Author Topic: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness  (Read 165919 times)

Offline Kuroimaken

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #560 on: December 07, 2014, 03:56:24 PM »
STOP MAKING SCIENCE AND MATH LOOK SO EASY!!  :banghead :banghead

...sweet merciful Jebus, I feel so stupid sometimes.

But it totally is if you have the talent for it. It's just that you need to know the preceding steps before the next step makes any sense.

You just need to take a few more levels in Egghead instead of taking more levels in Badass. Serious, Kuroi, do you really need more levels in Badass?

I dunno, it's getting harder and harder to level up.
Kami darou ga akuma darou ga, ore no michi ni tateru mono NASHI!!

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Offline dman11235

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #561 on: December 07, 2014, 04:11:29 PM »
Amechra, where are you?  Because compasses DON'T point north.  They point to a point in Canada.  And there's an area in Michigan that points not to it as well.  And a few other places like that.
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Offline Amechra

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #562 on: December 07, 2014, 04:41:28 PM »
This has happened when I've been in:
  • The Netherlands
  • Spain
  • NY State
"There is happiness for those who accept their fate, there is glory for those that defy it."

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Offline dman11235

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #563 on: December 07, 2014, 04:49:14 PM »
I'm pretty sure I know of one in Spain and NY, but I don't know of one in the Netherlands.  Doesn't mean there's not!  You can easily mess one up with a tiny magnet remember!  And actually, sometimes?  If you have a high iron content in your blood?  You can do it with your hands.  Yeah.
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Offline Frogman55

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #564 on: December 07, 2014, 05:00:43 PM »
I'm pretty sure I know of one in Spain and NY, but I don't know of one in the Netherlands.  Doesn't mean there's not!  You can easily mess one up with a tiny magnet remember!  And actually, sometimes?  If you have a high iron content in your blood?  You can do it with your hands.  Yeah.
I remember my high school physics teacher getting really upset because compasses would randomly point SW in the classroom. Then he discovered that it was happening when one of the power tools (a lathe, I think, this was a while back) in shop class next door was being used. All sorts can screw it up.

That being said, I'm fairly certain dman is being a bit hyperbolic.  :???

Offline dman11235

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #565 on: December 07, 2014, 05:09:52 PM »
no, it can be affected by blood iron levels.  Not by much, and it's only noticeable if your hands are really close to the needle tips, but it can affect it.  It can't change it, from, say, N to NNE, but it can do it from N to NNNNNE.  NOt a lot.  But it's there.
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Offline Amechra

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #566 on: December 07, 2014, 05:33:58 PM »
I might have high iron content; that could be it.
"There is happiness for those who accept their fate, there is glory for those that defy it."

"Now that everyone's so happy, this is probably a good time to tell you I ate your parents."

Offline bhu

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #567 on: December 07, 2014, 07:34:56 PM »


But it totally is if you have the talent for it. It's just that you need to know the preceding steps before the next step makes any sense.

You just need to take a few more levels in Egghead instead of taking more levels in Badass. Serious, Kuroi, do you really need more levels in Badass?
Depends on the local schools.  Ours cut back on science a lot after one of the students flash-fried all the grass off a huge field...and the chem teacher blew off his finger...and the chlorine gas incident...

Offline linklord231

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #568 on: December 07, 2014, 09:36:04 PM »


But it totally is if you have the talent for it. It's just that you need to know the preceding steps before the next step makes any sense.

You just need to take a few more levels in Egghead instead of taking more levels in Badass. Serious, Kuroi, do you really need more levels in Badass?
Depends on the local schools.  Ours cut back on science a lot after one of the students flash-fried all the grass off a huge field...and the chem teacher blew off his finger...and the chlorine gas incident...

Somehow I knew who this was before looking at the author (posting from my phone so that's not immediately visible).
I'm not arguing, I'm explaining why I'm right.

Offline Amechra

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #569 on: December 08, 2014, 02:40:46 AM »
God damn it.

18 hours remaining in Ludum Dare and I've still got a whole lot of writing to go.

Serves me right for working on a stealth gamebook. And not starting until the whole thing was half over.

But still.

 :banghead

(If anyone's curious, here's the first "page". I apparently learned how to pixel-art in the last 6-ish hours.)
"There is happiness for those who accept their fate, there is glory for those that defy it."

"Now that everyone's so happy, this is probably a good time to tell you I ate your parents."

Offline bhu

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #570 on: December 08, 2014, 02:47:40 AM »


But it totally is if you have the talent for it. It's just that you need to know the preceding steps before the next step makes any sense.

You just need to take a few more levels in Egghead instead of taking more levels in Badass. Serious, Kuroi, do you really need more levels in Badass?
Depends on the local schools.  Ours cut back on science a lot after one of the students flash-fried all the grass off a huge field...and the chem teacher blew off his finger...and the chlorine gas incident...

Somehow I knew who this was before looking at the author (posting from my phone so that's not immediately visible).

lol

Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #571 on: December 08, 2014, 02:38:12 PM »
It seems like every damned game I get into on Mythweavers almost immediately goes belly up. What makes this particularly a pain in the ass is the whole "application process" to get into a game over there.  :shakefist
I don't pee messages into the snow often , but when I do , it's in Cyrillic with Fake Viagra.  Stay frosty my friends.

Offline Frogman55

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #572 on: December 08, 2014, 02:43:57 PM »
It seems like every damned game I get into on Mythweavers almost immediately goes belly up. What makes this particularly a pain in the ass is the whole "application process" to get into a game over there.  :shakefist
When I was active there, I told myself that I wasn't getting into a game, I was polishing my character creation skills. :) For what it's worth, I think I'm way better at writing character backgrounds than I used to be. I think my first dozen or so characters were all 'orphans who's parents used to be caravan workers, caravan wiped out by x'.

Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #573 on: December 08, 2014, 02:56:22 PM »
I've actually gotten into over half the games I've applied to... but almost all of them have immediately collapsed, or seem on the brink of doing so...  :shakefist Character building is typically the most time intensive part of PbP gaming, and so this feels like a colossal waste of time (I know... ironic since most people would think the entire exercise of PbP gaming is a colossal waste of time :P ).
I don't pee messages into the snow often , but when I do , it's in Cyrillic with Fake Viagra.  Stay frosty my friends.

Offline Frogman55

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #574 on: December 08, 2014, 03:05:17 PM »
I've actually gotten into over half the games I've applied to... but almost all of them have immediately collapsed, or seem on the brink of doing so...  :shakefist Character building is typically the most time intensive part of PbP gaming, and so this feels like a colossal waste of time (I know... ironic since most people would think the entire exercise of PbP gaming is a colossal waste of time :P ).
That sounds about right. In the last six months or so before I quit, I actually think I may have gotten my rate up around 80%, and most of that 20% was games that ended before the GM even picked players.  :clap

I ended up with a long list of rules and standards about which games I applied to that helped - most of the games ended after the first encounter instead of after introductions. :)

  • No GMs with less than 500 posts
  • No GMs with a posting rate of less than 2/day.
  • No games that limited sources to core.
  • No games with unlimited sources
  • No games that allowed homebrew (unless the GM in question was well known to me and trusted)
  • No Sandbox games
  • No unlimited member games except for Arena games
  • No unorthodox multiple party games
  • No games that allowed Leadership
  • No epic games
  • No games that required joint backgrounds
  • No games that encouraged pvp action.
  • And there were more, of course. But you get the idea.   :yap

Offline Kajhera

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #575 on: December 08, 2014, 03:07:22 PM »
Tried starting a game and all but one of my players apparently vanished, one even deleting the doc for his character sheet.  :(

Apparently is not just on player side. I can't move a team game forward with one person. We did get through the first encounter though.

Edit: Is possible I'm just a bad GM, though supply/demand for system I was using suggests even that would be tolerated, or the players just didn't mesh well together. There were some rough patches though they were politely resolved ...
« Last Edit: December 08, 2014, 03:14:28 PM by Kajhera »

Offline brujon

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #576 on: December 08, 2014, 03:13:41 PM »
PbP is *hard* to maintain. I have a shitton of ideas i want to try out, but i told myself that before i start another PbP game i'm going to fully flesh them out, and then present them to my players.

Currently, i'm trying to figure out just *how* a city whose entire economy and industry revolves around using the undead for physical labor might have sprang up when Necromancy is punishable by death on most of the civilized world, and frowned upon on most of the rest of it. Then i need to figure out exactly how such a society would keep functioning, what kind of rites and customs would arise from such a fact, and how exactly does the rest of the world deal with that civilization.
"All the pride and pleasure of the world, mirrored in the dull consciousness of a fool, are poor indeed compared with the imagination of Cervantes writing his Don Quixote in a miserable prison" - Schopenhauer, Aphorisms: The Wisdom of Life

Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #577 on: December 08, 2014, 03:18:03 PM »
I know it's hard... I have two PbP games I'm the DM for sitting in the "morgue" on this board... DMing takes more time (and inspiration) than being a PC, though... (especially once you're past the character generation stage).
I don't pee messages into the snow often , but when I do , it's in Cyrillic with Fake Viagra.  Stay frosty my friends.

Offline Kajhera

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #578 on: December 08, 2014, 03:28:31 PM »
Environmental hazards that make the city difficult to attack but also encourage the use of undead? Desecrated ground, rampant negative energy (with tomb-tainted soul likely being common between this and the undead presence), hungry undead whose draining abilities are useless against undead legions and who do not automatically attack them, strong thread of necromancy present in sorcery/native abilities, ancient pact for survival of the living against dark forces?

City has been sacked by the forces of light and positive energy in the past, conquered, occupied, and wound up corrupting them through the insidious influence of native magic and native belief, resulting in reformers whose methods grow steadily towards the necromantic while maintaining some idealism unrecognized by the next conqueror? As per Wee Jas, those who live in the city willingly give consent for their body to be used and consider it holy to serve after death, thus discouraging anyone whose motive is that necromancy involves desecration of the dead? Also as per Wee Jas, funeral customs could involve decorating the cleaned bones of skeletons who are raised, recording accomplishments and history and honoring with beauty ...

Perhaps there are some Deathless members of society, able to maintain dominance of force over negative-energy-infused groups while quite able to survive positive energy to preserve culture should a Sunbomb be unleashed.

Offline Frogman55

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #579 on: December 08, 2014, 03:29:52 PM »
I know it's hard... I have two PbP games I'm the DM for sitting in the "morgue" on this board... DMing takes more time (and inspiration) than being a PC, though... (especially once you're past the character generation stage).
It takes even more in PbP. People don't realize how important the chatter and meta conversations are to a game. It's pretty easy to recognize a consensus when planning during a difficult situation in RL, but online the GM has to force it or use other techniques to manage it. It's relatively easy to riff off your players in RL, but a PbP game can lose flavor so easily.

And once the flavor is gone, the game is probably sunk.