Best posts made by Thenomain

@ghost said in Regarding administration on MSB:

Waxing philosophical here, but how can we expect people to treat each other with respect and civility on these games if the general standard for many is to take the OOC drama from these games to a demilitarized zone where they can behave aggressively and abusively without it affecting their actual roleplay time? It in no way keeps the drama away from the games, it just takes the fight to a place where they're less likely to be banned from the game for it, because it's not happening on the server itself.

This right here is why a lot of people refuse to come to Soapbox. You could (er, well, I am) say that this prevents Soapbox from becoming a place to discuss game theory or otherwise be a casual hub for hobby discussion, because either none of Soapbox is the Hog Pit, or all of it is.

Theoretically, the existence of a distinct forum for people to come separately and get their wank on means the game administration will have no idea that these people are spewing acid because it's removed from the game.

That leaves Soapbox administration left holding the overfull vomitorium bucket. What they decide is for Soapbox and Soapbox only. If they really think that the Hog Pit saves these games from trolls means that they keep the Hog Pit. If they want to be a community discussion site, then they keep the Hog Pit locked down.

There may be other ways for it, but that's my current thesis. Either Hog Pit stays and the rest of the board is moderated heavily, or it's unlocked and Soapbox returns to being Wora in the hearts and minds of those not already there and some who are.

@auspice said in The Board Game Thread:

After watching some videos about it, I really want Sagrada. Has anyone else played it?

Imagine Yahtzee, but on a grid, and everyone else keeps taking your goddamn dice.

A++, would recommend. Best with 3+.

@surreality said in Regarding administration on MSB:

No one's said this.

You may not have. Others have, explicitly.

I will back this up. I was going to say when she did that I couldn't remember who because it was a silly thing to even suggest, but then I started thinking about it: Culture propagates. If something is okay in one place, then people can start believing that it's okay in other places.

The fear of this can drive people here to call this place a hive of scum and villainy. That is, to stamp out bad behavior in one place, it's an understandable method of trying to solve the issue of stomping out all bad behavior.

I personally think that this is a bit of an insult to the ability for adults to act like adults when treated like adults, and expected to act like adults, but this is my take on the entire issue.

@prototart said in General Video Game Thread:

and donut county

Here is a game that is something you buy not for the game but for the charm. Donut County oozes personality and made me grin, and was over way, way too soon.

So I had a thought. This isn't to derail Apos' point, but I was reminded that this thread exists.

We have another thread on this board that is focused entirely on venting outside of the rules and confines of the context of what we're venting about.

This one. Here's an example of venting for the sake of venting, and sometimes even swearing and insulting in a not at all friendly manner. And it's still mostly constructive. Why? Because there is no to almost no chance that anyone who is being vented at or about will see it. We don't have to tell people to not vent about people on these boards or in this hobby, even if they are driving us insane in an RL manner. The limits of that thread are understood almost universally without extra rules being enacted.

And yet I don't for a second doubt that it's not useful. We get things off our chest to fellows who either commiserate or ignore it if they disagree. Even shouting into the void is considered healthy, in moderation.

There is no stated conclusion here, but in my mind it's a lynchpin of many of these related comments.

@Thenomain said in EPIC vs Steam:

Someone needs to come up with a system where no matter your game store, you can just find your game and launch it without launching the launcher

Oh hello, slightly younger and more ignorant me, have you tried Playnite yet? I'm about to. I'll let you know how it is.

https://playnite.link/

Finding the right balance of buzzed to effective coding is hard.

@Ghost said in Best (PnP) RPGs of 2018?:

saying that some Brujah might be alt-right or that radical Islamic vampires were involved in Chechnya IMO isn't shocking.

Except they weren’t saying that the vampires were involved, they were saying that the suffering wasn’t real and was a front. The people suffering said, “Um...what.”

I agree that the response hit GamerGate levels of stupid, the same kind of internet bullying that has hit many innocent and undeserving people, but there is a wide difference between Vagina Dentata; and Your Suffering Is Fake; and Here’s a Pedophile to Play, Enjoy!

I don’t fault White Wolf for trying to push comfort levels, as this is what good horror does. I also don’t blame Paradox for chastising White Wolf for not being able to read a room, especially with all the lead up they had. Nobody did anything catastrophically wrong except hiring Zak S. for anything.

Sywin Billard.

Asexual Virtual Adept. Not in-your-face asexual, nor "Forever Alone" in-vir...in...those people who band together because they're not having sex and insult everyone. I mean, Virtual Adept, so insulting was on his list of things to do that day, but because he wanted everyone to be better and the end of the world was coming and shit needed to get done. His played-by, in the days before played-bys, was literally the image of the Virtual Adept in the original Mage book, and I thought: How would he be as a person? How many people would mistake him for a woman in the wrong light? How would he take this? And I thought: He'd be aware, and annoyed about it, but in general tell people to get over it. And in turn, people got over it.

I should note that I can't tell if the image is supposed to be a woman or a man, but I think that's the point. Data doesn't care.

Me: Oh wow, Bloodlines 2 is up for preorder everywhere!
GOG: Available March 2020
Me: ... Nevermind.

There are a few things I will pre-order (CP2077 will be one of them to support everyone involved), but with a whole year of lead-time? Yahno.

@three-eyed-crow

I think the question is, then, are people who play a woman agreeing to the discrimination of their gender? Or a person of color for their race? Nationality? Physical injury?

Unlike @Ganymede, I disagree that this is an all or nothing case, though I don't entirely disagree with her logic. I agree far more with @faraday because her thesis is that its harm can be mitigated, even eliminated, with respect of the people involved and recognition that this is not really happening.

Like you, I personally quite enjoy escapism into reality. But like everyone here, we don't like it when it goes too far.

Though if you look at Firan's boundless popularity even in its infamy, some people's definition of "too far" is on a galactic, not local, scale. Sheesh.

The balance is between "Anything Goes" and "Nanny State". Should be easy, right?

A bunch of young kids at work are going crazy about this “Magic the Gathering” thing. What the hell is going on in the world? Are we grasping for nostalgia so hard even people who never lived through these things are pining for it?

@ganymede said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

I'm saying that anyone trying to justify their choice to engage in IC discrimination probably took lessons from the Dan Brown School of Writing. And, no, I don't mind being judgmental about it; there's good writing and there's terrible writing.

And good writing never included IC discrimination.

@Arkandel said in General Video Game Thread:

I need to play something new. Start Fallout 4 or grab Divinity 2?

Please don't answer "yes".

Do you want to play a good game, or do you want to play Fallout?

Page. OOC. @mail. Anomaly Jobs. Events. Organizational tools that help keep players connected and on the same page.

@Ghost said in General Video Game Thread:

Sarkeesian is a bit of a carpetbagger.

A bit?

It’s sad that anyone can turn Feminism into a business model.

@bobgoblin

And yet, I bet she still enjoyed it.

Sorry for this almost-double-post (good to know, @Alamias), but in going through my DTRPG downloads I forgot one.

The big one.

The best one.

A Dirty World, by Greg Stolze.

People probably know him better because of Reign, Unknown Armies, Wild Talents/Godlike, Better Angels (mentioned previously).

A Dirty World is a game about living in the the 1940s and uses a system that I desperately want to make work elsewhere wherein you can do pretty much anything that doesn't take a lot of skill as long as your personality says you're confident in doing so.

If you want to deflect a scum mobster, you need to be confident in your righteousness. If you want to hit harder, you need to give up some innocence to throw your anger behind your punch.

These personality traits aren't just whatever number you want, but they come in pairs, and at a level they're mutually exclusive. You don't have "slight of hand", but if you're more sleazy than innocent your character is more likely to pick that lock no matter how much "skill" your character might have.

And the system is tiny. My explanation of why I like the system is about as deep as the system goes, and follows up with many specific examples because the idea of rolling "Persuasion + Purity" doesn't come naturally.

It is not a game of high worldly stakes. It's noir, through-and-through, and as part of a larger system I could take to it even faster than Apocalypse World for a new way of playing RPGs.

@auspice said in How much Code is too much Code?:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS TOO MUCH BOOB.

Said no woman with chronic back pain ever.

@Auspice said in General Video Game Thread:

Bloodlines 2 is getting delayed.

I mean, for understandable reasons, but I can still express a brief

So I was curious about this, and the first hit I checked out was from Gamesradar+, and included this gem:

While news of the delay is definitely a bummer, it would be an even bigger bummer to get a Bloodlines 2 that's as buggy and unplayable as the original.

I don't think that people remember that the limited selection of buggy games gave us classics like Bloodlines. Good writing, developed world, and a game that was buggy and yet somehow still playable? We should be so lucky to get games that we want to play this badly.

Witcher 3 still would have been an amazing game with half the polish.

We need to stop expecting the world.

--

Rimworld was so captivating that I didn't get any sleep last night.