After a long time of patience and effort, my physical degree was sent to me in the mail, and my happiness is immeasurable.
It hangs on my wall over my desk, right next to a framed autograph of Jeffrey Coombs, because the frames match and I am not being monitored adequately.
@Ashkuri
There is no war in Ba Sing Se and there are no sex pests on AoA.
Any belief to the contrary is against the way of things.
Self-report, then self-deport.
/s
@Rathenhope
A tragedy to the entire Terminators-fueled-by-kittens community, I’m sure.
I was playing as a tattooist and was just goofing off with some dice, did a roll with, like, 11 dice involved, because nWoD and broken, and somehow came up with a double botch. The other party in the scene, it was a small item, like their third in-game tattoo, and I’d RP’d out the previous one, covering up a drunken-mistake-grade piece. It was decided by the other player that we’d roleplay out that experience and it was … something.
Me: [bzzzzt]
Them: [humming]
Me: I have to admit, we should put on some music, if it’ll help you relax a bit.
Them: Oh, cool. Let’s listen to something fun. How about, hmm, Ace of Base?
Me: Can do.
[youtube link is shared for the scene]
Them: Cool, cool. I really like this song.
Me: Yeah, same. Also, I meant to ask, why did you want the word, “Drawstring,” tattooed on your shoulder in Chinese?
Them: …
Me: It’s cool if you don’t want to share, people do all kinds of neat things with their ink.
Them: …that’s not what I requested, though.
Me: [jazz music stops]
Them: …
Me: …
Them: What… what did you do?
Me: …uhm.
Them: Show me.
Me: [provides mirror access]
Them: Wait. That… that says, “drawstring” in Chinese?
Me: Well, yes. I thought that you knew that.
Them: No! No, I did [expletive] not! What in the [expletive] is wrong with you?
Me: I’m doing what I was paid to do!
Them: Fix it.
Me: What, you want it in a cursive script? These things don’t have an ‘undo’ feature.
Them: FIX IT.
Me: Okay, let me know what to do, I’ll do my best.
Them: [details cover-up, three times the size, complexity, cost, and time to complete]
Me: …okay. I’ll eat the cost on this and we’ll move on, cool?
Them: If it sucks, no, we won’t.
Me: [works hard, new roll is made, five successes]
Them: Okay, it looks really cool. Thank you.
Me: No problem. I hope that you have a better day.
Them: Eh, I wasn’t expecting this, yet I can’t complain about basically free ink.
Me: Right, well, closing up for the day, going to rethink some choices.
Them: [departs]
Me: [examines stencil]
…
[consults character sheet]
Flaw: Haunted
Me: …I’m calling in a [expletive] exorcist tomorrow.
I buy off the flaw, scene was hilarious, the other player took up the role of the now-ejected spirit and their final hijinks changed the layout of the shop and some posted rules.
10/10 scene, would do again.
So far, my experience with Retro has been kind of underwhelming.
The application process is… tricky.
I’m certain that the game is fun, conditional to being able to actually get to play on it.
Amended: asking for help with writing an application is a fast way to get a reply from Staff - and shown the door. They’re deeply inconsistent enough in their criteria that they tacitly refuse to document it.
I’m not just underwhelmed, I’m reminded of why Polk felt so at home in that place.
@Juniper It’s for people who want to live in both denial and sadness simultaneously, I guess.
@Pavel
I applied to play two characters - the first was a Mage, nothing out of the ordinary, the process would be slow-going; I understood, the sole staffer was swamped with what was described as eight applications in a small period of time. Totally cool, even relatable. Every day, I check in on the job. There’s some back-and-forth with the very-helpful Magewiz on the topic; mostly, it’s in fixing up the paradigm and avatar, which are usually my weak point. Progress is made, updates are posted to fit with stated criteria, the Mage is not the issue.
In the interim, I apply for a Changeling; I’m familiar with the source material over the last (ha ha, I am old) thirty years, so I feel pretty confident in it. There’s no guidelines to follow, just vibes, and no help is on offer. I wing it, and my first effort falls short, because it doesn’t fit the “setting.” Which, well, it’s their game, they know it best. I get told to update it to fit the game mechanics, to ensure that I include the words, “Troll,” “Kithain,” “Dreaming,” “Fae,” “Noble,” “Glamour,” “Banality,” “Changeling.”
In the CtD20 core rulebook, the opening story that runs from page 14 to 24, uses the word “pooka” exactly twice and none of the other aforementioned words. How in the shady side of Hades someone is to compete with that narrative and somehow shoehorn in those terms, I’m certainly intrigued on that process for setting up a background.
Asking for help on their Discord in the “Help Me” section netted no actual help. There were helpful people and they did offer assets, inclusive of someone who provided me with a link to a historical website detailing the goings-on in the era and locale; given that I’d been alive and around the same time and place, it was gratefully accepted although of limited use.
A while later, I got a message from one of the admins which was also accompanied by what I thought was a spammer’s message; some routine antisemitic stuff, nothing that unusual.
Edit: the two events, while taking place close together, are not likely from the same source or incident.
As a freebie, I was blocked, which I consider a very strong positive, all things considered.
A quote from the app process comes to mind: The criteria are largely subjective, not objective.
Earlier, I had joked about a vibes-based character generation process. I feel eerily prescient now.
The third thing: vibes-based chargen, in which stats are inferred and implied, and dice challenges resolved through the pageantry of dance.
Okay, really, I’d just go with well-documented and either web-based with a registered login provided upon request, or well-documented and handled on-site, with approval mostly rubber-stamping after the sniff-test is done.
Clearly, I’ve found the apologists - perhaps it’s required that I share the specific message that I received, because there’s otherwise no cause for any person to receive antisemetic messages, ever.
That world feels so much safer than this one, so let’s focus.
The two events, taking place in the same span of fifteen minutes, might not be tied - given that I was removed from the server, I can’t determine if I shared any server with the aforementioned message. That helpful link is gone, so I moved on with my day - and went to bed. When I wake up, due to how I parsed the explanation, now I’m accusing a game admin of being antisemetic; I have no earthly clue if they are or aren’t, nor am I focused on it. My issue was in the lack of assistance, although if I found out later that they did harbor that specific strata of sentiment, then I would be taking issue with it.
It’s also notable that the issue I raised with the first post, of the absence of help being available, has been glossed over by a slew of apologists on behalf of the admins for the game. Clearly, there’s some strong biases at play, and finding fault with the admin is not a key choice to make: one must simply believe in the better angels for all people, at all times, forever.
I pointed out that they dropped the ball on not having any active support and discarding requests for actual assistance; the community is most definitely engineered away from the solutions of complaints and much toward the celebration of them.
One sentence is parsed funny, there’s a conspiracy at play, apparently; I bring up an actual issue, there’s crickets. Making a benchmark for my later reference about receiving a rather unpleasant screed from someone was clearly not a wise choice - once I block someone, I couldn’t even begin to guess when and where the topics of whatever message is involved. Maybe that’s on me for not documenting it better? Who knows.
What’s certain is: complaining about a process definitely doesn’t get a solution, not when there’s a reason to flense the slowest in the herd.
As I watch another app on a game enter its third week of inactivity, I draw a great many conclusions about the people who staff it. Volunteer or not, after a certain point, my interest doesn’t wane, it rots.
The concept of “the squeaky wheel gets grease,” combines with “the second rat gets the cheese,” really. If someone speaks up against staff idleness, they’re being un-mutual to the game itself; if they remain silent, well they clearly enjoy the silence, and are hoping it doesn’t change.
What constitutes a polite reminder by intent may not appear as such to a particularly-idle staffer.
@gremlinsarevil
That was for my Mage, and the notes were for: Resources, Enemy, Haunted.
Those aren’t exactly the heavy lifting of note-writing. Should I have been taken up a slower writing process, as to accommodate the others who need much, much more time than me? That definitely would have helped with the application process.
Also of note: all three of those notes got approved.
What point did you want to drive home?
@catzilla
I have operated under the impression it was only paid in shame and open theft.
This changes my retirement plans considerably.
@Artifact
I logged in every day, checked my app, shrugged and moved on after making mention of the process. Asking for help is not “doing [my] app for me.” You can feel free to invent whatever conspiracy make up for choosing to be unhelpful to a new player - which, I’ll note, you absolutely were, because the only person who actually helped was one of the admins.
You saw someone asking for help and your first thought was, “I can’t help them, it would ruin my aesthetic!”
The “comments” that I made were about needing help. I’d been using the CtD material for a very, very long time, and trying to match “vibes” is certainly a challenge, and combining that with an absence of assistance makes it a lot tougher. Asking on the Discord for help with writing the application - not, notably, having another person write it, just assistance in it - is what got me banned, as best that I can tell.
As for my “next step,” it was feeding cats and took out my trash. A short while later, I went to bed; in your worldview, I waited for the chance to login here and immediately describe the goings-on in the worst-possible light. Weirdly, not the case. You make the villain whomever that you need, so long as you remain the heroic and indifferent witness to all things.
When someone asked for help, you showed exactly whom you are, though.
@Juniper
I have rolled Dexterity+Skulking vs 7, five successes.