MSB: The meta-discussion
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Hmm. I remember characterizing WORA as being mostly about cutting loose and going off on people. The topic was MUs, but the point was not. This was fun to do sometimes, and fun to watch. I understood people to be operating under snarky WORA personas. I remember once really pissing off Thenomain and coming to the realization that I'd likely pissed off the actual person as well as his WORA-persona, and feeling bad about that, but I don't recall ever being genuinely upset with it besides that.
I think having the cross-game community was a good thing. The format, I dunno. It helped with some things, as people have observed.
I think MSB is better not because it's less vitriolic, but more because the hobby's population has become less hidebound.
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@Derp said in MSB: The meta-discussion:
Nobody is preventing people from other games posting? If it'still heavily WoD, that's just because the active people play WoD games. Feel free to start discussions about other active games?
Nobody prevents it, no. But it's sure not fun to do so when so many discussions turn into a holy war about the only 'right' way to do something - a way that is often heavily biased toward the type of game that most of the active people play. 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.
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@Thenomain I mean more, I have all the reason in the world to shit on MSB, due to my general hatred of WORA, so if I think MSB isn't really shitty or anything, I figure it means something.
When I say I'm not biased, I mean if I was a huge fan of WORA, obviously I'd be more inclined to also like MSB.
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@faraday said in MSB: The meta-discussion:
@Derp said in MSB: The meta-discussion:
Nobody is preventing people from other games posting? If it'still heavily WoD, that's just because the active people play WoD games. Feel free to start discussions about other active games?
Nobody prevents it, no. But it's sure not fun to do so when so many discussions turn into a holy war about the only 'right' way to do something
And yet, we just confronted someone on the constructive and advertising forums when they were doing this. I'm not going to say that Wora's history doesn't color people's attitudes about Soapbox, but these discussions about the "right" way are more discussions now. (Often moot or academic discussions about how things should go without getting the practice in. Me, I'd rather have discussions about how people are doing things.)
<edit, because this hit while I was typing>
@HelloProject said in MSB: The meta-discussion:
@Thenomain I mean more, I have all the reason in the world to shit on MSB, due to my general hatred of WORA
This is a faulty comparison. The chain of Wora->Swofa->Wora was direct in intent. Soapbox was not created as an extension of nor by anyone who ran Wora, is run differently, with different goals and expectations. Apples and oranges.
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A game is 'doing it right' when it doesn't wind up on WORA/MSB. That said, I think games that voluntarily advertise on MSB are very brave and open-minded, though they should keep in mind that they'll be attracting a specific sort of crowd that is heavily biased toward 'The Way We Do Things Just Because It's How We Do It'. I enjoy MSB for what it is and for reasons I mentioned earlier in the thread. But I'd never voluntarily bring any game I play to anyone's attention here; my internet life has been very peaceful this year since the MU I play primarily isn't on MSB and most people there either don't know what MSB is or are scandalized/terrified by what they read here. So to that end, MSB does serve a noble purpose, it is a deterrent against abuse because if you're bad you wind up here.
Tinuviel about 9 hours ago
I hate you with the power of a thousand Pandoras. -
There's more talk about Arx by far here over the past few months than there has been about any WoD game -- or I daresay all of the current WoD games combined.
People do use WoD concepts as examples often when discussing abstract ideas for games since they are familiar to a majority, but often enough that's the only reason they're coming up. I've talked about a lot of my dev concepts in this way to provide an easy frame of reference for people, but I am not working on a WoD game, but one with an original theme and system.
For example, instead of spending half an hour saying 'we have the following kinds of stats and this what each type of stat is intended to do', it is much easier for people to understand (and takes less time) for me to say 'it has attributes and skills like WoD, but all the things like powers, merits, and conditions are handled under a broader catch-all category called traits that can be temporary or permanent, and instead of specialties, there's a list of established tasks associated with each skill that people can assign +/- modifiers to'.
It would take me walls of text to explain that without that reference, but I'm pretty sure most people who have played WoD even once or just read here enough to have had WoD mechanics hammer them over the head can get a general idea of what I'm describing.
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@Pandora said in MSB: The meta-discussion:
A game is 'doing it right' when it doesn't wind up on WORA/MSB. That said, I think games that voluntarily advertise on MSB are very brave and open-minded, though they should keep in mind that they'll be attracting a specific sort of crowd that is heavily biased toward 'The Way We Do Things Just Because It's How We Do It'.
Are they?
This board is full of people who don't post very much, and even fuller of lurkers, and I suspect those are actually the audience for a lot of the advertising threads.
Which brings up something that does actually bug me. I have no issue with games that advertise here being bitched about. But I have this knee-jerk 'This is Bullshit' reaction to that bitching happening in their ad threads. Make a thread in the Hog Pit! Or a slightly veiled thread in the Constructive area. Link it in the ad thread (I don't actually think bitching about these games should be difficult to find), but it always rubs me the wrong way when these threads get taken over. Often times by bitches only tangentially related to the game that seem to boil down to slap-fights between players or about games from the Long Long Ago, or sprawling MU fights from the peeves thread that've spilled over.
Maybe I'm wrong about this, and maybe this is in the spirit of what MSB is designed for, but it Mehs me out whenever it happens.
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@Three-Eyed-Crow I'm with you on the 'I don't think flaming should happen in an ad thread' thing.
Maybe make two: one for the ad, one for the heated discussion elsewhere. But I do believe people should let people advertise in peace, with a link to 'here is the discussion that is not basic questions about 'do you allow princesses/Sith/OCs/etc.' or 'what RPG system/edition/supplement are you using' and so on, without bitching and screaming if it's not the one the questioner prefers.
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@Three-Eyed-Crow
I agree with the second portion of your post, but as for your suspicions regarding the audience, I have to disagree. Plenty of active posters play new games and spend a fair chunk of time giving unsolicited advice about how new games should do things, even after being politely but firmly informed that said game will do things their own way. I'm sure such things are well intentioned so I'm not in any way blowing a fuse about it. -
@Pandora
Maybe. I totally own that any argument made about the silent majority is kind of talking out of one's ass. Most boards are primarily lurkers/low-level posters, but who knows how much those people are actually paying attention/actively lurking. And there will always be those VERY vocal people who treat the board like a Yelp! review of new games, which I do always side-eye. I hope most people are cynical enough readers to tell the difference between good, critical points and just blowing up over one minor thing that wasn't exactly to your liking, but people are very reactive, so idk. -
@Pandora said in MSB: The meta-discussion:
A game is 'doing it right' when it doesn't wind up on WORA/MSB. That said, I think games that voluntarily advertise on MSB are very brave and open-minded, though they should keep in mind that they'll be attracting a specific sort of crowd that is heavily biased toward 'The Way We Do Things Just Because It's How We Do It'.
You're doing the "MSB Hive Mind" fallacy here.
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Name me a thread that doesn't get derailed or drift by offhanded remarks that become even more offhanded. "That reminds me" is pretty normal.
There's also a long-standing philosophy from far back in Wora days that staff who come to defend their game are doomed (often a self-fulfilling prophecy) while those who explain their game seem to be praised, or at least understood. I wouldn't be disappointed if only people who started an advertising thread were allowed to post in it, then we'd no more have the people who are excited about a game than those who have questions about it.
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@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, good/bad/indifferent (I had thousands of WORA posts, I am no saint).I think @surreality had an idea that's my ideal world. There's an ad thread that does just exist for advertising (maybe locked to the originator, though I do think questions that are actual questions are useful) and a more general thread where comments/criticisms get dumped (honestly the random OMG THIS IS THE GREATEST THING EVER is just as if not more irritating to me, it just leads to total derails less frequently). I honestly don't know if this even bothers anyone else, but this is the meta thread and this is my big meta complaint with the board. I take/leave/am cool or indifferent to the rest of how it's run.
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.
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@Pandora said in MSB: The meta-discussion:
A game is 'doing it right' when it doesn't wind up on WORA/MSB. That said, I think games that voluntarily advertise on MSB are very brave and open-minded, though they should keep in mind that they'll be attracting a specific sort of crowd that is heavily biased toward 'The Way We Do Things Just Because It's How We Do It'.
For starters it's quite normal (and for good reason) that games which are or are becoming popular invariably end up on MSB simply because someone plays on them. I think this is confirmation bias on your behalf to claim that, since being on here isn't a bad sign - in fact many threads have had nothing but good things to say about the MU* they were about.
May I present Star Wars: Defiance as a counter-example? A bunch of 'us' tried it, and we gave it pretty high marks; I said they had a good and very helpful staff, Ganymede praised their CGen and helpfiles, etc. Even when I decided to move on that was because I just couldn't get into SAGA (the system they were using) which had nothing to do with the quality of the MU* itself.
MSB isn't universally harsh on MU* by any means. Nor is there a universal 'we' involved when 'we' see something iffy happening; yes, some extrapolate wildly from a tiny sample ("this will never work because six years ago someone tried something vaguely similar and it didn't pan out" but the rule isn't that we get the pitchforks out.
Which is not to say pitchforks don't exist, or that they aren't within easy reach, mind you.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@Arkandel said in MSB: The meta-discussion:
some extrapolate wildly from a tiny sample ("this will never work because six years ago someone tried something vaguely similar and it didn't pan out" but the rule isn't that we get the pitchforks out.
I mean, really, this isn't even limited to MSB. This is just a part of MU culture, from everything I've seen. Someone tried a thing, it didn't work (for whatever reason -- maybe the players went crazy, maybe staff implemented it badly, maybe it didn't scale well, maybe it didn't fit the theme... the list goes on and on, here), and forevermore people are gunshy of that thing, and will often bring up this one example of this one time that it didn't work on one game as a reason it should not be implemented on this-or-any-other game. I don't think it's entirely fair to lay that at the feet of MSB, when it tends to happen within MU's themselves just as frequently. If not more so. So yeah, I agree with your sentiment here.
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You know, the more I think about the whole 'it's just a lot of WoD players who post and decide what is right and wrong', the more I get bothered. There are /plenty/ of us here who post and comment who have never touched WoD, see @Roz, that you can't just dismiss. Just because we aren't the top posters, doesn't mean our voices aren't part of things. (I mean, can you really tell who is the top poster outside of 'Less Than Gamey', for example?)
And if we weren't, you wouldn't see the cultural clashes that definitely spring up here. Like, the recent one that comes to mind is whether assuming a communication about game stuff to one staffer would be shared with all staff (unless it's about another staffer). And yeah, there were two very different cultures here. But it didn't end up written off as just one way as the 'correct' way to do things. Each side explained their points and it came down to most of us agreeing well-- The expectation should be clearly communicated, but neither is wrong.
I think chalking things up to an MSB hivemind or it all being one culture is an easy way to dismiss criticisms.
#FreeFarfalla
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I've lost a friendship merely trying to explain to a MU* player that places like MSB can be good because they can discuss something they did that made big waves, and come out with something less than a nuclear option on evaluating the players involved.
I was told that everyone here is a toxic snake that couldn't possibly ever do any good. And yes they are still friends with other regular posters here.
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@Meg I don't want to sound defensive on behalf of MSB but sometimes it is a dismissive tactic by people trying to pigeon-hole the forum overall and paint it a certain way to serve an agenda.
For instance there have been legitimate concerns, backed by several independent sources when the latest bout of Arx-related complaints came up in the wake of @lordbelh's ban. It was easier for staff apologists to rebuke the legitimacy of those complaints by bundling the place collectively due to the hive-mind's general negativity than to address and answer for the specific allegations raised.
Note that often the same people do use MSB as a platform to launch their gripes for when it fits such an agenda, mind you.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@Pandora said in MSB: The meta-discussion:
A game is 'doing it right' when it doesn't wind up on WORA/MSB. That said, I think games that voluntarily advertise on MSB are very brave and open-minded, though they should keep in mind that they'll be attracting a specific sort of crowd that is heavily biased toward 'The Way We Do Things Just Because It's How We Do It'. I enjoy MSB for what it is and for reasons I mentioned earlier in the thread. But I'd never voluntarily bring any game I play to anyone's attention here; my internet life has been very peaceful this year since the MU I play primarily isn't on MSB and most people there either don't know what MSB is or are scandalized/terrified by what they read here.
It's good to be brave and open-minded.
Like many, I oppose the idea that this board is dominated by WoD games. This sounds hypocritical coming from me, I guess, because it is true that the vast majority of my experiences come from those games. That said, any comment I make to which I would attach experience as my basis of understanding is invariably going to come from a WoD game. That doesn't mean my opinion is any less apt from that basis, but I don't think it's entirely fair to say that I and folks like me are knowingly trying to dominate the conversation and steer it towards WoD games (and I know that's not what you intended to say).
But, I get what you're hinting at, and I mostly agree. There are a lot of games out there that are doing just fine. Some advertise here, some don't. And I wish they would because I am open to new experiences.
SW: Fires of Hope looks nifty. I made a PC there, but I haven't gotten all the way through the CGen process. I also ginned up a PC on End of Days, but I too have not completed the process. SW: Dawn of Defiance was a lot of fun, but it wasn't for my entire crew. And, to be frank, I did have fun at Kushiel's Debut, Arx, and other games that I've played on.
In my opinion, many game designers and operators don't want their work bashed on. So, they've concluded that our Hive-Mind will poo-poo anyone that comes here. This is untrue. I can understand why anyone wouldn't want bad publicity, but a lot of games get good publicity here too. And just because an incident arises that could make a game look bad does not mean that others won't or can't see past the bullshit.
