Course Corrections

[saosmash]

@Arkandel Mileage may vary. I do find excessive %ts annoying in situations when NO ONE ELSE is doing it, but eh. With tenses, that's actually a thing I'm READING, not like ... ... ... I don't know, window dressing.

As far as wiki codes -- if it's for emphasis, I have accidentally used **, / /, _ _, and // // almost interchangeably for like the last six years and sometimes even accidentally put two in the same pose, so it's clear that mileage may vary for me on that one. . .

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@Ghost said in Course Corrections:

• Staff reached out to me and basically told me "we agree with you but to keep things calm, give her some room"

This is what bugged the hell out of me about this situation. It happened repeatedly on multiple games (I played with a handful of her alts), and I know there were multiple complaints of this type about it that went up the chain to staff (different staffers) properly. There was a weird reluctance to call her on it that I never understood.

There was one scene where she fired at a basestar (this is a giant carrier-style space ship, that was in the sky overhead) with a rifle (this is...a rifle as we understand rifles) from the ground, and didn't get why it wasn't effective.

...................................................................

I do not mind being corrected in RP, though I usually prefer that correction come from a staffer or person with actual OOC knowledge of how the theme's being approached, like a player-helper. I don't like pedantry, but I want to play the theme I'm in. If I realize I'm doing something dumb, I try to stop doing it. I don't get the stubborn refusal to play in the world you're in. I also don't really know where the line is. Players shouldn't be the ones policing this stuff, but when staff is reluctant to address repeated issues, what do you do?

Idk.

[Misadventure]

RPing in English probably means you're doing it wrong. We need a form of Katakana.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Ganymede said in Course Corrections:

See, I don't have a problem with this. I'd have a problem if the following occurred:

<OOC> Lord McFarty says, "wtf don't you know what a gun looks like?!"
<OOC> Artsy Fartsy says, "I know what it looks like, but my PC has no idea what a gun is and doesn't know what you're referring to."
<OOC> Lord McFarty says, "well ur goin to know now cuz everyone knows it unless they're stupid"
<OOC> Artsy Fartsy says, "Look, guns don't exist in this world, so I don't even know how your PC knows what gunmetal is. Guns don't exist in Westeros. I'm just trying to keep things IC, know what I mean?"
<OOC> Lord McFarty says, "ive never watched GoT!!! i don't plan to so don't tell me what i can't pose!!! i don't plan to change"

If I read that exchange I would be disinclined to RP with either ever again.
Neither look good not the I must defend every hill of IC knowledge artist nor the willfully ignorant lord seem like people I would have an enjoyable scene with so any IC issues that had to be dealt with could get handled over mail.

[surreality]

@Arkandel I can deal with the '' formatting things if it's in a log going up on the wiki. People have used /<text>/ or -<text>- or other things to indicate italics or bold for years and years, so using the actual thing that will translate it to italics or bold in the log just seems like saving time for whoever's stuck editing the thing to post later.

[Arkandel]

@Thenomain said in Course Corrections:

Didn't see this until @Pyrephox responded.

I love the history of technology. I revel in it. It is super-interesting to me. I have probably watched every James Burke BBC show, certainly every episode of Connections and The Day The Universe Changed. Maybe I want to start an industrial revolution. Isn't it plausible that I pursue it as a character goal?

Plausible? Absolutely. Thematic? Well, maybe.

The question really is what kind of game you want to run. A gritty grimdark fantasy game might see some industrial revolution-styled arcs very favorably (some really nasty things can happen to pave the way to progress) but a high epic fantasy one might not, for instance.

Also consider the differences between our world and a make-belief one. We had to go down a certain path because it made every sense to; ships can only sail so fast on oars, we can only hand-craft clothes that fast. But add magic to the mix and is that still the case? When a wizard can make a portal or whatever to go from A to B would steam-powered ships have been necessary or even useful? When you can cast a spell to solve your problems (or build your castles) will technology evolve the same way it did?

Maybe.

But either way, my original facepalm wasn't so much that someone asked those questions but that they insisted. If staff specifically says 'yeah, we don't care if cement exists man, it's outside the scope of this game' then that's a pretty decent answer I think.

[Runescryer]

I agree that there's certain levels of egregiousness when it comes to the actions and poses of other players. The past tense thing...annoying, but not really worth getting upset about, IMO. Themebreaking...again it depends on the level and the experiences you have with the player. If someone's seriously breaking theme and responds to a gentle reminder with 'WhatEVA! I do what I want!', yeah, that's an issue there.

You do have to know which battles to fight, though. If there are other people in the scene that are cool with it or don't seem to want to point it out, it may not be worth choosing that particular hill to die on. For example: the worst bit of themebreaking I ever encountered was on one of the LUGTrek games that sprouted up a few years back; I think it was Anomaly, but don't quote me. There was a costume party social event, and my mind nearly broke when a Vulcan character, who was one of the main characters there at the time, showed up dressed as...The Joker. Including acting like The Joker: crazy laugh, random bits of Chaotic Stupid randomness, the whole shtick. I asked In Character who he was supposed to be, my way of politely going 'WTF?', and he did this explanation, In Character, about researching old Earth entertainment and coming across the character, then deciding to try playing him as a sort of personal 'experiment'. Every other character/player in the scene seemed cool with it, so I played along a bit more, backed out of the scene, and slowly began to disentangle myself from the game over the next couple weeks. It just wasn't worth it, for my sanity, to be 'VULCANS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!!!' And considering this was happening on one of those 'Fill out your Duty Reports' Trek games to create an 'Authentic' Starfleet feel, that was just too much lorebreaking double-standards for me to want to deal with.

[kitteh]

@Thenomain said in Course Corrections:

@kitteh said in Course Corrections:

Maybe they really were legos. This has happened before.

I mean, nobody here is complaining about five people hearing a Bob Dylan song 30,000 years before he was born. Sir Terry Pratchett (RIP) said he tried his hardest to not do things like this, but the idea of interlocking blocks as educational building tools shouldn't be the problem; calling them Lego should be.

Right. I just meant it's possible in BSGverse that there's literally some kind of time loop and Legos might have actually existed both before and after because there's no before or after and it's all circular. Or.. maybe an angel did it?!!!?

But I'm just being a nerd. The player still sounds like an asshole, and it definitely defies the genre expectations to be tossing a lot of current-Earth brand references into RP.

[Ghost]

@Ganymede said in Course Corrections:

But I try because I know that the pop-culture references aren't really found in the BSG world.

Yeah but BSG also had people singing the actual lyrics to Dylan/Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower" ,which blows the whole fuckin' argument out of the water.

My point, really, was this. I don't wish the LegoPlayer any ill will, nor did I from the get go. I agree that the big problem was being reported to staff as being a harassment case when I was just trying to get a feel on her level of understanding the canon material and offer my services as a support source.

For whatever reason (Bad past experiences? Bitchy person? I don't know or care), she took it as hostility and chose to react to it with hostility.

MORAL OF THE STORY:

1. If you're playing on a game with a certain kind of canon setting (Battlestar, 100, Firefly, etc) and you don't know the setting very well, be reasonable with people who try to help you learn the setting. 9/10 times they're just sharing Intel on a setting they love.

2. If you're playing on a game with a specific canonical setting, and you see someone who doesn't seem to know it, approach them politely, try to share your knowledge, but don't automatically assume that they don't give a fuck. Your delivery when attempting to course correct matters every bit as much as how they choose to respond to it.

People care about setting. They can't cry with a faker present, so if you don't know the setting, take the time to learn what you can about it. It's conscientious to the other players on the game.

[Cupcake]

As a side note, I want to remark that I've since encountered Lego Lass on a couple of games, and she seems to have calmed down and has been pretty chill. Of course, we also haven't been on any IP themed games, so if it comes up again, we'll have to see.

In the meantime, I go back to trying to explain to someone as gently as possible that on L&L games, marriages are often business arrangements. Yes, even if you love your intended.

[Paris]

@Ganymede said in Course Corrections:

@Cupcake said in Course Corrections:

... but when people continue to pose in past tense around a bunch of people using present tense, is it just sloppy? Is it a passive aggressive fuck you?

It is probably because they are terrible writers with a lack of self-awareness.

They are usually transplants from forum or LJ type games, and are getting used to MUSH, in my experience. Eventuslly some folks get the hang of it, though it's tough to switch if you are still rping in both formats.

[Ganymede]

@Paris said in Course Corrections:

They are usually transplants from forum or LJ type games, and are getting used to MUSH, in my experience. Eventuslly some folks get the hang of it, though it's tough to switch if you are still rping in both formats.

Yours is a wise and reasoned response. Mine is more visceral, and should probably be discounted appropriately.

[Packrat]

I can see why staff on say, Arx, would not want to engage with somebody who is talking about trying to bring about an industrial revolution.

First of all that is not the theme they want for their game, but secondarily the people who talk about this kind of thing on a MU* tend to want to launch a society like... 4-500 years forward over the course of one or two then get argumentative if this vision is not allowed to succeed. Having said that on Arx they are weirdly defensive about say, gunpowder (no bats because guano is used for making gunpowder!).

People who do not want guns in their late medieval/renaissance fantasy seem to be worried about the same super accelerated advancement, somehow feeling that if gunpowder exists in a setting then the next step is revolvers and breach loading artillery instead of 'two hundred years of fucking around with fireworks, garbage weapons for militia in siege defense and maybe the odd hideously unreliable static bomb'.

[surreality]

@Packrat That's quite well put, really. I'd sum it up as something like 'they all want to be the lead from Da Vinci's Demons', though I'm not sure how many people have watched it. (It definitely went to those kinds of places, and often aspired to be clever-er-er-er-er-er than that, even.)

That's a good point, though: how do you reasonably place those limits without getting extreme?

How much leeway does someone really have to say: That could feasibly happen IC but we really don't want to take the game in that direction.

I don't think it's necessary to, say, uncreate bats just so people won't make gunpowder from guano (though if someone wants to do that, that's their call and I support their right and choice to make it), or perhaps more accurately, I do not feel it should not be necessary to go that far in order to be able to say: we really don't want to go in that direction with this game/do not want to drastically change the game world in the ways that idea would inevitably change it.

There's some real questions there, I think, and I'm somebody who loves the idea of people being able to add things to a world pretty freely. At what point does the 'little thing' someone wants to add change the game world, or the experience of the game, profoundly enough that it's just not the same game anybody was initially drawn to/initially wanted to play in/would still want to play in?

This is definitely one of the harder 'no's to articulate but it's possibly one of the most necessary ones, not as a control freak trip, but in order to keep the game people signed on to play, well, still the game people signed on to play.

[Ganymede]

@surreality said in Course Corrections:

I don't think it's necessary to, say, uncreate bats just so people won't make gunpowder from guano (though if someone wants to do that, that's their call and I support their right and choice to make it), or perhaps more accurately, I do not feel it should not be necessary to go that far in order to be able to say: we really don't want to go in that direction with this game/do not want to drastically change the game world in the ways that idea would inevitably change it.

My objection to taking such a stance is how horridly insipid it is relative to the development of modern firearms, which took almost 1,000 years. Plus, gunpowder existed, but was seldom used during the late medieval/renaissance period of European history, from which much of fantasy seems to be lifted from. (For example, full suits of plate armor did not exist until after cannons were used in the Battle of Crecy, 1346.)

[Thenomain]

@surreality said in Course Corrections:

This is definitely one of the harder 'no's to articulate but it's possibly one of the most necessary ones, not as a control freak trip, but in order to keep the game people signed on to play, well, still the game people signed on to play.

And yet we complain about games that don't allow players to make changes in the game world.

So let's take this and swing it back on topic: What about course corrections with staff? Is it okay to apply this concept to players but not staff?

[Jim Nanban]

@Seamus said in Course Corrections:

@Ganymede So... what's the PK Stance of the game?

This needs to be a meme.

[Cupcake]

@surreality said in Course Corrections:

I'd sum it up as something like 'they all want to be the lead from Da Vinci's Demons', though I'm not sure how many people have watched it. (It definitely went to those kinds of places, and often aspired to be clever-er-er-er-er-er than that, even.)

Me, me, me! I watched it!

[surreality]

@Thenomain said in Course Corrections:

@surreality said in Course Corrections:

This is definitely one of the harder 'no's to articulate but it's possibly one of the most necessary ones, not as a control freak trip, but in order to keep the game people signed on to play, well, still the game people signed on to play.

And yet we complain about games that don't allow players to make changes in the game world.

So let's take this and swing it back on topic: What about course corrections with staff? Is it okay to apply this concept to players but not staff?

I have to say I don't see a difference between the two there in terms of what I'm talking about, at least. A staffer deciding 'let's totally redesign the world through the introduction of space monkeys attacking!' is just as, if not more, dangerous to keeping the game even vaguely coherent due to their perceived (if not actual) authority, if space monkeys attacking is not within the intended scope of the game.

As an admittedly extreme example, any given player on a modern game could make the argument that their character could find the means and information to make a dirty bomb and set it off in the middle of the grid, wiping out the majority of the game's inhabitants or otherwise destroying an enormous portion if not the totality of the grid in the process -- or potentially turning it into a wasteland space from which everyone has to scatter with no hope of return within anything approximating a normal timeline. Any player on almost any game with a modern setting could put in a job to do this and do this through rolls with staff with no other players ever the wiser. Maybe it's because they just want to see what happens. Maybe it's because they secretly want a wasteland apocalypse game instead of a modern urban fantasy game. Maybe it's because they 'want to make a change' or 'want to make their mark on the game'.

As staff, what do you tell this player?

Do you let them do it simply because they arguably can, or are you also responsible for the fun of everyone other than that player on the game as well, and should you be considering them and their fun also?

Does the mad bomber's fun trump theirs?

There are some ways you could potentially handle this that might avert it through IC means -- possibly having contact/ally/etc.-holding characters start hearing rumors about something (if this is even feasible, depending on the bomber's plan) along with whatever they asked -- but there's also just, "No. No, we're not going to be doing that, thank you."

[Misadventure]

I let the player succeed.

I let the rest of the game continue in the space where the character didn't succeed.

The player is welcome to create their own MU* where they did succeed.

At a certain very large level, staff created and supports a certain framework. They did not say they would support any framework that came along.

Alternately, we end the game suddenly, and ask the player how amazing the RP is now.