MSB: The meta-discussion

[surreality]

As another person in the top ten loudmouths present, I've played more original theme stuff than I have played WoD by an enormous margin.

I also think WoD is just really not that great for MUX and am often pretty vocal on that particular point especially. I reference it a lot, for the reasons stated above: most people know it and that can make a lot of things considerably easier to explain than they might be otherwise.

My third favorite thing to get mouthy about is that silly thing about different setups working for some games and being a bad idea for others.

(My very favorite thing is still carping on about creepers being creepy. Thankfully since I more or less stopped playing they aren't really an issue any more. Whee?)

[Thenomain]

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

@Thenomain
I'm not really disagreeing with you. I said up-top that this stuff is very well likely in keeping with MSB. I'm just stating that it bugs me when it happens, and it happens frequently, and it is a carry-over from WORA culture

And I'm saying that it's a natural outcome of a forum that doesn't have strict rules about who can and can't post where. Here has the same two rules that the last version of Wora had. 1) No personal information. 2) Attack the idea not the person.

Soapbox has flipped the expectation of Rule #2 where on Wora this was only on the Constructive forum while here it's only not on the Hog Pit forum. Even on Wora, Rule #2 was mainly expected to cover the Advertising thread, but it wasn't an actual rule until Soapbox.

ETA: Also, I'll admit, the 4chan wanktards spamming ad threads with bizarre and trolling questions has set me off about this. But it's a long-standing issue with me.

Well yeah, but fuck those guys. There is a huge difference between a troll and someone who has an honest dissenting opinion (edit: or an honest dissenting question), and part of what makes trolls so effective is that it's almost impossible to tell that difference.

[Miss Demeanor]

Huh... so, okay, I guess being one of the Top 10 posters... most of my MU* experience is from WoD games. At the time I picked up MU*ing, WoD games were the most active and most talked about. But I found after a few years that there were other types of games out there. And I have tried many of them! WoD is easy to reference because it is one of the few systems that damn near everybody will recognize. I think it has nothing to do with WoD being 'better' (it isn't, oh God it so isn't) than any other system and has a lot to do with it just being so widely recognizable.

As @surreality said... if you go 'oh yeah, my system will work like WoD for X and Y' the majority of the people on this board will know what you are talking about. Even people that don't often or haven't played WoD have picked up on it simply because it gets brought up so often. Fate, d20, etc. just aren't as widely known yet. Now, this may change as I believe a number of games are in the works that will use Fate/FS3.. but WoD is still the 'everyone knows this system' go-to for referencing how something works or how it relates in a way that the broadest category of people can understand.

[Thenomain]

How to know when I have a day off: I hyper-post as if I had to make up for lost time.

(This is no longer true; I hyper-post because "that makes me think of", which of course everything does. I'm like Ark, except with less free time during the day, the lucky bastard.)

@Miss-Demeanor said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

Fate, d20, etc. just aren't as widely known yet.

Fate was tried but a lot of people pushed back against the core Aspects system which can allow far too much latitude.

d20 was the other system that it was pretty much guaranteed that Wora people knew, but there were two popular D&D games. All others that were tried seemed to fail.

Thanks to Evennia, the systems that Mud-likes invent are starting to gain popularity here, too. All I'd need to do to make a 7th Sea game approachable is to say that the core "Roll and Keep" system used by Arx is pretty much stolen from there. Add pirates. Mix.

[Miss Demeanor]

@Thenomain You know, I have never played a 7th Sea game, but i have had so many friends tell me how amazing it is that I would absolutely try it. Also... pirates. God I would kill for a good pirate game. I WANT TO BE A PIRATE DAMMIT.

[saosmash]

@Thenomain Oh, I thought Arx's system was taken from L5R ... (speaking of tangents)

[faraday]

@saosmash said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

@Thenomain Oh, I thought Arx's system was taken from L5R ... (speaking of tangents)

L5R and 7th sea used the same basic roll+keep system initially.

[Pandora]

@saosmash said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

@Thenomain Oh, I thought Arx's system was taken from L5R ... (speaking of tangents)

IIRC, it was asked on Arx's public channel a while back and a staffer indicated that they weren't aware of what L5R even is.

[Arkandel]

@Miss-Demeanor said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

I WANT TO BE A PIRATE DAMMIT.

www.thepiratebay.se

[Thenomain]

@Miss-Demeanor said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

@Thenomain You know, I have never played a 7th Sea game, but i have had so many friends tell me how amazing it is that I would absolutely try it. Also... pirates. God I would kill for a good pirate game. I WANT TO BE A PIRATE DAMMIT.

Sadly the new version of 7th Sea kind of sucks for simple roll-and-resolve mechanics, which I think is why people won't try Fate Core, or worse, won't push Fate Core when they do play it. (note: Fate Core is best when your character is pushed.) Maybe if we used the older, but somewhat broken version of 7th Sea. (If you play Arx, you already know what aspects feel broken, but they've simplified some of the things that can really break it--magic and swordsmanship schools).

--

@saosmash:

Tomato, tomato. Roll & Keep is the core of both systems, but having never read Lot5R I can't comment further. Besides, if people want to get their Asian Pretendy Game-Time on, I suspect they would be far more likely to gravitate toward the Exalted power fantasy.

Roll & Keep itself is, I think, a beautiful core mechanic, but the way that Arx implemented it creates an artificial rarity curve based on--you know what, doesn't matter. 7th Sea does something similar, but not to the same extreme. The extreme that 7th Sea breaks its own core system has to do with magic and swordsmanship. Mind you, these can be beautiful brokenness, and I for one would welcome a broken system that people want to play over a perfect one that people wouldn't.

[Alamias]

I'd be willing to play on a 7th Sea game. I have all the new books (but haven't read them yet) so I could at least figure out the system if it was used.

I was looking around today for something else to try, and found a Dresden game, that sadly seems to be shutting down as soon as I find it...just my luck. I've read the Dresden RPG (Fate) and it seems like an interesting system, but I have never had a chance to play it.

[Ghost]

I think that WORA and MSB have been responsible for more negative behavior than positive. In fact, I'm of the opinion that WORA and MSB are primarily positive mostly as a resource for finding out which games are the new games.

WORA/MSB help spread and cement the following negative behaviors:

• The creation of cliques centered around board veterans, and the weird maintaining of ooc reputation through board posts alone
• Mob-justice, valid or invalid, gets taken to the boards where anyone unethical with a slightly convincing argument can use the board as a social dominance tool
• Promotion of the player over the character, thus expanding the assumption that all characters are the player
• The ooc connection Nexus for players to spread gossip, which is usually heavily one-sided, and build that into the community's network.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of cases of rapey, stalky, and unethical players who have been called out on the boards, and the community may be better for it. However, there are plenty of unethical people on these boards who come here with a personified agenda and are simply extending their ooc bullshit to these boards. I've seen innocent people who weren't rapey or stalky get turned into scapegoat of the week on these boards by unethical people who sought to salt their ability to find rp over stupid, petty grudges. There's something negative that lives in the DNA of this community, and WORA/MSB have been, by our design, used to maintain that ooc catfighting. People come to these boards prepared for it, and these issues spread to the games themselves, where gossip and petty drama propogates.

Pretty much, if you post here, you should understand that there's a chance people who disagree with you are going to go "fuck that guy" and find out who you play on any given game and avoid you. Which would make sense if you were been stalkerish, but when it happens because of an ooc disagreement on what constitutes as an actual apology, it's just petty and fucktarded.

[Thenomain]

@Ghost said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

• The creation of cliques centered around board veterans, and the weird maintaining of ooc reputation through board posts alone

Man, when do I get my clique?

• Mob-justice, valid or invalid, gets taken to the boards where anyone unethical with a slightly convincing argument can use the board as a social dominance tool

I think this has been answered: This isn't a Wora culture item, but a human culture item.

• Promotion of the player over the character, thus expanding the assumption that all characters are the player

I can argue this at length, and will continue to do so. If you think this is poisonous behavior, I would love to have this discussion, as a discussion, in the Creative Forums. That is, I think you are wrong.

• The ooc connection Nexus for players to spread gossip, which is usually heavily one-sided, and build that into the community's network.

You know how I said I don't have a clique? Part of it is because I am loud as fuck when I think someone is doing just this. Someone earlier in the thread laughed about the idea of defending the "invisible minority", but those people exist and several of the top posters are willing and able to either explosively (me) or subtly (@Ganymede) or a mixture of both (@surreality) or Socraticmethodly (@Arkandel) point out the bullshit in attempt to open discussion and willingness to open minds.

[il-volpe]

@faraday said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

Differing viewpoints are frequently ridiculed or "grilled and shredded" (as surreality pointed out) without stopping to consider that just because it doesn't work well on WoD doesn't mean it doesn't work well on any game ever.

Yeah. That's what I meant about the readership being less hidebound now. I think people have actually figured that out, and this is one reason the tone here is different? Keeping in mind that I read only a small fraction of this board, when I'm in one of those moods where I check it at all.

If WORA damaged the hobby it would be in contributing to and enforcing certain ideas about how a MUSH should be run. They're not even good for every WoD game.

[Ganymede]

@Ghost said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

I think that WORA and MSB have been responsible for more negative behavior than positive. In fact, I'm of the opinion that WORA and MSB are primarily positive mostly as a resource for finding out which games are the new games.

I can't argue with an opinion, which is what I call a statement cannot reasonably be proven as false. So, one of the things I have to decry is how, on WORA and MSB, opinions masquerade as facts.

WORA/MSB help spread and cement the following negative behaviors:

• The creation of cliques centered around board veterans, and the weird maintaining of ooc reputation through board posts alone

Allow me to concur with @Thenomain by laughing so hard at this that my food literally fires out of my ass and shreds my underwear.

• Mob-justice, valid or invalid, gets taken to the boards where anyone unethical with a slightly convincing argument can use the board as a social dominance tool

I have yet to see any game or clique rise or fall based on what was said on WORA or MSB. You're free to provide an example.

• Promotion of the player over the character, thus expanding the assumption that all characters are the player

The connection between players and characters has been discussed ad nauseam, with no concurrence. I guess I better remind my partner that I've been on stage as Othello, so that bitch better not lose my hanky.

• The ooc connection Nexus for players to spread gossip, which is usually heavily one-sided, and build that into the community's network.

This board shares and shreds gossip in equal measure.

If you mean to say that community members may have greater sway over other members because they have better skills of persuasion? I can get behind that. And has this misled others? It sure has, as a truism. But that's the nature of communicating in a written medium, so you might as well rail as to how newspapers seem to be able to convince people of their perspective by publishing articles that others read.

[il-volpe]

@Pandora said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

A game is 'doing it right' when it doesn't wind up on WORA/MSB.

Considering how mention here draws new players, that may not be the case.

[Arkandel]

@Ghost @Ghost said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

Pretty much, if you post here, you should understand that there's a chance people who disagree with you are going to go "fuck that guy" and find out who you play on any given game and avoid you. Which would make sense if you were been stalkerish, but when it happens because of an ooc disagreement on what constitutes as an actual apology, it's just petty and fucktarded.

Petty or not though that's how human beings work. I never operated under the illusion that being critical of certain situations here will always make me friends; it's only been a couple of days since I got an angry PM over the Arx situation. So do I think there aren't players out there who'd rather not play with me because of MSB? Absolutely. Are there folks around here who're trying to incite drama? Yup - and in fact the PMs specifically mentioned 'someone else' was informing them of things I allegedly posted here - which I hadn't even actually done, which is easy to see since... they are all public.

So is this whole affair kind of like highschool? You bet.

But would I rather keep my trap shut (or fingers still, if you prefer) to avoid the fallout? Nah. I'm a big boy, and if anyone wants to not play with me is welcome to do so and I won't be butthurt by it. Despite appearances we're not actually in highschool, you know? My self-esteem doesn't depend on how popular I am or in what circles.

Who cares?

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@Ghost said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

• The creation of cliques centered around board veterans, and the weird maintaining of ooc reputation through board posts alone

I wouldn't mind seeing the reputation system done away with, since some of the high rep people are MU*ers I know personally are drama-flaily hypocrites I would like to reach through the Internet and punch in the goddamn face.

Though I also like the ability to register mild agreement or mild disagreement without posting anything. So idk.

[Ganymede]

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

I wouldn't mind seeing the reputation system done away with, since some of the high rep people are MU*ers I know personally are drama-flaily hypocrites I would like to reach through the Internet and punch in the goddamn face.

YOU ARE SO MEAN TO ME.

(I concur.)

[Arkandel]

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

I wouldn't mind seeing the reputation system done away with, since some of the high rep people are MU*ers I know personally are drama-flaily hypocrites I would like to reach through the Internet and punch in the goddamn face.

You mean upvotes? People care about those? I just take it as a +1 on something I posted, that's all.

Though I also like the ability to register mild agreement or mild disagreement without posting anything. So idk.

Now I'm confused though... isn't that what upvotes/(downvotes) do?