Posts made by TNP

The Expanse.

It's still a bit early to tell but so far I'm rather enjoying it. It feels very old school science fiction, hearkening back to the days of Asimov and Heinlein. The solar system has been colonized. There's a rebellious Mars who feels it's time to be independent from Earth who wants to retain control at all cost.

There are Belters, living out on Ceres in the asteroid belt. There's water rationing and a generation whose physiology is adapted to low/no G with long limbs and brittle bones. There are miners who mine the asteroids for ice in spaceships that obey the laws of physics.

Not sure I care about the plot yet but the setting is awesome.

@Ganymede said:

@Coin said:

I once ran an oWoD game set in Istanbul.

It's Constantinople.

I've known that song since I first hear a recording of the Four Lads sing it. But it wasn't till I regularly handled coins minted in Constantinople that I really wondered why did Constantinople get the works? it has so much history and flavor, why change it?

I'm not satisfied by the answer of it's nobodies business but the Turk or that they liked it better that way..

Edited to add: Googling reveals it's a rather complex story and rather interesting.

@Cobaltasaurus You're doing it wrong. You have to change contains to is in the event.

@Arkandel said:

Welcome to MSB.

Welcome to the internet.

@Misadventure Please. I've been on plenty of games that were perfectly adequate. I'm sure everyone has. The majority of games never had anything like the the horror stories that made it to WORA. The kind of thing that make them 'terrible'. Just like any other activity such as theatre or sports or even books clubs where many people get together, there will be the normal amount of friction that's unavoidable. This does not come close to 'terrible'. (It doesn't come close to wonderful either but that's not germane to the topic.)

Extrapolating to infinity based on a limited sample.

I used the unregistered version for a very long time. I have to admit, the spellchecker is nice to catch my typos.

@bored said:

. The sort of thing @Ganymede is suggesting is a) not actually different from how MU* have always worked and b) fundamentally terrible, as the history of this stuff tells us.

So just what does the history of this stuff tell us? Let's see... In the last 20 years or so, there's been a hell of a lot of Mu*s out there. Some lasted for years. Some lasted much less time. Some have been up and running almost all that time. And a very, very small percentage of them ever got mentioned on WORA. Most games in those two decades went completely unremarked on because, one assumes, they ran well and without any major insanity and asshatery.

So the history of this stuff tells us that the majority of games have been pretty successful and only a proportionately few have been terrible

@Griatch said:

Huh, is it correct that SimpleMu is a $20 shareware program? Interesting.

No. It's no longer being updated. It's a free download and it's impossible to register. You need to get an existing key from someone.

I use SimpleMu. I know many do.

@deadculture said:

It's far worse to prohibit or impose artificial limitations to certain concepts to some and not to others.

No, it's really not. There are some people who should never play an Elder. There are some who should never play an Alpha. There are some who should never play Superman. Sometimes it's because they're dicks. Sometimes it's because they're just not good leaders. Sometimes it's because they're perpetually unreliable even if they're stellar when they are around.

It's staff's job to make a game run well so that the most people possible enjoy it who are on it. That includes weeding out players who aren't suitable for certain things.

It is also ten times - a hundred times - A THOUSAND TIMES - worse to get rid of someone unsuitable than it is to just make sure it never happens in the first place.

There's got to be at least one of the geek social fallacies at play here.

I was just going to reply on this topic and here it has its own thread.

I'm actually more in agreement with @Derp than not. He's not letting friends play banned concepts. Something that's restricted is not banned. Staff still allows it, you just need to get their approval first. So what does staff use to determine whether someone is allowed to play a restricted concept? Their opinion.

Does it really matter if they only met this person on that game three months ago? The person has a limited track record on that game but they seem sane. Staffer instinct? Yes. Is that really better than if the staffer knew the other player for a year elsemu*? Or for two years doing tabletop? It all comes down to the same thing: they think the person won't abuse the concept and will benefit the game. Every player is judged on the same criteria and has the same opportunity to play that concept.

Now some caveats. Is there a quota? That gets a lot more grey. Do the rules specifically say the person must have been playing for X time first? That's a violation. I could go on but I think my point is clear: if you trust the staffer to decide who gets to play something, they should be allowed to use their discretion so long as everyone has the same opportunity and it violates no existing rule.

If you don't trust staff, don't play there if it bothers you that much. If you do play there anyway, suck it up. You made your choice.

I still look back on CIty By The Bay with a certain wistful nostalgia for when it was in its prime. There was a year there that I had a lot of fun and can't really think of any complaints. And then it went to shit. A slow, inevitable, decline into wanting to gnaw my own leg off just to get away which was the culmination of the also inevitable 'maybe if I just make an alt, it'll get better' and the other standard attempts at trying to salvage something I sunk so much time into and wanted to recapture the fun.

Naturally, it didn't work and I left before I gnawed my own leg off. Would it have been better had it shut down before getting to that point? Maybe. Regardless, I had some of my most fun there right up to the point I stopped having fun there.

@JustNobody It's time to unfriend RFK and change your relationship status. Delete the contact info from your phone and erase that last recorded message. No one wants to hear how you've been spoiled forever for all other games. It's time to move on.

@DnvnQuinn This is the most horrible forum software ever created by man.

@Arkandel It's a sound hypothesis. I didn't try KD till WoD was dead. I'll be staying there too regardless as to whether activity increases on the WoD games.

How... ... sad.

@Apu I rather like them. When I go shopping, I always look at the nutritional information. Knowing I could eat the entire box/bag, I check out the calories per serving then the servings per container. Knowing that this little box has 1500 calories, I don't buy it.

I just had a couple jobs taken care of that had been waiting. Small stuff but it shows that the queue is again being worked on.