aluminiumtrioxid

Yeah... the 72 hours following Baldwin's tweet dubbing it GamerGate was in NO WAY WHATSOEVER a coordinated media blitz against standard gamer identity. Had you exactly read the articles that whipped you into this frothing rage, you'd have seen pretty much all they contained was "hey look at this, Leigh Alexander said this thing and now people are upset". It's called news reporting. But you're welcome to see it as an attack against your identity. So what? The paper is flawed and Sargon used their very own material against them. You can bold your text and claim contempt as much as you like, but that doesn't change the point. Serious question: how good you feel your grasp of statistics is? Because I think you might be fundamentally incapable of understanding why this video is such a huge problem. I mean, it was my whole point that Sargon didn't "use their own material against them"; he took some statistics completely out of context and proceeded to claim that the people who are not taking them out of context are lying by omission for doing so. Which is disgustingly spineless. Aren't gamergaters supposed to be crusading against exactly this sort of "tainting [institution]* with an agenda"? Or are you seriously believing anti-feminism isn't an agenda? *in this case, science Do you know how to solve world hunger? Or to prevent wars? Are you allowed to see world hunger and wars as problems humanity faces, despite not having a solution for them? What? World hunger and wars cause death. What death does the lack of diverse representation of different minorities in video games cause? So any problem that doesn't cause deaths is now not worth talking about. Oh wait, that... includes... everything gamergate is complaining about? How does that even work?

Erm... well... this is not an actual looking-for-group thread. I understand if it seems counter-productive, but, well, topic drift happens sometimes. If you are looking for a - presumably online - group, I advise you to open a separate thread because pretty much nobody is reading this one aside from the four of us.

There are limits to what I'm willing to GM

That actually sounds great to me! You got anything particular in mind? I'm just gonna call it a "GM Appreciation Day" and let you choose what you'd like to play. A Top 5 list would be preferable since I'm not guaranteed to be familiar with your first (or second, or third) pick, but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to GM something out of 5. Edit: ...Then again, Zoli just had a birthday. So I suppose he's also welcome to chime in. Reach a consensus!

The statistics the study relied on were sloppy, but acceptable for the conclusions it was trying to support. Sociologists have an implicit understanding that the sample sizes used generally give fairly low confidence levels. Applying those statistics as "proof" that "gamers don't need diversity" is a dire statistical error, however. When applied at that scope, the sample size gives a confidence level lower than 50%! It's worse odds than that of a coin toss, and you're not seeing anybody trying to justify their conclusions with "well, it came up heads, so I must be right"! And it's the height of irresponsibility, if not malice, to claim that the study that's simply not applicable outside of its scope due to this issue was "intentionally buried by lying feminists" because "it didn't fit the agenda". If I believed for a moment that Sargon of Akkad knew anything about statistics, I'd have to hold him in absolute contempt for knowingly abusing science to support his crusade against feminism. Thankfully, I know not to attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity. Do you know how to solve world hunger? Or to prevent wars? Are you allowed to see world hunger and wars as problems humanity faces, despite not having a solution for them?

You do know I'm rightly cautious about accepting anything you link at face value since the whole "Sargon of Akkad fails at statistics" debacle, right? Will watch it later. When it's not around midnight. Probably. (Will also react to the other posts.)

- Define "hate group" - Define "deserve a voice" ...Why? Because time and time again i've noticed that we have diverged into completely different domains when talking about this. Define "completely different domains".

I chalk it up to the beginning of the whole thing, where the GG side was calling for dialogue and discussion while the aGG side was calling us a hate group who didn't deserve a voice. If we're talking about botched first impressions, let's not forget that "ETHICS!" wasn't really an issue for gamergaters until gamergate actually became a thing. So, based on those early days, the "beginning of the whole thing", as you put it, "hate group that doesn't deserve a voice" was actually not that far off from the truth. Sure if you equate GamerGate with BurgersAndFries, which I don't. For me, and for most of who I consider GamerGate, the first shot was the Gamers are Dead articles. Yes a lot of the BurgersAndFries people were early GG supporters, but it would have disappeared without those articles. You mean the articles that literally don't exist in the form gamergate is so fond of painting them as (Ie. "an organized attack against gamer identity by games journalists")? Because, well, "gamergaters aren't a hate group, they just failed to interpret correctly a body of texts even a high schooler should have no problems understanding" isn't really making the movement come across any better.

I chalk it up to the beginning of the whole thing, where the GG side was calling for dialogue and discussion while the aGG side was calling us a hate group who didn't deserve a voice. If we're talking about botched first impressions, let's not forget that "ETHICS!" wasn't really an issue for gamergaters until gamergate actually became a thing. So, based on those early days, the "beginning of the whole thing", as you put it, "hate group that doesn't deserve a voice" was actually not that far off from the truth. - Define "hate group" - Define "deserve a voice" ...Why?

I chalk it up to the beginning of the whole thing, where the GG side was calling for dialogue and discussion while the aGG side was calling us a hate group who didn't deserve a voice. If we're talking about botched first impressions, let's not forget that "ETHICS!" wasn't really an issue for gamergaters until gamergate actually became a thing. So, based on those early days, the "beginning of the whole thing", as you put it, "hate group that doesn't deserve a voice" was actually not that far off from the truth.

Well if you're asking others nicely to behave in a civil manner, you can't really be held up as an example of evil pro-censorship SJW oppression, don't you see? And we can't have that.

It's super weird that you are asking me to try and get the thread closed. It has been actively censored, one iteration was even closed down. Why would you push for that? Are you pro-censorship? Something something feminist agenda?

You almost make a good argument for not-ignoring the thread. But then I remember I can actually talk about feminism with people who've actually read and understood feminist texts, which clearly seems to be more productive when one's goal is to discuss feminism. So my newfound interest quickly evaporates.

Or I could GM something for a change. You sound like you could use a break?

Or we could just play Wushu.

Oh yes, skills. Since I imagine my guy to be a bit incompetent, I went with the "broad but weak" spread. +3: Academics, Biotics, Empathy, Medicine +2: Athletics, Contacts, Guns, Rapport +1: Alertness, Deceit, Investigation, Resources, Stealth I also get a +1 bonus to a physical skill of my choice for being turian, which I originally intended to apply to Fighting, but then I saw that you totally can use Biotics for SPEHHS PUNCHing people in the face, so I'll just use it to boost Athletics, making me really, really good at running away. Re: your skill spread, personally, I'd swap out Academics for your choice between Endurance and Resolve, because that gives you an extra stress level, and unlike in regular games where diminishing returns set in and the more health you have, the less impressive the prospect of getting more seems, in Fate, the more stress boxes you have, the more individually impressive those boxes become. In other news, I came up with my contribution for the last adventure! It's basically "I put up a barrier around us before we hit ground, and thanks to that, we're fine instead of being fine red paste". I'm gonna call the corresponding Aspect Biotic Protector or somesuch. Now we only have to choose stunts and powers (we get two of each for free, and may lower starting refresh to get more). (Spoiler: I'll pick Barrier and Stasis.)

They totally aren't!

I generally need 7-8 hours, more after exercising. I can function with less in the short term, but doing it for more than 2-3 days in a row, my migraine is bound to cause problems. Since said migraine is generally presaged by visual disturbances that cover most of my field of vision, which can be extremely inconvenient (I can't really function when effectively blind), I generally strive to get all the sleep I need and then some.

In all fairness though, the implementation of the deceitful reputation irks me. Basically no matter how good I'm at lying, if I do it often enough, people will believe me to be a lying liar whose pants are, presumably, on fire. You can't ever be a successful manipulative bastard, at least not in the long term.

So I promised to walk you through the remaining part of character creation. Let's start with the Aspects! As I mentioned earlier, the best Aspects can be used both to complicate your life and to assist you in some manner. Of course, as long as you have a fair balance of assets and hindrances, it doesn't necessarily matter whether any single Aspect can be used for both, but that's the dream. Let's review mine, to get a clearer picture. High Concept: Disgraced Cabal Drop-Out - This describes the character pretty well, but it's also rather one-sided. It does the job of implying his biotic talent, but its uses are exclusively negative: it can be compelled on infiltrator-y stuff to autofail for those tasty, tasty Fate points, and maybe to autofail attempts to gain respect of people who look down on those who dropped out of Superspy School. On a second thought, I guess I could use it to boost rolls to appear harmless, but that a/ hinges on people being aware of my status as a cabal dropout, and b/ is a rather niche application anyway. (Also, being pretty damn harmless, having to roll to appear harmless seems counter-intuitive to me, but ah well.) Trouble: Barefaced Coward - Another one-sided Aspect. It can be compelled to auto-fail social interactions relying on trust vs. turians or people well-versed in turian culture. I suppose I could also gain Fate by getting into trouble when behaving like a coward (not exactly a compel in the strictest sense, but roleplaying the heck out of your Aspects is also Fate-worthy as long as it hinders you in some way). Positive uses are rather scarce, but they exist: I think it's appropriate to invoke it on rolls to run away from threats, and to play Sidereal-esque mind games, ie. trying to bank on my reputation of untrustworthiness to get people to do the opposite of what I'm telling them to. Background: Stricken from the Records of Parthia Colony - This is actually more nuanced than it looks like. Essentially, the social penalty, while more intense (also more localised), is not that different in effect from my Trouble Aspect's. On the other hand, being Stricken from the Records of Parthia Colony, figuring out my true identity's gotta be pretty hard for people who care about that sort of thing. So in a weird way, being an incredibly bad spy actually helped me to erase my digital footprint. Take that, superspy instructors! Adventure 1: Mental Health Professional (work in progress) - This is where my problems start. First off, this Aspect doesn't actually reflect my character's contribution to the adventure. He demonstrated being horrible at playing psychiatrist! I guess I could rename it to Mental Health Semi-Professional, but that's also a horrible Aspect, since it implies it can be both invoked and compelled on the same sort of action. Which would be bad. I suppose I could just go with making the Aspect about what the adventure revealed about my character. In this case, something like Utter Tool would be appropriate. But since I'm already loaded with negative (well, mostly negative) Aspects, doing so runs the risk of putting too heavy an emphasis on the downsides. While it's somewhat viable (you'll always be swimming in Fate points), if there are no counterbalances to ensure you also have opportunities to blow those Fate points off on stuff that's actually useful to you, your efficiency might take a hit. So we're not going down that road; hence, the Aspect needs to be something I can invoke positively. For this reason, I swap out Mental Health Professional to... Adventure 1: You Need Professional Help! - which is an improvement in pretty much all respects. It reflects both the events of the adventure and the character's generally helpful attitude, shows shades of catchphrase potential (if Indiana Jones was a Fate character, I'm pretty sure This Belongs in a Museum! would be on his character sheet somewhere), and has both positive and negative uses - ie. it can be invoked on attempts to provide said professional help, and compelled to force the character to do so even when it's inconvenient. I'm pretty happy with it. Adventure 2: Something To Do With Chemicals - this is pretty straightforward, basically a fully positive Aspect that establishes the character's proficiency on the field of (bio)chemistry. I normally don't do these, but with every other Aspect so far being ambiguous or mostly negative, its inclusion is warranted. Adventure 3: [something biotic] (even "work in progress" would be overly charitable) - I will resist the temptation to call it Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue. (Were it the result of genetic engineering, I might even go with it.) Anyways, Adventure 3 was pretty late in the session, attention spans were dwindling, and frankly, I don't remember much of it. But since survivability is an issue, I'm pretty sure I want this to be a biotic-enhancing Aspect. So I'll figure something out if somebody will be kind enough to rehash the events of Adventure 3. Next up: skills, stunts, powers and refresh! Or a subset of these, at the very least.

That's what Satan would have you believe!

...said "God".

I'm pretty sure he meant the ME video games

The Dancing Plague?

Yeah, 8/10 is more than fair, and actually better than how I'd rate the majority of kickstarted RPGs, BG1, or any of the Icewind Dale games.