Influence/Reputation system?

[Coin]

@Misadventure said:

At least with Ghouls, the spectrum of standard relationships includes many negatives. If you asked someone "Hey want to portray the destructive effects a vampire has on a ghoul even when they appreciate something specific to that ghoul?" they would be likely to think that's okay. I'm not sure you could even ask that easily for a Kinfolk/Wolfblooded and a werewolf, even with such being in the books, and in werewolfy type movies and books (it was even in Twilight, over in a corner, cuz domestic abuse even in the service of a spiritual duty isn't romantic).

I think you can ask that of any relationship; you're just more likely to get a positive answer from the subset of people who like playing ghouls--but then again, this hobby is chock full of people who want that sort of relationship, anyway, even just between mortals.

[Misadventure]

They will play it, though I notice that it usually comes with some sort of OOC relationship that can easily be damaged by the "wrong" activities, such as spending time with another ghoul etc. To me, that is basically just social RP, just like sex RP, or hanging out being bitter in a bar. It's just the player more or less.

I'd love to see people step forward with a purpose, a type of thing they want to portray and have change over time (maybe the abusive relationship gets better, maybe someone learns something and that changes the dynamic, maybe it ends with an attempted murder, at least it went somewhere). To exercise their character and a theme, for themselves and other players to enjoy. I wonder if the rate of change that would include would mess with the rate of play done online by people with more than a few hours a week.

In short: even in LARPS you don't play to just hang out being someone else. There is something going to happen, and that should affect your character.

[mietze]

I think lying IC is always okay OOC, so long as the player is willing to have their PC get the consequences if they're caught and if consequences can be enacted.

I think lying OOC is pretty much almost always problematic. Unfortunately some people cross the two. They can't accept that a nasty or swindling PC could be played by an above board/non-cheating player. Or that someone who plays a PC who is one of their buddies has in fact been pretty nasty and destructive OOC, and may have kind of been using them to that end.

I think most people in the hobby do get sucked in to either side at one time or the other (passing on gossip that turns out to be full of shit, avoiding people on someone's say so who later turn out to be folks that are actually fine and our someone was full of shit, taking an IC annoyance/defeat and applying an OOC dislike to the player for a time), but most people don't make that a way of life, thank god.

I guess, after so many years staffing and playing, my point is that I'm so tired of legislating to the lowest common denominator. Because some idiot used X in some way, no nobody can have X and outlaw that type of PC. Because someone might lie about Y when they shouldn't/don't have the IC capability to, we need to do away with any possibility for lying (IC or otherwise). Most folks are not going to be abusive, or cheaters. They're just not. And for the people who are truly compelled to be that way, no amount of very stringent rules is going to make them not, and there are some that are very good and can succeed at that anywhere until they're caught or overstep and wear out their OOC welcome finally. And most of the time, that does happen eventually.

[Groth]

@mietze said:

I think lying OOC is pretty much almost always problematic. Unfortunately some people cross the two. They can't accept that a nasty or swindling PC could be played by an above board/non-cheating player. Or that someone who plays a PC who is one of their buddies has in fact been pretty nasty and destructive OOC, and may have kind of been using them to that end.

The most stupid example of OOC lying I've come across yet was when I transitioned from Player to Staff on RfK. In the weeks before new years I had been talking with the people running the game at the time that I was planning to have my character go out in a blaze of glory of some kind and once my character was gone I'd like to help them out running the game.

The original plan was for one of the staffers to run a plot for me in which my character died, however what I hadn't expected was that a certain IC personality conflict would blow up in such a way that my character would end up PK'ng @Alzie's character in the middle of Elysium. What then followed was a clusterfuck of a scene where 30+ people wanted to get involved and by 3am my time (CET) the my character was declared de-facto torpored and I went to sleep as my input was no longer required.

The next day I ask one of the people involved if they know what happened to my character after I went to sleep and they tell me 'No, I have no idea'. Afterwards I learn their character shot mine with a crossbow and transported the body away. It wasn't the best start of our Staff/Player relationship.

[mietze]

That is pretty weird. If they were worried about you taking it personally that they were the ones that shot you, I mean, they could have just said "You got shot and torpored and now So and So has the body." Though that seems kind of weird to try and hide from someone who is going to be on staff (especially that small of a staff).

People do very strange things though. I have had people oocly out of the blue and without me even contacting them first even to say hello page me to start lying about what they or another person were doing. (In one case I knew it was a lie because I was involved IC/OOC with the planning of this thing and was the originator, in the other because I also staffed on the game so at the very moment the person was proactively, preemptively lying to me about the situation on my other window there was a staff conversation going on about it.) The odd thing was in both cases, it wasn't a thing that anyone cared about. (In one case the organization/running of a fluff social event, in the other it was about some OOC facts about a tinyplot thing that neither of our PCs were involved with or could become involved with anyway!) So lying had no point--no action to cover up, no bad juju to spin, nothing.

It's just bizarre some of the things that people OOC lie about. I can understand lying/bragging about RL, or to avoid someone being upset in that minute, ect. Some of that is human nature I think. But the people that like proactively lie about really weird stuff that nobody cares about, eh.

[surreality]

Transparency is a double-edged sword, when it comes to stuff like this, simply because people get retailiatory. Ideally, visible to just staff would be great in case something needs to be checked out -- but even more ideally, no one ever having to check.

I'm doing a rumors-thing wiki-side. Because it's wiki, anyone will be able to see (by checking page history) who added something or changed something else. That's 'totally transparent' if someone knows how/where to look. My take on it: we'll see how this works out, one way or the other.

[mietze]

I think that's why there was a Rumors account for RfK wiki, that everyone knew the password to. That way it wasn't obvious to wikistalkers, but the players who posted the rumors had to claim them via beat reporting so that staff knew, or else they would be removed.

[Groth]

@mietze said:

I think that's why there was a Rumors account for RfK wiki, that everyone knew the password to. That way it wasn't obvious to wikistalkers, but the players who posted the rumors had to claim them via beat reporting so that staff knew, or else they would be removed.

Yes, the shared account helped somewhat in preventing mostly unintentional IC/OOC crossovers when it comes to rumours and by having them logged and investigatable it meant that there was always IC accountability to be had.

What started to bother me however was that while we had an IC process to remove rumours, mainly intended to allow characters to get rid of things that were in some way harmful, in the last couple of months it became a trend to try to scrub their characters wikis of the most innocuous stuff and I couldn't understand why.

The purpose of rumours on RfK was to provide RP hooks and a way for players to learn more about what's been happening IC lately. If everything that's not self-promoting is scrubbed away, what's the fun in reading that?

[mietze]

I agree. But more a loss for those particular players I think. I don't think most people were doing that though, were they? I only noticed a few in particular. I never understood it either. There were times that I thought certain things were kind of passive-aggressive and somewhat crossoverish, but eh. It's not like vampires can't be passive aggressive too! It always made me smile when VERY SERIOUS PC's players left their silly stuff up.

[lordbelh]

@mietze said:

I guess, after so many years staffing and playing, my point is that I'm so tired of legislating to the lowest common denominator.

So much this.

[Ganymede]

@Misadventure said:

At least with Ghouls, the spectrum of standard relationships includes many negatives. If you asked someone "Hey want to portray the destructive effects a vampire has on a ghoul even when they appreciate something specific to that ghoul?" they would be likely to think that's okay. I'm not sure you could even ask that easily for a Kinfolk/Wolfblooded and a werewolf, even with such being in the books, and in werewolfy type movies and books (it was even in Twilight, over in a corner, cuz domestic abuse even in the service of a spiritual duty isn't romantic).

Whether I ever engage in this sort of RP depends on who I'm playing with. I think that you'll find many players of wolf-blooded don't mind playing up the domestic-abuse angle, as long as they trust the abuser's player not to go out of their comfort zone.

[Misadventure]

Good to know. I've not seen it in my Werewolf experience, but that experience is limited. Maybe what I am looking for is not just the players in a scene aiming to portray some specific thematic or personal element, but that it gets shared beyond those in the immediate scene.

That may be asking too much.

[Ganymede]

I'm not entirely sure what you're saying, Misadventure. Can you re-state?

[Bobotron]

@Ganymede
I think Misadventure is saying she hasn't seen the Werewolf kinfolk abuse penchant in her personal experience.

[lordbelh]

oWoD Werewolves were pretty annoyingly PC Guardians of Nature way too often. Rather than the rawrfuck hypocritical monsters I always read them to be in the source material. The amount of trouble my Shadow Lord'd go through just cause his kinfolk mate better tend the damn trailer like a good slavic woman, was OUTRAGEOUS!

[Coin]

I remember playing a Fianna who had a Kinfolk mate, and @lordbelh played the mate's werewolf grandfather. Good times. Brief, but good.

[mietze]

For all the rapey mcraperson abuse abuse abuse yawn dark DARKNESS backgrounds that I've looked at for old school kinfolk (and that I hear are common amongst wolfblooded too) I have rarely seen it on public display too.

I think that most people exercise some degree of discretion in how much they shove that in people's faces unless they are OOCly sure that it won't cause a stir. I don't know that I think that's a /bad/ thing, since the people who do shove it indiscriminately tend to have other major boundary issues, in my experience.

Even most vampire/ghoul people I know are also similarly careful. I have seen some really super surprising reactions IC and OOC to relatively mild things. After you've had a few OMG TRIGGER YOU EVIL PERSON HOW COULD YOU reactions to stuff like a vampire casually slapping their ghoul that mouthed off to them and sending them away, or references to property, ect, I know that I tend to be a little more mindful. Do I think people flipping out ooc like that is odd given the theme yeah, but I find it hard to blow off when I have upset someone /that much/ OOCly whether I meant to or not, so I tend to try and get some idea as to whether it would be OK to imply or RP out things that some find upsetting before I know it won't or I think it probably won't. If that makes sense.

[lordbelh]

@mietze I think you're right. There are a lot of people out there who will try to attach a stigma of being Bad People, just because what's happening IC is bad. Rather than attract that sort noise, they'll just not be too obvious about it. I'll do the same thing if I'm honest. Also cuts down on having to deal with Saviors. Which is also kind of a pity, because those can be cool storylines. Just not when random bumfuck SUPPOSEDLY evil vampire is the one trying to come to the rescue.

[Misadventure]

Yes, I have not personally seen any Kinfolk/Wolfblooded abuse other than in a house rules sense, and feeling left out of play. Mind, abuse isn't the critical thing here, I use it as it's a variant on a common RP bit, the friendship or romantic relationship.

My topic, the direction I am going in, is trying to get players to at least sometimes explicitly approach a scene as a chance to portray something specific, hopefully in a mindset where displaying an IC negative is still seen as an OOC positive. Show off that alcoholism, flakiness, cowardice, bullying, anger, caprice, arrogance, lack of direction, addiction, misplaced anger, and everything else! If you don't like playing that way forever, then makes scenes about explicitly trying to over come it, failing sometimes, backsliding, and still coming out better on the end. Meanwhile the players had something good to play through. Hopefully waving that giant flag (thats actually a game design term) will let others KNOW the player is portraying negative traits on purpose, and respond with their own less than perfect in character actions.

Anything to get players to stop trying portray perfect characters, who put up with nothing negative from anyone ever. (BTW the I don't put up with any shit" is a great trope to prove wrong, to backslide on, and so on). Anything to get people to stop worrying about coming out on top, or that others will shove them down if they stop trying to come out on top.

Unless Mary Sue RP is your thing. Usually can't do that with multiple perfect stars, but of that floats your boat ...

What I wonder about being asking too much is players being willing to share their scenes and the outcomes. Public logs, or hints at good and bad events in other scenes without it becoming a pride or pity party. A black eye and some dark looks, post-high jitters, just some signs so people see whats going on, again without invite the whitehat brigade.

ETA: if one player shows negatives things off ICly, and others don't go for a perfection based response, then maybe players will also get used to portraying characters who deal with non-ideal situations often, and they won't feel the need to KILL someone just because they don't toe a line utterly.

[mietze]

I don't know, with the people I choose to rp with on a regular basis, they all are already doing that (portraying flaws). Maybe because I don't find RP that fun with perfectly perfect PCs, so I don't end up playing with them much outside of ginormous scenes.

It can be a bit of a balance though. My ideal is someone who has a PC with flaws, who RPs them, but who is /also/ capable of give and take and noticing/playing off others' flaws too. Because there are some people who are so in love with their broken PC that sometimes they become very self centered as far as needing that to be the focus of all scenes you have with them. (The If Only People Bothered to Unwrap My Awesome PC but Instead They're Bothering Me With Their Own Stuff people--I bet everyone has experienced that too.)

I don't know if you need a flag for that, so much as just observe. You'll learn a lot about what people are capable of handling and if they'll be fun by seeing their reactions to /others/ in a scene, how they handle others' reactions, and how they respond to your flaws or showing weakness (To me, arrogance, rudeness. ect is a weakness too, I'm not talking about Somebody Rescue Me here. )

Someone who can give and take frailty/flaw/danger is awesome. Someone who only wants you to be the audience for their character development usually ends up being boring/a lot of work.