Sin City Chronicles
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@Coin Conflict of Interest on a political game can be troubling, as one player attempts to manipulate things to their own advantage. I can also see why what you posted about might be interpreted as potentially squicky by staff, and maybe they'd want to protect you from being pressured into doing something or pressuring someone else? Other than that, I don't see the issue.
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@Coin That example makes my head hurt more than a little.
I mean, I can see it from both sides: it is a harmless thing, and it is technically 'benefits gained'.
They're just not remotely unreasonable or unfair or quantifiable benefits that in any way disadvantage anyone else on the game or provide an advantage to you, or the other player's character(s).
^ This is the spirit of that 'law'; it is the only reason that rule could ever be necessary.
While, yes, enforcing the spirit of the law rather than its letter requires the dreaded situational judgment call, enforcing the letter of the law above its spirit creates too many openings for the spirit of the law to be violated through the inevitable loopholes, and trivial things that do not in any way violate the spirit of the law become egregious offenses that make the rule itself appear absurd. This alarmist approach ultimately diminishes the chances of the rule being taken seriously even when it is actually necessary or important, because everyone has been running around screaming that the sky is falling any time there's so much as a gentle spring breeze.
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@Lisse24 said in Sin City Chronicles:
@Coin Conflict of Interest on a political game can be troubling, as one player attempts to manipulate things to their own advantage. I can also see why what you posted about might be interpreted as potentially squicky by staff, and maybe they'd want to protect you from being pressured into doing something or pressuring someone else? Other than that, I don't see the issue.
If they wanted to protect me they would have come to me and asked. They wanted to flail like idiots and bash someone they didn't like.
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@Lisse24 said in Sin City Chronicles:
@Coin Conflict of Interest on a political game can be troubling, as one player attempts to manipulate things to their own advantage. I can also see why what you posted about might be interpreted as potentially squicky by staff, and maybe they'd want to protect you from being pressured into doing something or pressuring someone else? Other than that, I don't see the issue.
Unfortunately CoI and players OOC maneuvering on behalf of their PCs is as incredibly common as it is impossible to chase down due to how widespread it is. Metagaming in political games is probably my top peeve in MUSHing, yet I recognize it's awfully hard for staff to intervene on something that's basically impossible to not just prove but ultimately even reasonably know happened.
The heart of the issue to me is that people have friends - OOC friends - and they like playing with these OOC friends, something which can convey advantages when that neonate hangs out with the Prince all the time because they OOC love playing together. Access itself is an advantage, regardless of the nature of that relationship.
Yet what can be done about this? What should be? In most cases absolutely nothing, and the line that separates impropriety from perfectly acceptable behavior is very blurry and subjective.
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@Arkandel said in Sin City Chronicles:
@Lisse24 said in Sin City Chronicles:
@Coin Conflict of Interest on a political game can be troubling, as one player attempts to manipulate things to their own advantage. I can also see why what you posted about might be interpreted as potentially squicky by staff, and maybe they'd want to protect you from being pressured into doing something or pressuring someone else? Other than that, I don't see the issue.
Unfortunately CoI and players OOC maneuvering on behalf of their PCs is as incredibly common as it is impossible to chase down due to how widespread it is. Metagaming in political games is probably my top peeve in MUSHing, yet I recognize it's awfully hard for staff to intervene on something that's basically impossible to not just prove but ultimately even reasonably know happened.
The heart of the issue to me is that people have friends - OOC friends - and they like playing with these OOC friends, something which can convey advantages when that neonate hangs out with the Prince all the time because they OOC love playing together. Access itself is an advantage, regardless of the nature of that relationship.
Yet what can be done about this? What should be? In most cases absolutely nothing, and the line that separates impropriety from perfectly acceptable behavior is very blurry and subjective.
There's no real way to deal with this, I don't think.
The guy who always has 2 friends app in with him is always going to have an advantage with him over the loner. Unless the group of 3 makes 0 effort to make outside connections or something, but even then, the lone person has an uphill battle even if they all start together on day 1.
This gets incredibly messy (imo) on multisphere games because it's no longer Joe and his Friends playing a coterie of vampires. It's Joe now having easy access to members of other spheres, because they're played by his friends.
The only real CoI stuff I've ever seen is the result of the above. It's people who already OOCly play with each other all the time, playing with each other across every character and mixing and matching them.
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@Tempest Yeah, these are social games in their hearts. Certain kinds people players have an advantage - social ones, good roleplayers, there are all kinds of edges folks have just because of who they are OOC. How many times do we see some neonate nobody be incredibly popular just because they're playing the hell out of their concept? Same political situation as the guy next door, same clan or bloodline... but one of them is just better.
But there's the flipside of it... I'm getting outmaneuvered on a political game and so I send @Tempest a PM here to make an alliance together, so we work the details out and just assume it happened or just play it out with the understanding that it will happen. Or I just flat-out ask you to create a character so that I can get some backup.
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Sudden flashbacks to The Reach having to actually implement rule for length of time after approval before you can be involved in PK due to Javier(?) getting somebody to app in and help him kill Shane. (The fight scene was like 30 minutes post-approval, iirc.)
Good times.
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@Tempest Oh god, I remember that...
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@Tempest I read that rule and as soon as I read it I immediately believed it was due to some bullshit someone had did in game. Was curious about it.
On CoI in general, a pretty common case is people liking a player and really wanting to just smother them with RP from every character they have and being controlling and creepy. CoI helps limit that, even if everyone doing that just needs to be nudged away, but it's definitely both genders and commonplace, 'I like the RP from X, so even if they aren't wild about me and are trying to avoid me I'll relentlessly pursue them and hope they don't realize the new character is me'. It's easier to have rules that make it explicitly clear that's not okay.
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@Tempest said in Sin City Chronicles:
Sudden flashbacks to The Reach having to actually implement rule for length of time after approval before you can be involved in PK due to Javier(?) getting somebody to app in and help him kill Shane. (The fight scene was like 30 minutes post-approval, iirc.)
Good times.
This is some old school shit, man. I remember someone trying that on me on Tartarus.
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@Tempest said in Sin City Chronicles:
The guy who always has 2 friends app in with him is always going to have an advantage with him over the loner. Unless the group of 3 makes 0 effort to make outside connections or something, but even then, the lone person has an uphill battle even if they all start together on day 1.
And this is why staff always has the advantage over players when it comes to their characters. And so we slip further off topic with “should staff be able to play at all, or what kind of characters should they be allowed to play.”
Hopefully we can get this advertising thread back to what it is: An advertising thread.
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Anybody else overly excited to play Promethean?
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I am VERY hyped for this game, even if desert-based games are meh to me. (I want mountains and forests and snow!) Being able to play full-on 2E is awesome. Also, DEMON! YES! I think the game allows them, right? And yes, Prommie will be bad ass. Very excited.
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@toreadorfool said in Sin City Chronicles:
I am VERY hyped for this game, even if desert-based games are meh to me. (I want mountains and forests and snow!) Being able to play full-on 2E is awesome. Also, DEMON! YES! I think the game allows them, right? And yes, Prommie will be bad ass. Very excited.
No Demon no Beast. No women no kids. But we will have Stigmatics. In fact we will have three flavors of them.
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@Ganymede said in Sin City Chronicles:
This is some old school shit, man. I remember someone trying that on me on Tartarus.
The only thing I [vaugely] remember from Tartarus (if we're talking the same game) was some dude named Puck(?) trying to wipe out an entire nightclub of vampires by using a Prime spell to "summon the sun." He instead rolled some 20 points of paradox. My friend and I laughed, as it was the first time I ever heard/saw a staffer come into the scene and start off with "who just tried to break the game?"
...I know this was a tangent from the current conversation. Carry on!
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@tragedyjones Oh. Hype far lessened, then. Still interested, though.
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@tragedyjones said in Sin City Chronicles:
No Demon no Beast. No women no kids. But we will have Stigmatics. In fact we will have three flavors of them.
I don't know much about Beast, but what's the reasoning for that?
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@Ganymede said in Sin City Chronicles:
@Tempest said in Sin City Chronicles:
Sudden flashbacks to The Reach having to actually implement rule for length of time after approval before you can be involved in PK due to Javier(?) getting somebody to app in and help him kill Shane. (The fight scene was like 30 minutes post-approval, iirc.)
Good times.
This is some old school shit, man. I remember someone trying that on me on Tartarus.
I remember on Tartarus, I was on day 1 with my silver fang, and got pk'd by the head staffer with their gen 6 Brujah that had Protean 6 etc... never went back to that game.
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@Arkandel said in Sin City Chronicles:
@tragedyjones said in Sin City Chronicles:
No Demon no Beast. No women no kids. But we will have Stigmatics. In fact we will have three flavors of them.
I don't know much about Beast, but what's the reasoning for that?
For not having them? No one cared enough to bother trying to include them, basically. If it wasn't for me, do you think there would be Promethean? Hell no.
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