The Gaming Den

It could be barlowe's work, I'm not sure. Wouldn't particularly surprise me, though it's a bit out of style for him, I think. I think I tried stating up some of the aliens from that book for D&D when I was a kid...

Count Arioch the 28th wrote: Mind Flayers lived on the planet between Mars and Jupiter...

That's.... Neptune, right?

no, he means a planet he made up. The illithids destroyed it.

It's Ceres, actually, though there's some kooks who call it Tiamat and think it was the one that smacked into the Earth or replaced the earth.

-Crissa

huh, didn't know there'd actually been one.

Since it's relevant to the thread, I was wondering what you guys thought of this policy list for a RPG community discussion/review site.

krainboltgreene wrote:Since it's relevant to the thread, I was wondering what you guys thought of this policy list for a RPG community discussion/review site.

Worrying about politically or religiously "insensitive" material is kind of bullshit. After all, some people find D&D religiously offensive. I mean, nice idea, but you can't please everyone all of the time. Also, what do they have against porn?

Where do you think the asteroids came from? ^-^ I had to look up the Tiamat thing, tho.

-Crissa

Worrying about politically or religiously "insensitive" material is kind of bullshit. After all, some people find D&D religiously offensive. I mean, nice idea, but you can't please everyone all of the time. Also, what do they have against porn?

"they" is me, actually.

1. Nothing against porn.
2. I guess "insensitive" could be changed to "disparaging"...

But the point of those two policies is to keep it from being, well, /b/.

krainboltgreene wrote:

Worrying about politically or religiously "insensitive" material is kind of bullshit. After all, some people find D&D religiously offensive. I mean, nice idea, but you can't please everyone all of the time. Also, what do they have against porn?

"they" is me, actually.

1. Nothing against porn.
2. I guess "insensitive" could be changed to "disparaging"...

But the point of those two policies is to keep it from being, well, /b/.

I see. Well, that does seem like a reasonable rule set to squelch a large swath of flame wars and keep people from getting fired without impinging too much on discussion. The Den is too attached to religious and political debate for that sort of thing to fly here, but for a strict gaming-only site, sure.

Well, fbmf isn't so hot on us linking to Stormfront et al. So it may be an unwritten rule here. But it was more 'don't link to/talk about things which the FBI might look askew at.'

-Crissa

krainboltgreene wrote:Since it's relevant to the thread, I was wondering what you guys thought of this policy list for a RPG community discussion/review site.

I know that your intention is to find something to reduce the flamewarring around here, but this one got me...

"You cannot ever post or link to content that reveals the identity or information of a person unless that information is public."

I realize the goal is to prevent others from breaking your anonymity, but how does this even work? If you can link to it, isn't it public? Can you tell people your own name?

Maj->

They seem to believe that people should judge only ideas, and not people. See this rule:

"You must always take care not to post your personal information, so that people will only judge by your content rather than you."

Which makes sense to an extent, because lots of people treat other like shit just because they're X, Y, and Z.

OTOH...

"You must understand that anonymity is the strongest tool against vanity and ego. "

Ergh, no. They're dead wrong there.

Gotcha. That's a rather blissful take on things.

I know that your intention is to find something to reduce the flamewarring around here, but this one got me...

I'm not sure why you think that's my intention...I don't give a rats ass about "flamewarring".

I realize the goal is to prevent others from breaking your anonymity, but how does this even work? If you can link to it, isn't it public? Can you tell people your own name?

Woops, looks like I mangled two different versions of that policy. It should be:

You cannot ever post or link to content that reveals the identity or information of a person unless it was publicly given by the person.

Ergh, no. They're dead wrong there.

Care to explain why? This, by the way is the same reasoning that goes behind the image boards.

kraineboltgreene wrote:I'm not sure why you think that's my intention...I don't give a rats ass about "flamewarring".

Sorry. I wasn't really paying attention when I wrote that. It didn't occur to me that someone would post a link to their CoC for the peeps here to analyze.

ibid wrote:You cannot ever post or link to content that reveals the identity or information of a person unless it was publicly given by the person.

So you can post your own name, but you can't post someone else's name unless they do so first? So I couldn't link to my husband's articles because I'm not him and they're published under his real name?

ibid wrote:Care to explain why?

Anonymity is great at curbing vanity and ego in the sense that you don't get to take credit credit for doing something awesome.

On the other hand, you don't take the blame for doing something craptastic, either. Having no consequences tends to bring out the asshat in people.

To top it all off... While people may not know your identity in real life, it's not difficult to get an identity online. Even if you always post anonymously, certain traits and habits get pulled out and can be used to identify you - sort of a written shibboleth. The minute that happens, you gain all the benefits of being able to take credit for something awesome (praise goes a long way), while not really having to suffer many of the consequences of being known because your online identity isn't matched to your offline identity.

So you can post your own name, but you can't post someone else's name unless they do so first? So I couldn't link to my husband's articles because I'm not him and they're published under his real name?

You could not link to personal information about your husband unless your husband wrote that information.

IE, if your husband has his mailing address on a website, you can link to that. You cannot link to a website where someone has found your husbands address.

On the other hand, you don't take the blame for doing something craptastic, either. Having no consequences tends to bring out the asshat in people.

And I'm entirely fine with both of those things.

I don't see how that even remotely suggests that Anonymity doesn't curb ego and vanity.

Writing styles generally accrue when you're forced to identify yourself. Do you think you can identify 4chan users individually without a tripcode? I'd like to see you try.

krainboltgreene wrote:

So you can post your own name, but you can't post someone else's name unless they do so first? So I couldn't link to my husband's articles because I'm not him and they're published under his real name?

You could not link to personal information about your husband unless your husband wrote that information.

IE, if your husband has his mailing address on a website, you can link to that. You cannot link to a website where someone has found your husbands address.

I don't think that is very understandable from the rule you gave, but I'm not exactly sure how important it is, either.

kbg wrote:Writing styles generally accrue when you're forced to identify yourself. Do you think you can identify 4chan users individually without a tripcode? I'd like to see you try.

Writing styles accrue. You don't have to have a name for a pattern to be evident. That's one of the things the human brain excels at detecting.

On a board like 4chan where it's nigh unto impossible to see a pattern for all the noise, it's not a thing. Someplace like here...? It's gonna happen.

When no one cares, you'll get some ego and vanity curbing, and it's a lot harder for people to care when you get lost in a sea of posts. So if you mean anonymity in the sense of "there's so much shit here that you can't see the forest for the trees" yeah, you may be onto something. But if you mean "doesn't have a name" then I think the assertion is off.

Prak_Anima wrote:huh, didn't know there'd actually been one.

A prevailing theory for a long time was the asteroid belt is the remains of a hypothetical planet (Called "Phaeton" by science people and "Tiamat" by... less scientific people). The theory has been discredited, like all the cool ones tend to be. However, the idea of sentient beings having civilizations in the Cretaceous period is also scientifically discredited, I think I am allowed to use it (along with a wet Venus filled with bugs which I absolutely refuse to think about any further than I have, and a Mars filled with horrible tentacled beasts such as Psurlons and Tsochar).

When I called that dumb bitch AlexandraErin fat, there was immense asspain from everyone, and even the mods got involved. But calling Zinegata fat is suddenly acceptable? Fuck off, you fat, hypocritical shits.

Psychic Robot wrote:When I called that dumb bitch AlexandraErin fat, there was immense asspain from everyone, and even the mods got involved. But calling Zinegata fat is suddenly acceptable? Fuck off, you fat, hypocritical shits.

Wait, what? Are you sure you have this right?

Psychic Robot wrote:When I called that dumb bitch AlexandraErin fat, there was immense asspain from everyone, and even the mods got involved. But calling Zinegata fat is suddenly acceptable? Fuck off, you fat, hypocritical shits.

PR, we're done with this here. If you seriously want to start another bitchfest, start a thread MPSIMS

The thing about this board is that I know if I ever got around to designing a game and brought it here for an honest critique, I would summarily be thrown a verbal curb party by the forum members, who would rip my work to shreds, hurl a veritable maelstrom of personal insults at me, question my parentage, insinuate that the llama that birthed me would have been better off being kicked in the womb while I was still in utero, and then tell me to fuck off back to rpg.net.

But everything they said about the game would probably be right.