@TNP I’m so sorry to read this.

I mean I understand the complaint and where it’s coming from, but I’ve been the one left holding the bag for someone else’s RL emergency, and it sucks.

Whatever you do is wrong. Whatever you say is wrong. You aren’t enough and you can’t be enough, because what’s needed is the one whose bag this is and you’re just hanging onto it right now.

And it’s their RL, so you either turn into someone unreasonable, or you accept that RL comes first and this sucks.

And in the meantime, when someone puts a post up like this, it’s just pure demoralisation. There’s only one person who can answer these questions and - for whatever reason - they aren’t in the conversation right now.

Sure, the post may be accurate and it may be on point and it may be whatever, but it doesn’t help. And it won’t help. And it can’t help. All it can do is get people talking around in circles about their grievances, while also making the people who’ve been left with the bag feel like shit.

Congrats, I guess?

I’m very bad when it comes to paging people - even close RP friends - and asking for RP. I was raised to never be a bother, and paging people to say ‘Would you like RP’ feels like being a bother unless there’s a specific arrangement already in place or something that needs to be directly discussed - and, like STD, I really don’t want to be That Player Who Seems Kinda Obsessive.

I’m much more inclined to drop myself on the grid, hit an LRP flag, say on channel that I feel like RP if anyone’s interested, and so on. I try to be available, rather than seeking specifically.

Having seen people use descs etc. directly stolen from other people/games, I’m a little wary of giving someone carte blanche to use the shit I write anywhere and everywhere they please without even the ability to say ‘Really?’

And given the rise of AI data scraping, I’m even more wary of a clause allowing them to use my writing as training data. I don’t claim to be the next literary great, but the modern world is a total hellhole when it comes to automated copyright theft.

I can absolutely understand wanting to defend against scorched-earth idiocy, but giving the administrators the power to use anything I create on their game wherever and however they please feels like a bit much in this modern era.

Wandered onto Towers of Londinium earlier. Saw the terms, spotted an oddity.

3. You agree to grant to TowersMUX and the administrators thereof a
   non-exclusive, non-commercial license to any content you create via the
   mediums of TowersMUX or its game website; including, but not limited to,
   descriptions, poses, bulletin board posts, wiki pages, et cetera.

Does anyone know what the bloody hell this is in aid of? Because from over here it’s sounding kinda shady.

I too have a long history of administrative roles, and finally transitioned into a career a few years ago. This is partly because the career path I should have taken wasn’t as open then as it is now.

What I learned in administration is that you never, ever, underestimate your admins. They see everything. They know everything. And anyone who can organise other people - especially people with big egos and big tempers - to get things done is not someone you want to cross.

And yet the administrative staff are so often dismissed by people who only ever see the surface of things. It’s both stupid and weird.

@hellfrog said in MU Peeves Thread:

everyone wants to take down The Man! everyone has different ideas for how to do it and wants the credit

Everyone wants to take down The Man, until they themselves are The Man, at which point everyone else has to be delighted with the idea and nothing can ever go wrong ever again…

@Pavel said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Evilgrayson said in MU Peeves Thread:

Yes, let’s tell the human-hating centuries-old elf who’s just slaughtered a whole town that they’re an idiot. That’s really going to go so well.

This is absolutely something that any number of my characters would do.

@Evilgrayson said in MU Peeves Thread:

the human-hating centuries-old elf had casually grown the mother of all trees through the mouthy one

And this is absolutely the extreme overreaction consequence I would be looking for, please and thank you.

If only more people thought like that.

I’m with you. If my character does something that stupid, they should get consequences! But ye gods, the wailing if consequences actually happen.

Yes, let’s tell the human-hating centuries-old elf who’s just slaughtered a whole town that they’re an idiot. That’s really going to go so well.

And yet if the human-hating centuries-old elf had casually grown the mother of all trees through the mouthy one, you’d have been able to hear the OOC screaming from my side of the Pond.

@dvoraen Ray - who got that revelation in the Murder of Crows while discussing Lowers secrets and specifically the things that had happened to people who said the wrong thing in the Murder of Crows - hid in his secret subterranean lair for a week.

@Rhamnious Looks like the Accords from here. Red Wardens, Prismatic Order, Triarchy, Smiling Shadows, and True Lyceum. Two ‘good’ orgs, two ‘bad’ orgs, and one ‘neutral’.

@SpaceKhomeini said in MU Peeves Thread:

I’ve found that being polite and direct (at least in my time working at HCL and Microsoft) at the first given opportunity, i.e. “how can I help you? I’m engaged in something right now but have a few minutes” tends to be an effective shortcut.

That approach turns the whole thing on its head, which is why it’s so effective. You have to be polite at all times - but if the other party only has a few minutes, it becomes more polite to get to the point so they can go do the needful.

@dvoraen said in The Arx Secrets Thread:

@Evilgrayson I seriously considered trying to do the Paladin bit for Bhandn at one point (doing it on his own, to specific god(s)), but I could never quite justify it to myself, and I second-guessed the idea constantly as to whether it was even thematic if not heretical.

But I did want to do something involving Vellichor, but the reasons why now escape me.

Was it heretical? Absolutely. But Ray didn’t care, and Death wasn’t like most of the other gods.

@MisterBoring said in Arx Stats for Nerds:

I always assume that whatever the visible staff count is, there’s an invisible staffer who just gets online to help squash bugs and update code. They may have a PC or two, but they never mention their being on staff, because the part of staffing they do doesn’t really require player interaction.

Good for most games, but Arx’s coder was Tehom. So already in the count.

Ray started from nothing, just a criminal henchman with a cliche’d backstory.

He found out over time that he was a quarter Nox’alfar. He found out that his father had been a holder of part of the Will of Baalphrigor who’d sacrificed thousands to the Abyss in a war, and who’d killed Ray’s mother.

He found a woman who could cope with him and got married, and a man who could cope with them both but couldn’t get married but was a not-quite-husband. He found a goddess who could cope with him and swore to Her service. He rose to be a Second of his crime family and one of the top-ranking members of the criminal underworld. He made friends and he made enemies, and he was the protege of the Queen of the Compact, while his wife was a successful businesswoman and a ‘successful businesswoman’ and a protege of a Voice of the Crown and his not-quite-husband was a Knight-Lieutenant of the King’s Own.

He ended up dying to save a bunch of souls in a shardhaven, and his goddess and his patron brought him back to life. He became an Aspect - and then went and performed the Paladin rite on his own and for one goddess only, and became the Paladin of Death, because that was a much safer title to use. The Wheelspinner came to him, and in the last battle he did what he could.

House Mazetti tried to ennoble him, often. House Velenosa made the offer as well. He’s accepted on behalf of Tanith and his child(ren), and House Calvaria will rise.

He started with nothing, and he ended up with so much, and I’d like to thank Herja for a truly stunning storyline and Tanith and Austen’s players for some absolutely amazing times - and the rest of Ray’s friends for putting up with the irritating murderous git and letting him be around regardless.

It’s been a whale of a time.

@Pavel Which is nice if you already know that, but I’m not a mind reader and that’s very much not how I was raised.

Cultures vary. Even in the same country, cultures vary, and my culture and the culture of most people here are very different in some surprising ways. Just opening up with what I’m after would be seven shades of rude and utterly against all the rules of human interaction I’ve spent decades learning to follow by rote because buggered if I can actually understand any of them.

I generally start a conversation with a wave, which is both a polite notice that I’d like to talk to you and a way for me to find out if I’m talking to a void before I start.

I live in a timezone that means people quite often aren’t there even if their character is. Often, by the time someone AFK comes back, I’m asleep. Better to just send a quick wave as a politer sort of ping.

@Roz I used to live near there. It’s absolutely wonderful, I wish I could go back.

@hellfrog Have you got change for ten million people?

Flashback Jambalaya