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11:43, 28th March 2024 (GMT+0)

Vents with allowed responses - 3.

Posted by GamerHandle
mickey65
member, 46 posts
Long-time PbP player
Love several systems
Fri 14 Jul 2017
at 23:20
  • msg #912

TFW...

In reply to GammaBear (msg # 911):

My sympathies, Gamma. Was it a matter of Creator Blindspot?
GammaBear
member, 788 posts
Gaymer
Fri 14 Jul 2017
at 23:45
  • msg #913

TFW...

In reply to mickey65 (msg # 912):

I don't know for certain, and I don't think I can go in to details about the game, but like I said, I thought it was a cool idea at first, but then when I actually read the stuff the DM posted for the game, I thought everything sounded sketchy so I didn't RTJ. Though now I see it constantly looking for replacement players.
mickey65
member, 47 posts
Long-time PbP player
Love several systems
Fri 14 Jul 2017
at 23:57
  • msg #914

TFW...

In reply to GammaBear (msg # 913):

Sketchy is a bit of a slippery concept. Even the most detailed planning has to leave room for some sandboxing, because players ARE going to catch you off-guard unless you write an encyclopedia and have an eidetic memory. Maybe even then. And in a pbp game I've always loved thinking on my feet from outlines. Sure, I need notes on major events, locations, and characters, and sometimes maps are indispensible, but it's rare that I put a lot of work into things like NPC charsheets, shop inventories, family lineages, local dinner menus, etc. I've even been know to tell a player: "Tell me which NPCs in this caravan you want to interact with" and then let the player come up with their own wish list.
Brianna
member, 2126 posts
Sat 15 Jul 2017
at 19:39
  • msg #915

TFW...

In reply to mickey65 (msg # 914):

You're reminding me of an argument I've had several times, whether computer games are essentially multiple choice.  If they are well-crafted, the player may never be reminded of that, but somewhere, sometime, someone will come up with a plan, a strategy, that the designer has not thought of or allowed for, even if s/he has done all the charts and detailing you say you don't, but that you could make up on the fly if necessary, and a computer game cannot.
mickey65
member, 54 posts
Long-time PbP player
Love several systems
Sat 15 Jul 2017
at 19:43
  • msg #916

TFW...

In reply to Brianna (msg # 915):

I'm sure you've heard that multiple-choice questions are the most difficult test questions to design well, so that they actually measure what they're intended to measure. Computer game designers face a similar challenge, but I don't know whether any have thought of it that way. :)
Brianna
member, 2127 posts
Sat 15 Jul 2017
at 19:55
  • msg #917

TFW...

In reply to mickey65 (msg # 916):

Both are indeed difficult to design, and often none of the choices given is exactly right, or even closer to 'right' than any of the others, at least to some.
Kessa
member, 525 posts
Dark Army:
Out to Lunch
Sat 15 Jul 2017
at 20:08
  • msg #918

TFW...

In reply to GammaBear (msg # 913):

This happened to me recently, as well. Was excited to find a game. Started reading what the GM was posting for it and decided to wait a little bit before RTJing. Glad I didn't. Turns out they are just using the system for an idea, but not the world that I would have built the character to fit in. Ooops! Kinda makes a difference....
Merevel
member, 1186 posts
The Unlucky Gamer
Sat 15 Jul 2017
at 22:02
  • msg #919

TFW...

Your character understands that there are no bears in wolfhome.

How ironic that no bears are in wolfhome when the book specifically mentions them several times. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that mine was told find a bear and the packs Alpha will let her win the challenge. No, I doubt a gm will bend his univerce to apple with me like that. Surely not right? For a guy who claims I am trying to ruin his game with the idea of leaving he sure seems like he wants me gone.

I wish the bloak would make up his mind.
This message was last edited by the user at 22:02, Sat 15 July 2017.
mickey65
member, 58 posts
Long-time PbP player
Love several systems
Sat 15 Jul 2017
at 22:08
  • msg #920

TFW...

Had a sad moment I've already vented privately about, and people have been so nice to me that I feel better but the situation is even more sad.

I started recruiting for two games around the same time, about four days go. The first game has seven players playing eight characters and is up to more than 700 posts already. The players are so enthusiastic that we're playing all day, and that not only uses up my free time nicely but keeps me happily occupied.

But the other game never got off the ground because I simply had no time for it, and I had to confess to those five players that I had to suspend the game after they had worked hard to create characters. They've been so nice about it that I wish I could run that game too after all, but right now that's not possible.

I'm slowly going blind from ocular cataracts that went untreated for way too long. I can't do a damned thing until after both eye surgeries are over with around the second week of September. Everything is lined up for the eye surgeries and I've got about five and a half weeks to twiddle my thumbs...or keep seven players happy while keeping myself happy. Which I'm doing. Yet I had to let five very nice people down, and that bothers me.
pitademon
member, 833 posts
hi all
Sun 16 Jul 2017
at 05:09
  • msg #921

TFW...

Mickey...will you have to wear bandages for a bit?  Asking as one of my old gms here had a major stroke and then went blind from diabetes.  I am not sure if it is a machine or a program, however she was able to convert her keyboard to voice.  Anything that some one wrote her the computer spoke and she could have it type what she said back.  I know I am also having vision problems and am looking into it.  perhaps it could help
Fyrerain
member, 72 posts
Sun 16 Jul 2017
at 09:15
  • msg #922

On to round five...

Finally got the power back on, if not the A/C, after 6 days without (last went out Thurs before the July 4th weekend; between people leaving work early for the holiday weekend, and the general back-up of overscheduled electricians, couldn't get anyone out until the following Weds). Then finally got the A/C tech out Thurs to fix that... and yet, once again, ~48 hours later, I've no power, no A/C.

Apparently, my summer break is being spent crashing in a friend's living room. Gods know how long it's going to take to get things fixed this round. :P
Kessa
member, 527 posts
Dark Army:
Out to Lunch
Thu 20 Jul 2017
at 00:15
  • msg #923

Why is it...

Why is it that the only time the battery in the fire alarm goes out is the day I arrive home late from vacation and just want to do nothing but sleep? I don't even know if I have batteries for this stupid thing, that, of course, is the one in the bedroom, so I can't ignore it even if I wanted to!
Fyrerain
member, 73 posts
Fri 21 Jul 2017
at 22:59
  • msg #924

WTH?

Some people are way too far on the weird side of stupid. I live out in the desert in a very rural area, so when three young teenagers flag me down on the road, a mile from the nearest house, no car in sight, early in the afternoon, I was wondering where they heck they'd come from. No bikes, no backpacks, no water, no drinks of any kind -- in the desert in summer... and no phone, either, as it turns out.

I let them call someone on my phone, and offered to drop them off at our community convenience store, where at least they could wait in air conditioning. (I figured with three of them, we should all be safe from accusations of impropriety; sad that has to be a consideration these days.)

Barely get started moving and a call comes in on my phone, we need to turn around and backtrack a few miles, the other girl is back that way... in an SUV full of kids with, it turns out, the young mother of the girl who'd borrowed my phone at the wheel. Said girl gets out, gets in the SUV without saying much, too busy crying because she knows she's in trouble -- but the other two adamantly refusing to change vehicles. Okay....

And the mother? Doesn't say a word to me. No thanks for helping my child, who was out in the desert utterly unprepared. No concern for the other two kids, who are supposedly her daughter's friends, and are in a car with a total stranger. Not even a hello. Just, nothing. Collects her kid and drives away. WTH?

Mind you, we're within 5 miles of a major "smuggler's highway," used for Mexican drug and human smuggling -- to the point the state land ~8 miles to the south has signs saying it's not safe, stay out of the area. And she says nothing?

I ended up driving the other pair of kids to one of their homes about 8 miles away. But I still wonder who ditched them out there with no water and no phone. And if they're smart enough not to get caught in that situation again. Sadly, I'm not too sure about that. :/
OceanLake
member, 1006 posts
Sat 22 Jul 2017
at 00:38
  • msg #925

WTH?

Well, you're a good gal/guy helping these candidates for a Darwin Award.
Kessa
member, 528 posts
Dark Army:
Out to Lunch
Sat 22 Jul 2017
at 02:24
  • msg #926

WTH?

I wonder if they could have been the ones being trafficked. Just glad nothing weirder happened and nothing happened to you. I generally don't pick up anyone for just this reason. Much easier to call folks a cab or call the police to come help anyone on a roadside.
Fyrerain
member, 74 posts
Sat 22 Jul 2017
at 05:35
  • msg #927

WTH?

Thanks. :) I live on the edge of nowhere, though. There are no buses, no cabs unless you call one out from the metro (an hour+ away), and the kids had no phone, nor likely near enough money, anyway.

Average response time from the sheriff's office is between 45 minutes to 2 hours. On a good day. (Non-emergencies, they may show up 2 days later, if they don't just take a report over the phone.) Mostly, they just take reports after the fact, do traffic tickets, handle accidents, and make the almost quarterly major drug trafficking and/or illegal trafficking busts.

I am very cautious about stopping for anyone these days, especially when alone. Certain folks I won't stop for at all; I'll call the sheriff's department to get a deputy dispatched instead. That ensures someone will come by who can help, so they won't suffer too badly from the heat.

I definitely considered the risks, before pulling over. But these kids were ~14, skinny sticks of kids, and I routinly heft 80 pound bags of feed. All three of them together weren't much risk to me, and in minimal summer attire, no one was hiding any weapons big enough to be dangerous, either.

If they'd been nearly adult-sized teens, probably I'd have let them use the phone without getting out of or unlocking the car, and then called the sheriff's department once I left. That way, if the kids weren't picked up in short order, a deputy would have been sent round to look for them.

Having been stranded on the side of the road in the summer, I've had occasion to be terribly grateful for the people who did stop to help me. It was a very calculated risk, but it worked out. :)
KaiWriter
member, 44 posts
Fri 28 Jul 2017
at 11:45
  • msg #928

WTH?

I'm about to lose a game I played in to the autoclean function, and it's making me both sad and a little ticked.

It was a Battletech/Mechwarrior game, and I'll be damned if the GM didn't know their stuff and create some of the most engaging, wonderful and purely amazing worlds and NPCs for us all to interact with.  The characters were all selected and were amazingly developed, and we were all clicking together like crazy, with huge plans for the length of the game- we had plans to go all the way down the official storyline, from the beginning of the Clan War all the way to the Word of Blake Jihad and beyond, with plenty of the best stuff you could ever hope to find in a game.

This was a GM that was really one in a million, and I've found two of them during all my time I've spent playing tabletop RPGs.  But sooner or later I'm going to lose everything I did for it.  I can't even ask the GM of the game to poke it and take it off the delete schedule- he vanished near the end of 2013 and we only found out in the first part of January 2014 that he'd been in a fatal accident.

So I started trying to print off as much of it as possible- I feel games like that just don't come around often enough, and I don't want to lose the memories and all the work that was put into it.  I just don't know any other way besides printing everything off that I'm going to be able to hang onto it.  I wish there was a way I could preserve it completely, because one of these days I'm going to log on and it'll just not be there, and I'll have lost all the wonderful work and development and memories.

I know this isn't one of those rants where you're all irritated and such, but- I loved this game and everything about it; and it's a shame that it's just going to end up formatted into nothingness.  I just wish there was a better way than a hundred bucks worth of ink and paper...
MalaeDezeld
member, 16 posts
Fri 28 Jul 2017
at 14:13
  • msg #929

WTH?

My suggestion would be to kept it in electronic form. Windows 10, Mac and Linux have a "print" to pdf instead of directly to a printer by default. For older Windows, if you can install new drivers, you can add a special printer that do the same (google pdf printer for windows X). Otherwise, chrome and firefox have ways to save pages (html form) that they could reopen.
ShadoPrism
member, 1111 posts
OCGD-Obsessive-Compulsive
Gamer-Disorder
Fri 28 Jul 2017
at 16:18
  • msg #930

WTH?

In reply to KaiWriter (msg # 928):

Actaully on older systems (Windows 7 and earlier) go to File - click Save (or Save as) and make a HTML copy of it and save it to a folder. This is how I archive All my games. Been doing this for close to 17 years that way.
You can save it in that format with Windows 10 to. Right click and chose Save Page As. It automatically goes to HTML format.
If you can open the page to Show All then you can get a whole series of post in one try.
icosahedron152
member, 769 posts
Sat 29 Jul 2017
at 04:22
  • msg #931

WTH?

Shadowprism, what is the unit that you save? A post, a thread, a game? I've been saving each thread using Rpol's D/L function and saving as a Word document, but if there's a better way...
ShadoPrism
member, 1112 posts
OCGD-Obsessive-Compulsive
Gamer-Disorder
Sat 29 Jul 2017
at 10:47
  • msg #932

WTH?

Usually a whole thread if you use the show all setting. Makes for one very long page, but you get any pics on the thread and character profiles to.
SunRuanEr
member, 52 posts
Sat 29 Jul 2017
at 23:54
  • msg #933

WTH?

In reply to KaiWriter (msg # 928):

You're not the only person that's going to miss that one, trust me.

As ShadoPrism said above, save it as an HTML. That's what I've done with the threads I really don't want to lose, over the years.
Isida KepTukari
member, 150 posts
Elegant! Arrogant! Smart!
Sun 30 Jul 2017
at 12:26
  • msg #934

Pet Woes

My cat is sick.  For the past few days he's been refusing food, or only taking a few nibbles.  And this is a cat who never misses a meal and by Odin's hammer doesn't let you forget it!  He'll meow and yowl and walk up and down your sleeping body until food hits his dish. This is a cat who lurks next to us when we eat so he can lick our plates when we're done.

And he's not eating.  We've taken him to the vet twice already - the first time said they didn't feel anything wrong with his bladder or bowels, his recent bloodwork indicated nothing untoward, had no obvious signs or symptoms of something more subtle.  Other than an injection of anti-nausea medication, they didn't have anything else to go on.  But the second time they did say there might, just possibly, be something in his stomach he isn't passing.  So Monday he goes in for an ultrasound to see what's in there.

He's 14 years old, healthy as can be otherwise, active and strong, a loving and adorable render of flesh.  I adopted him at a very low point in my life, and he's been with me longer than I've been married.

Timmy, my sweet pretty baby boy, please let this be something we can fix!
fireflights
member, 353 posts
playing with Fire
always burns
Sun 30 Jul 2017
at 12:52
  • msg #935

Pet Woes

Do you know what breed of cat he is?
Isida KepTukari
member, 151 posts
Elegant! Arrogant! Smart!
Sun 30 Jul 2017
at 14:30
  • msg #936

Pet Woes

Domestic (American) shorthair mackerel tabby (otherwise known a mutt of some stripe).  He was originally a stray, so his exact parentage is unknown.  He's fixed, with all his claws.  He's occasionally showing some interest in getting food on a plate or in a bowl, but as soon as he smells it, he refuses it.  :(
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