To OOC Room or Not to OOC Room (and Other Artifacts)
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So this came up in another thread:
What do people think about the concept of the OOC room on a game?
I'm a bit torn on it. On the one hand, I think that it encourages people to just kind of idle about and not play, which is pretty detrimental to games.
On the other hand -- I kind of think that it's nice to have a place to escape to that isn't the quiet room. But the quiet room plus channels tends to have the same effect, yeah?
What does everyone else think? Would you play on a game without an OOC room?
And as part of a larger discussion, what other things do you think that we've become attached to that we could probably abandon / should probably keep?
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Quiet Room with channels is fine for me. it sidesteps the sense that since you share a space you should communicate with people near you. Include in the desc how to block people and channels, and you are good.
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I'm all for the OOC Room. Honestly, I don't think it encourages anything except social interaction. If people aren't going to play they're not going to play. If there's no OOC room they'll either idle IC in a private room or just not log onto the game. I've seen too many ideas spring from OOC Room chatter to not include them on my games.
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I think that public channels are pretty much the superior option. I haven't seen any game hurt by not having an OOC lounge.
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I said in the Peeves thread that I feel no compelling need for one and don't utilize them as a social area even on games that have them. I use channels and either get a room of my own PC's to idle in or stick them in a Quiet room.
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I like the OOC room because it gives you a place to stage things and link other spaces together such as the building nexus, charGen, etc.
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@Derp I am neutral on them, except for I think it is easier for staff to monitor channels vs the room (especially for a small staff).
A bunch of ooc chatter that I can't avoid where people need to talk about how specifically they banged their wife last night, political screeds, and/or a bunch of game stat wangwaving will turn me off to any games that I log onto as a guest or a newbie. Doesn't matter if that's ooc in a room or on a pub channel.
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@sibermaus said in To OOC Room or Not to OOC Room (and Other Artifacts):
I like the OOC room because it gives you a place to stage things and link other spaces together such as the building nexus, charGen, etc.
Alright, here are two others to chew on too:
Big Grids with Player Builds - In some of the modern systems like Ares, you have the option of creating what is essentially a virtual temproom. How big of a grid is too big? How small of a grid is too small? With the ability to summon an additional space basically at the press of a command, is there a reason to still do player builds? (In my experience, they tend to clog the grids fairly rapidly, and often include rooms that never see RP anyway. I am not a personal fan.)
Chargen 'Rooms' - Similarly, chargen and advancement can often be completed via a command that starts some kind of program, or possibly teleports you to some predefined area in which you can do the chargen thing. Is there really a need for a chargen room itself, if the chargen command comes with help files?
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
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@mietze said in To OOC Room or Not to OOC Room (and Other Artifacts):
a bunch of game stat wangwaving
This is the worst part of them for me. All the dick-measuring. I am so tempted to create an ePeen channel for that. Maybe call it something more tame, like 'Swagger' or something. I know it's a huge turnoff not just for me, but for other players, and on at least one game I play there are a handful of players that just do this non-stop. It's so irritating.
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I like OOC rooms because they provide a place and a format to get to know other players prior to playing with them. I'm at a point in my life where I don't want to play with randos. I want to play with people I like, and having a place to talk to others as well as to see how they treat others is a good way to gauge them.
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For the people who are fond of OOC rooms, I'm curious: what benefit or functionality do they provide for you that channels don't?
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@Roz said in To OOC Room or Not to OOC Room (and Other Artifacts):
For the people who are fond of OOC rooms, I'm curious: what benefit or functionality do they provide for you that channels don't?
They're easier to opt into or out of than channels are (why do no two games have the same commands for turning a channel on, aliasing it, and/or turning a channel off?), and easier to tell who has opted into.
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I am marginally pro-OOC room, for one specific reason: I'm not someone who grabs a pile of friends to start off on a game. I usually go alone, even if I ask others to join me there after feeling it out, if I've decided to stick around.
A notable measure of 'how comfortable I'm going to be in a space' is seeing how people relate to each other OOC when not in a scene. Seeing that people are joking around and friendly in downtime is reassuring when shit hits the fan in a scene, and something dramatic or tense goes down in that I usually find it easier to engage someone (IC in potentially tense subject matter, or OOC if there is an issue) when I have observed them behaving in a chill, friendly manner with others in the playerbase.
There are obvious exceptions to this -- if they're only friendly to their in-joke circle, for instance, or only engage those people even when many others are present and chatting freely -- being the big one. The new one on me was someone going on effusively about what a great time they were having doing something that was making me utterly miserable, which made me feel like I could not approach them to say, "Yeah, your super fun times, please knock that shit off." It was a big problem, but it is also in that category of what I'd call 'rare exceptions', in that it's happened all of once in over 20 years.
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@GreenFlashlight said in To OOC Room or Not to OOC Room (and Other Artifacts):
why do no two games have the same commands for turning a channel on, aliasing it, and/or turning a channel off?
Those are typically codebase-level commands, so. Probably because they're not using the same kind of code? I primarily have used MUX, so I'm not sure how the others set it up. What's penn/rhost/evennia do?
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
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It's just easier to see who is part of the conversation. I think channels could work too I just prefer the OOC Room myself. Mostly. Since transitioning to Ares channels have gained a lot more strength since they can be accessed via the web portal.
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I like OOC rooms.
I spent years on games without them and I often felt isolated. Like I was playing inside a vacuum with just a couple other people. Mostly because the public channel would be too much spam and/or I'd forget to turn it back on after turning it off to rp. So I'd have group or area channels which.....adds to that isolated feel.Many games, also, don't offer private rooms for everyone. So you find yourself constantly waving off rp if you're just on to do mail or talk to people.
All the complaints about them exist in other means (and can/should be policed by staff). But I absolutely find benefit in them for helping me feel more ingratiated to the game....and I say this as someone who had to have words (as staff) with someone who was causing issues in the ooc room. I'd rather do that and leave people a place to interact than have none and find people not even bothering to login because they feel they're being forced IC at all times.
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@Derp said
Chargen 'Rooms' - Similarly, chargen and advancement can often be completed via a command that starts some kind of program, or possibly teleports you to some predefined area in which you can do the chargen thing. Is there really a need for a chargen room itself, if the chargen command comes with help files?
I love chargen rooms. I especially love the system or program ones that spread it out so you only have to process one part of the sheet at a time, with direct references in the rooms to helpfiles I might need so I don't have to flail around with syntax and the like. Even better when they're quiet rooms with no channels but page/tell and the overall newbie/help/info channels.
I also love that most, if not all, the games I've seen and used this on have an 'advanced' option for those who don't need a hermetically sealed environment to figure all their shit out to skip it.
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@eye8urcake said in To OOC Room or Not to OOC Room (and Other Artifacts):
@Derp said
Chargen 'Rooms' - Similarly, chargen and advancement can often be completed via a command that starts some kind of program, or possibly teleports you to some predefined area in which you can do the chargen thing. Is there really a need for a chargen room itself, if the chargen command comes with help files?
I love chargen rooms. I especially love the system or program ones that spread it out so you only have to process one part of the sheet at a time, with direct references in the rooms to helpfiles I might need so I don't have to flail around with syntax and the like. Even better when they're quiet rooms with no channels but page/tell and the overall newbie/help/info channels.
I also love that most, if not all, the games I've seen and used this on have an 'advanced' option for those who don't need a hermetically sealed environment to figure all their shit out to skip it.
Well, they can still have roomlike feels. Hell, they can even have actual rooms, probably. My point was mostly that there's no real need to have a dedicated exit for it when you can just type 'chargen' and have it teleport you there, right?
Though I do agree with the idea of chunking chargen into manageable pieces, and leaving advanced options. That's how @THenomain's CoD chargens work. All the commands are there, you can use them from basically anywhere. The rooms are there mostly as just like -- help files.
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
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I vastly prefer having a CG room. Like @eye8urcake said, it helps break things down neatly and room descs can have all the vital Information available
I do warn against having it teleport someone there because I've often typed 'cg' to check something or verify I'm remembering the command on Ares. I'd hate to get teleported away suddenly.
