The Desired Experience

il-volpe · Nov 28, 2021, 3:02 AM

@mietze I don't see where I, or anyone, am proposing forcing people.

Incentives, as you mention, might be in order. Unless you think insular playgroups are desirable. My saying they are not seems to be a bone, so hey.

faraday · Nov 28, 2021, 3:18 AM

@il-volpe said in The Desired Experience:

@faraday Because, as @mietze points out and has been demonstrated in the thread, "just suck less" and "If you were fun, people would play with you," tends to be what people actually say.

If the answer to "why am I not getting any RP" is "just suck less", that's a separate issue. I don't care if the person saying that is only playing with the Original Sammich Club or if they're on every night playing with 90% of the game. They're being a jerk.

But I think more often you'll see comments like "you get out of it what you put in" or "I dunno, I get plenty of RP, maybe you could try (whatever)", which are more misguided than malicious.

The truth is that finding RP involves many factors. Faction and location dynamics, character roles, what plotlines are ongoing, scheduling, existing relationships (IC and OOC). Your character and personal RP skill certainly matter, but they are by no means the only (or even main) factor.

Telling someone "If you're fun people will play with you" is just factually inaccurate.

@il-volpe said in The Desired Experience:

Zane brought a big bowl of potato salad that's pretty good, but most people are full up on brownies and sandwiches and don't want any

I can understand why Zane would be bummed that he brought brownies and nobody wanted any. I've literally had that happen in potlucks. (I took the brownies home and ate them myself.) I still don't get why Zane would think the other people somehow owed him eating his brownies, or that they were rude or "uncool" for not doing so.

il-volpe · Nov 28, 2021, 3:55 AM

@faraday You've got this assumption that Zane feels all high and entitled to people eating his brownies. But that is what a potluck is for. And in the MU potluck, you can't eat your own dish, only the dishes you trade it for. He didn't expect to show up to the potluck with brownies and not get to eat. Is he wrong?

@faraday said in The Desired Experience:

Telling someone "If you're fun people will play with you" is just factually inaccurate.

Thank you. I expect the hobby is over for me. I'd like to think it's not because I'm just no longer any damn fun.

faraday · Nov 28, 2021, 4:09 AM

@il-volpe said in The Desired Experience:

@faraday You've got this assumption that Zane feels all high and entitled to people eating his brownies. But that is what a potluck is for. And in the MU potluck, you can't eat your own dish, only the dishes you trade it for. He didn't expect to show up to the potluck with brownies and not get to eat. Is he wrong?

Yes, he's wrong. The idea of a potluck is that you bring something to the party hoping that others might enjoy it, and hoping that you might find something there you might enjoy as well.

The key word there is hope.

Nobody is obliged to eat the brownies that you brought.

Nobody is obliged to bring a dish that you will enjoy eating.

Zane may leave bummed and hungry, but that doesn't mean the other partygoers did anything wrong, and it doesn't mean that he's a bad cook. Things just didn't work out. If that happens a lot the host of the potluck may want to revisit their strategies.

GreenFlashlight · Nov 28, 2021, 4:11 AM

All this talk about how relationships with other hobbyists should be transactional feels really weird to me.

Derp · Nov 28, 2021, 4:12 AM

@greenflashlight said in The Desired Experience:

All this talk about how relationships with other hobbyists should be transactional feels really weird to me.

Same, sub 'transactional' with 'obligatory'.

il-volpe · Nov 28, 2021, 4:13 AM

@faraday Oh, Zane would enjoy eating the dishes brought, they're just reserved for others.

Maybe leaving Zane bummed and hungry isn't wrong, but it's hardly friendly.

@GreenFlashlight Hmm. When you RP with me, I am RPing with you. In the metaphor, it's a trade of foods, but that's a metaphor.

faraday · Nov 28, 2021, 4:17 AM

@il-volpe said in The Desired Experience:

@faraday Oh, Zane would enjoy eating the dishes brought, they're just reserved for others.

You say the dish is reserved for others like there's a sign on it rubbing Zane's nose in the fact that he can't have it. Maybe if the RPers were all: "Haha, no you can't play Zane, neener neener neener" that might be the case. But for me it's more just that somebody else ate all the cookies before Zane could. It's not Abigail's fault that she didn't bring enough cookies for everyone.

Can we maybe just agree that the potluck analogy is imperfect?

Derp · Nov 28, 2021, 4:17 AM

@faraday said in The Desired Experience:

Can we maybe just agree that the potluck analogy is imperfect?

This is why I used 'community theater with unlimited stages'.

Ominous · Nov 28, 2021, 5:34 AM

@runescryer said in The Desired Experience:

Hmmm...A thought has occurred to me...

I present to you 'Runescryer's Law of MU's'...

"Given sufficient population and lack of Events, all MU's, regardless of theme, become sex MU's"

I'm not sure this is a new realization. Pretty sure this has been an established fact for a while.

Ominous · Nov 28, 2021, 5:39 AM

@derp said in The Desired Experience:

@faraday said in The Desired Experience:

Can we maybe just agree that the potluck analogy is imperfect?

This is why I used 'community theater with unlimited stages'.

Maybe large city park? You can hang out with a big group or you can wander off with a small group of friends to do your own thing.

Ganymede · Nov 28, 2021, 6:31 AM

@il-volpe

I agree with you. It is a pity I cannot RP as much as I want, but that is a by-product of how life is for me and a lot of others, I think.

reversed · Nov 28, 2021, 10:37 AM

Well this thread convinced me that I hate either RP or sandwiches, not sure which

Carma · Nov 28, 2021, 3:34 PM

This post is deleted!

Ganymede · Nov 28, 2021, 3:44 PM

@carma

If I were a GM, I would leave Sandwich Club alone, as they apparently want. They would be eligible for no position which would require them to RP out of their circle.

If I were part of Sandwich Club, I would want the GM to just leave me alone.

Derp · Nov 28, 2021, 4:01 PM

@ganymede said in The Desired Experience:

@carma

If I were a GM, I would leave Sandwich Club alone, as they apparently want. They would be eligible for no position which would require them to RP out of their circle.

If I were part of Sandwich Club, I would want the GM to just leave me alone.

This.

faraday · Nov 28, 2021, 4:11 PM

@carma said in The Desired Experience:

Maybe what I'm really asking is, Sandwich Club members, what kind of storyteller attention do you want?

I don't think there's a universal answer here.

There are some Sandwich Clubs that, as @Ganymede says, just want to be left the heck alone.

Barring that, though, I think they're entitled to the same support as anyone else on the game. That doesn't mean you have to personally craft events/hooks/scenes just for them. It just means you shouldn't actively prevent them from accessing plot hooks you dangle for the game at large.

Most Sandwich Clubs I've encountered (including the ones I've personally been a part of) are not 100% insular. They may prefer playing with each other, but there's enough tangential encounters that anything you give to them has a chance to spill out to the rest of the game -- especially if the thing you give them leads to some kind of public event, or requires support from the science department, or whatever.

There's nothing wrong with staff gently incentivizing people to play beyond their comfort zones; it only becomes a problem when it's forced and/or expected.

GreenFlashlight · Nov 28, 2021, 4:13 PM

A year or two ago, I complained about how hard it was for me to play Starfire on a comics game because most of the other players, most especially her teammates on the Teen Titans, refused to play with me under the assumption that because they didn't know me, I was going to play her like a character in a bad porno. That was a bummer, but at the same time it felt like their refusal to play with me was doing me a favor. It wasn't because they were jerks or elitists or bad people or whatever, but because playing with then would have been a bad time for me and for them because of their attitude.

If the other Teen Titans don't want to play with me because I'm not part of their clique, then good! I'm glad they helped me to dodge that bullet instead of letting me stand in front of it.

If the other Teen Titans don't want to play with me because they have no spoons, then also good! Sucks for me, but it would suck worse to be a silverware thief.

Runescryer · Nov 29, 2021, 12:23 AM

@ominous said in The Desired Experience:

@runescryer said in The Desired Experience:

Hmmm...A thought has occurred to me...

I present to you 'Runescryer's Law of MU's'...

"Given sufficient population and lack of Events, all MU's, regardless of theme, become sex MU's"

I'm not sure this is a new realization. Pretty sure this has been an established fact for a while.

It's a rule of science: Credit goes to the first one to publish the observation, not necessarily the first observer.

mietze · Nov 29, 2021, 12:33 AM

If someone really doesn't want a sandwich club on their game I don't think there's anything wrong with that, as long as they're up front about their expectations of activity, ect.

However most of the games I've seen where sandwich club suddenly becomes a problem are ones where hands off/no staff interaction beyond spends and approval is one of the appeals, but then someone gets pissed thar the group isn't paying attention to their pet storyline, ect. So then the annoyance/angst that staff has for the minute group defying their interest expectations can cause everyone else to suffer when they get stompy about it.

Personally if you set things up so that sandwich club is a possibility then just leave it be.