Posts made by Thenomain

@Sunny

To be briefly pedantic to make a broader point: "One" is an alt limit. Sometimes it's the right limit. I'll agree that often it's not, but there's a Mage game coming up that I believe would only benefit from a one alt limit. Games like BitN are broad enough that I felt comfortable with two, but more felt to me like a grab at numbers. Maybe it works, but it feels like ... whatever the opposite of the fly/sledgehammer analogy is. Smoke and mirrors? Anyhow.

And yes, I'm aware of the abuse of the word "alt" here, as you can't have an singular be an alternative. It's the way this hobby has changed the meaning of the word. Call me Humpty Dumpty.

I'll also agree that if players were responsible for the games they played on, we wouldn't be having these arguments about "what's fine for me is bad for others" (aka "one man's trash"), and even then players would have to be responsible enough to calmly deal with things they disagreed with.

@Sunny

I think you're putting "babysitting" in the lap of staff. I believe the #1 goal of staff is to facilitate the fun-having, with a stress on facilitate. Staff is capable of reacting to problems that they know about, but it's not uncommon that "this person has 15 alts" is first known when they all hit super-idle at the same time. You think it's easy to track alts? Sure, if you stay on top of it, it's possible, but enough groups of friends and housemates game together to hit a fair share of false-positives, enough people game from multiple locations to make tracking harder.

The easiest way for staff to resolve issues like this is not to set up a complex alt-tracking system and threaten banning anyone caught not using it (which I've seen), but to put an alt limit on it first and if that doesn't work then upgrading the staff-running resources when it becomes a problem.

I'll admit, I don't know how we got to this particular argument, but I don't see the problem with saying, "Hey, three characters per player, and no rotating characters once per month." New character creation is taxing on staff too, you know, and responding to a response of yours in another thread, both staff and players have to work together to make the game run smoothly.

@Lotherio

I will be less deeply analytical than almost everyone else here, because we come back to this and nitpick the details and blah blah blah. That's a good way to parade our theories but focus on the basics.

1. @Sunny is right, because
2. Staff sets the tone.

If staff don't love playing and running the game, the game will never have a chance. Staff can play the game through NPCs or through events or the love of building interesting things, I don't care, but staff have to participate.

Then it's up to players to step up and join in the fun.

We remember that's what this is for, right? Social fun? Yeah? Cool.

@Kanye-Qwest said in How Many Alts Would An Alt User Alt If An Alt User Could Use Alts:

This is an interesting point. I've met a lot of really awesome rpers that couldn't get into the 'meta' plot (IE attend GM events) in MUs because of time zone. Feels bad, man, but I'm not sure how to fix it other than trying to recruit a staffer for that time zone.

If a metaplot needs GM run scenes to participate, then it's just a plot, and if it's meant to affect everyone then it's pretty ill thought out.

@surreality

We did that because of the situation Faraday mentions: Players in control of too much. Hell, we're still trying to resolve staff doing it. Sure, part of why we restrict power is because we're afraid of players abusing it, but it also gives more players a chance at experiencing that kind of role play.

In WoD terms, it's one per sphere because we expect spheres to rarely interact. It's an easy way to let people play all the games they want (Changeling and Geist, e.g.), and each of those sub-games have enough people to sustain themselves.

On a BSG game, I might consider "civilian" and "military" to be the sub-games and allow one character per category, but maybe there is so much overlap that you don't need to bolster numbers of either group to keep the interest going.

One highly successful single-sphere oWoD game, Sanguine Nobikis, I don't think had an alt policy at all but few people took the option to play more than one character.

Aether, an original themed game about four political races did the "one per race and only one leader" thing.

There are many ways to handle alts, but I sincerely would want to make sure that there was enough going on in the entire game before limiting that number to "one".

@faraday

This happens quite, quite often on WoD games, and I was wondering your secret.

@faraday

Have you on your games then you've allowed alts ever had problems with alts affecting one another more directly than you were comfortable with?

@tragedyjones

Foul. Ad hominem. Five yard penalty. Still second down.

I did that to be fair. If you two have a grief, and we all know you do, we have boards for it. Please take the mud-slinging there.

I mean it. Please do.

I have my popcorn ready.

@ThatOneDude

Foul. Begging the Question. 5 yard penalty. Second down.

@ThatOneDude said in Interest/Volunteer Check: Major Multisphere Chronicles of Darkness:

its a game that is being played, we should be looking for things that enhance play

Which style of play? There are dozens, probably more. Without context, I could read that equally as "Vampires controlling the Cops is fun for everyone" all the way to "I didn't like the way I was treated once".

@Cobaltasaurus

Two recommendations:

1. + instead of *. + means 'at least one', so the code will only trigger when there's something there
2. Start the whole thing with ^, which is the beginning-of-line indicator, so it doesn't trigger when someone is talking about a page from someone else. Might as well end it with $ which is the end-of-line indicator.

In short:

^(\w+ pages: .+|From afar, .+|Long distance to .+: .+|You paged .+ with .+|To \(.+\), \w+ pages: .+)$

The reason I might recommend Victoriana is that the PCs are aberrant, they are against the norm, freaks of society even when they are a part of it. An upper-class elf dares treat a servant as more than a servant? Noblesse Oblige and all that, but that's scandalous.

The PCs might have no compelling reason to interact, but they already share the same disgraceful mindset and therefore have more reason to interact in a day of British Imperialism.

@ThatOneDude said in Interest/Volunteer Check: Major Multisphere Chronicles of Darkness:

@Thenomain said in Interest/Volunteer Check: Major Multisphere Chronicles of Darkness:

@tragedyjones

How about we fix the reason for police PCs so they aren't always creating antagonists of other PCs? While it's good to makes sure that characters always have some level of checks and balances, I never got the impression that police PCs vs. other PCs was very fun.

The way most staff in Mu*'s use police in WoD / CofD like it is RL is fucking lame...

Hopefully this is a step in the right direction.

A little different than what I was talking about. PCs vs. PCs is my concern. PCs vs. NPCs is not, because its theme is easily described. All things being World of Darkness, the cops are on the front line against a pretty damn dark dimension; they have every right to be brutal.

Either that, or mortals are snack-cakes and the police should be the Keystone Cops, bumbling around without a clue.

Either that, or we take a page from the original Vampire, and the system is corrupt from the top. Making friends with the Prince means not having any mortal legal concerns. The immortal concerns for drawing mortal attention could leave you dead or worse.

@Cheesegrater

Thanks.

In my ignorance, tho, I wonder what they call someone who is none of these. It does put weight on the theory that this is a sex game, tho.

@Vorpal

I don't see @Ganymede being anything but logical and straightforward. Everything he (or she?) is saying comes from her (or his?) understanding, stated in a clear manner that even I can follow.

In contrast, I'm not sure what your problem with Ganymede is.

Secondary: I misunderstood the role of women in this game, and retract my statements regarding them. It's Gany's statement, "This game is clearly advertised as being for male superheroes" that clued me in to check the initial post and, yup, that's what it is.

I mean, the images on the front of their wiki are pretty damn sexualized, so I wouldn't be surprised if this game was very pro-sex, but I play on WoD games so I'm not going to judge.

@Vorpal

You know, I understand going off on someone for missing the point, but I don't read @Ganymede as saying anything more than, "Not my cuppa" and possibly, "The initial post is kind of sketchy."

I know and completely understand that the entirely of history leading up to the Stonewall Riots give people the right to have a double-standard of "no <this kind of sexual preference> in my game" if that person's game is, e.g., toward gay male interactions, but I don't think it deserves the kind of reaction you're giving it.

Where I see the initial post as sketchy (and a note to @Hushicho: I supported it) is the note about women being allowed, but only emitted. If you're going to be very staunchly on one side of a line, then don't pussy-foot around like that. Say 'gay/bi male characters only'. Period. I see no purpose to do it this way, and kind of a slap in the face.

"This group of people exists only as a token on this game." Where is the open-mindedness about that?

This is not a hate. (Again: I was the first person to talk down the negative reactions, so stuff it if you're going to flip out on me.) This is a criticism. Ganymede's is a criticism. They don't come from nowhere, and all criticisms can be ignored, and most are.

If you disagree with the criticism, that's cool. Don't be like me, tho; use more logic than emotion.

Works fine in Vivaldi and Chrome on the Mac.

(note to @Glitch, can you look into resolving my 'not really a bug' about when I use */* inside code? thanks.)

@Auspice said in Flights 'n Tights MUX:

Since the girls I end up attracted to are almost always straight (sigh)

As a straight guy, I can honestly inform you that gender preference is hardly the biggest hurdle.

@tragedyjones

I meant more when police PCs turn the lawbreaking PCs (i.e., a lot of them) into the antagonist. I had this happen once, but it was a long, long time ago and I don't know how police PCs are being played these days.

We've (us and Onyx Path) worked pretty hard to stop the knee-jerk antagonism between the major supernatural game lines that I worry about the people who want to play Cops & Robbers. That's all.

(post partially removed, because I cannot read straight today at all)

Mind you, it wasn't the answer I was expecting though it makes sense. I was more wondering about the reason for the phrase "versatile bisexual women", emphasis mine.

Versatile how? Are there un-versatile bisexuals? Are there versatile straight women? What in the world does this mean?

I'm imagining that a bisexual woman who, for instance, can do some home maintenance and is a polyglot and, I don't know, occasionally speaks as a motivational coach at the local homeless shelter. You know, is versatile. Does a lot of different things.

I suspect it has to do with sex partners, which is going to make me rub my face a little and go off on a tangent at @Hushicho again. Disappointment comes in all forms.