Posts made by WTFE

和楽器バンド - 千本桜

@Auspice said in RL Anger:

Pro tip:

If you're on an online dating app/site, don't tell the chick that actually stuck through your 'I'm feeling suicidal' episode (out of legitimate concern) that 'women are fucking bitches who won't talk to me.'

Correct response:

Here's a gift for you!

It's time for me to compare cultures again.

One thing I admire about the Chinese is their stoic natures. While sometimes they take it too far (in first response circles it's well-known that you pretty much ignore expressed symptoms when dealing with Chinese people and look only for signs because they won't actually TELL you when something is causing them pain!) in matters like free meals and such they're a joy to deal with.

If you arrange free food and you arrange something someone can't eat, they just ... don't eat it. If you arrange a free trip into the mountains (like my employer did last year) and someone can't climb the mountain, they just ... don't climb the mountain. There's none of this bizarre sense of entitlement that I routinely found in North American companies (where people routinely lost their shit over free food and whine loudly and bitterly at being "left out" of activities they didn't like or were unable to partake of). I still reflexively cringe whenever free food/activities/whatever show up because nearly 40 years of watching assholes whine with almost spectacular doggedness has left scar tissue, but the cringe has thus far always been proved premature.

Unless you deal with children. The current crowd of Chinese people 20 years of age or younger are whiny snowflakes like North Americans and will get the axe if they get on my sole remaining nerve for much longer.

@Ganymede said in RL Anger:

The problem wasn't that there were dietary restrictions or preferences. The problem was that they were increasingly specific. "I can only eat wheat-free (gluten-free wasn't a thing back then), dairy-free, tomato-free, but not vegan -- I like my meat." "I can only eat vegan, tomato-free, but not wheat-free because wheat-free crusts are of the Devil." "I can only eat <insert laundry list of increasingly bizarre requirements>."

It's fucking free food, not civil rights.

Preaching to the choir here, girl.

I'm allergic to fucking nuts and legumes, but you don't see me being a bitch about motherfuckers who insist on bringing hummus and pecan pie in.

And were I stupid enough to be part of the group that is arranging food, your legume allergy would be taken into account because, as I said, it kind of sucks being left out of a group activity because, in effect, you're sick.

On the other hand I would guess you're not that kind of a shithead that would see the effort we'd put in to including you and then shitting on us because it wasn't the specific kind of legume-free food you wanted.

"Oh, but I'm vegan, so if you don't provide me with an option, I'll feel left out."

You fucking left out meat and dairy products voluntarily, so go fuck that noise. You don't fit in at a Burger King, but I don't see you whining to them.

Yeah, the more militant branches of vegetarianism start collecting a hefty "fuck you" from me because it is pure choice. Interestingly they also tend to be the loudest of the whiners when it comes to their tastes not being catered to. And let's face it, vegan pizzas at their absolute best fucking suck. If you're whining about how your vegan pizza is terrible ... well, fucking duh! You've deliberately selected a dietary choice that gives you crusts that suck, "cheese" that sucks, and toppings that suck. Get used to suction.

SO MUCH AGGRAVATION.

So much, in fact, that the company dropped the pizza lunches. So much, in fact, that if I'm ever in a position to make the decision, free food will simply not happen.

@WildBaboons said in RL Anger:

We get free food relatively often at work and I've rarely heard anyone complain that wasn't giving a valid complaint. Like the catered luncheon where the vegetarian can only eat one of the bags of chips... said vegetarian got themselves into the position of helping arrange the food and fixed the problem instead of whining about it.

The problem wasn't that there were dietary restrictions or preferences. The problem was that they were increasingly specific. "I can only eat wheat-free (gluten-free wasn't a thing back then), dairy-free, tomato-free, but not vegan -- I like my meat." "I can only eat vegan, tomato-free, but not wheat-free because wheat-free crusts are of the Devil." "I can only eat <insert laundry list of increasingly bizarre requirements>."

Now for some things--medical conditions--I have some sympathy and I will bend over backwards to accommodate these at social events because it sucks to be left out because, in effect, you're sick. Some other things--common dietary restrictions like "kosher" or "vegan"--well, that's (mostly) a choice, but the availability is sufficiently commonplace that it's easy enough to find something that complies.

No, what gets me is when you have a long laundry list of personal choices that make life a logistical Hell as you juggle five or more pizzerias along with over 9000 very specific requirement lists (despite the company only having 300 people!) all so that each precious little snowflake can have, in effect, their own private pizza. At that point, I agree with what management chose to do: ditch the free pizzas entirely. You want your special snowflake pizza? Order it and pay for it yourself.

Sucks for the majority that strident minorities killed a good thing, but it sucks even more to go through the massive efforts required to arrange such a thing only to get shit upon literally every week.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in RL Anger:

@Auspice said in RL Anger:

@Cupcake

I wouldn't have told her. I'd have just told Douchebag 'Maybe you should buy them instead.'

I dunno why people bitch about free food.
I fuckin' love free food. Free food is the best food.

The amount of terrible back-biting and entitlement free food brings out in people around an office boggles my mind. It's made me cease to participate in or partake in pot-lucks because I CANNOT deal (I also get guilted for that, but I'm not eating so they can stuff it).

When I worked at Entrust the Tech Bubble (v1.0) was in full swing so any company who wanted to keep staff had to wear kid gloves. One of the things Entrust did was the Friday pizza lunch where they ordered in enough pizza in a bewildering variety of crusts and toppings to feed a company of 300 or so people about five times over.

Seriously, local pizzerias were getting to dread Fridays because of us.

They tried to cater to everybody: wheat-free crusts on some, cheeseless on some, tomato-free on some, vegan on some, etc. And keep in mind, just in case the point is being lost here, THESE ARE FREE FUCKING PIZZAS WE'RE TALKING ABOUT and not freezer pizza from the grocery store either.

And yet…

The whining began almost immediately. "What about those of us who want a cheeseless, wheat-free, vegan pizza?" (What? You, you mean? 'Cause nobody else is asking for that shit.) "What about…?" "What about…?" "What about…?" "What about…?" "What about…?"

Every week the whining got louder, more strident, and more ridiculously specialized. The weekly event that was supposed to bring us all together in one room having a good time and good food turned into bitter contests of who could be the most oppressed. (Yes, we had the Oppression Olympics in the '90s. And it was just as ludicrous as it is now.)

So the company cut the free pizzas.

Which brought on even more whining.

If I ever wind up in management in a company, free food is not on the plate. People are complete assholes as soon as free food enters the picture.

If there's two ways to do things...

1. Stupid;
2. Really stupid;

...Steve Jackson will pick the third option:

3. Really fucking stupid.

This is true every time. It covers game design, marketing, customer relations, legal interpretations. You name it. He will invariably pick "really fucking stupid" as the way to go ahead with things.

As far as I can tell the entire purpose of having staff at Steve Jackson Games is to get Jackson as far away from actually touching things as is humanly possible.

@Tinuviel: I just wanted to say, apropos of nothing, I FUCKING CALLED IT, BITCH!

When the GM has absolutely, positively had enough of your fucking crap.

@Tinuviel said in RL Anger:

@Ex-FaviIIa-Surgo said in RL Anger:

untermenschen

Oh, sorry. I didn't realise you were actually braindead.

Also, it's always capitalised: Untermenschen. If you're going to insult me, do it properly.

Further, you cannot be "an Untermenschen". You, in the plural case, can be "Untermenschen". In the singular case, however, as was used here, you can be "an Untermensch". (This presumes, naturally, you want to be one of those tiresome turds who mix languages to disguise their lack of thinking by "SEE A FOREIGN WORD I'M NOT AN IDIOT WITH NO OPINION WORTH EXPRESSING!")

TL;DR summary: go back to 4chan. Feel free to return when you accomplish adulthood in more than just time spent on the planet.

@surreality said in Adapting FATE for MU*s:

@Thenomain I have this now.

It's so good it's worth sharing just to spread the word, no joke.

I have this now.

Literally the name is "Drunken Ass Spirits". I got it specifically for reading MSB. At 60%ABV it's there to numb me to the pain as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

FATE has some rules for making a magic system or ten. And in the FATE System Toolkit there's even more.

Doesn't really have a "magic system" as such, though.

@Auspice said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):

I have never enjoyed a GURPS game I have played. I've had diehard fans of the system insist it's 'just bad GMs' or whatever, but I still blame the system. I think it's far too rules-heavy and clunky than any system has any need to ever, ever be.

I played in one enjoyable GURPS game once. (Using GURPS 2nd edition, I think, though it may have been 3rd, and GURPS Space set in the Traveller universe.) And it was purely the GM who made it enjoyable -- by largely ignoring the actual GURPS rules most times. Once the dice came out, the joy vanished. Eventually we switched that campaign over to CORPS, though, and it was for the better. By far.

And this from someone who finds the HERO system to be downright amusing and fun to build characters in sometimes.

One of the things that really, really, really, really, really bugs me about GURPS is that it's an utterly schizophrenic system.

Does armour work D&D probabilistic-style with a chance of just not having anything happen at all? Or does it work Runequest style as damage reduction. GURPS: "Why not both!?"

Do character points measure IC difficulty of learning/acquiring/whatever abilities (in the vein of, say, Rolemaster) or OOC estimates of "utility" (in the vein of, say, HERO)? GURPS: "Why not both, randomly, without rhyme nor reason!? And then make costs way out of line sometimes for no reason that can be discerned."

Almost everywhere you turn in GURPS you find this kind of decision by choosing all available options simultaneously. It makes the game incredibly incoherent and trivial to hack.

As an example for the latter, in that very game that I mentioned above early on we all made the characters we wanted (which was one of the selling points for making us use GURPS over Traveller). The first session, though, was a disaster because most of us made a character based on reasonable "this is the character role I want to fill" and one, who was familiar with the rules, made a character, on the same number of points and disadvantage limits, etc., that was better than everybody else's character at every role in the game. He was a better combat monster than the Marine. A better starship pilot than the Naval pilot. A better medico than the actual doctor, etc. All of this was because he knew the system enough to know how to get grotesquely disproportionate outcomes from trivial point investments.

After the disastrous first session he helped us create our own characters and gave the GM some tips on making the NPCs and challenges, but really, no game should be so trivial to hack that you can have one person who knows the system a bit better than the others make a character that can literally replace all the remaining characters put together. (I mean HERO is hackable too, but not to that extent! There's some numerical breakpoints you can use to eke out a bit more ability for the same price, but not orders of magnitude more.)

GURPS Asparagus.

Time for a trip in the wayback machine.

Long, long, long ago Unka Steve of Steve Jackson Games infamy, being tired of languishing in obscurity after his relatively minor hit with TFT and rather larger one with Car Wars (if I have my timeline straight -- it has been decades after all) decided he was going to write the end-all, be-all of role-playing games. (There's a joke in there. I'll give 14 quatloos to the first person to spot it.) He proceeded to write a set of rules and farmed them out to playtest among a bunch of playtest groups in stores around North America.

I was in one of those playtest groups.

Fifteen thousand fucking signatures later (dude was REALLY paranoid with his NDAs!) we finally played the game that was later released as GURPS: Man-to-Man (again, if I recall the title correctly: it predated the actual GURPS core book, though, so whichever book that was).

Stevie Wonder didn't listen to any of the feedback. At all.

People pointed out that his height and weight charts, for example, were utter shite. Since, apparently, Steve Jackson himself is a short shit, he decided that average height for a human male was 5'5". He further linked height to strength only so in the GURPS world no short person is strong, no tall person is frail. The game was chock full of this kind of stupidity and it was SOUNDLY ridiculed for it in Usenet and in some of the less ad-dependent gaming press.

So he blamed the playtesters for not bringing it to his attention. Despite the fact that, you know, we TOTALLY FUCKING DID.

He corrected some (note: some!) of the most egregious flaws (that we'd told him of LONG before publication of M2M!) for the core rules' first edition, but AFAIK to this day still blames the "useless" playtesters for all the original flaws.

He didn't correct the flaw I'd noted, however, with leather jerkins being able to just bounce arbalest bolts off sometimes, until a major supplement for GURPS' third edition and final incorporation into the core rules in the fourth edition. Now if my memory serves me correctly, GURPS proper was released in 1985 or 1986 and the 4th edition was 2004 or 2005. So we're looking at nearly two decades before a bug in the system I'd noted in the early '80s was finally fixed.

But yeah, it was his playtesters' fault.

The man is a total, worthless shit.

@ThatGuyThere said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):

Chart is not bad though I would say these ratings are based on a 1-20 scale since there are games like Traveller and Gurps out there that are much more complex than D20 not to mention any system ever published by GDW if we want to dig back into the mists of history.

Waitwhat!? What drugs have you been on that make you think Traveller is more complicated than D20!?

@Arkandel said in RL Anger:

@Aria I've a friend who refers to vampires as "Draculas".

I can't tell if he's just trying to piss me off or what.

I refer to anime as japanimation. And yeah, I pretty much do it to piss off the fans. It's especially funny when they screech that it's not a word and I point to the definition in the dictionary…

@Aria said in RL Anger:

I'm literally biting through the straw on my drink trying not to be like, "DUDE. One, 'a yoda' is not a rank. It goes padawan, knight, master, grandmaster. Two, they clearly don't care. Try some bullshit sports metaphor instead."

Fucking FINALLY! Revenge of the nerds! So many fucking years of listening to tired, wannabe jocks using sports metaphors I can't even begin to follow. Now someone's turning the tables.

I'll bet you loads of money this guy is doing it deliberately, right down to ignoring the "we don't understand what you're talking about" parts.