My team at work is hiring for a 6-month contract position. This is a
work-at-home, work-whatever-schedule-you-want, and (as far as I know)
potentially part-time role. The job involves building an Excel-based
model for market forecasting in telecommunications services.
Thinking about doing character generation for a campaign of
rob_donoghue's this past weekend, has collided with some musings
I've been having about MUSH play, in order to produce a little bit of a
random thought this morning, that I wanted to capture while it's still
fresh in my head:
Satisfying roleplay requires mutual respect of character concepts.
In tabletop games, the expression of character is usually explicit. Everyone
knows what everyone else intends for their character. Failures to
portray those things convincingly often get given a pass, both by other players
and by the GM. Indeed, this is where dice often end up coming out; if you
totally fail to impress the NPC with your lack of witty charm, you might
still get a chance to roll, albeit without a bonus or even at a penalty.
Great character actors often make for better games, but it's not, strictly
speaking, a necessity.
In LARPs, this becomes more of a challenge. Long-running, recurring games
end up having the same sort of atmosphere of collaboration as tabletop games
do, as the players get to know one another and get to know each other's
characters. They'll also get to know quirks like "Joe loves to play witty
charmers, even though he can't do wit or charm worth a damn", and the regulars
will probably give him a bit of a pass, respecting his character concept.
Newcomers may be a little puzzled, but as people are absorbed into the
group, they learn to respect the underlying basis of the character, even
when the expression is a bit clumsy.
In one-time pick-up LARPs, people who know each other and their typical
quirks tend to respect those quirks. Characters in this kind of game tend
to be at least somewhat stereotypical, though, so that everyone sort of
knows how to immediately react. "He's a Ventrue" means that he's going
to get treated a certain way right off the bat, and even if the player
proves inept at playing it, there's still usually a bit of forgiveness,
because people are holding in their heads "this character is supposed
to be X way".
When you get to MUSHing, a lot of this goes out the window. Again, players
who know each other or possess a lot of information OOC about other people's
character concepts (or are dealing with Feature Characters drawn
from the original book/comics/movie/etc.), will tend to play in accordance
with intent, at least if they're on good terms with one another OOC. But
everyone else will almost certainly react based purely on the character
as portrayed.
This tends to be where everything really goes off the rails. The
cunning guy isn't. The supposedly menacing evil villain is really
kinda cuddly. The charming fellow is offensive and doesn't seem to
know it. The innocent virgin keeps giving off "take me now" vibes. And
instead of respect for concept, what usually happens is IC reaction to
exactly what's been portrayed, and behind-the-scenes OOC mockery.
And the player ends up being pretty frustrated.
rob_donoghue has
said before about
MUSHing, "You can never create the kind of play you want for yourself.
You can only create the kind of play you want for other people, and
hope that they do the same for you."
This is one of those situations in which it applies, I think. By
behaving strictly IC, you miss the opportunity to create the kind of
play that someone else wants, and if it's a game-wide culture, you end
up not having the likelihood that other people will in turn create the
play that you're hoping for, unless you're one of the really skilled
players for whom IC portrayal reliably matches OOC intent. Generosity
has real mutual benefits here, and is applicable one-on-one, but I
suspect the model needs real system and cultural support in order to
scale game-wide.
rob_donoghue, my co-conspirator on
The Road to Amber (players of
the MUSH will know him as Zakalwe), recently wrote an interesting four-part
series on his gaming blog about the lessons he learned from the game.
It begins with the premise that Brand successfully took the Jewel from
Corwin, and drew his own Pattern; the original Amber and its shadows
were destroyed, and Brand's universe came into being. For all who
survive, they know nothing of the original Amber; for them, the
history of Brand's universe and their lives therein are all they have
ever known... except for these twinges of memories that keep intruding
upon their grim existences, memories that belong to their once-selves,
memories that allow them no peace in this world twisted by the insanity
of its creator.
Yeah, I keep doing Amber things. I suppose it continues to be an easy
theme to riff on.
I'm looking for software that does a bit more than just a basic logbook sheet.
I'd like it to be either cross-platform (since I use both a Mac and a PC),
or have an online component that would allow me to upload data from any
of my computers.
I need it to track:
Blood pressure
Heart rate
Glucometer results
Food, preferably tied to a database that populates nutrition info
Exercise, if possible
General notes field for events, etc.
If I can't get all that in a single application, separate programs with
export features would be useful, so I can combine things on my own.
I've read 52 of these in total. I think with the few exceptions of
more recently published stuff, I've read nearly all of those books
before the age of eighteen or so, when I mostly stopped reading
non-genre fiction.
People interested in playing my
pick-up D&D4e virtual
tabletop game, whether on a semi-regular basis or every once in a while,
please check out the
Campaign Wiki, and
join the hat_campaign community. Character concept ideas
should go there, along with other discussions, and I'll post game
notices and whatnot there rather than in my regular LiveJournal,
so as to not create clutter in my personal LJ.
My life is ridiculously busy, thanks to work and work travel.
You, my friend, are Far Away, and/or your life has been eaten by your
children.
I nevertheless want to play D&D.
Solution: Pick-up game, played via virtual tabletop and voice chat.
Thus, I propose the following:
I will run a pick-up D&D4e campaign.
My friends are welcome to create characters to be played whenever they
have time to join.
Games will happen when I have time to GM, and some people have time
to play.
Games will be short -- probably just a single encounter.
The party will be small -- two to five people, max.
Homebrew setting: Post-apocalyptic high fantasy. Ark, the City at the
Edge of Oblivion, founded as part of the desperate last stand against
a planar incursion. The city was created to house at least a breeding
pair of as many lifeforms as possible, and sorcerously sealed off from
the rest of the world, leaving everyone who wasn't lucky enough to
take refuge in Ark to an unknown and probably cruel fate. Now,
generations later, the magical barriers have finally gone down, and
the denizens of Ark can venture out into the world again. Think
"consequences of forcible urbanization upon normally-wild sentient
races", "monster menagerie, deliberate breeding, and release into the
wild", "unknown outside world and apocalypse survivors of dubious
disposition", and, of course, "shift of powers as the city enters a
new age".
If interested, leave a comment. Post character concepts and random
setting ideas as comments.
judd_sonofbert posed a
challenge:
Make your own New Crobuzon (of China Mieville's Perdido Street Station)
by taking three humanoid monsters and three bizarre monsters from the D&D
Monster Manual, explaining how they fit into the city. This has spawned
many interesting
ideas, and I'm taking up the challenge with an entry of my own.
bastille felt compelled to watch the YouTube video of
Susan Boyle on the TV. Since I do actually live under a pop
culture rock, I had been totally oblivious to the British equivalent
of American Idol.
I was actually impressed. It was certainly startling to hear that voice
come out of that body -- the voice reminds me strongly of Lea Salonga,
and young waif-like women. More Eponine than Fantine. (Salonga has done
both roles.)
Startling... but worthy of individual album-quality, if one strips away
all the rabble-rousing? Boyle does not have the sheer vocal power of your
typical Broadway (or West End) singer, but she might hold the ear well
enough on record. It was certainly an emotional live performance,
although that song is practically designed to cause people to reach for
handkerchiefs.
Previous winner Paul Potts certainly wouldn't have been an operatic
voice of any note without the show. I'm not even sure why one would
listen to him sing opera on record, either. Yet that's clearly not stopped
his recording career or popularity on tour.
Still, Susan Boyle makes for a good listen, and I suspect, a good
reason to tune in to the show.
Issue 14, the "mission architect" build-your-own-missions update for
City of Heroes, goes live with the next server update (this upcoming
Tuesday, I believe). It's currently on the Training Room test server
in open beta.
I've been waiting for this forever. I re-installed CoH on my
computers, including doing a Mac install for the first time. It is
giant and immersive on my 24-inch iMac screen, although unfortunately
sufficiently so that I get motion sick unless I move well back from
the screen.
I played some with the mission builder, and it is fantastic. If you
played CoH and enjoyed it, I think it will be well worth re-activating
for it, at least for a little while.
Any of you folks know the tradeoffs for using stretched VLANs (across
multiple data centers), especially in the context of failover for
disaster recovery purposes?
I haven't the slightest clue, and Google searching is not yielding
anything useful.
We went to see Coraline
in 3-D, and it was subtly wrong and creepy in a suitably Gaiman-esque
way. The 3-D is beautifully done -- blended in such a seamless way
that you almost don't notice that you're watching a movie in 3-D, but
it brings real additional life and depth to the visuals -- so
definitely go see it in 3-D if you can.
I think the first segment of the movie, which is devoted to
world-building, is far better than the second segment, which is
action-oriented. The pacing of the introduction of Coraline's real
world and the alternative button world is slow and delicious, which
makes the remainder of the movie feel rushed, but overall, this is an
outstanding film.
Definitely go see it in a theater, in 3-D. It's worth it, and you'll
really miss the visual impact if you wait to see it on DVD.
MUSHcode geeks might be interested in taking a look at a recent blog
post I've written over on PennMUSH's community (which is a nice
general MUSH community site). It covers my data factory concept, and
is pretty much the key to how I crank out code very quickly. (On Road to Amber, I use a previous
generation of this; the stuff on the blog post is the next, much
better, iteration.)
Here's a taste:
If I wanted to create a new ship, owned by me (the enactor), and give it initial coordinations of (4201, 6250) and a home port of Mars, and be able to readily refer to it as 'newship' in the remainder of this block of code, I'd do this sequence of functions (the setq calls can be combined if desired):
We had dinner at
Bourbon Steak,
which just opened up in the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown.
(This, they said, was their eleventh night.)
It was really, really good. Good enough to win hands-down over my
favorite steakhouse (Acme Chophouse in San Francisco), good enough to be
one of the best meals we've had since moving to DC, and good enough for me
to declare that this is where we are eating for my next birthday dinner.
amused
sleepy
creative
awake
nerdy
impressed