Posts made by Wizz

@Ganymede said in MU* Gripes and Peeves:

@silverfox said in MU* Gripes and Peeves:

But a very adorable angry kitten?

THAT CAT IS CLEARLY JUST GIVING THAT MAN A HUG AND HE IS REJECTING THAT LOVE

I don't wanna be That Guy, but weed was a net negative in my life and turned it into kiiiind of a living nightmare for a while. It was surprisingly easy to go from normal to shithouse rat crazy, it just took the right strain in the right concentration.

I guess what I'm saying is it's not all giggles and pain relief and you should be as cautious going into marijuana as you would any other potent psychoactive drug. Do your research and don't buy into the "miraculous gift from the Earth Mother that solves everything and could never ever harm you" bullshit that seems to make up about 95% of weed culture.

Also, could this maybe be its own thread?

ETA: @Ganymede sry u are just a wonderful catbot who works so hard for us

@HelloProject

I mean, it's like Magic, it's got an entire lore and universe behind it? Presumably the MUDs are just using the cyberpunk setting of the card game.

@Sparks said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@Warma-Sheen said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

Just keep in mind there are many flavors of POC who also have many flavors of culture. A lot of people forget the distinction between skin color and culture. I know a few white dudes with chocolate frosting. I know a few chocolate dudes with white frosting. They are people too.

Don't let fear of 'getting it wrong' stop you from playing a POC character.

You are way more concise than I am apparently capable of managing today; apparently I shouldn't have left the reply window in fullscreen mode and watched updates to the thread periodically while I worked instead of blindly writing a small novella while three more pages of thread materialized.

But, yes, this. Upvoted, and then an additional 99 more upvotes in spirit.

Pretty relevant TED talk on the subject of limited perspectives into the cultures of others and why that sucks, I really recommend it!

It also ties into a fantasy trope that has ALWAYS bothered me, that fantasy cultures are usually super-simplified in much the same way -- ie, dwarves are all miners and heavy alcoholics , elves are almost always archers and scouts and live in forest communes, etc. It's become shorthand because it's recognizable and writers are desperate for shortcuts sometimes, but isn't that problematic for most of the same reasons it's problematic in real life?

@Tinuviel said in MU* Gripes and Peeves:

Fictional races may as well be literal aliens from another planet.

Specifically in regards to elves and dwarves, why? If they developed on the same world, in the same geographical regions, there's no real reason they wouldn't, they're not aliens. They've got the other human skin pigments and their bodies are almost identical to human bodies, to the point (in a lot of fiction) that they can even cross-breed with humans.

It's much more common that elves and dwarves with black skin are the evil faction -- dark elves, and (specific to WoW) dark iron dwarves. That's just off-putting and weird to me.

@Tinuviel said in MU* Gripes and Peeves:

@Wizz said in MU* Gripes and Peeves:

Like...you should care? It matters? How do I even need to explain it to you? It was, yeah, eye-opening about the community at large and even (very unfortunately) about people in my own life at the time.

Eeeeh. When it comes to fictional races... I don't really agree with you.

Why not? Aside from the obvious, like literal aliens from another planet.

@Sparks said in MU* Gripes and Peeves:

I got challenged by a POC friend ages ago (fourteen-ish years, I think?) to try playing exclusively POC characters in MMOs and other online games for six months and see what happened, and I found it an eye-opening experience. Not just socially—in a breathtaking amount of online gaming there's a surprising amount of sudden racist toxicity you experience when you change your avatar's skin color, far more than I'd realized even though I knew intellectually it existed—but even technologically as well.

This was truly a trip on WoW back in the day. Full disclosure, I am white, but I often tried to make my avatars black -- not for any more complicated reason than just to see if I could, which an absolutely shocking amount of times turned out to be "not really." When I pointed out that you couldn't really make a dwarf or blood elf (at the time, for example) with very dark skin tones to people their responses were almost always very dismaying to me, the mildest usually being some variant of "who cares?"

Like...you should care? It matters? How do I even need to explain it to you? It was, yeah, eye-opening about the community at large and even (very unfortunately) about people in my own life at the time.

@mietze said in Interest in Cyberpunk MU*?:

When just getting pregnant and/or hitting a certain level of environmental toxin level or reacting to implants of a much cruder nature can alter people's brains/behaviors/ect, through no fault of their own, I guess it doesnt really seem to far fetched to me that when you replace organic systems wholesale, that can lead to some pretty life altering effects.

Life altering effects, sure? But why insanity?

@faraday

I mean, personally my mileage there goes a lot farther, because I would absolutely replace my weak-ass human limbs with cyberlimbs so I could juggle dumpsters or whatever. Are you kidding? Being a cyborg would be cool as hell.

BUT, more seriously, my biggest issue is that in that system, there IS no distinction between like, someone in a horrible accident who needed to replace all their limbs/organs and someone who elected to. In fact, reason doesn't enter into it at all, it doesn't matter if you're trying to become the perfect killer, or a supercop, or adapt to new environments, or explore identity, or you just wish to be able to return to something like normalcy, just the act of getting cybered up makes you crazy. That is weird, nonsensical and upsetting to me.

@Runescryer said in Interest in Cyberpunk MU*?:

And if you're worried about 'inherently gross', then, no offense, but Cyberpunk might not be the genre for you.

I happen to enjoy cyberpunk as a genre quite a lot, thanks. But gore is not what I mean by "gross." The author clearly understands why that is upsetting. Hyperviolence is supposed to be upsetting, it's dehumanizing.

The authors behind the concept of cyberpsychosis don't understand why the use of extensive prosthetics leading to mental illness is a gross concept. It's a perspective we've outgrown culturally. Prosthetics are not dehumanizing, they're empowering.

@faraday said in Interest in Cyberpunk MU*?:

And part of it stems from a world-building desire not to have terminators running around. It wasn't in line with the vision of the setting, even though it could have been a natural consequence of the technology. That may or may not fit in any other cyberpunk setting depending on what you were going for.

That's the only point I was trying to make, was that a cyborg with all the listed augmentations would only be a terminator because the augmentations themselves are overpowered. They're going for a certain aesthetic and whether or not it makes sense depends entirely on the in-universe logic, not universal logic.

@Runescryer said in Interest in Cyberpunk MU*?:

Now, is it a mechanic to limit getting loaded up with Cyber? Absolutely. Is the concept in the game more devastating than in the literary genre? Possibly. But, without the possibility of cyberpsychosis, everyone would be playing a FullBorg.

There are other setting limitations that you could impose that would make sense and not be quite so outdated or inherently kinda gross.

Cybernetics could be costly, legally restricted, unreliable (as in, early development or maintenance is difficult/rare), or all of the above.

ETA: accidental doublepost, which I am allergic to

@faraday said in Interest in Cyberpunk MU*?:

@Wizz said in Interest in Cyberpunk MU*?:

If you can otherwise turn yourself into an unstoppable cyborg with the options the game provides, a balancing mechanic that punishes the player for picking what's available feels weird to me. Why not just make cyborgs more stoppable instead?

I don't really get the argument. It's like saying: "Why punish players by not letting them take every skill and attribute at max level". It's just a game balance limit with a bit of in-universe fiction to justify/explain it.

It's not like that, though. You can't just take every skill and attribute at max level, that doesn't make sense system-wise or fluff-wise.

You could conceivably become a total-conversion cyborg in Shadowrun's universe, it's just a matter of installing the parts? But there's this arbitrary point total mechanic that says, "no, you can't get that prosthetic eye, that's too many Soul Point Deductions."

Because the prosthetics themselves are overpowered and break the game balance if you allow someone to get all of them or add them on top of other powers, etc.

It is a mechanic that makes sense in Shadowrun, it just doesn't anywhere else.

@faraday said in Interest in Cyberpunk MU*?:

@Wizz said in Interest in Cyberpunk MU*?:

It's also an ableist relic, imo.

Perhaps in part. It was also an important game balance mechanic though in Shadowrun, to keep people from just chroming themselves with everything under the sun and becoming an unstoppable cyborg. (Or worse, an unstoppable magician cyborg.) At least for awhile until they started breaking their own rules with cyberzombies and otaku and other silliness.

If you can otherwise turn yourself into an unstoppable cyborg with the options the game provides, a balancing mechanic that punishes the player for picking what's available feels weird to me. Why not just make cyborgs more stoppable instead?

Some settings assume a full-body conversion is actually more or less commonplace, like Ghost In The Shell. Major Kusanagi and Batou were pretty much the opposite of invincible.

@Runescryer said in Interest in Cyberpunk MU*?:

Cyberpsychosis has always been a staple of the Cyberpunk genre, from Neuromancer onwards. It's also a physical representation of the overall genre theme of the dehumanizing effects of technology.

It's also an ableist relic, imo. I think society has discarded a lot of the pretty ugly fear and rejection of prosthetics that we carried close to forty years ago when Gibson wrote Neuromancer.

But I'm a filthy transhumanist so what do I know ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Maaan I really want to like the new season of Altered Carbon but the magic is just gone somehow. I'm slogging through it in hopes of a redeeming moment but it is fairly ehhh so far.

@icanbeyourmuse said in New Mu* Creation: Atharia:

It is, very basically, a world where people are cursed to keep reliving the same life over and over again. Each time something happens in a previous life that is a big deal something changes in the new life. (hope that makes sense)/

As in, there's some sort of time loop wonkiness going on and they literally relive the exact same life? Or it's the same mind/soul in different bodies, and like...fated/cursed to do the same things in their lives and face the same sorta circumstances? Or...?

@Mr-Johnson said in Building a new Supers Game:

It makes me properly sad to see that so many people have gotten so jaded and cynical over the years that a genuine statement of praise is seen to be something it's not.

It's not that I didn't think you were praising Runescryer & Co., it's that I disagree with the premise that games are inherently in competition with one another. But that's enough derailing for one day.

@Ganymede said in Building a new Supers Game:

I doubt either of you would seriously consider living in a country where the means of production are not in private hands.

jk lol. Maybe. IT'S COMPLICATED OK
That's an entirely different topic tho, Gany.

@Mr-Johnson said in Building a new Supers Game:

I'm all for more competition in the market place!

I am pretty sure this was said facetiously, but I kinda wish people wouldn't even joke about it. Other games are not competition, even friendly competition, and that attitude can be seriously misinterpreted and lead to shitty behavior with the best intentions that can harm one or all games involved.