Posts made by Thenomain

@Jeshin,

I cannot find this text on the front page of your site. All I see is "October contest coming soon!".

@Misadventure said:

It's hard to draw a line.

It's very easy to draw a line. The line is "be consistent". If people know what to expect, then when the line is crossed everybody knows that's what just happened. All you need to do is stop yourself from wanting to give in to being nice, and to be self-aware enough to keep from being manipulated.

Easy.

I think that kind of misses the context, @surreality. I don't want to get into the whole horrid discussion of being RP Police, but it is, I think, a dangerous thing to let people constantly game the game, breaking the flow, instead of playing inside it.

How many people (besides me) think that people who treat all RPGs as a PvP situation, or a potential PvP situation, are people who need to be asked to leave. It strikes me as the kind of person who logs into a D&D game and wants to be Drizz't and refuses to play anything else.

Two, according to Star Trek.

"Fool me once, shame on thee. Fool me twice, shame on me."

@Ganymede

It could be that believing the lie is a system with only one Door. You both can be right about this.

Show us on the doll where the bad gamer touched you...

Saw isn't horror. Saw is gore-porn. I got a laugh when watching a play-through of Until Dawn and they mentioned this.

(edit: not trying to derail the discussion. i wholeheartedly admit that tension and suspense are very valuable tools in the arsenal of horror. i just wanted to note strongly that there is more to 'dark' than horror.)

Because I would stab anyone who forces me to use the d20 system for everything repeatedly in the face, unless it's d20 Modern.

Er, sorry, constructive. Uh, because I find level-based systems inappropriate for a wide variety of games, and I mostly don't care for them. I'm fine if that's the thing for the table, but don't want it to be the only thing.

@Usekh said:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/webeharebrained/battletech

You missed the colon.

You also had me at "Harebrained Schemes".

@ThatGuyThere

Damn yes, diaspora and its Firefly Financial System.

Just as a note, a setting can be dark without it being filled with horror. Batman's Gotham, for example.

The consequences can also be social. 'Socially shunned' is just as potent as 'not feeling it today'.

Fate Core has a mental health track which is used in social combat.

Just sayin'.

@Jaunt said:

I just don't find it an unappealing or particularly effective method when the goal is actual, valuable discussion.

I would like to point out again that your first posts were about how you were going to use your own standards to determine if discussion was worthwhile, and worse you announced that you were purposefully antagonizing the rest.

Two thumbs up for trying to be the nice guy you say you normally are, one thumb down for still not quite being self-aware in your new environment. It's still one step forward, so let's call it progress toward, but not quite to, the moral high-ground.

Yes, I mixed my metaphors.

Incidentally, I consider being called different than all other communities out there a compliment.

(another edit) I'll have real content eventually, but for now I'm getting a crick in my neck from looking upward at all the riders on their high horses!

Irony nonwithstanding.

Maybe add 1Password support while you're at it no no aigh no just kidding!

@HelloProject said:

In @Jaunt 's defense, in the professional world you generally say "My opinions do not reflect the opinions of company X".

And when you're talking about company X, that and a quarter will get you a cup of coffee.

(hint: drink fresh-ground, home-brewed coffee; it's very inexpensive)

Thenomain Translates Marketing-Speak to English: Episode 4 (OR's proposed new intro text)

@Jaunt said:

Goals of charter re-write: Make it clear what community OR is focused on supporting. Clarify the criteria that we use to determine our sub-genre. Avoid language that might be seen as subversive to other communities, or could be construed as manipulative.

Slide #1 text (major change): Optional Realities is a community and design blog for text-based multiplayer online role playing games (TMORPGs) with a specific focus on character and story-driven games that include permanent character death and automated combat as core features. TMORPGs include sub-genres such as RPIs, MUDs, MOOs and MUSHes.

I think we have determined that treating Muds, Moos, and Mushes as cultures (or genres or sub-genres) was getting in the way of the message. Advice: Strike the last line from the charter entirely; instead explain further in a "Welcome to Optional Realities!" post, or "About OR" page.

Slide #2 text (minor change): Optional Realities is a place where the future developers and long-standing members of our community can come together to share ideas on design, writing, and what makes each of our games most meaningful to its players. Its contributors are leaders from games that have been around for twenty years, as well as new games currently in development.

I think "our community" folds into a we/us expectation, and therefore positions a you/them. Advice: Strike "of our community". Slide one explains who the site is for already.

I have a personal beef with "leaders from games" as reading like a grab for authenticity, but it's more how I feel about the statement. There are other ways to inclusively say, "We are formed from people of all skill and experience levels." Stand on your skill, not on implied age-means-wisdom.

Slide Text #3 (no change): Join us in creating a better, more intelligent, more supportive community for our favorite game genre.

Better than what? More intelligent than what? More supportive than what? Here I think we have the outcome of the "we are tired of X" mentioned by the OR Representatives repeatedly in this thread, while those of us here have no context for that. Advice: "Join us in creating an intelligent, supportive community for our favorite game genre."

Finally: Please investigate a way to not embed the text with the image. HTML5/CSS3 is a thing. I don't know what this would do to important accessibility, so fix the site for screen-readers first, then maybe make my coder heart more happy.

I played on MasqMUSH until the then game owner flipped out and shut down, then restarted it because he was begged to by his online TS buddy. This ending happened about a week before DarkMetal first opened its doors.

An old story about an old game.

I have also said that I didn't mind the weekly updates. This makes three times now.

And yes, Jaunt, you are here officially representing Optional Realities. You are staff there, you are talking about it, you can't get away from that. This is the way the world works. Sorry. (Also the third time I've mentioned this.) Just because you don't want it to be this way doesn't change the world.