The grim/noble dark/bright alignment system might be helpful: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/s/bB0gvqrwjL

I am firmly on the Noble side of settings. I am down for anything on the Bright-Dark setting with slight leaning towards Bright, but I don’t have Grim in me anymore. As @DrQuinn said, if I want Grim I’ll look at the damned window, and I’ve been in that state for about a decade now.

EDIT: After thinking about it more, I’m going to take it back. I’m down for anything but Grimdark. I’ll take Grimbright. Arx felt Grimbright to me.

@Pacha said in Grid vs Web Scenes:

I think another thing to consider is that in the “old” days a lot of the live RP was like…pickup RP. You went somewhere on grid, stuck up your LFG flag and whoever turned up turned up and you sort of just made do with that. This led to a lot of the dreaded Bar RP.

The deliciousness of Ares is (for me) that I don’t have to put up with that any more. I can go and read everyone’s hooks, pick out who interests me (and almost as importantly, who I have no interest in) and then just seek to RP with those 5-10 people.

That lends itself to more 1 on 1 private scenes that can very naturally go async as the parties go about their lives, and I find those scenes tend to be more directed and purposeful. I am going to stick with that scene until its finished, rather than just “posing out” of the bar scene when my interest/patience wanes.

I have two problems with that. The first is that it doesn’t allow for relationships and situations to develop organically. Those set up scenes never seem to be “our characters come across one another and strike up a conversation before becoming fast friends a few scenes later.” They always seem to start in media res. And when they do start as “our characters come across each other,” things feel stilted. You’re in a scene with this other person and you have a very specific direction this scene is supposed to go in, “developing some sort of relationship so future scenes can be had with them.” There is no chance that if things seem to be going sideways in the characters’ interactions that you can pose out or ideally shift more of the interactions to other person’s present.

The second problem I have is that it doesn’t leave room for happenstance. You’re not going to have the scene interrupted by someone barging in unannounced and taking the scene into an unexpected direction. This can be a good thing as maybe those already in the scene aren’t up for a detour and shenanigans, but some of my favorite scenes came about because of such incursions.

Also, I am a weirdo who likes BarP.

This may have already been brought up, but I’m too lazy to scroll up and see.

A setting in the X-Files, Delta Green, SCP, Control, Triangle Agency, etc. vein. You could even include World of Darkness stuff, but the setting would mostly from the viewpoints of a government agency of “Hunters” and the occasional Mage, Vampire, Werewolf, whatever that decided to work with the agency. The server is mostly PVE as PCs work together on missions they take, but the server could also can go the Paranoia TTRPG route by having some NPCs and PCs belong to secret societies, have ulterior motives, be given contrary secret missions from the Directorate, etc. to keep people a little uneasy and wary. Operations could be investigations into weird shit, neutralization of weird shit (more tactics and combat oriented), covert ops (cause weird shit to happen so we get a funding increase), etc.

@KarmaBum Eh. I know how it is. You can run an event every hour, 24 hours a day, and some people will still only do BarP for all their interactions while complaining that there is nothing to do.

I demand to be allowed to write in Ralph Nader as my vote.

@catzilla That’s clever and a good use of AI for MU* purposes.

Honestly, I am coming more and more around to the idea that all PBs should be custom created art and/or AI generated images. The use of images of real people who didn’t agree to be used for such purposes has been making me more and more uncomfortable over the years.

@Aria said in MU Peeves Thread:

At that point it’s not harassment, it’s just the other person being annoying by not taking the hint. And my dudes, dropping a hint is not clear communication. It’s deliberately vague communication, which is hard enough in person when there’s also body language and facial expressions and tone to pick up on. Text has none of those things. Don’t drop hints, cross your fingers, touch your toes, and hope the other person clues in to what you’re (not) saying. Say what you mean. You can be nice about it! But say what you mean. The internet is not going to burn to the ground if you tell someone “Oh! Thanks for the offer, but I’m not really up for that.” or even just “No, thank you.” the way we were all taught when we were, like, five.

Yes! Exactly!

You dropping what would be a very clear hint to anyone else that you aren’t enjoying our interactions:

Me who is terrible at social interactions:

I have hesitated to post anything in this thread, because I very much do not appreciate being drafted into the role of OP for this particular topic. Anyways…

@ProperPenguin said in AI PBs:

Hi, tech writer here.

I am job hunting (as I left a toxic work environment right before the AI obsession began in corporations). I have been job hunting.

The work disappeared for a good while. And reports from people who weren’t laid off basically came down to them being piled on so high with work they couldn’t manage. One person even reported that her coworkers had nicknamed her AI. ‘Send it to AI.’
Which was hugely demoralizing (understandably) to her.

I know a developer who runs a team: he was made to lay off his tech writer and told ‘just use AI.’ Except he’s in the financial sector. They cannot use it (for security, accuracy, etc.) and when he pointed it out, was told ‘it’s just writing, do it yourself.’

And this is the core issue, the lack of appreciation and respect to a profession from other professionals and industries. “Anyone can write. Anyone can draw. Anyone can take a photograph. Anyone can shoot film. Anyone can work an assembly line.” No, anyone can’t, and no a robot cannot give you as good a quality, yet. If you need specialized, expert, professional work done, you need to pay for a specialist, expert, and professional.

I like AI for hobbyists, people who don’t have the cash or the level of personal investment into whatever hobby it is to pay for a professional. “I want a PB that isn’t a photograph of a real person, I don’t have any artistic talent at all, and I don’t want to pay $150 for an image I am going to slap on a wiki and never really think about again.” “I need a desc, but I hate writing them. I’ll just have an AI write one over and over until I get one I like.”

And I am now going to exit the thread again. Have fun, y’all.

I think it would be help to clarify the distinction between the two. How many rules are needed before a “freeform” game is now a “system” game? It might be something like the Supreme Court’s definition of obscenity “I know it when I see it,” but it might be helpful to roughly delineate the boundaries, because I consider rules-lite RPGs to still be a system. If a book is being used to run a game, even if it’s only 10 pages, that’s a system to me. Whereas, kids playing cops and robbers in the backyard is freeform.

The snack of all gaming champions, both tabletop and video: Cheetos. With a Mountain Dew to drink, because it compliments my X-TREME hobby that involves sitting at a table and/or computer for hours at a time.

I rarely remember my dreams. Most of the ones I do remember are work dreams. I miss having the vivid, lucid dreams of my late teens and twenties.

@Aria said in MU Peeves Thread:

Like if your goal is to get off without really caring what you have to do to manage it, there’s faster and easier ways to go about it that don’t involve being awful to other people. They can be more ethical and more efficient with their smut!

But the goal likely isn’t to get off without really caring what they have to do to manage it. It’s to get off with another person without really caring what they have to do to manage it. And just any person may not do. Cost, looks (in this medium, writing style), personality, etc. are potential qualifications for the other person. Rape would be much less of a thing if all rapists wanted was just an orgasm.

@Tez said in MU Peeves Thread:

@helvetica said in MU Peeves Thread:

Demand characters have so many administrative skills, they become virtually unfuckable.

Joke’s on you, I’m into that shit

TIL that shibari with Red Tape is a thing.

@spiriferida For L&L, really play up the politics, intrigue, animosity between rival families, and management aspects to the level that no one has time to knock boots on screen.

@Pavel Ask them to name their favorite two Nirvana songs that aren’t Smells Like Team Spirit.

@Evilgrayson I was going to reply with this as well. Age of consent even varies between US states, and Romeo & Juliet laws make things even weirder. However, this would be more like sexual communications and there may be stricter or less strict regulations than the age of consent in various jurisdictions. Sort of like how there is fraud and then there is wire fraud or how a jurisdiction can have an age of consent under 18 but minors still can’t perform sexually in front of an audience or for a camera. Someone with more legal knowledge would have to opine.

EDIT: I should also point out that Bahrain and Cameroon have an age of consent of 21. So even a minimum age of 18 could arguably not be safe from liability.

Age of majority (adulthood) varies even more. Alabama, Nebraska, South Korea, and several Canadian provinces have ages of majority of 19. New Zealand and Thailand have it set at 20. Mississippi, Puerto Rico, Singapore, and several African and Central American/Caribbean countries have it set at 21.

They didn’t have a plan. “They” being the writers. The Director admitted as much in one of the Director commentaries for the first season in the DVD set, and the moment I heard it I lost all interest in the series. Babylon 5 had established how one pulls off a well-planned sci-fi series a decade prior, and that numbskull thought he knew better.

@Yam

Philistines! You just don’t get my sophisticated, highbrow sense of humor.

@Jenn I loved the design of The Network but just didn’t jive with the theme. I wish there were more MU*s like it around.

@dvoraen I think it’s more of a “Git Good Waveform.” The exact skill the XP is ultimately going to go toward is spread across multiple possibilities until the player observes a particular skill needing to suddenly be increased during a dire moment, which causes the waveform to collapse into the needed skill. We know that this unintuitive bit of mathematics maps to physical reality with the double sleight experiment. A GM calls for a roll from a munchkin player who rolls, announces the result of the roll and that they succeeded, and quickly grabs the die with a sleight of hand before anyone can see it. When the GM first glances at the munchkin’s character sheet, they see barely visible pencil markings for all of the skills. When the GM asks for a closer look, the munchkin player engages in another sleight of hand, and suddenly the necessary skill is written in pen and at just the right level to pass the skill check.

EDITS: Improving the joke.