Ask Calavera

[Rhyden]

Can you please stop animating NPC's who cat-call, whistle, and tell my character to 'shake it'? It's so demeaning. Kthxbai

[Maso]

Do you guys make fun of players, like "X is such a douche - he's always mudsexing" or "Lol! X is such a rubbish player, she always dies. Oh look! She died again, haha"...?

[ShaLeah]

What is the one piece of advise you'd give players who find it really hard to play totally evil characters?

[Malifaxis]

What is the one piece of advise you'd give players who find it really hard to play totally evil characters?

"Send Malifaxis 50 bucks a week and tell him to get your character's rep up there."

[Calavera]

Do you get frustrated at players choices that you watch?

Frustrated is kind of a weird word choice. I don't think things that players choose to do often frustrate me. Things that frustrate me when dealing with players tend to boil down to the same things that probably frustrate players about staff: poor communication or a lack thereof. I'm pretty easygoing. The only thing about the game that really frustrates me is when I just plain have no idea what's going on with a given situation. I try to avoid that, though, and staffing as a whole is vastly more enjoyable than it is frustrating.

Have you ever been east of Berlin before?

Depends on which way you fly around the world, comrade. I've been to south-east Asia. That's about as east as it gets.

Is there a specific part of being on staff, or thing that you get to do as a staff member that you enjoy doing the most?

I love scaring the shit out of people and/or making them uncomfortable with really awkward NPCs. Messing with people in the wilderness is up there. There are certain NPCs that fit like well-worn gloves that it's fun to pop into after 'playing' them so long because they have a history with the PCs in question.

I also LOVE designing and building tattooists.

Hanging out and shooting the shit with other staff is also pretty cool, because they are all pretty cool.

Is there any surprising or interesting things that you learned when you came on staff?  Something not too secret that you can share on the GDB?

This is a tough question because I'm not really sure if you meant IC or OOC! So I guess I'll just blab a little bit about both.

The most surprising thing for me to learn IC wise had nothing to do with documentation or wikis or awesome secrets or anything like that. What surprised me the most is just how much roleplay goes on in this game. Those people in the tavern that you think are idle? They are probably psi-ing, thinking, and feeling their asses off. The sheer amount of character interaction and RP and the nuances thereof just shocked me when I came upstairs, and I mean that in the best way. I've always had a high opinion of our players, but until you experience watching the entire world via your magic staff commands, it's difficult if not impossible to comprehend just how alive our world is.

OOCly the thing that surprised me the most was how easy it was to pick up. I figured there'd be a massive learning curve and I'd fuck up left and right, but it wasn't so bad. I mean, yeah, I did fuck up, but usually not anything major and I could almost always fix it. :X

Does your staff avatar have a description, and if so can you post it here?

I never wrote a description because I thought it would be funnier to not have one. But my EQ list is pretty dope.

You don't see anything unusual about it.
Calavera, the Grammar Nilazi is in excellent condition.

<worn on head>           a gristly sausage
<worn on torso>          a t-shirt that reads, "How Tuluki am I?"
<worn on left shoulder>  a creepy cat in a purple hat
<worn on left finger>    a ring of knotty fuckwood
<worn around body>       a bloodied plush, bright pink snuggie
<worn about waist>       a huge giant scrotum
<worn on feet>           a new bloodied pair of business socks

[Calavera]

do you ever watch the game world and players in it and think. Mmmm, I'm such a stalker? Do you dream about stalking players, and debating how best to kidnap them? 

... Not... really? I think I am pretty mentally well-adjusted for someone that plays text-based internet elf games. Besides, kidnapping is a felony. Don't want to end up on the no-fly list.

Can you please stop animating NPC's who cat-call, whistle, and tell my character to 'shake it'? It's so demeaning. Kthxbai

Can you stop playing characters with such voluptuous asses?

Do you guys make fun of players, like "X is such a douche - he's always mudsexing" or "Lol! X is such a rubbish player, she always dies. Oh look! She died again, haha"...?

We make fun of each other infinitely more than we make fun of players.

Calavera: Well since it's a save room...

Nyr: your mom's a save room.

Calavera: I forgot to save your mom last night

Nyr: are you sure you don't mean force save yurmom?

Calavera: Purged her instead

Calavera: mupdate yurmom

Nyr: no, yurmom is roomsized

Calavera: If my mom's a room, yours is a zone

Calavera: z58 - Nyr's Mom and Other Surrounding Tracts of Land

... Overall, staff encourage positive discussions and positivity amongst the team. Unless we're discussing one another's mothers. Then all bets are off.

[Calavera]

What is the one piece of advise you'd give players who find it really hard to play totally evil characters?

Remember that no people are truly evil. There have been some great discussions about this on the GDB in the past, but I'll reiterate what I think are the best bits. Okay, so you're getting more than "one piece of advice" but that first sentence is my go-to.

So you want to play a murderer. Why does he kill? Is it because he's mentally unbalanced and feels a compulsion to harm others? Then he isn't evil, he's just mentally ill and he feels that satisfying his own desires to harm others is more important than them being able to live their lives. So when you get right down to it, he's not evil, just self-centered.

So you want to play a genocidal maniac. Why does he want to purge all elves from the face of the world? Is it because he loathes them and feels the world would be a better place without them, since all they do is steal and they're a threat to humanity? Then your maniac isn't evil. She's just narcissistic and may actually think she's doing the world a favour.

Remember that no villain would ever refer to themselves as such. Villains are always the heroes of their own story.

[Zoan]

Have you ever played a PC with one of my PCs? I don't mean in passing, I mean we had a fairly okay relationship/your plots involved my plots and we wanted one another to die.

Obviously, you can be vague.

[Orin]

I got a Raspberry Pi the other day.  What do you think I should do with it?

Also, Windows/Mac/Linux?

[TheBadSeed]

Calavera, I <3 you.

Do you feel the same? 

[Zoan]

Back off, she's mine!

[TheBadSeed]

Back off, she's mine!

*puts up his dukes and derails the thread!*

[Calavera]

Have you ever played a PC with one of my PCs? I don't mean in passing, I mean we had a fairly okay relationship/your plots involved my plots and we wanted one another to die.

Obviously, you can be vague.

I'm going to plead the fifth on this one, because I started this thread to provide some illumination to the OOC side of staffing and to entertain folks and I'd rather not discuss my player history overmuch.

Besides, some of you folks have had a lot of characters. It's entirely possible we have and I just had no idea it was you. :X

I got a Raspberry Pi the other day.  What do you think I should do with it?

Also, Windows/Mac/Linux?

If you're American, put it inside your Thanksgiving turkey and let the internet control it. But only once the turkey is on the family dinner table.

I use a combination of all three operating systems over the course of my work day, funnily enough. My Armageddon machine is Windows, but I played primarily from a Mac for years and still miss Savitar.

[Calavera]

Calavera, I <3 you.

Do you feel the same? 

I love each and every one of you. For... various reasons.

[Iiyola]

How many hours a day do you spend Arming, and out of these hours, how many: do you staff/play/administrate/are you mine to forever love?

[BleakOne]

Why does my mul sorceror/psionicist with steel bones and hyper-regen app keep getting rejected? Lack of proper background?

[perfecto]

I will forever search high and low for a pair of these.

<worn on feet>           a new bloodied pair of business socks


Question:
Whats your favourite southpark episode and why?

[Norcal]

Put the Jaxa Pah in charge so they can wage horrible elf war against the neighbouring tribes in the Tablelands.

Bring em on.

[roughneck]

What is your favourite breakfast?

Do you prefer coffee or tea?

What do you think of burly Canadian men?

There are right and wrong answers to these questions, you will be graded on your answers.

[Calavera]

How many hours a day do you spend Arming, and out of these hours, how many: do you staff/play/administrate/are you mine to forever love?

Totally depends on the day and my RL workload. An average evening usually involves settling down into my favourite comfy computer spot, whipping open the request tool and diddling around on that for a while. Sometimes I'll log into the game at the same time (for staffing OR playing) but I believe I have a bit of the ol' adult ADD going on because it's quite difficult to do both at the same time for me. I usually only mess about with requests for an hour or so at a time so that I don't feel tempted to rush through them or give incomplete responses. Nobody likes that!

I still play the game, too, although the amount of time I put on my character varies quite a bit. When working on a big project or working around time constraints RL, I always put staffing first.

If I had to break it down into numbers, I'd say the game gets about three or four hours a night on nights that I play/staff, but there are some nights where it gets nothin' 'cause I'm pretty busy.

I can be yours forever, but you have to win the auction.

[Calavera]

Why does my mul sorceror/psionicist with steel bones and hyper-regen app keep getting rejected? Lack of proper background?

You keep spelling "bosom" wrong.

What is your favourite breakfast?

I like a big heaping pile of traditional white person breakfast food, i.e. eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, toast, roast tomatoes, mushrooms. There's a restaurant near where I live that will put all that on a pizza for you. Plus hollandaise sauce.

Crepes are nice, too. Oh, and biscuits and gravy. And come to think of it, I eat a lot of porridge.

Breakfast food is my favourite food. You found my weakness.

Do you prefer coffee or tea?

Both have their places and I enjoy both immensely. I normally don't ever have more than one cup of coffee a day, but I could explore tea endlessly. And a good cup of coffee is an art form.

What do you think of burly Canadian men?

There are right and wrong answers to these questions, you will be graded on your answers.

Oh, I think about burly Canadian men all the time. ... Oh, you said what, not just 'do you think of them.' How burly are we talking here. Like lumberjack burly? The degree of burl involved is an important distinction before I can answer with full, clear honesty.

Question:
Whats your favourite southpark episode and why?

Imaginationland will always hold a special place in my heart because of the visuals. It showed me that South Park could be pretty!

[Scarecrow]

What is the best way to earn karma?

[HavokBlue]

<worn on left finger>    a ring of knotty fuckwood

This is the best thing I have read all week.

[tiptoe]

When you discover characters mudsexxing it up, do you turn the channel to the next PC, or watch?

What is the longest mudsex session you've ever witnessed (or heard about)?


Do you prefer to watch people solo rp or rp in a group?

What would you say is the biggest difference in people's playing style? Do you have a certain style that you prefer?


What are you dressing up as for Halloween?

Puppies or kittens?

[kayza]

Has this ever happened? Maybe not verbatim.  But the general idea.

OOC : Consent for the most wild and crazy Mudsex there ever was!

say (mounts the last Kank there ever was) LoL I'm just kidding Yo, just scaring away those stuffy staffs!

say (while LoLing) Let's do some leet twinking!