Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them

[Arkandel]

@tinuviel said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:

I used to really loathe the Super Friends thing. But then I realised that that isn't what I loathe, really. It's when Super Friends is the only thing going, and the internal 'sphere' plot is either non-existent or solely in support of the Super Friends.

For me it's that I'd rather have RP than not have it.

Inter-sphere RP is easy. You have something to talk about right out of the box - the whole learning about each other's ways trope is wide open. And the romance. And, yes, the fangs-on-fur-and-magic-sex trope, too.

There's something to be said about immediately accessible things to talk about. In itself there's nothing wrong with it. After all there's no guarantee that in-sphere RP is going to be creative and innovative either.

[HorrorHound]

I will clarify: Cross-sphere is whatever. I mean, I have no problem playing Sabbat who bangs with Black Spirals or weird assholes who sometimes talk to Cthulhu. I just don't like it when the game becomes pockets of The Legion of Doom or uh, you know, the Superfriends.

[il-volpe]

@horrorhound I sympathize with that. But also view it as being pretty much the same as how I didn't want my Game of Thrones MUSH to be all sword-swinging women, yet also think that the GoT MUSH that bans them is bullshit, because they're a major element in the source and of course people are going to want to play them.

And I suspect we're all kinda tired of that game where you have to make an alt to get any RP, because, you know, somebody encouraged you to app that empty/wrong-time-zone-for-you faction. Especially when you get on great with the dwarves who are on around when you are and there would be no problem if people would stop bitching about how corny and wrong elf and dwarf players are if they RP not hating one another too much to interact.

[Solstice]

@il-volpe said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:

I didn't want my Game of Thrones MUSH to be all sword-swinging women.

@il-volpe said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:

Especially when you get on great with the dwarves who are on around when you are and there would be no problem if people would stop bitching about how corny and wrong elf and dwarf players are if they RP not hating one another too much to interact.

What? That's stupid. Even in games where there's supposed to be a history of distrust between species, those are the NPC rules. It's just the theme - which as a PC, you then choose to make efforts to gird up or tear down based on the actions of the PCs. Do people not understand this? Is this something that's not understood?

[mietze]

@solstice it is something that is rarely understood unless it's specifically cultivated, yeah. And even on games where it is there will be people that are very vocal in their ooc opinions to the contrary (of course those also tend to be the ones sitting on their asses doing nothing in the ooc room too, but not always.)

Though depending on the structure and dynamics in an individual sphere and game at large it might very well be that there isn't much to do but sit around if you are hoping for engagement with your sphere and you don't want to go outside of it. In that case I usual set a finite time for me to rp hunt hard/see if it improves and then just leave.

[il-volpe]

@solstice It's the attitude I associate with the use of the word "superfriends," anyway.

It really is a swordmaidens sort of issue, in the sense that if all the PC women are swordmaidens it changes the theme in a way that people may not wish to play, and takes the pith out of playing a swordmaiden. A game where half the PCs are members of crime-fighting vampire-mage-werewolf-changeling polyamorous quads is probably not what's wanted. But as I resent banning of swordmaidens I dislike when GMs set diamond-hard glass-smooth sky-high walls against PCs of antagonistic factions/species getting chummy, and I get peevish when other players enforce it OOC socially. Especially in cases when it's OOC punishing to somebody who didn't app a swordmaiden, just ended up with a sword, eg, oops, I apped a Ferengi and I like her a lot, but it turns out everybody I'm really liking to RP with and share connect times with is playing a Klingon. It would be cool to be the only Ferengi on this Klingon ship, but staff-controlled Klingon High Command won't allow it and the Klingon players are embarrassed to say they want this unthemely arrangement...

[Carma]

This post is deleted!

[Arkandel]

The part about super-friends I'm not crazy about is when it's trivialized. That's it. The too-cool-for-school mindset that rolls over these things for everyone.

Werewolf Bob: "HOLY SHIT I FOUND OUT VAMPIRES EXIST JOE IS ONE HOLY SHIT"
Werewolf Jane: "Lol. I was at their Elysium last night to watch the new Sanctified Primogen conduct Midnight Mass."
Werewolf Bob: "..."

The reason I dislike it is because it taints future interactions. How is Bob supposed to build up to the next small tidbit of apocrypha he pries out of Joe and feel legitimate excitement about it when Jane has read the fucking handbook IC and knows everything there is to know complete with its canonical terminology?

[Ganymede]

@arkandel said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:

The too-cool-for-school mindset that rolls over these things for everyone.

As usual, it's the players who ruin everything.

[Ominous]

@arkandel

We're all Hipsters at our core. "I was into X before it was cool." "I knew about Vampires before anyone else did."

[Wretched]

@ominous said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:

@arkandel

We're all Hipsters at our core. "I was into X before it was cool." "I knew about Vampires before anyone else did."

I realised we were all hipsters before you realised we were all hipsters.

[Derp]

@wretched said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:

@ominous said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:

@arkandel

We're all Hipsters at our core. "I was into X before it was cool." "I knew about Vampires before anyone else did."

I realised we were all hipsters before you realised we were all hipsters.

[Ganymede]

@derp

[Groth]

@arkandel said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:

The reason I dislike it is because it taints future interactions. How is Bob supposed to build up to the next small tidbit of apocrypha he pries out of Joe and feel legitimate excitement about it when Jane has read the fucking handbook IC and knows everything there is to know complete with its canonical terminology?

I think this is an inherent issue with multisphere. You can either try to create a cohesive thematic experience or you can have the entire kitchen sink roam the grid but you can't have both.

Back in the day people tried to force it with the whole 'OOC maquerade' but we don't try to do that anymore for good reason.

[Derp]

@groth said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:

we don't try to do that anymore for good reason

I wish this were the case, but alas, tis not.

[Juniper]

@arkandel said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:

The reason I dislike it is because it taints future interactions. How is Bob supposed to build up to the next small tidbit of apocrypha he pries out of Joe and feel legitimate excitement about it when Jane has read the fucking handbook IC and knows everything there is to know complete with its canonical terminology?

Now imagine that instead of doing that, Jane continues to treat it like a secret and admits to keeping things from Bob. Or pretends to be surprised so she doesn't have to admit she was keeping things from Bob. There are a million interesting ways you could have taken this, Jane, God damn it.

[Arkandel]

@groth said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:

@arkandel said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:

The reason I dislike it is because it taints future interactions. How is Bob supposed to build up to the next small tidbit of apocrypha he pries out of Joe and feel legitimate excitement about it when Jane has read the fucking handbook IC and knows everything there is to know complete with its canonical terminology?

I think this is an inherent issue with multisphere. You can either try to create a cohesive thematic experience or you can have the entire kitchen sink roam the grid but you can't have both.

While I'm whining about nonsense like an elitist jerk, you know what gets me?

Fine, fiiine, Jane can learn everything there is to know about the Lancea Sanctum in record time. But I wish at least it generated actual RP, instead of all that expertise being assumed between scenes, where an entirety of a sphere's knowledge was transferred in the background.

[Ganymede]

@juniper

[il-volpe]

@juniper said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:

Now imagine that instead of doing that, Jane continues to treat it like a secret and admits to keeping things from Bob.

Weeeeelllll... this often seems to result in a situation where Bob knows Abelard's secret and Jane's secret and Jane knows Bob's and, and. And you've got five characters in the room and every one of them is in the know about every other and even knows that every other is in the know, BUT they're all treating it like a secret so they have to RP about Starbuck's secret menu or sneak off in pairs to talk plot, and it's god fucking forbid that they RP as a group about something rewarding, and while all of them have IC reason to be involved and OOCly want to, desperately, only two out of the five will get to play, and very likely one will get left out of the loop entirely because passing on the interesting info once is fun, twice is kinda fun, but by the time you've done four separate scenes telling people the same thing you're bored of it and poor fucking Dylan, who just wants to be in a goddammed scene, is banging his head on the floor begging to play Superfriends and wishing his getting to play the damn game was more important than pretending that not-secrets are secrets.

[Sunny]

I think there's also something to be said about it being more about tone differences, than superfriends vs not-superfriends. WoD in particular is really susceptible to differences in tone being basically like...gamebreaking/immersion breaking.

If we're not all taking the game at the same level of seriousness (not like, obsession with RP seriousness, but like, my fancy hat is important and we are not here to laugh! seriousness). Witness: the fishmalk showing up to Elysium, and how often that was a straight up night killer.

If people are playing two different versions of the game in WoD, it can get really hard to reconcile really quickly, even when it's tone and severity of said tone. In a lot of other settings, it's super easy to disregard the little bits of cognitive dissidence that goes on, but in WoD (old and new!) it's basically baked in that you have to care about wtf your neighbor is doing.