GM Laufeyjarson

We were very successfully continuing our face to face campaign using some free tools: Zoom for video conferencing. Google Drawings (part of Google docs) for the shared map Google Docs for shared notes Discord for private chat to each other and the GM. We also had an on-line die roller that would show everyone the results. Discord has a bunch of tools for that. This let us play pretty well. The big discovery for us was the map on Google Docs. The GM prepared a document and opened it, sharing it with us. We could then mark on it, or drag tokens around. Anyone could make marks or drag tokens; the map didn't keep us from moving things we shouldn't. But our vinyl battle map didn't either, we just had to not be jerks. And the cat won't walk across Google Drawings and knock everything over! We played just fine with our group of four players and one GM that way until the story ended. We're sort of between GMs at the moment and not playing anything but it's not because of the tools.

I met Robotech_Master on Live, and depended on his guides there. When he became a GM here I had a chance to talk with him more, and learn more about him. He was a busy contributor to our community, as well as several others. He will be missed by many more than just us, and hopefully left a positive mark on the world. This is a very sad loss, for a foolish, pointless reason. Rest in peace, R_M.

I'll second this. A favorite of mine is: '/lfg Running story arcs in <whatever zone>. Room for 7!' I'll just put that out every time I finish a mission (or two if they're really short, and if it's really quiet) and pretty soon the team is full and we're charging along doing stuff. Finding some active global channels with a lot of people is also helpful - look for AT or server channels. Most have a "Giant Monster, task force, etc." channel by various names and those are often full of people who are happy to come and do something. This is not to say the LFG system could not be improved! But you can be a team leader without doing anything too complex. And in CoH, almost any combination of players makes a good team, so if someone wants to come play, welcome them in and go have fun!

I played quite a bit of AD&D, but never really enjoyed it much. Turns out I was playing with a lame group; the game was fine, but having people always multiclass the weirdest things and never know what spell or action they wanted to take, and having games cancelled because someone's kid was having their third birthday or Christmas was only NEXT MONTH got really old. Eventually I found other people to play with who were more into superheroes, and they introduced me to Champions, which was great and I still enjoy. We had a regular gaming group playing Pathfinder until the pandemic made visits a problem. We did play virtually and that was okayish, but we're short a GM lately so have just been chatting and watching movies instead.

I hadn't noticed this forum! Moo2 will occasionally demand some attention from me. The interface and graphics are SO dated, but the game play is still really good. There's a game called Startopia that I love, too. They're remaking it and I'm hoping they aren't messing it up. The beta is... lacking. The snarky British humor in the original and the weird combinations of things that happened were great. You need ALL the trash bins.

As a note for people who're missing Resume_info.txt, it's storing your password in plain-text, which is a terrible idea. If you want to log in more easily and still use a good password, I suggest a password management tool. There are several to pick from. (Personally, I use Keepass.) You tell the tool to put your password for this thing on the clipboard, then paste it in to whatever. This works very well with City of Heroes and lets you use a complex password without having to bother knowing it. A borderless full-screen game works fine with alt-tab to get to the password tool, and control-v pastes the password in to the password box. BTW, on the Mac, it's Control-V to paste into the password box, just like it is on Windows. Usually a Mac app would use Command-V, but the game still uses Control-V. Other than that (which took me WAY too long to figure out) the password manager works fine there, too.

Let's see... I've been distracted by Skyrim lately. Had never played it before so am discovering it all newly. I spend a lot of time just wandering around the map, finding things. I did get a Valve Index VR headset, but haven't messed with it much. I tried Skyrim VR and was HORRIBLY dissapointed. Bethesda really did a crap job on that, and it's unplayable on the Index. (Literally: It depends on buttons the Index doesn't have, because it's mapped it to an Occulus.) Elite Dangerous is really amazing in the thing, though, and I'm waiting for the new DLC for Euro Truck Simulator 2 to try it there. Hopefully the Index will be high enough res to read the dashboard and gagues in the truck.

First thing to try and change, in my opinion, is FSAA, or Full Screen Anti-Aliasing. Turn that down to 2x or off and see if that helps. It reduces greatly the number of pixels being drawn by the card without killing off other effects.

We do not use canned responses just because they are common in support. Both the reasons you give there are true and both are important. Consistency of replies is important. It keeps us from saying things we perhaps shouldn't. It also means we give better replies and nobody gets tired and types "done" or "ok" and closes the ticket. Those aren't really great replies. It also means that if I have to give you directions, I don't miss a step because I've given these directions six dozen times, and leave you wondering what you're supposed to be doing. Our canned responses have all been proofread and checked to make sure they're complete. This has value! :) Volume of tickets matters, too. We want to reply to everyone and make sure they get help. If we can give them a canned response and move on it means that they got a reply and we have more time to think about the really hard question someone asked that we have no idea how to respond to. Or that we can go do the investigation and take seriously the reports of poor player behavior, rather than either ignoring them or over-moderating things that aren't really a problem. The biggest reason we use them is to save labor. There's less than 30 volunteers responsible for running all of Homecoming, and only 20 of them are GMs or CRs who handle tickets and most in-game issues. There's pushing 9,000 players on at peak times, and a group of 20 people spends their limited personal time making sure those 9,000 people are able to play and have fun. In general, we love to do it and are really glad to have the opportunity to help make Homecoming happen. But we only have so much time in the day to dedicate to things like video games. Every minute we spend writing a unique reply is one less minute someone didn't get help and couldn't play. Yeah, we understand they can feel a little trite. We don't mean them any less than a message we hand-crafted, and in fact, we sometimes do better when we use the pre-written responses. Because of our limited staffing and to help keep responses professional and on-point, canned responses are a necessity.