I don't know if it's the right question. I think a better one is to ask if you want PCs to have complete control to be able to attack/kill/do whatever to other PCs, regardless of the kind of attack, whether physical, social, whatever. I think if the answer is yes, then you don't need to really restrict social skills that remove agency. If the answer is no, then I think you remove them.
@Apos But are they jarred out of it? If I responded to your disagreement with insults for example it'd have been as likely to put you on the defensive and just dismiss everything I'm saying ('Arkandel is just a fucking idiot' - you might actually have been right about that
) as to actually take what I argued under consideration.
It's very difficult to look at someone calling you names and admit they have a point at the same time, you know?
While the last 20 pages have been kind of depressing, I think the whole, 'Wait I'm doing harm by my posts and people are getting upset at me because I am unconsciously belittling their life experiences' and people in turn getting insulting actually very clearly was getting through a lot faster and more clearly than the more reasoned and calm arguments that were posted earlier.
@deadculture Yeah we'll probably disagree on what makes harm. But look, a lot of the posts weren't trying to start a dialogue and win converts, and that's the problem. It was people reflecting on their life experiences and shitty things that happened to them, and it was a lot like some random asshole barging into a conversation of people that all had been mugged to chide them on not being safe when the dude lives in a safe neighborhood. The conversation should have just been, 'hey, that happens, keep an eye out, but it isn't about you', but guys were very desperately trying to make it about them. If you don't wanna say harmful, I definitely wouldn't say it was helpful either.
@three-eyed-crow said in What does Immersion mean to you in MUs?:
@pyrephox said in What does Immersion mean to you in MUs?:
For me, it's a lot more about setting building than mechanics. The more a world or setting 'holds together' and operates by consistent rules (even if they're complex or hidden from the players), the more that I get excited about it, and the more 'immersed' I feel in it. Mechanics rarely enhance or detract from that, for me, unless they're really egregious or contradict the 'fluff'.
I'm the same way. I can RP with a decent degree of immersion even in something like a Gdoc, which I know a lot of players can't, because there's no skeleton of a world to hang anything on. But if I feel like the internal consistency of the setting doesn't have any meaning, or that my actions as a player don't carry any weight? I lose it, whatever systems are in place.
Players who I don't feel are playing thematically are a far bigger problem for me than staff or code most of the time, I will just own that. I've been in this game long enough that I'm quiet about it and try to tune it out. I don't have the strength to be a scold in me. But, it is a thing.
There's kind of a sliding scale there for what will ruin someone's immersion by seeing characters that in small ways or big contradict someone's understanding of the setting. I find that most of the conversations about Wrong Funning people come from this, of some character that's just too contradictory and snaps other people out of it with a, 'Okay yeah but that character can't exist though' type vibe. Like the movie star perfect looks in a post apocalyptic setting without running water or whatever.
@mietze Yeah, I wasn't trying to make a value judgment on whether it's good or bad there, just that I believe people will use the systems, to contrast with the posts arguing they'd go unused. I do think that simpler systems will get used more, particularly if the introduction to them is fun and engaging. I think the drawback is simple systems are really great for cooperative play, and help create fun RP between friends, but I think anything for PVP needs to be more robust. Simpler systems means staff oversight and judgment calls, and even if a staff member is fair, our community's trust levels when it comes to PVP is not great.
But in order to avoid that, I think we need to have really detailed systems that have characters do incremental change and define what their characters will and won't do, and probably detail how their initial stances with other characters would be, and how their relationships shift and change. I think that's amount of bookkeeping can be successful if it also tries to make the development of that fun, and play to a lot of players really wanting to define their characters likes and dislikes, and providing meaningful incentives for characters to have pronounced vulnerabilities, and making some required. IE, a character that trusts no one, has no empathy, and is stubborn and unmovable is socially toxic and no one would have any reason to ever involve them in anything, and making those kinds of tradeoffs clear.
@deadculture I even understand the kind of defense. "Well, I'm involved in a hobby and something that I've always considered net positive. Sure, there's bad spots, and I can picture these things happening, but I have never witnessed anything like it should it stands to reason that these are far less common than it sounds and it might be overstated." That's kind of the mental process that started from this stuff about sexism and assault in gaming, and it's the last part of that defense that's the problem.
Because no one here seems like a big enough asshole to actively be turning a blind eye to something as loathsome as assault or overt abuse, and they sure as fuck don't feel it's fair to be grouped in with it. Everyone here gets that. But when they say, 'Well, since I haven't seen any signs of it, I feel like it has to be overstated', that's where the shit hits the fan, because no, lord no, LORD NO it is not anywhere close to true. It is pervasive and constant and that's why so many posters here gets enraged when they see the, 'but there's two sides guys!' polite dismissal. Because that kind of the unconscious, 'well, benefit of a doubt time' that is a large reason why this kind of abuse stays as pervasive as it is. So right, it's probably better to let the topic change if you still have that, 'well, these assault victims probably are being too loud or I wanna withhold judgement'. It's really not the time or place, and confronting them is pretty damned cruel when they aren't exactly looking to debate about it.
I think that this stuff comes down to tradeoffs and just what staff are willing to deal with, and more importantly, what they enjoy doing. Like I worry that we'd drift into talking about design in a way of best practices, when a well run sandbox game with no metaplot could be infinitely better than a plot driven game that just isn't run well, and I think because of people's experiences on good games they might be more inclined to say, 'this is the best way to do it' when really it was just colored by that particular approach being well done.
So on balancing the need to be a protagonist that a lot of players are after, I really think of it as a general scale. I mean sure, if a single player out of 500 goes and kills the space slug and saves the world, other players might be cranky and jealous about that. If 100 out of the 500 do it, while there was 4 other also very relevant stories for each of the other hundred, then that mitigates complaints from anyone but a handful. And if staff doesn't want to deal with those kinds of headaches, then they either don't do it, or try to change the game to the point where the headaches are minimized.
Similarly I think of different tools as just tradeoffs. Like I just don't have a dark version of staff invisibility. I personally feel the cost in trust outweighs the gains of me being able to run around the grid and spontaneously create RP on people that don't suspect it that would enjoy the surprise. Conversely, I hide other information for narrative reasons that I think don't have the same kind of problems I want to avoid but have large gains, and I don't think this is a right or wrong thing, just preference by a staffer on their game.
I think it's only interesting in so much where you can say, "Hey want to play a video game?" to someone completely unfamiliar with MUs and it doesn't come across as misleading.
I do use the soap opera thing as a general analogy for roster characters pretty often, when talking to players. For people very uncomfortable with playing a roster character, often they hate the idea of not living up to others' ideal of what the character should be, or being a close enough interpretation to a previous player. Talking about the whole different actor taking on the same role helps a lot of people be reassured about that, particularly when most other players are willing to roll with anything jarring to immersion when someone just has a different take on a character.
I personally see PBs as being interpretive, so I lean towards letting people change them, but I can understand other games that see them as a more hard definition and wouldn't want them changed.
@thenomain No man, I read it, but the problem is you keep giving yourself some wiggle room here with, 'well both sides'. And I think it's very, very, very important you divorce that. I remember that thread with a blow up on a star wars game in CG with Soresu I think it was, it definitely happened on Arx, and it happened here. Don't give yourself mentally an out by saying they were partially at fault.
@buttercup said in Buttercup's Playlist:
I am a bit relieved to be done with him in some sense. There is a large gap in immaturity where players associate characters with their players. I had seen a lot of it and understand this is a natural tendency for any medium like this. I took Tovell (the pious and dutiful knight) off the roster to sort of just compare experiences. I kept my use of him pretty much unknown and the difference in how I was treated as a player was amazing. Some of the same people that were crap OOCly to me with one alt were friendly, welcoming, and utterly different on the unstated alt. I enjoyed the OOC experience of playing a good-guy far far more.
In fairness to that, there's a marked difference between outright hostility ooc and just people being guarded, though. If someone is an antagonist, a lot of people just aren't comfortable being extremely communicative ooc because they feel they could be considered disingenuous if they then need to work contrary to you, or want to avoid ooc pressure over IC decisions. Anyone can be really friendly and chill when they know there is absolutely nothing at stake for doing so, and I tend to pay closer attention to the people that are that way when they know their own characters are at risk.
I think most things like this are a balance between the enjoyment of one person and the continuity of the game or immersion of other players. Most wrongfun type stuff are arguments because one person's enjoyment is jarring for other people and they feel like it diminishes their fun, and I think it's just a careful compromise between the two, whether it's about theme, or minute details that are meaningful to one person because of their real world expertise, or allowed character types or PBs or anything.
For me I just allow respecs that don't change a character's core concept, would invalidate previous RP, or are too jarring because of degree. I think that limits the abuse cases while avoiding punishing simple mistakes.
RL is really, really tough for her right now. 2020 hit her over and over again in a dozen different ways. Talked just short of a month ago.
Well I think @faraday is right in that there's some apple/oranges going on because people think of very different things with sheets and they are used in really different ways. I mean they can be used in narrative games to have secrets where reveals and discovery is part of the fun, and the pacing of stories, and in those games there's a lot of necessary concealment just for fun. It would no more sense in those games to reveal a sheet than it would be to tell everyone the ending of movies or books.
In other places that are PRP driven it's necessary for players to communicate oocly about information in order to effectively run things. And in other places again with a more competitive vibe then it can become vital to have clear distinctions between what is ICly justifiable and what's not. I don't think there's a one size fits all, but I do think it's important for games to kind of customize what's accessible based on the mood they want to have and what behavior they expect from players.
@mietze What I more meant was there might be an expectation that MUs are much better structured and more tightly policed than they usually are. Anyone coming from a different RP environment might be expecting something that's more cohesive and friendly.
@faraday said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
@apos said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
And people wanna post their random flyby criticisms and throw shade without it ever being thrown at them so I dunno how you do that and make a healthy environment that allows people to talk about flaws in games or people without it becoming personal.
Uh... by not throwing shade? I mean, not all criticism has to be rendered with a sledgehammer, right? You can say "I don't like something" without turning it into a personal attack like "I don't like this thing you built and I think you're dumb for having built it and ZOMG can't you even see how dumb this is what's the matter with you?" There are things in this hobby that are objectively horrible and probably don't deserve kid gloves, but the vast majority of these flamefests are over disagreements as trivial as whether somebody likes chocolate or vanilla.
Yeah I agree completely but I think in order to do that the mods would have to be really proactive about snipping things that are provocative without even meaning to be in order to keep it civil. Like for example, someone could say, 'I don't like softcode'. Fine, okay. No one would object to that. Then how about, 'Softcode is stupid, it should not be used anymore. I can't believe anyone would seriously do it with the options available. The 90s called, they want their code back.' Now that's getting provocative, and it's phrased in a way that's combative. That's not a personal attack, but of course some people would take it personally, and it's understandable if they do. The problem is that I think people would only be chill with moderating the really, really egregious things that go miles past that, and that over the top stuff only happens when someone is crazy (hi @Nemesis ) or long after the first mild provocations spiraled into that, and it would have to be snipped earlier to keep things civil imo.