Dintiradan

Newer forms of social media have their uses, but I feel like a lot of communities have a forum-shaped hole in them. I noticed a lot of communities had a fundamental shift when Discord came around and forums started to get depopulated. Discord's good for extemporaneous discussions, but bad for periodic, ongoing ones. And if you've created something you want to share with the community, you need a friendly mod to pin it for you, otherwise it gets lost immediately in the noise. On the other hand, if mods do this too often, Discord just becomes a worse forum.

(Twitch chat is this x100.)

It's hard to form a cohesive community over microblogging services like Twitter or Tumblr, though in their defense they were never designed for that sort of thing. In an odd sort of way, they remind me of the way the web was two decades ago, where if you didn't link share with the right people, or be part of the right webring, you languished in obscurity.

There's also my general sense of unease over communities moving from "let's create a website, host a message board, and congregate there" to "let's use this company's services to run our community", but that's just my FOSS paranoia talking.

Ah, hmm. I was referencing the running joke where Kuzco meets all the Disney Princess requirements set in Ralph Breaks the Internet (better than Vanellope does, which is one of the reasons why she's off the list), but yeah, I can see how there's more than one way to take it. Consider him rescinded, and my apologies.

If it's not enough, I can add Disney princes as well! No biggie!

Disney princess round (including both non-princesses who are part of the official Princess Line as well as princesses who are not):

Snow White

Cinderella

Aurora

Eilonwy

Ariel

Belle

Jasmine

Pocahontas

Mulan

Kuzco

Kida

Tiana

Rapunzel

Merida

Anna

Elsa (she was a princess at the start of the movie I guess?)

Moana

Feel free to do the public domain versions (or any other versions) if you're adventurous.

You know what we forgot to do last year? This thing! Take part in the Spiderweb tradition of being way too public about yourself! Of course, previous criticisms about this test still hold, but the benefit of repeating the same test year after year means you can see how you've changed over time. Well, at least I can. I should probably pretty up my gnuplot script at some point...

Wait, are you telling me that George Clinton isn't Bill Clinton's dad? Riiight, next you'll be telling me that Director Hoover and President Hoover weren't the same person.

Something I believed until embarrassingly late in life.

For the crime of not ranking George Clinton, I'm not only adding Jeb Bush to the list, but also making you read a dribble I wrote for him:

Well, now that we've started doing famous presidents, we can do famous presidents' fathers!

Joseph Kennedy Sr.

Prescott Bush

George Clinton

Fred Trump

12 hours ago, Edgwyn said:

I would pick Yogi Bear over Pol Pot

I'm sure Slarty would have rated Pol Pot lower if he had a handlebar moustache.

Boris Johnson

21 hours ago, Damp Annals said:

I wasn't sure Smaug was going to be dethroned, but you did it, Dinti.

Pretty tough to think of anything worse than AM. Happy (?) to be proven wrong, though.

Ancient Greece round:

Socrates

Plato

Aristotle

Diogenes

Epicurus

Archimedes

Alright, let's see if I can knock Smaug off his throne:

AM (I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream)

18 minutes ago, Damp Annals said:

I'm also interested to note that there is now at least one person on the list whom I view identically to one of the current candidates.  Not only would I rank them together, I see them as having exactly the same strengths and weaknesses.

Marianne Williamson and Genghis Khan, obviously.

Republican round:

Cincinnatus

Scipio Africanus

Cato the Elder

Cato the Younger

Sulla

Cicero

Crassus

Pompey

Julius Caesar

Spartacus

Avatar round:

Aang

Katara

Sokka

Toph

Zuko

Uncle Iroh

THE BOULDER

America's Asset round:

Captain America (Earth-616)

Captain America (Ultimate Universe)

Captain America (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

Captain America (Hydra Supreme)

9 minutes ago, Damp Annals said:

Aslan: Boy, you gave me some trouble with this one!

Ooh, I could get behind Puddleglum for President. Presumably his ad campaign would be "Mourning in America".

Fantasy leaders round:

Aragorn

Rand al'Thor

Richard Rahl

Albus Dumbledore

Aslan

Billie Holiday, Ayn Rand, Julie D'Aubigny, Simone de Beauvoir, Olga of Kiev, Cleopatra, Elizabeth Báthory, Lady Gaga.

EDIT: I suddenly regret putting down Cleopatra, because I kinda want you to rank not just the non-fictional Cleopatra but various fictional portrayals of her as well. Ah well, she can stay. Maybe if you're feeling bored and want some extra credits.

Finally got around to finishing Glen Cook's The Black Company. One of those books where I could see why others like it so much, but it wasn't for me.

look, nwn2 might be a clunky toolset that has very little community support compared with nwn1, but you're able to set a bard on fire in the main campaign, and that covers a multitude of sins

Well, the usual advice people throw around is "there's no wrong way to have fun." So if you and your friends are having fun playing this way, more power to you. That said, there are probably ways to have the same amount of fun with less work on your part.

Blades of Exile isn't designed for this kind of play, but there are games that are. RPGs with co-op multiplayer, with built-in support for a Dungeon Master to modify things on the fly; Bioware's Neverwinter Nights being one of the first big examples. Host a server and have your friends connect, while you play using the DM client. This way your friends will be able to control their own actions and you'll have an easier time modifying the game to do what you want.

Alternatively, you could just play D&D, or another RPG like it. It sounds like your players already want a more traditional RPG experience, with them writing character backstories and using unconventional tactics like "pit filled with holy water". An online toolset like MapTool, Fantasy Grounds, or Roll20 will take care of a lot of the rules for you and your players, making it easier to learn. There are also a lot of alternatives to D&D out there, if you find D&D to be too rule-heavy, or otherwise not a good fit. Spiderwebbers played AIMhack, a homebrew d20 system, for years (search for AIMhack on these forums to see how the system evolved over time and for actual play logs). Finally, there are decades worth of pre-written adventures out there if you don't want to make your own (which sounds like the case, since you're effectively using BoE scenarios this way).

I'm getting [[Template core/front/global/commentEditLine is throwing an error. This theme may be out of date. Run the support tool in the AdminCP to restore the default theme.]] at the bottom of some posts (edited ones, I assume) when using the Compact and Convenient theme. Doesn't seem to impact anything else, and it's a minor issue, but if there's an easy fix, I'd appreciate it.

Thank you Scorpius, very cool!

I was about to post champagne.jpg, but then I remembered that these are American forums. More for the rest of us, I guess.