@dvoraen said: I still feel like I can’t manage something “professional” level in this regard to save my life. Reminder that technically the only difference between an amateur and a professional is you pay a professional for their work; it does not by any means need to be GOOD.

As mentioned here: I have.a number of cousins Dave. https://www.peacetigers.com/

@MisterBoring A lot of D&D tt gamers agree, or maybe 'cause I’m straight up that at least part (though not all) of the reason I have that collection is that he’s family. His son and I do mean it, though. Hah, I should just run those old modules… Anyway, these’ll be fun,

@Deviant JK Rowling has claimed that she came up with the whole ‘wizard school’ idea independently of Yolen (in 1991), Pratchett (1983), Murphy (1974) and LeGuin (1968). LeGuin said that her own Roke Island wizard’s school was inspired by T.H. White having mentioned the folkloric wizard school Domdaniel in The Sword In the Stone (1938). Domdaniel is known to English speakers from One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. But Rowling says it’s coincidence, and the other authors have, wisely, not bothered to argue. [image: gotta-love-pete-v0-kct6x1ip5mfe1.jpeg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=3edd398fbc7ddd0d5df9c4779674afe7dc431980]

@Pavel said: Richard Riehle, Office Space and Bridesmaids star, dies at 78 Awww. He was a people person, damn it. Have quoted this man quite a bit in my professional life. [image: giphy.gif]

I am not exactly excited with the new project I am on at work, but for once they aren’t violating ADAAA laws under the guise of “training is more important (than your health)”, and I’m getting a small raise next week putting me back to what I was making a couple of years ago (e.g. making up for pay cuts I got when being shuffled around).

A lot of AI sucks, I can’t stand AI writing, and I hate what it does to artists, but I think there will be much more people in our hobby in five years than there is right now.

Bring it back [image: 1791816571723-doit.jpg] (please, I was excited seeing the ad go up before realizing its gone)

Steam recently began complying with Australian legislop and requiring age verification to view adult materials. Their ID of choice? A credit card. Not a debit card, not an ID card, but a credit card. The Reserve Bank of Australia reports that only 18% of adults under 30 in Australia own a credit card (Livermore et al., 2023, p. 21). @Faraday said: and they’re so easy to circumvent that they do virtually nothing to keep kids out of spaces they shouldn’t be in. Especially with Firefox and other browsers just straight-up having a VPN button to push, for free (with limits, but c’mon), right there. Even the least technologically interested child will learn that pushing that button gives you access to The Good Stuff. Livermore, T., Mulqueeney, J., Nguyen, T., & Watson, B. (2023). The evolution of consumer payments in Australia: Results from the 2022 Consumer Payments Survey (Research Discussion Paper No. 2023-08). Reserve Bank of Australia. https://doi.org/10.47688/rdp2023-08

@Aria Can’t slap them, I’ve got this tricky shoulder y’see…

My own little $0,02 and tidbit of experience with this subject (as both a player and a staffer cleaning up the mess so to speak). In personal RP, with a trusted writing partner, it can work. I’ve been in private scenes that involved this material in ways that supported a dramatic arc, and just like dark RP in general, when done well, with someone you trust, and for a purpose (and I’m not a prude, that purpose can be, to some degree, situationally prurient on top of story-affecting…) it can be memorable. The two places it is a HUGE gamble: Written in spontaneous RP with someone you don’t know, or with someone who advertises it as THEIR kink. One of the two characters becomes more an object than a participant. There are games for that, sure, but this can be a severe problem on a game that doesn’t rhyme with Shmang or Shpen. And group RP, where the content is less controlled by nature.

christ dude But the answer to the question for me is Yes, with a Big Caveat, and that’s that you simply will never be able to reproduce the same experience as a regular PC. Even if you somehow stay anonymous, the other elements of the game – how the systems work, what the mysteries are, the relationships between other players and the jobs they submit up to you, these will all be floating in your head all the time and will inevitably color your experience. There is also, of course, the gulf between what you want a game to be and what it actually is to play. If you are open about it being a staff NPC, people will expect you to have knowledge and lore and stories. If you aren’t, they’ll be bitter when they find out. But it’s crucial anyway, whichever route you go. It’s far more important the more immersive your game is, too. An RPI needs it far more desperately than a game done mostly in async on Ares, but it’s still important wherever.

@Nerdvana I remember Dani! I can’t remember how much we played together but I had a Fae-Touched with a little rat companion. I remember she won a big summer competition by letting everyone else fight while she just raced to the finish line or something.

VPN of choice; be sure to check out any before you use them, some are connected to Palantir or the Israeli govt. Organic Maps to track my running without feeding me to a data miner or worse. Foobar2000 for music. VLC for non-music media. Foxit for reading and filling in .pdfs. First Aid and Pet First Aid from The American Red Cross. One time payment for DroidcamX so I can use my phone in lieu of a webcam, resulting in much better quality than any retail webcam.

My feelings are if a game is going to have child PCs/NPCs then they need to show up semi-regularly or at least get called out in the background as parts of scene sets and the like. It’s jarring when my character has gone months not interacting or even seeing a child and then, in the middle of a scene, a kid shows up fucking up the vibe.

Could you give a bit more on the tone and themes of the game, and a rough outline of the world? L&L is a pretty large genre. Dune, Bridgerton, Game of Thrones, Kushiel’s Dart, and a Court of Thorns and Roses are very different from one another.

@Roz Ok but which of these six bears would you vote for if they were the candidates? This is very important to the theme of this thread.