In reply to V_V (msg # 1429):

Good luck and hang tough!  If you need to go that far, remember you can buy the groceries, and take her car to put the gas in, rather than give her money.

Chiming in just to say that for people who have trouble conceptualising money beyond a binary of have money(infinite spending!)/no money, giving them money in cash is the most effective way to make them understand what they're spending. Invisible money flows like water, handing over your last fiver, not so much. Good luck!

This.
When someone is having problems controlling their finances, giving them more money is just enabling. Buying what is _needed_ is the best way to help. If they need more, they need to make the hard choice.

The problem creeps in when their last fiver is not their last fiver, because all the people who keep giving them money will just give them more.

What some people learn when people keep rescuing them from the consequences of making mistakes is that there ARE no consequences ... until they run out of friends.
This message was last edited by the user at 01:08, Fri 23 Aug 2019.

So I was going to join a game on a virtual tabletop site, and it seemed great -- a high level AD&D 2e game is a rarity, so I thought I'd try it out. The GM says "write me a 12 page backstory, and make sure your sheet is complete, as long as you do that you can play whatever you want." I spend 6-ish hours making the best backstory I can, completing every detail in the sheet. But I made one mistake: I wrote "good" instead of "neutral good" in the alignment box. Seeing this, the GM's response was "make a different character." Didn't even look at the rest of the sheet or the 12-page backstory I wrote. Oh, and the kicker -- the other players didn't have a single word of backstory on their characters.
I ask the guy, "Why can't I just revise it to meet your expectations which were never listed in the first place?"
His response is to kick me from the game without a word.
Gosh, I really hate some internet communities.

In reply to Aleph Null (msg # 1434):

I'm sorry you had this happen.  I tried a couple of times to get into rpgs, and whenever I'm required to write a novelette for a backstory, and do 'test posts' it always ends poorly for me.  I've also had games where I got accepted, waited weeks for a single post to the point where I would check in every few days or so, then when I didn't respond to the GM's post within 12 hours, the GM had my PC killed.   Another notable instance was the GM accepting my PC, failing to post for me, and when I submitted another PC I got a post that actually had my first PC as an NPC for my new PC to meet....talk about lazy.  Running a game should not be a power trip where the GM aims to cause as much trouble as possible for people, it should be a set of challenges that the players try to surmount in order to reach a certain goal.   Characters develop over time, and that's more interesting than having a document backstory with a lot of guessing and gloss.   I understand your disappointment, you are not alone.

Essentially, that was a game you didn't want to be in, in the first place.  I hope you find a good one and can enjoy it.  I don't have any advice on how to do that though.

A 12 page backstory? I would've backed out then and there! Requesting a brief character backstory is fine and expected, but a short novel is kinda ridiculous in my opinion.

If the GM kicked you for your question, be glad you were kicked. That game isn't the type you want to be in. Sorry you had to put up with that, but at least now you're free to find a better, more reasonable, game.

In reply to Aleph Null (msg # 1434):

Sounded like that GM was power tripping - kind of GM that it is just better to avoid as they are not mentally mature enough to run a game. Or much of anything else.
The massive back story request tends to come from such GMs in my experience - it's a huge red flag. So now you know better.

In reply to Aleph Null (msg # 1434):

12 page backstory??  I would have been out of there!  !2 page history is what you get after you play the character for months!

Welp, at this point I've dropped plot breadcrumbs, plot pebbles, plot bricks, and plot anvils.  I debated applying a clue-by-four to the narrative but decided it wasn't worth it.  I couldn't make the plot-bait more tempting than if I covered it with glitter and sparkles.  If they want to wander off into Nowheresville, I will just have to make up a new adventure in Nowheresville...  *sigh*
This message was last edited by the user at 09:33, Sun 25 Aug 2019.

...have the key to the Nowhereville situation kidnapped by the forces of your original intended campaign? It sounds like you need to be subtle, because your players have a suspicion they can't explore once they get on well-marked highway Plot This Way...still, maybe do a bit of sounding out as to what they want, as they might not have been into the main plot anyway. Alternatively, just let 'em run off over there and let the consequences of whatever they ignored play out, it'll be great!

@Shannara - Aye, I know that all too well, but there was mention of giving the friend a budget in there, and if it's in the bank account it'll just evaporate like a puff of steam, was all I meant. Making money visible has a strong psychological effect - I've heard of a documentary where a family began pulling themselves out of chronic debt after being instructed to put what money they had (coins and whatever notes friends lent) into clear glass jars, and I've seen it work on two previous over-spenders with that binary all/none concept of money myself.

In reply to Isida KepTukari (msg # 1439):

Is the plot you've dropped hints for location-specific, or can you adapt it to taking place in Nowheresville? Or is it more of a "I need to hire a group to rescue the kidnapped prince! / We're not interested in rescuing kidnapped princes." sort of situation?

They've already got the first part of the plot well in hand, I was just trying to get them some answers to many of their questions in a timely fashion (play by post being what it is, too much time passes and people can forget why they were in an area in the first place). But if they don't want to check out where I was dropping clues (which would be the very logical place to search for answers), I'll just move maligned plot elsewhere in the world...
This message was last edited by the user at 05:44, Mon 26 Aug 2019.

In reply to Isida KepTukari (msg # 1442):

As the founder and primary resident of Nowheresville, I'd appreciate a bit of warning before you drop any wandering murderhobos into my neck of the woods, Isida.

In reply to NowhereMan (msg # 1443):

Your neck of the woods is roughtly the size of Russia, so you need not worry to much about the murder hobo's finding you.

Oh, like that's ever stopped a murderhobo. If it was deemed plot-important that it stay alive, they'd find and kill the one single living bacteria on Mars, and they'd do it within about twelve minutes.

I hate, hate, hate the way job applications are processed these days. Everything is snipped down into tiny pieces, shoved through a filter program, and then a few lucky apps get spat out to hiring managers if they happen to have a few random key words tensed just so.

Not only does it take forever to reformat, or adjust a resume because the filter doesn't know how to handle tenses or synonyms, but even if you have them, if the search parameters aren't set up correctly, it might not even matter. Or, even better... the sites that do this PLUS ask you to retype the entire resume. Yes, cut and paste is a thing, but you still have to go back over it again to make sure it looks good and doesn't contain a bunch of '&&;' errors and it's usually not just a single cut/ paste, but a hundred individual boxes that, yes, I can probably retype faster than copy/ pasting anyway. And let's not forget software and webpage errors that are there to conveniently lock you out half-way through an application, or buttons that don't work like they're supposed to.

Yes, it's beautiful to see hundreds of resumes being submitted for a job in the internet, but a lot of the bad ones get shot through because of search terms and a lot of the good ones never even make it to being printed for an initial human glance. Not only does it significantly extend my time working on every individual resume, but I honestly believe it wastes hiring employees time and often provides sub-par applicants.

Why can't I just walk into a place, smile at someone, and hand them a piece of paper? I have literally never been turned down for a job I've applied to that way. </rant>

In reply to Kessa (msg # 1446):

As there is usually far more people wanting a job than there are openings, the goal is to reduce the number of applicants that the hiring person has to look at.
These filter programs work well at doing that.

I'm not sure the qualification actually matter, as most new hires have to be trained anyway.

Yes, the filters definitely do cut down the pool, the way they do so is where my frustrations lie. Often having to toss in key terms in the verbatim style of the listing makes resumes sound worse than they would normally and horribly repetitive. I don't have an issue with trying to implement a filtering system, but some of these are so bad I almost feel like they do more harm than good.


I have to disagree here. If this is the case, why not just hire the first person who applies? Qualifications definitely matter. That's the whole point of taking multiple applicants, to find the one who is most qualified, or otherwise the best fit. I could theoretically have no experience with home appraisal, but toss in a an application because I like the salary being offered, figuring I'll figure out the basics later when other people have been doing it for years and don't need to take extra time to figure out anything.

In reply to Kessa (msg # 1448):

I guess I just have a sour taste because I once made the mistake of taking off on my lunch break to go to an interview for basically the job I was already doing that they were going to make permanent and better paid.
Because it was inter-company and I was on my lunch break I didn't take time to "Dress the part".

A total nub that I had to train got the job.

Found out that I didn't have the right image for the job because I was wearing my work clothes to the interview.

So, yeah, qualifications are not the deciding factor surprisingly often.

In reply to Kessa (msg # 1448):

Years ago, before the internet stuff - I kept running in to the problem of 'need x amount of experience' for a job. One of my favorites on that for pure stupid was a company wanting 10 years experience in a field that had only been around 5 years. Litterally did not exist prior to that time cause the technology did not exist. I had at that time 3 years experience in that field - could not get the HR people to understand why they could not get someone with as much experience as they wanted.
Now days, most every job is apply online and hope someone see's it and has enough brains to actually check a resume - seen to many people with fake online resume's get jobs they are so not qualified for just cause they know how to work the system.

In reply to ShadoPrism (msg # 1450):

Yup, these days knowing how to properly (and successfully) apply for jobs appears to be a separate qualification. At the same time almost everyone working in HR is so dumb that my mind cannot comprehend it.

There is also another issue creeping up majestically, i.e. the compulsive appliers that do apply to literally any job posting on internet (obviously without even reading the job requests), just because they don't have to pay for a stamp for each application. This is spamming massively the tools, that show often hundreds of applications from people that has nothing to do with that job opening.
Having to put a stamp on the envelope of each application used to be a good enough filter.

A buddy of mine quit is job to make a board game. I wanted to try and support him so I demoed it and came back with a ton of feedback. Now granted it is pre-alpha but I had some basic tips like increase the font size on the cards because currently his cards used tiny font and graphics so the majority of the card was blank. I then explained some parts of the rules that were either confusing or perhaps in the rulebook should be reordered.

Anyway I wrote him paragraphs of in depth feedback.

His response was basically a bullet-by-bullet response basically saying that it's not wrong. Now not in a constructive way like "The reason X is here is because I tried it over here and it made things worse so this is the result of other feedback" but instead it was like "Well its pre-alpha so it doesn't matter" or "Well other people didn't mind it that way"

Like you do you dood but that's the last bit of feedback I'm giving you.

In reply to praguepride (msg # 1453):

That's too bad. In my experience, it's not every day that a friend is willing to provide in-depth feedback instead of just offering vague praise.

I don't have the right mindset for game dev, but as an artist, I can safely say that constructive criticism is always more valuable than praise. Pinning my picture to the metaphorical fridge and telling me its the bestest ever doesn't help me; telling me that I chose an awkward color palette that makes everything look washed out, or something like that, does help me, since I can re-examine my work with that comment in mind.