Posts made by Vulgar Boy

@Alveraxus There’s always room for grave dancing. I mean, I’m still starting the morning with a little jig thanks to Kissinger riding the one way tramway to hell.

I haven’t played on the game in a couple of years, but here are my two OCs. I also played an FC, but none of the things that were interesting about him were related to his secret.

Hamish - Hamish’s secret is that he was a nox’alfar. Not the reincarnation of a nox’alfar or half-nox’alfar. He was just a nox’alfar. In ancient times he was a minor functionary in Calithex’s court who had done something gravely offensive to Death and she had cursed him to never see the Shining Lands, so his soul drifted from recently dead human to recently dead human, and he spent a thousand years doing that. Hamish (or rather, Wyll) would die in his current human life and then would wake up in the body of someone who had just fallen off of a roof or who had died of some disease. As a result he spent hundreds of years absolutely hating humans and hating the human experience. As he would later say to Symonesse, “We just smell all the time.” He spent years as peasant laborer, as a merchant, as a soldier, a noble, as a slave. He mostly avoided Forest Gumping his way through history, though it was later established that he’d been close to Caithness. And eventually he came to appreciate humanity and love the lives they live, to see each one of them as precious. In the life before Hamish, just after Brand had died, he was approached by Bringers who thought he might like to be the next rep for Silence since he’d have a good reason to want to break the Wheel. He said no thanks and spent the next few months being tortured. Managed to swallow his tongue to get out of it and woke up as Hamish Farmer. Decided to devote himself to Death, swore before the seraph of Sanctum, and became a mendicant priest until he was called to Arx. Thanks to Herja, who was so great in helping me feel like I was more involved, his background expanded as he started to remember what he’d done. Had a vision of coming disaster, was lead astray by a demon/fractal and decided he knew better than Calithex how to deal with it, and it all blew up in his face, resulting in two of Calithex’s guards being killed and their souls destroyed. In Arx he resumed some old friendships, having tea with Symonesse was always fun, met some people it turned out were relatives, and he took the wheel with the Harlequins. Whatever my ultimate relationship with Arx may have been, I’m proud of what we ended up doing with the Harlequins, and I’m glad to hear that they remained a fairly active org after I left. Symonesse once asked Hamish if he’d like to reincarnate in his original body after he died and he said he wasn’t sure. I’d like to think that either he ended up doing just that, or he finally got to the Shining Lands.

Gilroy - A far less liked character than Hamish, and I don’t blame anyone, though weirdly popular with that group of nobles who love slumming and hearing commoners say mean things about them. He was the latest incarnation of a soul that, whenever reincarnated, was always a legendary hero. Seraphs. Paladins. Knights. Lords Commander. Which leads to Gilroy, who was the son of the Baron of Castrum Trucido, whose brutality in the Southport War was notable even in that skirmish, and whose cruelty to his own people was only second to the cruelty he had toward his own son. After his preincarnations urged him to embrace heroism, he decided to beat his father to death with a fire poker, but didn’t finish the job before he had to go on the run. As such, Gilroy reviled the nobility, hated heroes and the notion of heroism, and was in general a dick to 90% of the people he met. Which got me several offers to be the protege of different Velenosa nobles, oddly enough. His refusal to acknowledge his destiny lead to his preincarnations actually speaking to him, though he ignored them since they were all so preachy. It was actually a lot of fun coming up with historical figures like Prince Donrall Marin, Dame Eleanor Fidante, the Carnation of Tor, Mother Merrows, the Salt Witch, etc. And posing flipping off people in the Hall of Heroes never failed to get a scene going. Fun fact: Gilroy came to me almost entirely fully fleshed out while watching Matilda with my kids when Danny Devito said, “Nobody ever got rich by being honest.”

@MisterBoring said in Arx Stats for Nerds:

@Apos said in Arx Stats for Nerds:

4000 were rooms created on grid

That’s an absolutely huge grid. I’m curious, if you don’t mind my asking, how many of those 4000 rooms were in regular use?

@mietze said in MU Peeves Thread:

One of the things that I LOVED about Wyrdhold is glitch making private scenes truly private (I think there was notification of how many but that is all). I don’t remember seeing any You Are Not Invited events but I don’t know if just planning happened privately (I participated in some that were handled like that!) or if there was some switch that made it happen, Glitch is like super awesome so I could see that being something they could do!

Now, see, my MU Peeve is that this game is gone and now you’ve gone and mentioned it, you awful person.

@Cobalt said in Stupid Memes:

Exhausted Mini Muffin

Compulsive Self-Aggrandizing Lying A5 Wagyu Ribeye That Cost $2000.

An option to make ending turns on a controller require a hold rather than a press is a godsend.

Matthew Perry.

Dude was 54.

@Cobalt said in Stupid Memes:

Cobatlt

My real name is Jim, so let’s see…

…hmmm…

…yes, my ghost name is Jim.

Terrifying!

All in on chroming up and getting that sandy, baby.

I just need handlers to stop whining that I wasn’t undercover enough. Oh, boo hoo. If you wanted stealth you called the wrong merc, choom. I’ve got a handful of grenades a katana and if you’ve got a problem, yo, I’ll solve it, but it’s going to involve the entire block being set on fire and everyone involved being decapitated. I don’t have an anger problem, Regina, I’ve got an anger solution. Now step aside, cos I need to crouch behind that box for thirty seconds until the cops decide they aren’t getting paid enough to deal with this shit.

@Wizz said in General Video Game Thread:

my 11 year old son, watching me FINALLY play the FF7 remake: “Geez Cloud, you really need to learn how to talk to women right.”

My kid was mostly concerned that Cloud appears to sleep in full armor, including his gigantic shoulder piece. She was really worried that he was probably tired all the time.

Version 2.0 and the big DLC, Phantom Liberty, are out and for a lot of people Cyberpunk is back, baby. Unlike a lot of people I actually had a good experience with Cyberpunk at release. I didn’t have a PS5 and I didn’t have a good computer, but I bought the version on Stadia, which came with a free Chromecast and a free controller, and honestly, it played really well*. It didn’t look quite as good as the PS5/XBSX screenshots, but it looked and played well. I did run into some bugs, but not a lot. I put in a lot of time, but then puttered out as new games arrived and then just never went back.

With 2.0 enough stuff is different that I went ahead and bought it on sale for PS5 and I’ve been playing nothing but since. Will I ever finish FFXVI? Will I get into act 2 of Baldur’s Gate 3? Will Alex Chen ever have closure on the tragedy that took place at the end of the first chapter of Life is Strange 3? WHO KNOWS?! V NEEDS TO ZERO GONKS WITH HER CHOOMS, FUCKOS! VISIT THE RIPPERDOC CHROME UP TO RUN THAT EDGE AND ALSO THE NET AND FLATLINE SOME … SOME GONKS!

I honestly hated the anime. Dogshit animation. Most obvious story ever. Terrible backgrounds. Giancarlo Esposito phone it in in the worst way possible. AH RAH SAH KAH! I gave it a 4 out of 10 initially, since it at least had a good soundtrack and two standout songs, but then it went and won a bunch of awards over much, much better shows and I had to revisit it to give it a 2. So I was a little wary about jumping back in, but goddam the changes to stats and perks and how rep and skills are, are just so great.

On my first run I played as a high int deckhead (it’s too bad the game has no real netrunning, but not many cyberpunk games have, and the netrunning in Shadowrun was not great) and emptied out entire floors of bad guys without even walking into the building. It was a lot of fun, but this time I decided to go another way. Initially I went for Reflexes and Cool to be a stealthy ninja, but I have no patience for stealth, so I respecced my stats (which you are allowed to do once a run through, though you can cash out perks at any time) to be Reflexes and Tech and now I’m a metalhead samurai who goes in loud and solves every problem with a katana and a handful of grenades. Add in the sandy and I can kill six people before the first even realizes his head is missing. Double jumping and air dashing (yes, they’ve added air dashing) is such a fun way to find out of the way spots in the world, and reflecting bullets back at people with a katana never gets boring.

Out are perks that do things like ‘+.5% to control quickhack durations’ and in are big perks that do real changes (like bullet reflection, katana finishers, rages for body focuses characters, focus for rifle focused characters, quickhack queues so you can load a bad guy up with timed attacks and then go on to other things) and then secondary perks rated to the big ones that are just focused on making you look cool when you get the big perks. A new stat, mitigation, makes it more likely you will take less damage when certain conditions are met, and those conditions then encourage you to just do cool, stylish moves, like dashing into battle, or jumping on people from a distance, or use thrown weapons, or punch people so hard their heads fall off.

I’ve yet to get to the DLC, but everyone I know who has played it has said that what you do in the quests there are so different that it really changes things up in a good way. So I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve yet to catch up to where I was in my first playthrough, which had seen me through the Takemura line (such a dreamboat, why can’t I romance that silver fox?) and Judy and Panam, but I’m getting there. I’m also focusing on being nicer to Johnny this time, since I know the best endings are tied to getting his relationship to 70%.

Anyway, it’s great, so people should give it another try if they got burnt out the first time around.

*As a bonus, when Stadia died they gave me my money back, then unlocked Bluetooth on their controllers so I can use it when I plug my Steam Deck into the TV.

@Pavel said in Celebrities We Lost 2023:

Michael Gambon, actor who played Prof. Dumbledore in 6 ‘Harry Potter’ movies, dies at age 82

The Dumbledore Curse claims another.

@Faraday said in Concordia Thread:

@Vulgar-Boy said in Concordia Thread:

I will say that on a non-Ares MU if I decide, hey, I want some random RP, I can go into a public room and chill and if someone wants to join they can and if no one does no big. While on an Ares game I have to start a scene and throw out a first pose and then my failure to draw people in will be a feature of the active scenes page until I finally give up and go weep in a corner. And then if I’m proud of my failure I can make certain it is permanently made a part of the public record.

Or you could go sit in a public room and chill and if someone wants to join they can and if no one does, no big. (Though web-only players would not be able to join.)

Or you could create a scene on the active scenes list and then do scene/stop when you give up, and no one will ever see that scene again. If there are no poses yet, you can even straight-up delete it.

I personally fail to see why having an empty scene on the ‘active scenes’ list is any more or less of a perceived failure than sitting around on the +where list in a room by yourself, but YMMV.

It’s okay if not 100% of people like 100% of a thing you made. Call it a personal failing on my part, I guess.

@Tez said in Concordia Thread:

@Vulgar-Boy said in Concordia Thread:

Some players did some really impressive worldbuilding there, especially with work on their houses and home worlds…

This was a thing that is gonna be a hit for some players and a turn off for others. I can see why people would be down for the chance to feel as though they co-created the world. The feeling of player investment is real and valid! Detailing their lands, their houses, even their own gods and religions: I have no doubt that there are a lot of people who would be thrilled by that.

But it’s not for me.

I prefer a clarity of vision that comes from staff so that players can continually drag it off course and make it really reductive and insist that those guys are pirates, these guys are slutty, and those guys all worship spirits and not gods.

Obviously there are challenges with either approach.

For me, however, it contributed to the empty ChatGPT hollow I felt.

I get that, tho it’s going to happen anywhere that you have a theme people care about enough to get involved in. Just look at the unofficial stuff on the lux of Arx, and the way that expanded out wildly with everyone needing to find the one thing their house was famous for. Our county is known worldwide for our tree-fresh maple syrup! Well our march is beloved for our crisp Russian vodka (don’t think about it too hard)! Well, our duchy is known for our rum, even tho historically rum has been reliant on a ready access to sugarcane, which grows in tropical regions, because I saw a documentary about a captain named James S Parrow where it was implied that pirates like rum and we’re pirates! House Grayson? Oh, we make cellphones.

It’s just Concordia offered a way for players to make it official. Well, “official”. It was mostly the same in that no one was really paying any attention to it except for the core audience of other people in the house. At least on Arx you could do an action, which would more-or-less force staff to make a Vox which said “boy, everyone sure loves House … Crampton’s … famous taters?”

On a recent game where I played I kept a personal list of local businesses I’d made up, just so I could reference it if I needed to name a convenience store or florist and there wasn’t one built. But I got that no one could have possibly cared but me. It made me feel like things were a little more alive. And my wretched, dead heart craves things that are alive.

@Roz said in Concordia Thread:

@Pink said in Concordia Thread:

I feel like it’s a trend with new Ares games.

This isn’t an Ares game trend; it’s an Every MU Ever trend (in my experience). New games open, there’s a big rush, and then it settles down. I think we may just see it happen more visibly nowadays because the technical barrier is a lot lower when we have resources like Ares that make the setup a bit easier for less technical folk.

I will say that on a non-Ares MU if I decide, hey, I want some random RP, I can go into a public room and chill and if someone wants to join they can and if no one does no big. While on an Ares game I have to start a scene and throw out a first pose and then my failure to draw people in will be a feature of the active scenes page until I finally give up and go weep in a corner. And then if I’m proud of my failure I can make certain it is permanently made a part of the public record.

Concordia never really hit with me. I’m not sure what I wanted, but it felt like a lot of people weren’t really sure what they were doing and then they got successful and then they really didn’t know what they were trying to do. My favorite part was when they set up official house positions, but each house had like twenty positions to fill. Like, there were not nearly enough players to fill these spots, and the big holes in the rosters just looked silly.

Some players did some really impressive worldbuilding there, especially with work on their houses and home worlds, but the day the head of the game was like “we have no intention to do any all-game crises” after the big event that had everyone in the same city, I knew it wasn’t gonna maintain any heat. They were taking away a key reason for everyone to RP. You won’t find me bristling with compliments for Arx, but it had a clever reason for everyone to be in the same place rather than going home to their home domains. Concordia didn’t seem like it even wanted that.

@Noraaa Everyone is allowed their hobbies.

That’s why you need to convince as many people as possible before the GM makes their ruling. Then it’s too late and everyone thinks such and such are basically Vikings, even after multiple posts get made saying that they aren’t. You can gaslight an entire theme if you work hard enough and believe in yourself!

I cut off Gale’s hand and decided that ten minutes of roll back was too much, so I lived with it.

Devs are Larian have come out to say that the companions weren’t suppose to be so goddam horny, tho. It was a bug!

Today my peeve is simple theme questions you’re told to +request and then no one ever claims the request and a week later you still have no answer to a question every character should know. If you don’t want people asking how many moons there are on your weird sci-fi planet, set your game in Sacramento. I know how many moons Sacramento has.