required before really bad things happened can pre-emptively get rid of that potential.
This is a pretty huge thing unto itself, and is not limited to player death as an outcome.
"I'm going to be an asshole because I can," when it manifests as a player attitude (as opposed to character behavior IC), is really something we really need to stop uncomfortably accepting out of a fear that any potential alternative is going to be worse.
I think the PvP example can be remedied by something described here -- which was kinda how I'd read it actually at first glance so I'd missed a bit. Mostly, if no decision can be agreed upon, go to the dice. Deciding to not do a thing would come up in discussion as an option in decision-making, I would think, if it was a viable option, rather than the 'well, it just bounces off' option.
Part of the 'you can't ignore game reality by consent' thing, for me, does include other folks' stats -- so ignoring the guy with Intimidation 5.Menacing Bastard.Scaryface.Growlysnarl.Stinkeye.Prom Date's Dad-Glare would not be entirely kosher without a damn fine reason (like stats that reasonably allow for it).
Yeah, I think there's room for a 'werewolf as the pop culture example goes' style of game -- it just... isn't really what nWoD werewolf is.
I have to wonder, though, if that is the direction they aim to go with the Pure in 2e. That would be interesting.
@crusader Actually, while those examples are great for 'this is how this faction within WoD might look', the majority of those worlds do not ever imply that there are vampires of any other kind in them. Blade and Underworld are the big exceptions here. For all we know of most of those settings, that's the one kind of vampire out there -- not one kind of many.
There's a fairly good example of factions in Lumley's fiction, but none of that has made it to the big screen yet. (Someday, maybe!) It's what a fair bit of the notions of the Tzimisce from oWoD were drawn from, however, if I had to guess. (It's not a hard guess if you're familiar with the Necroscope series, which makes the Tzim look pretty tame by comparison at points.)
None of these -- barring Blade, oddly enough, as the closest -- has the broader scope suggestive of WoD vampire more broadly.
@Arkandel, be careful, this is so on point with things I want to do with half a dozen projects you may find yourself begged to join staff somewhere, some day!
I am a huge fan of hybrid environments this way, they're just hard to handle on the fine points. Most of them are addressed here pretty well and I agree 100% with every single one of them. There are a few I'd like to throw in additionally, and expand on some others from what I've observed from consent-based environments and tinkering with hybridization before.
On 4, I always sum this up as part of a broader concept: you can't no-consent to part of the essential theme or setting or character class. For instance, using WoD examples, you can't play a vampire and opt-out of being harmed by the sun without powers allowing such, or you can't suddenly decide the rules of your covenant (per book or HR) are totally different when it comes to you and that thing you did is consequence-free, etc.
Absolutely love the PvP example. To me, that is the ideal for RP, and the OOC mini-award for good sportsmanship is excellent. I would actually put this on par with the dice award personally, as while one may have more inherent risk factor to the characters, the other requires more cooperation and maturity on the part of the players to keep things mellow and fun for all -- and both things are equally important, from my perspective, in the smooth operation of a game. Essentially, I don't think valuing risk above cooperative OOC play is necessarily the kind of message you'd want to send if you want to foster the cooperative environment, as it implies one method is 'better' or 'more valued' than the other from the perspective of the game. (That's a tangent of sorts and probably worthy of its own thread some day -- but it's something I've put some thought into lately in designing some XP awards for an atypical game environment, so it felt like something that bears mention, as the kind of awards granted are essentially a reflection of not only what a character is doing or has accomplished, but of what the game community/etc. places value on.)
One of the big ones for me is the idea of informed consent. This actually got nudged in the Clingy Players thread a bit -- in reference to how people stumble into situations that they don't realize are about to become explosive or more complicated than expected. I could dredge up my old example of Santiago and choking on panther wang when expecting a chat over coffee here, too. (But please don't make me? I can only afford so much therapy.) Informed consent is important -- and it's something people overlook a great deal, and many times it's not at all intentional. There are some "trappy" players like Santiago out there -- but they tend to be the exception rather than the rule.
The classic example on this one is the victim plot -- Jane thinks it would be fun to play a scene in which she gets mugged, Joe the Mugger is more than happy to oblige, both players have a blast... until Jane's 30 big protective brothers she never mentioned when Jane and Joe were discussing the scene and its potential resolution and consequences decide they all want to kill Joe and every member of his family. This would reasonably have an impact on whether Joe has any interest in taking part in that scene at all -- and it's only fair play he be allowed to consider these factors.
The other general big one, at least for me, is a pretty core belief that relationship-based RP should remain consent-based as a default. Anything involving TS has an FTB out, but even so, it may leave a player with some deeply ick feelings on the OOC front that are best avoided with a consent firewall. Pregnancy especially is the kind of subject matter that gets vaulted from 'but I wanna and I can force it to happen so it's gonna' strong-arm tactics in my ideal world.
For what it's worth -- I agree on the reason things like 'avoid dork via IP match' don't work; that wouldn't cover it on the whole. It'd need to be a tracked thing, and tracked things being opt-in, well, yeah, prone to some fail there. It's why it's very much a pie in the sky wish list sort of dream.
Really, though, the gamer gmail account is a thing of beauty. Not hard to acquire, easy to ditch if ever the need arises (which it generally won't) and sane to manage while keeping minimum safe distance.
I have two basic bastardizations of Vector I could potentially talk someone through, but to be fair I mostly just puttered around until things changed the way I wanted them. One's a 'wtf'-looking hot mess of confused notes, and the other is for a sekrit project, though, so please PM if you want to take a peek. The latter is definitely more workable for a page layout generally, and requires less puttering about with graphics.
In fairness, I am not sure who did Eldritch's pages, but they would be the folks I'd ask for advice. They did a stellar job with them. I am a chronic charpage-putterer and I'm still leaving my charpage template totally alone to blend with the rest of the site as designed, to give you some idea.