Best posts made by Thenomain

@Derp said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:

@Thenomain said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:

Mind you, the court of popular opinion is not a recognized legal system.

@Rook said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:

Wait, what? In MUdom? Oh yes it is. It is how we operate. It is what most MUs are all about, outside of theme!

Yeah. Pretty much this.

Because we have to have this discussion proves that it is not a notable nor lasting legal system. Because Spider has returned proves pretty soundly that the Court of Popular Opinion has some leverage but does not force anyone to do anything.

I strongly disagree with you both. We are having a very even discussion, and it's been noted that Anna, head of Fate's Harvest, is being trusted. Even if she wasn't, there's not much more we can do than complain or leave.

Maybe I have a stronger will than you? I doubt it. I've stood up to the Court multiple times; when I've sat down it's because someone with a respectful tone and logic has told me why I'm wrong.

I've stood up for other people as well. A lot of my time in Wora and some of it here has been telling people to chill out. Hell, a lot of people here do that. This isn't a court, this is the commons, the square that people go to shout and try to figure out what's going on. Good luck getting any two of us to agree on anything.

And when we do? There's something going on that's far more sensible than a Court of Popular Opinion. It's scary and impressive. Like now.

Funny. In DA:O, the key points always end the same and make no lasting effect on the game, but still manage to reflect your decisions.

Still one of the best RPGs I've ever played.

@Seraphim73

If physical situations can end a character, why not social situations? Is it different if the cut comes from a knife or a tongue?

Leonard Cohen.

):<

@Lisse24 said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

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

@Seraphim73

If physical situations can end a character, why not social situations? Is it different if the cut comes from a knife or a tongue?

Because in physical situations, losing a character can be chalked up to bad roles. A few more successes on a defense and you could have gotten out of it! In a social situation, because we're unwilling to let the dice stand alone

I'm going to stop here because this is the most solvable issue, and is the most confusing of reasons why people don't like social combat. Several people already have said, "Man, if there was only a better way of doing it with dice," which I feel is the best answer.

Naturally, a system without buy-in is pointless. Almost nobody knows about the popular game with the system that says, "Before you can get involved with combat you must identify your goal; if you deviate from that goal you start taking penalties." Why? Because people don't like it, even though it answers many issues with Mu*-related combat.

If we're unwilling to do something to better the hobby, that's on us. If we're unwilling to even try a solution, then complaining about the problems of Social Combat is pointless.

In fact, I have lost a character in a social/political situation, and when it was over, a staffer sat me down and told me that it was because I RPed wrong, and seemed to hint that if I had just worded one part of one pose differently everything would have gone differently.

Isn't this all the more reason to come up with a Social Combat system? My comment was because someone said that "death by Social Combat should not happen", even in a situation where rolls were happening. I disagree. Social situations can kill; we call this politics, and is doubly prescient for medieval politics. (Pulling that around because of the thread; honest, I do know where I'm posting.)

I'm sorry that the staff sucked. I'm sorry that staff didn't even try to consider you, the player, over their own rigid beliefs about how the game world works.

And yes, I would be glad to talk more in another thread. IMO, fastest way to do this is start a new thread with a quote from the old.

-- Pax.

RL Peeve: I've only now found a plot in Skyrim that I'm finding engaging, after 43 hours.

(It's the situation in Riften, for the curious.)

@HelloProject said in How Do I Headwiz?:

@Thenomain said in How Do I Headwiz?:

@HelloProject

Everything is a remix:
http://everythingisaremix.info

AVG is being a helicopter parent about this site.

"Connections" is, like almost everything David Burke ever touched, insanely insightful. It's about how technology breeds different technology. For instance, how the Dutch renaissance led to talking motion pictures.

And since good ideas are almost never "Eureka" moments, here is another person going on about how innovation is more evolution than sparks of genius:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NugRZGDbPFU

...

To bring it around a little bit back to "good artists steal", I'm 100% behind the idea that @Bobotron suggested to steal ideas from players. And whomever—@Ganyemede, I think?—said that you should always credit. Everyone loves being recognized!

Online is a lot less stressful when you stop trying to engage people who are out to argue.

Staffing: Haven't for over a year now.
Facebook: Quiet.
Hog Pit: Turned off.

It's like taking anti-anxiety medication. I can think, and in thinking I can do more things for myself.

@tragedyjones said in How Do I Headwiz?:

@Kanye-Qwest said in How Do I Headwiz?:

@tragedyjones said in How Do I Headwiz?:

Rule #3.5 - It is just a game.
Nothing matters in the end. If someone is so worked up they are seriously, seriously upset about a game matter, tell them to chill the fuck out.

This one makes me giggle. I remember once talking about staffing or requests or something and someone was like "what if it is an emergency?"

And I'm thinking, 'this is a game. It is impossible that anything occurring in this game is an emergency."

It happens. People get seriously invested. But anything IC, anything not related to OOC harassment or stalking etc? None of it is an emergency.

This is why I giggle when people demand my email address.

I have, when younger, been involved in a few phone calls phrased as emergencies. One of them was an emergency, most of them was people not knowing how to treat a game seriously but not too seriously.

Which is a thing. There is a social contract going on, which means that some people are going to treat that with even a little respect. Which is my advice:

• People are helping you run the game, from staffers to players. Respect their time and effort.

I think we've gone into that before, but it's my counter to people who say "it's just a game" means that anyone can do anything. When I see that, I have to ask them if they know what a game really is.

I know it is in Humankind's nature to find patterns in things, but we have proven ourselves, time and again, to be better at reasoning than needing to SHOOT UP A PIZZA SHOP TRYING TO PROVE A CONSPIRACY. The unopolgetic nature of the people adding fuel to the fire makes me grit my teeth so hard that I fear they crack.

Fuck this world. These people need openly mocked or, better yet, ignored.

Babylon 5: A single-station setting with a heavy exploration theme.

Buck Rodgers (TV series version): Takes place on Earth, much exploration.

@TwoGunBob

This is an awesome nativity. A+

Fuck that.

(That's a fucking joke. A joke. With the word 'fuck'. Meaning 'sex'. You people are weird.)

Just like everything else in our post-Political Correctness era, if you don't like someone calling you something, say something. "Yeah, could you not call me 'hon'?" There are political-social reasons not to do this, and always don't be a dick about pushing agenda in someone else's face, but I think that America is pretty well poised to start talking more openly to one another. Even if we only got there because of the negativity of the election.

Still, if someone has more respect than selfishness, they'll be okay with it,

@Cobaltasaurus said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

It was things like "don't huggle-snuggle people on public channel, unless you know they want it. respect people's OOC physical boundaries"

This was the element I forgot, yes. (Half mentioned in "respect others and expect to be respected".) And I was quoting the behavior policy.

"Don't make staff care" is a pretty damn good policy for games with responsible staff. There's no policy that will help a game with irresponsible staff.

I didn't want to mention the "no rape" policy because I didn't want this thread to become a discussion of details. You can usually tell who to toss by their general behavior, even over specific situations.

@surreality

Well, I'm hoping that the press get their heads out of their asses and return to the era fact-checking and contextualizing. I don't believe they're dirty liars, but their reporting has a huge impact on what people see and know.

@faraday said in Consent in Gaming:

@Thenomain It's come up a couple times - I believe Sunny mentioned it originally. But regardless, my point isn't about length it's about the prevalent sentiment that it would inherently be boring and is "exactly the sort of scene that would mostly be glazed over in a book or a movie". (Which is not really my experience with books/movies either, but that's neither here nor there.)

If there's character development, sure, but because our experiences differ, I try to lean toward being more forgiving.

"I'm going to chew you out now."

You're asking me to trust you and that your idea of fun, character development, or propriety even considers me or mine. The idea broached a little earlier that people shouldn't play purely for their own concerns, that goes every direction.

Staff, players, protagonists, antagonists, kobolds, child magicians, all of them should play to see what happens, and that means wanting the best for everyone around them.

I have been in plenty of scenes where my character has been chewed out. Those times where I've nope'd out is because it was not interesting, immersive, or developing. I was just a stand-in for some other player to play out their character.

Being a static prop to someone else's idea of fun, character development, and/or propriety is boring. As. Hell. Whether or not this is a dressing-down, a combat scene, torture-porn, a public meeting, if I am doing my best to take the consequences without playing out the scene then I'm still playing the game.

And I've played through every dressing-down anyone's ever brought to me.

"I'm going to chew you out now."

If you're not trustworthy to treat me like a member of the game, I'm going to not give you the satisfaction. If this upsets anyone, they are selfish and wrong.

So it comes down to trust.

"I'm going to chew you out now" does not itself indicate trust. Only duty. And this is a game, a hobby; duty is something we pour into it as love, and that love demands respect just as the game demands respect. There are no islands on a Mu*.

I live within walking distance of fresh, loose tea. Not brewed, god no, I brew it myself, but if I run out of gunpowder tea, it's not like I'm hurting for it. This is critical because there are so fewer places to get good tea than good coffee.

@Ganymede said in Consent in Gaming:

Is that punitive? Arguably. Consider the following:

@Thenomain said in Consent in Gaming:

Who you decide to help and spend your time with is up to you. This is ultimately a selfish hobby, and nothing, nothing can make you play well with others if you don't think they deserve it.

I think it is unreasonable for the player who elects not to play through a scene that I would like to player through to expect me to carry on, my wayward son, as if nothing at all just happened.

As do I. But I detected a quite negative bent toward anyone who would even consider it. The key is to work together as much as possible, which is how I take @faraday's "good sport" comment.

But being a good sport is not a rule, it's a method. You can absolutely be frustrated when someone doesn't give you a chance, but is it reasonable to complain about it? Sometimes.

The solution is to be deserving of it, of being self-aware.

Being self-aware sometimes means understanding that you may have to play through something that is boring in order to let others have their fun. It means understanding that it's not just about you and, maybe, you're part of a group whose needs and wants may be different from yours.

Hold on, I've got something about that here...

@Thenomain said in Consent in Gaming:

It would be awesome if we all got what we want out of it, but we can't. We have to negotiate, because we're not in it alone.

Yeah, okay, there we go.

If someone says, "Hey, this doesn't seem like fun," don't think less of them. Think, okay what can we do that's fun? Have a conversation.

To be honest, if someone says "hey this doesn't seem like fun," I'm probably going to believe that they have the maturity of a pre-pubescent. One might as well say "I think this is boring" or "you're boring me," or something equally ribald.

Better approach: "I think we're heading in a direction I'd rather not RP through. Can we figure out a resolution that works out for both of us?"

Or: "I'm not really feeling this path of RP. Can we take it in a different direction?"

These are good suggestions. We can all have better communication skills, but part of what you're either going to have to get used to or not (that's my I-M-Smrt comment of the day) is that a lot of people don't.

In my vocabulary, if you can't take "that doesn't sound like fun" as open feedback, I could say that's on you. Then we get into one of those truly fucking annoying pedantic discussions about how something was said ruined everything.

Is it up to me to change because you don't take the connotation the same way as I? Because I've been blamed many, many times of not saying something correctly enough.

On here.

Recently.

(note: If anyone wants to accuse me of same, that's a fair cop, gov. I'm willing to apologize and try to understand better, or explain myself better. I am not trying to be hypocritical.)

If anyone wants to see a barrier to newcomers, it's this kind of nitpicking which is not the slightest bit useful.

I have become increasingly frustrated with my experiences on games. I have trouble connecting by reaching out publicly to do so. So I am preparing not to give up, but instead to go back to building the game I want to see.

GASP! Mass Effect?

@VulgarKitten

Apparently I am a Pokemon.

Oh wait! Ash gets owned by Darwin. I forgot.