I also like “the bubble.” It was one of the reasons I became really engaged in Concordia, for example. Coming up with Alistair’s cat was a happy bonus to that. That cat was a built-in bubble for me, because I could just make up vignettes/short stories about him. >.>

As to the “burst bubble” status, so to speak? I don’t think I could even opine upon this, to be honest, and I’d be preaching to the choir and/or broken-recording what’s already been said in this thread. The people that will stay, will stay, and for their own reasons: plot involvement, friends they enjoy IC and OOC interactions with, bar rp, and so on.

Personally, I don’t think a game should “entice” people into playing via anything other than the theme and any game-specific features/rules its runner(s) want to have.

In other words, the game should speak for itself.

@Snackness said in Real Life Struggles/Support/Vent:

We are trying to figure out if my mom is “actively dying”. Dementia fucking sucks.

;.;

There’s been some side-eying given to a family member in my case as well, because they have been saying and doing certain things that seem like a precursor to it, or outright misremembering if not forgetting certain things.

@Faraday said in Why MUSH?:

There are plenty of styles of online RP, from forum PBP to freeform discords to hybrids like Storium. What do you like about MUSHing specifically?

It’s a very selfish reason, in my case:

To try and prove I can write. I like the imagination component and the dynamic nature of RP with other people. It’s very stimulating to my brain when I really get into things.

Unfortunately, it has also made me something of a snob.

Recently finished FF7:REBIRTH for PC.

15/10 OST.

Can’t say more because don’t want to spoil anyone.

@Roz said in Celebrities We've Lost 2025:

Val Kilmer, Film Star Who Played Batman and Jim Morrison, Dies at 65

RIP good sir. I will always remember you from Willow as Madmartigan, let alone Top Gun.

@dvoraen said in General Video Game Thread:

Claire Obscur: Expedition 33 Release Date Trailer

Well, I know what I’ll be doing on April 24th.

I don’t normally endorse these kinds of videos, but…

XBox Deep Dive into Expedition 33

(ETA)“This team gets it.” is basically where I’m at. I mean, even just talking about why there’s a world map I was like: snap point(/ETA)

Also, I would go gay for the Creative Director because of his accent.

@Meg said in Meg's Mu* Mist:

Updated. Trying to get back into this lil hobby, this quaint what did you call it? RP? Are you sure? Well, if you are sure you want to call it that. Sounds a little sexual tho.

meg I couldn’t decide whether to do a “one of us” GIF or the “come play with us” creepy girls from the Shining to try and sound sinister. Please advise.

@Solstice said in General Video Game Thread:

@dvoraen It’s been quite some time since I saw a trailer, raised a brow, and immediately set a reminder for the launch date on my phone. That looks like it could be pretty damn rad.

Go back to my first post (in this thread) on the subject. This is how I feel about the score:

Does everyone remember, idk how long ago now, when “olestra” was the biggest thing to hit food and all over the news (and the various rumors about it)?

I feel like “powered by AI” is along those lines, and I’m like, “ok. In 2025 olestra is something I never hear about anymore, so when can we get past the excessive AI push that probably isn’t really AI or as revolutionary as they claim?”

Folks I’m concerned. I think @Rucket may have been taken over by an AI.

ARE YOU OKAY? Use 1 for yes, and 0 for no. Matrix code will be confirmation of needing to run anti-virus on you.

Claire Obscur: Expedition 33 Release Date Trailer

Well, I know what I’ll be doing on April 24th.

@Tez said in Unspeakables: The Politics Thread 2024:

@dvoraen There’s a place to put feedback related to the change. If you actually have feedback on things that are broken, they can go there. If you have any amount of searching to figure out how to fix it, that’s even better. Roz found the solution to the layout issue and posted it in that thread so I could implement it.

I do not get paid to do this. I’m not just an unpaid volunteer, I pay for the privilege of volunteering. I assumed you were joking and responded in that fashion, because the idea that you were being serious was too wild to contemplate. If I was wrong, and you were serious, then yeah, it was in piss poor taste.

To be clear, yes, I was trying to be completely facetious, because I could not for the life of me figure out what I was doing wrong for either one. The only reason I tagged you was because you probably would know the most and, tbh, I just did not have time to research it because I was posting right before my appointment for a surgery consult. (And to be fair, I did open the door to being whapped with a ‘git gud’, but my reaction to it was to sigh in all caps in my chair, but again, I didn’t treat it as serious. I just didn’t laugh or find it humorous as far as “it was not funny” was concerned.)

But yeah. I probably could’ve handled that better either way.

ETA:

@Tez Same to you Miss Upgrader! Fix my spoiler block to redact properly!

this isn’t funny

Neither is what you’re insinuating with this, particularly when you consider that the initial response to me was flippant – and also not really funny from my perspective, but I didn’t take it as malicious or intended to be insulting (nor was my response to it meant as such either) – especially since, as we clearly just saw with not knowing how to properly image link from imgur, it could’ve just been a simple matter of me simply forgetting how to do it correctly. Secondly, if I had any real issue with the forum upgrade, it would have been voiced by now and in a very different way.

That said, @Tez if that was in bad taste, I am sorry.

@Roz said in Unspeakables: The Politics Thread 2024:

@dvoraen said in Unspeakables: The Politics Thread 2024:

(@Tez WHY IS THIS NOT WORKING WITH IMGUR LINKS REEEE)

Were you doing it with just the regular Imgur URL from the URL bar or did you right click on the image and get the actual direct image link?

I think it was the imgur-provided link instead of the direct one, yeah.

@Tez Same to you Miss Upgrader! Fix my spoiler block to redact properly!

Here is me, trying to summon @Apos to dive in on this subject, for reasons that should be obvious to many of us who were on Arx. (inb4thisisnotanArxthreadreee)

For myself, I consider metaplot to be “a story that’s going on that directly affects (or will affect) the state of the world and the players.” Metaplot should not only be fluid, because of player involvement/actions, but multithreaded, because there’s no one story that meets the definition I gave, let alone the outcome(s) of that story which could spawn other metaplot(s).

I’m keeping it generalized, because I have not been a game runner, and I sure don’t make any claims to being a plotter/storyteller outside of my own head (i.e., my personal fiction that lives in there for non-MU* writing). But, that is how I see it as a player, and Arx had a great deal to do with arriving at that definition.

At risk of coming across as really callous towards, well, everyone in the United States, I’ve basically been forced to adopt this particular meme, because so many people in the US could not read the writing on the wall, amongst other potential problems* with our new… “administration”, and note the air quotes.

But first, the meme:

(@Tez WHY IS THIS NOT WORKING WITH IMGUR LINKS REEEE)

It’s not that I don’t care what happens to people, it’s that I’ve basically run out of tears to cry with, you could say. So at this point, my emotions have basically hit the computer science equivalent of an integer overflow and gone to the opposite side of the digital number line, so that’s why I read r/leopardsatemyface now. I’m still waiting for some of the diehards to realize they are going to get exactly what they voted for, just not what they think they voted for. (How about those egg and grocery price promises, errbody?)

* ||The fact that The Donald has alluded to election fraud by suggesting tampering (by Elon) with the voting machines… yeah. r/houstonwade on reddit went wild about this for a while.||

(@Tez WHY DID THE SPOILER BUTTON NOT WORK EITHER REEEE)

Kind of a stream of consciousness reply to @Faraday in her original post:

I think there should be “tiers” of blocking, but I’m not going to propose something consistent here:

No contact blocking.

• Informs the other party that they have Crossed A Line, and also alerts staff that this player is absolutely not having it.
• Would require “ARE YOU SURE?” type confirmation to make sure this is not “for the lols” and is not to be used lightly. Also carries a warning that it cannot be removed without admin intervention.
• Prohibits contact from the no-contact-blocked player in any way (as much as possible).
• Perhaps even an IP or domain block as the filter, to catch some of the (non-VPN) abusers.
• Either party trying to get around this after it’s in place could potentially auto-report to staff. Again, not to be used lightly.
• Unsure how this could work in the case of a roster character, though, since auto-removing it on rostering opens the door wide to obvious forms of deceit and abuse.

Specific player and/or handle blocking.

• Not exactly a no-contact, but “I don’t want to listen to them.”
• Basically suppresses everything from that character/handle (pages, post notifications, emits, mail, etc.), but the initiator of the block can still see if the blocked person created a post (by manually going to the forum/board, such as when the blocked person is the author of the thread).
• Optional addition to notify the blocked party that they have been blocked. To make it really clear.

Muting.

• For lesser or temporary silence, such as a specific person on a specific channel, or when you just don’t want them paging you right now (“not a good time” “but…” “DID I TYPO?”).

I didn’t realize I had this peeve until yakking with @Rucket on Discord tonight:

I have no idea what MU*s are out there anymore aside from Ares games, and the occasional peek at Evennia’s tracker.

The peeve: How am I supposed to know what else is out there?! Where are all the MU* trackers?! I’ve forgotten and/or they’ve poofed.

@kalakh said in Your Latest Batch of (Silly) Drama:

@KarmaBum said in Your Latest Batch of (Silly) Drama:

Really old drama.

I almost put this in the “Good Things” thread just as an example of things I’m so glad we decided as a group to stop doing.

https://web.archive.org/web/20040204025308/http://southern.silvertree.org/southerngoldapp.cgi

14 general questions, then 33 questions on the gold application and 26 for bronze.

Question 24 on the gold application is amazing.

24. During your first hatching that you’re running as a Junior, you hear on the grapevine that your Weyrleader is flirting with prospective candidates and promising them search and/or impression on acceptance of TS. Your Weyrwoman is his RL wife, and has no idea any of this is going on, and in fact, you know, told him on a number of occasions not to TS. What do you do?

I don’t think I’ve ever seen vaguebooking in the form of an application question before.

ELI5. In a silly-drama way, to stay on topic.

@Tez said in Your Latest Batch of (Silly) Drama:

@dvoraen I sell it on Temu, run by my cat, Temu.

You should name your next cat Ekko, because of this ad.