Posts made by Three-Eyed Crow

@BetterJudgment said:

I recently explored apping a NCO (that is to say, someone ineligible for command) in his late-30s/early 40s on a game like this. It was not because I wanted the character to be in a command position but because I like playing characters who are dealing with the changed expectations and career goals that come with age and for whom issues of rank and experience can help define their actions and personality. I couldn't get anyone on the game to understand what I meant, however; they seemed to think that the only reason someone would want to play an older character was to have a higher rank and a better sheet. At least they were up front about it, which I figure saved us all some frustration.

Yeah, this is dumb.

There should be no reason to restrict apps of mid-grade officers or mid-grade NCOs on most of these sorts of games. These people aren't in charge of anything (though it creates a pool that's far more sensible to promote faction-head positions from). This is just how career progression in the military works.

I generally app the rank I want to play on these sorts of games, if at all possible. If my character gets promoted, great, but it's not some huge failing that rages me if it doesn't happen. Makes me a happier player.

@Wizz said:

Posted log @ Startekkin.net:

Casey
Casey is just about six foot tall and has maintained his physical condition while still being in his thirties.

This reminds me of a desc I read that emphasized how aged and wrinkled a 28-year-old was. Not as in 'Wow, this person who is 28 already looks WAY old and that's strange!' sort of way. But, 'Wow! This person is 28! That's real goddamn old!'

Nothing wrong with that.

I'm happy to waste some time on http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/ now and then, but I would NEVER read it at work.

@HelloRaptor said:

why don'we just add something to whatever log template we're using where we can put a rating on it?

Because rating systems are stupid and don't work for shit? See the difference between PG-13 and R today, and between either and the same rating on movies a decade ago.

If people want to make assumptions about what NSFW means beyond 'The person who tagged this figured you probably wouldn't want to get caught reading it at work.', fuck 'em.

This. The MPAA is a terrible organization and nothing should be modeled on it ever.

A note about graphic sex or violent torture in the 'summary' line of a log is nice, but I generally don't care (also my workplace, the bank that blocks almost everything but randomly not most wikis, doesn't care about most things that aren't pictures or videos).

@Glitch said:

@Tempest

For another high fantasy tale, I liked Codex Alera by Jim Butcher.

I liked these much more than the Dresden Files books, and I liked the Dresden Files books well enough (they play into my weakness for detective fiction).

Someone ages ago was talking about making a Codex Alera game, and I still hope it materializes one day.

No idea if he's still around or not, but I do want to say that I really liked the setup of that place. I found it at a time when people weren't really RPing, alas, but it seemed like a well-done version of L5R.

This sort of circles back to what I meant when I said that a staffer needs to be having fun on some level. A huge part of that, maybe the part that's most important, is whether or not the culture or your game (and the most active people on it) is something you want to engage with. You can change rules, you can change theme and setting elements, but the alchemy of who you have and what they're doing is beyond control of most staffers beyond a certain point (save encouraging good elements and removing toxic or rule-breaking ones).

Are all the players that've flooded into your game early sort of terrible?

This is (kind of) a serious question, because where you do your initial recruitment is really important. The most active players inevitably build game culture as much or more than staff does. If the person who did this unsolicited recruitment binge just brought in their friends, that's likely not a particularly nurturing population to staff for and probably have goals for the game very different than your goals.

ETA: Maybe the nicer way to phrase that question is: "Is this the group of players you would have chosen yourself for the alpha phase of your game?"

@The-Tree-of-Woe said:

@DamnitJim There was a real fear that the UK would intervene on the Confederacy's behalf, both because of trade revenues and to gain another foothold on the continent. Whether that was realistic or not is debatable, but the British earned a reputation as opportunists for a reason. You can hear it in a lot of the war songs/marching songs of the period.

When we studied the Civil War in AP History in high school, we debated how much this had to do with the timing of the Emancipation Proclamation (among other things, like the language in it that specifically avoids freeing slaves in loyal Northern states. I enjoyed this class.). I don't think it was the only reason for it, of course, and I don't think the political situation in Britain at the time would've made siding with the Confederacy at all tenable. But it was certainly interesting.

@JaySherman said:

@Three-Eyed-Crow: Staffing recently feels like getting out of bed, turning on the laptop and preparing to eat a big bucket of nails and glass while using up the next case of fire extinguishers in the cupboard. Amusing exaggerations aside, it's more worry than work, and I am definitely going to have to stop doing the 2-5 hour player mediation, especially since it's one player who has fixated on me personally like the Obsessive Girlfriend meme. When you get emails with things like "you are not allowed to change the story between our characters because that is a symbol of our friendship" .... Yeah. Just yeah.

There are parts of it I really miss, but all of them have to do with plotting on a grand scale and seeing what PCs do with the world you've created. None of them have to do with the people-management part of it. I've mocked the idea of PR Staffers repeatedly (and will again) but part of me can see the appeal of being able to say, "Talk to this guy. No, seriously, talk to this guy. That's what he's here for. Stop talking to me, go away."

Posts that are obviously aimed at That One Guy do grate with me. They inevitably conjure up that defensive, "Why are you bitching at everyone because one guy is a dick? Have a conversation with him and don't scold me." feeling. Sometimes, though, something really is a chronic issue with multiple people, or there's an indication it might become one and hasn't been addressed in other posts or files, and in that case this is the way you'd need to address it. So I try not to make knee-jerk assumptions when something like that goes up (unless I know who That Guy is, in which case they come off as pretty damn funny).

Also, you don't want to end up running a game you don't like very much, so don't just feel obligated to continue on because some randos have shown up and demanded entertainment through no fault of your own.

Staff actually need to get some fun out of their games. It's very different than player-fun. It often comes with bullshit and work that offsets the fun. But some fun still has to be there, and you have to believe in what you're doing enough to want to log on. Do what needs to be done and make the game you want to make. Players will like or they won't, but at least it will succeed or fail as something you actively want to be a part of.

@JaySherman said:

@icanbeyourmuse

To be honest I'm not sure if they were aware they weren't supposed to invite people on; they knew it was incomplete because they were logging into room zero that had no building. They just wanted to continue a forum RP with their friends and drug them all on without a second thought. This same person also tried to play 'go between' for myself and a coder, telling us both entirely different stories of what code was wanted.

If you have this person in any position of authority fire them now.

@JaySherman said:

The game I'm working on as an admin isn't entirely finished. The developer (me) invited 4 people on to help develop the game and become staff. During the initial building phase, one of the four people rushed ahead of everyone else, placing advertisements and inviting people on and giving out characters. This was before we had even settled on the theme! I literally woke up, logged in one day and found the game had gone from 4 to 12 players overnight and people were eager to get started. It was akin to building the car while it's going 65mph down the road.

The person who did this is a huge dick and that sucks. That was some bullshit.

@Derp said:

But this is exactly why you can never really have these types of arguments. As soon as you do, it sets off a chain reaction of things that are entirely unwinnable, because you either agree with the other side, or you disagree and get labelled a flaming racist. It doesn't matter -what- your grounds for dissent are, or why you feel that one argument is relevant whereas another is not, you're just hating all over someone else. Example above: I feel that the confederate flag is a symbol of state's rights and a pushback against encroaching federalism that grossly violated the Constitutional rights of the states and their sovereignty (and we had to add three Amendments to the Constitution to back the view of the Union on the matter, so it's not like this was at all clear cut on either side), but people are very gung-ho about it being all about race.

I don't think the way you feel about the Confederate flag signifies anything about you personally, because I know absolutely nothing about you.

Here's how I feel about it.

I was born in a town by the name of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, a place that is not terribly remarkable except for some gorgeous scenery. And for being, at the time I lived there (which was late 1980s/early 1990s), the base of the Aryan Nations hate group. They were actively robbing banks and blowing up people's cars. If you got on the back roads, you had to be very careful about where you drove, lest you end up passing by some psycho's compound while he was on patrol (my house was literally three miles from Ruby Ridge, which is the sight of a somewhat famous FBI stand-off, as such things are famous). The Confederate flag was a very popular symbol for these particular psychos. This is an entirely modern thing that still exists and these people are still horrible.

This is not what the Confederate flag means to everyone who wears a t-shirt with the symbol on it. I don't have a knee-jerk "This person is a skin-head" reaction every time I see it. But I do think it's naive and willfully blind to the way it's been co-opted to think we live in a time where it's no longer a relevant association to have with it, because I have personally met people for whom it means, "I'm a neo-Nazi."

I like Daredevil and Agent Carter well enough, and Flash and Arrow. I think what these shows have in common is that the parent company doesn't meddle with them very much, so they can just kind of be TV shows. Whereas Marvel clearly micro-manages everything on SHIELD.

Ugh, Gotham.

I was at least amused that the best of the ASoIaF books ("A Storm of Swords") was not the one the stereotypical white dude owns. Do people really exist who sink that much time into the damn things and then stop at the second one?

@Coin said:

Yeah. But they skewered Firefly and Dollhouse, among a bunch of others (I can only remember the Whedon ones... damn Whedon).

"Dollhouse" got a second season. It got a second season largely because "Firefly" had been so mistreated by the network and some people there who had relationships with Joss Whedon either felt bad or did not want to get more shit for essentially repeating that. It was promoted decently and while I'm not sure whether or not the episodes were aired in order (FOX is bad about that even with shows they're high on), I've rewatched the first season and the problems with getting people in on it were not FOX's fault. It got better, but that cancellation of that one isn't something I blame the network for. The ratings are here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dollhouse_episodes and even in today's decimated TV numbers landscape, this wouldn't have been sustainable.

@Luna said:

Pregnant women who can't talk or post about anything else. Ever. I don't need 10 status updates daily about your pregnant ass or your pregnant diabetic woes. You did both of these things on purpose to yourself.

I'm usually pretty good at pretending I care about this stuff, or at least tuning it out. It only raged me last year, when one of my coworkers was pregnant, and every fucking Wednesday meeting for two months inevitably had to involve a 10-minute digression on her fetus before anything got done. These meetings are annoying anyway, since they grind work to a halt and mainly exist to justify the existence of our managers, but this made them unbearable.