Nioca

*double post*

 

In other news, what the hell is wrong with people? Seriously? Really? As if the shooting wasn't bad enough, some jackass threatened to blow up the memorial?

 

I swear, this holiday season is apparently dedicated to destroying one's faith in humanity.

I'm not saying any of those problems are impossible to solve, only that they have to be looked into, before trying to load up schools with lots of new equipment.

I agree. My point is less "do this/these specific thing(s)" and more a question of what can be done to actively stop or minimize the damage of an in-progress event. It just seems like it's getting passed over in favor of preventive lines of defense (like legislation). Preventitive measures are great and have plenty of merit, but IMO, they shouldn't be the only line of defense, and I think there'd be a lot of merit to having something which could actively help reduce the amount of harm a spree like this could do. Obviously, different things would be better for different areas.

 

Lenar: Around here, there's absolutely nothing. You can just freely waltz into the school whenever it's open, and the only thing that might stop you is a hall monitor (which are unlikely to stop someone with a handgun or automatic, regardless of how stern they are). I like the idea of the roll-down metal door, though.

My question is, why isn't more being done to handle things like this? I'm not talking about gun control or other preventitive measures, and I'll admit I'm probably talking out of the wrong end here since it's been ~16 years (give or take) since I attended a public school, but I'm talking about how it seems that, once the shooting starts, the school is effectively at the shooter's mercy. I mean, it seems pretty plain to me that if you can't prevent an attack like this, you should at least take measures to limit the amount of damage they can do; yet it seems like the only thing the schools' faculty and student body can do is call the cops, hunker down, and pray to whatever deity they worship that the shooter passes them by.

 

Why not have panic buttons or alarms that bring every squad car and officer in a 10 mile radius screaming right to the school's front door? Why not train the faculty how to respond in a dangerous situation like this where every second counts? Why not have guards or security personnel with ballistic vests on premises and trained to respond and deal with a situation like this (preferably armed, if not with firearms, than with less lethal tasers, teargas, tonfas, so forth)? Why not have a barricade inside the classrooms that can be lowered to keep an intruder out? It seems like there's a dozen different things that could be done to help limit the damage an incident like this can do, yet it seems like they instead are hiding behind a shield of "oh, this could never happen to us..."

 

I mean, everyone seems to be focusing on doing things to prevent this kind of tragedy from happening, but no one's focusing on putting active countermeasures in place for when it inevitably does. And it just bugs me. It should take a whole lot more than just walking in with a handgun or assault weapon to put a school, a place where people entrust their children, completely at the shooter's (likely lack of) mercy.

Welcome back Niemand. I can't honestly say I hadn't noticed your absence (because I've mostly been absent myself*), but it's nice to see you back.

 

*Protip: Don't get into politics. It'll drain your sanity faster than spiderweb could ever hope to.

Lilith, regarding M&M: Holy... I've actually got a headache from trying to wrap my mind around the combinatorial explosion that system has. It looks very interesting, but keep in mind that you may have to hold a few hands when it comes to character building. I'm personally trying to stat up Mal Travers as a PL10, and am very thankful that I didn't try to whip up a completely new character.

 

Oh, regarding the poll:

 

Chance of Participation: 100%

Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Modern, Modern Fantasy

Established Settings: Geneforge, Avernum (I pity the poor soul who tries to run Geneforge with shapers in it, though. *shudders*)

Where: AIM, CalRef, Play-by-Post

Timezone: Eastern Standard Time (EST-5)

Game: AIMHack, D20/D&D, M&M

Session Length: 5-6 Hours

 

(Also: We have a spiderwebber in low earth orbit? )

I always remember the World of Avernum RP (and its revival) about the simultaneous collapse of Avernum and the Empire as my favorite RP from this forum. It was faction-based, but the individual leaders and characters in the factions were crucial parts of the RP. My first play-through was embarrassing, and my second was much better, even with the same faction... I don't remember why the revival ended up dying out.

The second one died out because of fewer players (one of the guys who helped start it up completely disappeared) and just flat out being more spread out. Plus a bit of intra-player friction. Interest just sort of fizzled out.

 

I like playing in the world of games Jeff has made; they provide a familiar lexicon of ideas for Spiderwebbers to use in their roleplaying. It's a universe that's already mostly fleshed-out. That said, rules need to exist. I remember a Geneforge factional RP that quickly devolved into godmodding and then sputtered out as a result of the roleplayers creating new and more powerful creations to fight each other. The original Avernum RP that I discussed earlier, before the revival, itself ended due to the equivalent of a magical nuclear bomb dropped by TM. At that point, it was welcome, because the RP wasn't going too well, and it provided a heavy-handed "Rocks fall; everyone dies" closure to the mess. The point remains, though, that magic/technology (insert quote about sufficiently advanced technology here) has to have some sort of hard set rules to its development and/or use, or it can quickly cause problems in an RP.

I've mentioned this a few times to a few people previously, but one of the key problems I've noticed is that even the better RPs can develop into Arms Races: One person introduces something powerful (not necessarily overpowered), and it results in either some players trying to one-up it, introduce something else powerful to stay relevant, or just think, 'hey, cool, I want something like that'. Which makes the others introduce powerful things, which in turn causes the others to introduce even more powerful things, and so forth. The Geneforge factional RP you mentioned definitely suffered from this; one player (ME, in fact) introduced a new powerful creation, and in the span of several posts, it led to multiple new supercreations, weapons, and armies getting pulled out the wazoo.

 

(Its other problem was that it tried to be a free-form RP and a game at once; you had some playing to win, others trying to tell a story, and everything in-between)

I've been having time shortages recently, but I'd do my damndest to participate. Fantasy, SciFi, Modern, and Modern Fantasy would all be fine, and Geneforge & Avernum would be two established settings I'd be interested in.

 

EDIT: Forgot to mention; I've got familiarity (in descending order) with AIMHack, D20 Modern, and D&D 3.5.

I fall under the Maybe heading. Not so much because I'm only partially interested, but because my time has been fairly limited recently (although it's freeing up a bit).

And the final session, Log 15.

Session 14 log

Yeah, the first opportunity was when you arrived in Revossa. The second was at the start of session 13, when you were talking to the captain. You had the opportunity to have the Actani soldiers distract the main force of Sactorrians while you slipped around and attacked the mages. I was hoping that, with the levels that had been missing the first time and some better luck and tactics, you'd be able to thwart them that time. And while the party had been beaten up the session before, Sarelim had also come into possession of about a dozen healing potions. I figured with all of that it would have been possible to take the north gate and save the city.

Aww. Oh well. It would have nice to participate in one successful fight with Leonere.

 

It's fascinating to the see the variations between what seemed sensible / logical / obvious / possible to the GM versus to the players.

Yeah, it's kinda astounding the difference between GM and player perspective. Although I think what the players did was fairly logical in this case; the Sactorrians routed us AND the Actani army pretty much effortlessly during that first battle. The players had no reason to believe that a second attempt would have gone any better, especially since it seemed we'd have to make do with far fewer soliders.

 

(Plus, we already had one major situation on our hands that was fairly time-sensitive and extremely dangerous; we couldn't afford to burn time and resources on another.)

 

Oh, also, Session 13 log.

Session 12

 

Yeah, nothing witty to say here.

I'm available whenever, so long as it's in the evening.

I'm interested, if I'm not too late.

I am going to hunt you down for posting this poll.

THIS.

 

JUST THIS.

 

Seriously, I've been getting political calls pretty much every half-hour to 15 minutes. It's absolutely insane.

 

...

 

Anyway, yeah. My opinions pretty much lie with the majority thusfar (Yes, no, yes, yes, DIE). Although I think another part of why I'm so sick of this election is what's going on on a state-level here in Michigan. We've got several proposals on the ballot that are basically special-interest or government power-grabs, and it looks like one of them is going to get through; namely, it's a veto referendum that determines whether or not Governer Snyder (or rather, his handpicked minions) can keep acting like a third-world dictator and running rough-shod over local elected positions. Oh, and it also looks like he'll get his nice little bridge and stick us with the bill, too.

 

I'm considering it, it's just that I've been rather busy recently. But yeah, I'll look over the system.

Bah. Don't be a spoilsport, Nalyd.

 

Anyway, my congratulations to Triumph. Although I must say I didn't take Triumph for the modly type; not that he's a bad choice or anything, it just seems weird having Triumph as a mod.

Why is it that I invariably end up reading these "I'm on" posts two hours too late to actually do anything about them?

Congrats, Sylae.

One thing I miss is the ability to display many posts on a single page. I miss being able to view 99 posts per page.

 

In happier news, I just noticed that it seems there's an option when PMing to make the PMs similar to how they were in UBB. In fact, it looks like there's even more features on it than UBBs!

I just noticed that a certain star-related thing from UBB of old has been brought back.

 

Wow. This is weird.

You've met with a colorful fate, haven't you?

Calendared.