Best posts made by Thenomain

@icanbeyourmuse said:

I believe there is a game that is all those spun into one. Lantern Hill or some such thing.

URL, please!

@ThatGuyThere said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

I will try to steer any RP away from public places on any game

This is too bad, because being able to find RP with new people and diverse interests gets people more invested in the game as a whole and increases the excitement of the player base, not to mention then their willingness to draw others, especially newbies, into the game's multi-tiered and various levels that make a game like this feel alive. It is a beautiful thing, but needs as many people as possible to buy into it.

That also makes the drive-by disruptions easier to ignore, as everyone can just shrug and get on with what they were doing. Or, and here's the even more fun part: These disruptions can be absorbed into the game as a whole and add to it. Not everyone is going to be willing to share their time this way, but not everyone in these drive-bys are this way.

@Pyrephox

Concerning your second point, "gaming the system" is popular for games, even role playing games. I've seen this behavior from both Mushers and Mudders; if you put a system in front of some people, they are going to analyze and use the system in front of them.

@Misadventure said in Rewards other than XP:

I in no way wish for social recognition.

I've known people who were turned off by getting badges. Sometimes the only joy it brings is to the person giving them.

Aether was masterful at its social recognition. The twice-a-year Aether Oscars, the public posting of "best reccs this month", so on. These focus on players honoring other players.

I do like @Misadventure's ideas of what would make solid achievements (which is surprising, since he and I usually disagree about social systems!); they are all things that a staffer may be impressed with and have everything to do with the hobby. "You are a good RPer." / "You went above and beyond in making everyone a part of this scene."

@Bobotron said in Plots for Spheres:

• A willingness to integrate personal plot/goals into larger, long-term plots IF they fit. Steal that shit from the players whose ideas are better than yours.

This.

@surreality said in Mobile phone usage poll:

@Three-Eyed-Crow I am sorta lucky in that regard. The new mac keyboard (the 'magic' keyboard) is a wireless bluetooth one. It's slightly longer than my tablet but not by too much, and can pair with my tablet (or even phone) as easily as it does with the desktop. It fits in a purse about as well as the tablet does.

Look into the Logitech K811 for easy multi-syncing, so you don't need to constantly re-sync that keyboard. Also, backlit.

@Ashen-Shugar said in Mobile phone usage poll:

I use an ssh client to connect to my server to use tinyfugue

This is what I ended up doing. I had way more keyboard control than in Mudrammer (iOS app).

@surreality said in How important are rooms poll:

I think, also, it might be good to give some examples of what 'big' and 'small' mean here.

I'd like to hear what people who voted them say they are, that way we could get a strong sense of what the hobby thinks when they hear these words.

@Ashen-Shugar said in Logging your activity:

It essentially, if toggled on a room (requiring staff), logs everything that room hears. This means that pages and whispers or the like are not logged.

So ... you invented @ahear. Go you.

(I kid!)

What I was really trying to tell @Misadventure was that no amount of verification stamps can stop someone from faking a log. The only thing that could reliably validate the stamp is the game code itself, which ...

... well, I know I'm speaking to the choir, but others should know a little basic social engineering.

My life-long Mu* coding ideology is that if it's going to come down to: If the problem is a social one, you have to be very careful about applying a code solution. (Extension: Because a social answer to a social problem is usually the best one.)

@faraday

I normally get the same effect by listening to the channel chatter, or usually also reading the boards. Sometimes people are not forthcoming with information, but I've also lived through the terrible time period where if you couldn't prove that someone RPd it with you, you couldn't know something. Maybe you didn't have to deal with "OOC Masq" hard-liners, but it wasn't fun.

Cue the "you kids don't know how well you've got it". Shake cane. Comment about lawn.

Again, I think that I mistakenly came across trying to say logs are pointless. They don't add anything for me. I don't enjoy reading scenes (mostly) and I can get a summary of anything important with gentle questions on a channel or via pages (mostly). I don't feel any desire to chase down xp (mostly) for reasons that can fill an entire other thread.

@Auspice said in Hyper Focused Game Setting:

Wasn't there a horror-themed show briefly about like, a haunted hospital?

Perhaps you're thinking of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace? A spoof of 80s/90s dramas co-created by The IT Crowd's Richard Ayoade.

If you like people making fun of VCR-era dramas (because most of them were horrible), it's a fun watch.

Well at least I know who they want to hurt.

Me.

@Arkandel said in Politics etc.:

Invest in good people and trust them to be themselves. They will solve problems for you code can't.

"It is very difficult to solve a social problem with code; be careful."

I and some others know this to be a truth, but in the newest incarnation of WoD, in what books, on which pages, is the following rule:

When you make notable progress toward a Long-Term Aspiration, gain a beat.

Wodologists have looked and so far have found nothing, but we heard about it somewhere, and it's established even here :: http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-new-world-of-darkness/32075-on-long-term-aspirations

Thanks.

Once, when I was trying to stretch out with my nerditry, I went to a new LARP-Group that wanted to focus on both RP and system. The first giant event was all-comers, all-day, and I was pretty excited about it. I and my friends all made our sheets and our kinda-costumes and went.

The event turned out to have no plan but "see what happens when we get this many people get together", but they didn't tell us that until it was over.

I didn't go back to that group.

The other y'all-come events I went to had people grandstanding. I don't LARP at all for that reason. If I'm going to waste my time with drama, I want to be able to snark with friends and nosh on chips.

Sometimes—online—those people got upset with me when I mocked their grandstanding (by also grandstanding, yes). It was entirely in-character, but it reflected what I felt about people who felt that actions did not cause reactions.

We got good enough at Changeling Crownings on Haunted Memories that the event would go as such:

• Everyone comes, mills, poses in, whatever
• Someone says it was time to start
• I would generally ignore whatever happens next, because only once was it trying to add to the game
• Crowning
• See who walks out in protest
• Disperse

This was efficient. The first few times, staff tried to make events happen during them, but it caused too much headache. Don't stray from the agenda unless you know what you're doing.

I don't find the point to such events, any more, except for the times where people have to be brought together in a thematic way to find out what happens. A ball, a critical meeting, and so forth. Whatever the scene, be up-front about it. If more is going to happen, warn people so they can plan their evenings around it. Even a simple event such as "see who the latest Staff Friend is" (unless Ernst takes the Crown) takes a few hours. Throwing a chase scene at 10+ players with 1 or 2 staffers is going to be a nightmare.

Where was I? Oh yes. Don't do it.

@saosmash said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

I can't believe we're on page 47 of this thread and the prostitution conversation is happening again. Hold me, somebody.

@Misadventure said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

However, here, well its funny to admit we aren't so great at passing on the wisdom.

I'm a firm believer that wisdom cannot be taught; it can only be learned.

@Apollonius said in Generic sci fi game.:

I'd like to just be a bartender in space. With a handsome beard. A bartender in space with a handsome beard.

Hipsters.
In.
Spaaaaaaaaace.

Hold on, Google is trying to tell me something.

...

Oh goddammit!

@Chime said in MU Things I Love:

@Thenomain said in MU Things I Love:

@Chime

Thanks, Theno~

You'll always be my strongest code-crush, you know that.

@Sparks said in What do you WANT to play most?:

I admit, I've been missing Lost Stars (original, invite-only science fiction game a friend and I ran years ago) something fierce lately, in part because of discussing the old DICE system I designed for there. But thinking on LS for systems design discussion reminds me how spaceships plus mysteries around ancient alien ruins was a fun combination.

LS had a distinct story arc, though, and we pretty much concluded it.

That never stopped Joss Wheedon. Or Mass Effect, come to think of it.