I generally think of it on two scales of investment and fun. Someone could be super invested and be having zero fun, and still want to play despite being miserable because they can't bear the thought of flushing down the character/stories they are invested in. Someone could be having a ton of fun and not be invested at all. I think when either of those is chipped away, people take off.
@rebekahse said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
As someone who sticks around these games for the day-to-day narrative/social RP aspects rather than the endless cycle of PRPs, I get frustrated when a game's setting goes out of its way to remove every negative societal trait that I would potentially have to deal with. Maybe sometimes I want to play Joan Holloway or Betty Draper, you know?
Games set in crappy/oppressive worlds have flourished before, but it seems like there was some seismic shift over the last few years where everyone got worried they'd be labeled some sort of '-ist' and now everything's sanitized and pretty boring.
I'm pretty sympathetic to this. My take though is it's not a seismic shift so much as there just being less games. Like if someone wanted to make super grimdark gritty Gorean style Arx, I wouldn't think they were wrong or anything like that, just it isn't what I was going for, and I hope people do make more games that can appeal to things that are more mutually exclusive, like just whether something has a more competitive rather than collaborative vibe.
I'm definitely not trying to remove conflict entirely because of course that would be boring, but it's just what kind of stories staff wants to tell. Like I'm perfectly down for telling stories about classism and the abuses of power therein, and if someone was looking to play like some of the tropes that deal with hard lives on my game, I'd nudge them in that direction (and have). I think the issue is less sanitizing settings and more what kind of RP someone is looking for in an environment and whether the game is set up to accommodate it, regardless of theme, lemme give an example.
Say Jill really wants to RP a character as dealing with institutionalized disadvantages, and enjoys the RP from overcoming systemic struggles. Okay, maybe racism and sexism doesn't exist on the setting, but classism does, and she rolls up a character that's impoverished and could get pushed around for being poor. That still might not be what she's looking for, for a couple reasons, even if it fits the bill.
Because when people want these conflicts, the way they find them fun can be really wildly different. Like some people really want an organic feeling of antagonists jumping at them unexpectedly. That can be a blast for some people. But if you have a super collaborative environment, people just might not be playing antagonists at all, even if it's implicit in the setting, unless you have key ways of encouraging that and making sure it's okay. Basically it veers towards full consent, and that can be murder towards immersion and organic development as people fall back and carefully construct encounters to be mindful of comfort levels. Some people would find that zero fun, since they just want to jump right in, let people hit them as hard as they can, and roll with it. Most RPIs are like that, and other people would find that INCREDIBLY offputting, and quit immediately if they had that because they did not sign up to be bullied the moment they hit the grid.
Games might have the exact same theme, but wildly different ways of approaching player conflict, and it could either give a player what they want or not at all.
@faraday Yeah, that. Twice I've quietly changed storylines because I just had someone give me a polite heads up that someone lost a loved one in the way that a story was moving towards depicting. It wasn't hard to write around it, and no one made a big deal about it.
Every player in a MU is effectively creating content whenever they rp, so they just generate stories under general guidelines with staff maybe deciding, 'these stories are just too big headaches and we aren't going to do those here'. That's never going to be exhaustive for what will bother the hell out of people, but frankly I've had way more experiences with people being reasonable and politely opting out of something with others then trying to accommodate them than I have people royally freaking out.
@sg said in How do you construct your characters?:
@arkandel said in How do you construct your characters?:
"oh, no, that plot twist wouldn't work for a MUSH"
But really, what twists do work for a MUSH? I'm trying to think of one that I've encountered that turned out well or was interesting for the players rather than the staff running it having just a laugh. More often than not, it has months of planning and RP being thrown down the drain.
I feel I've had some cases that worked well. I don't think it is something I could do except for a game in running, but what I've tried to do is make a few main, visible overarching plots that everyone has access to, and then dozens of secret subplots. It has been extremely gratifying seeing player reactions to things I planned out a couple years ago as surprises. I think one of the keys is to just make the plots as internally consistent as possible. Sure, some will never go anywhere or be rendered irrelevant, but more than enough will work to be really worthwhile.
Improve accessibility and playability to people unfamiliar to MUs without compromising the quality of the environment.
@wildbaboons Your character is an example of a slight tweak in approach, in that the first secret was imo extremely poorly designed on my part and just didn't do anything to connect the character to the plot, so when it made sense to overhaul it we did, and I think it just works better to connect him. There's a number like that, where I just misjudge what I think players might follow up on that doesn't really work out that way, and I'm trying to re-approach them to focus on current issues that can help someone get more immediately involved rather than a very vague, broad scope.
I care about tempo proportionally to the scene, and what's the scene about. I think of it as part of mood. There's a huge difference between characters bantering or scenes with a lot of gravitas, and I'd just want everyone on the same page there.
I don't enjoy scenes with strict pose order. I honestly can't think of one I did. I can do them, but they always feel like work to me. Always just meeting obligations. I'll do it if invited but I would never seek it out, and would prefer to not do any RP scene like that.
@emda The temptation of anyone creating their own theme is trying to tell everything about it all at once. People make a setting. They are understandably excited about the setting. They want to share their excitement.
Can't do it. Need to approach it from what's important, and fill in details as they are asked. Yes, someone will desperately want to know whatever excruciatingly minor pedantic detail they obsess over and there's a million of those but have to focus on what are the core story elements, even if a huge percentage of that will be hidden and just slowly come out as the stories are told.
@faraday Nah man I really think people just are making it hard because of the burning need to explain in exhaustive detail. You can break down different economies into trope approaches too. You can say post-apocalyptic barter, you can say utopian without any effective economy due to needs all being practically met, you can say bladerunner dystopian. People are familiar with the genres of sci fi, if you are making a grimdark warhammer 40k esqe game, they'll get from the get go that it's not utopian. So keep it to broad themes and address questions as necessary.
I think people picture that I'm blithely waving off the questions people will ask. I'm not though. I'm saying most just aren't story critical, and and are generally going to be people having a burning desire to know everything about a setting so they can make their head canon click.
@faraday said in Sci Fi/Opera Originality:
@apos said in Sci Fi/Opera Originality:
People are used to approaching things as the protagonist of the story, and sci fi is pretty steeped in discovery, so they want to be the one to do that, and it is impossible to do that for a full player base.
That is exactly the sort of thing I'm getting at as to why original sci-fi settings are so hard. Players want to do this. Sure you can try to fight it but you're swimming upstream. Good luck with that.
I think you're saying that, 'Unless you are willing to accommodate that, a sci fi game will not be successful because it will alienate its fans.' And I'm actually saying the opposite. 'If you -try- to accommodate that, your game will fail. It can only be successful if you are willing to alienate them.'
Anyone wanting to run a sci fi game with an original theme has to be incredibly disciplined in how they approach knowledge because it is a rabbit hole that they might never escape from. They have to be able to be strict when separating the elements they need to get across. They need to be able to divide up fundamental baseline elements that every character must know, from those that are roleplay critical for one person or small group to move a story forward, from those critical for one person, to those that would be nice to know and add flavor to headcanon but are irrelevant for many people in their every day RP.
People creating a game are excited about that setting and they will naturally -want- to answer every question. They should not do this. There will always be more questions than there is time to answer, and they need to approach it in a disciplined way or else their time is going to be dominated by a handful of very curious individuals and their game will fail because they don't make enough story to appeal to people that are less demanding.
It's really about buying time. Someone wanting to make an original theme game has to have it be fun so people are RPing and entertaining one another, so then they get the time necessary to answer the questions that flesh out the world. If they try to do it at the start, they will never, ever get the time, and the people that would be creating activity will drift off, and the people they massively invested in on a personal level will have nothing to do and also leave. So trying to answer all of Engineer Bob's questions about how the warp core actually works before they have vibrant story going is going to destroy their game. And Bob might quit, and that's too bad, but more reasonable Engineer Phil will be okay with getting the answers in 3 or 4 months when things are more stable.
Like, I wrote for the better part of a year before starting Arx. Fantasy games are under much less scrutiny than sci fi, sure. But all told, that was what, maybe novelette length worth in lore? Now there is well up into the thousands of pages, and it's still mostly from me, but it's about buying yourself the time to do that. And it cannot be done by trying to accommodate the neediest people that aren't in turn entertaining others.
@seraphim73 said in Sci Fi/Opera Originality:
I think that the debate @Apos is having with @surreality an @faraday comes down to the differences between sci-fi worlds and fantasy worlds (someone already made much of this point, and I apologize for missing who it was): You can tell someone that your world is low-magic feudal fantasy and they can play in it while you hash out the details; you can't tell someone that your world is high-tech meritocratic space exploration and let them play in it while you hash out the details.
Like I get that and I'm not trying to diminish the challenges in it, but I just don't think that's true. Star Wars, Dune, Warhammer 40k, Fading Suns, imo all of those could fall under the fantasy umbrella even so. But also take any near future sci fi, cyberpunk and so on, all of those also are also minimized and simple too, so imo you are pretty much just left with sci fi settings trying to define something completely alien.
And even there, I still don't agree. A creator just doesn't have to chase down all the rabbit holes. They could start with a dozen different character broad tropes, define really what they'd need to know in order to pursue the meaningful storylines to them, and then focus only on anything absolutely critical to their experiences as they occur. It just needs immense discipline on what someone is willing to invest time in or not.
I just don't think the genre matters nearly as much as people think it does. You can feel I'm way off the mark or incorrect about that, but I just do not think the underlying principles are that different, just how someone meaningfully invests their time creating it.
Defining social combat from the perspective of the aggressor is not difficult really, but defining it from the perspective of the defender is really difficult. In physical combat, not many people argue about coded Dodge or defense, except in systemless games where some jackass refused to ever be hit. But in social combat, defining how vulnerable someone should be too an attack implies a degree of customization of approach that only the most anal systems bother with in physical combat. I think there has to be one of two approaches or a combination of the two. Either you have it be free form with the attacker having to demonstrate a solid understanding of the defender and what would reasonably work on them, or you have to codedly define on the defender's side what would not work on them in advance with a system that illustrates their strengths and weaknesses in a fair way that shows their points of immunity and vulnerability. So people cannot define new ones on the fly because they really hate an outcome, not an approach.
@seraphim73 I think metagaming's a slippery term since we all know clearly positive ooc communications (people creating fun collaborative experiences), and clearly problematic and abusive ones, and then some really wide range in between that people are going to lean in the more IC or more ooc camp.
I lean a lot more heavily to IC myself, since I think some ooc communications are problematic that other people don't- for example, I think powers to detect lying are a bad idea on a MU, other people think they are fine/good for games, and that could be a core part of many social systems. I don't think it's too big a deal, most people know abuse cases when they see them.
I still have kind of an outsider's perspective when it comes to this, since I've only been on MUs for a fraction of the time as most people on the board. I see high energy, really enthusiastic proactive players often in conflict with older, more experienced players and it really took me aback, since I didn't really see why they would come in conflict. From my perspective, a lot of the really older players are very good at developing the RP they want, only the RP they want, and are intensely protective of that and are not inclined to welcome things that could disrupt that. That isn't great for fostering environments that's welcoming and encouraging players to be really proactive.
I think you can kind of look at helping proactive players from two angles- giving them the tools they need, and giving them an environment they need. And then you can break it down further.
What for the first part, someone needs to be very easily to get any kind of information to run a story. Easy access to theme, easy access to specific questions about the world, how to make it consistent with the game, what kind of rules there are. All that needs to be very easy, and that can be tools to very easily access it, and an environment that encourages someone to do so. Brainstorming is part of this. How easy is it look at other stories that happened in the game? How easy is it for someone that is new to build off existing stories, and cross reference stories? How can they find out about PCs, and their hooks and goals, and make things meaningful to those PCs on a personal level? How do they know what people want, what stories they can create that will be rewarding? All these kind of brainstorming elements can have tools created to facilitate them and an environment that fosters asking that. People build off shared creative energy- you see a ton of drive in creating a game because it's new and fun, and not a whole hell of a lot in keeping a game running. Because the former is more of a shared creative experience. So it has to be fun. And that means encouraging interaction that makes it fun.
With the second part, that means making it incredibly easy to get people together, roleplaying, with as easy to use and convenient tools possible for running a story as can be realistically done and an environment that makes it fun. For tools, this has to be very accessible, something intuitive or easily explained, and not feel like a ton of work with the ability to make mistakes without it being a disaster. Communication tools in particular are huge since MU players are mostly flakes, and the more things that can easily get them together and on the same page the better. But I do think the environment being fun is more important.
All it takes is staff tolerating a single negative, whiny player that shows up to stories and makes unreasonable demands. If they tolerate Negative Nancy or Whining William, that proactive player's drive is dead. And staff not saying, 'Sorry, you don't fit in here, best of luck to you, William' means that you are saying, 'We are keeping William, and it's okay if he drives off Driven Dave or Proactive Paula'. So all the tools in the world are worthless if staff and players are unwilling to enforce an environment that keeps a high standard of behavior.
Now for the third part, making sure someone feels appreciated I think is vital, and I think for a whole hell of a lot of STs, they might get 1 or 2 thank yous, but then they might see 10 people making sadface emoticons of how no one loves them and takes them to plots, or bitching that one person on their plot got a shiny, or someone whining that Proactive Paul gets to go on every story and on and on and on. Again, if those kinds of things are tolerated, I do not believe almost any proactive player's enthusiasm will survive in the environment. Honestly you can give a proactive player all the xp in the world and it won't matter if they get one super negative player that gives them sadface pages every time they do something.
Stomping on the last behaviors of people complaining about exclusion or mad someone else got something I think is vital. I don't think any game can sustain a proactive environment without policing that. In fact, from older players, you see them become more and more insular. Someone whined about how their public event went? Well fine, they do private events for their friends until the game shuts down. It takes someone that is unbelievably hardcore to just blow off dipshits calling random things favoritism and keep doing public events and creating for RP and ignoring people desperately trying to dump sand on the fire of their enthusiasm. I think there's probably no more than one person like that in a couple hundred.
For most, the moment they get pushback or a complaint, they are done. So reduce the pushback and complaints, and the latter is harder, because it's from players, not staff.
@rizbunz If the population is small, that can be an advantage in some ways in that you have the time to be incredibly hands on and weave stories specifically for the individual players in a way that a large game can't match. You can think hard about individuals and what they want to see, and also go out of your way for new players and help them get integrated. Generally if people have that kind of attention and are enjoying themselves and having fun, they'll stick around and invite their friends, and growth will follow anyways.
@three-eyed-crow said in Spotlight.:
I feel like a lot of this comes down to the old issue of getting enough GMs/STs to support your players. You can try to mitigate some of this with encouraging player GMs and automating some stuff, but STs are always going to be the attraction to a story game, and demanding they do 100 things in 1 day is neither fair nor reasonable.
Yes and no. It certainly helps, but keep in mind we're talking about recognition and a spotlight, and not the ability to entertain people. Like you take gigantic sandboxes with a few hundred people that feel like it's actually 80 games of 4 people each that all happen to share the same grid. And the reason is that there's no person over PRP runners grabbing someone and making the entire game aware of them, and forcing recognition upon them.
What people care about is that it feels special and exceptional, more often than not. And the more it happens, the less a lot of them care about it. So say like we added 30 staffers, and gemits were a flood. People would no longer care about that, but then anytime I did a special vox hit or something, that people would go apeshit over.
@arkandel said in Spotlight.:
Without getting into pseudo-sociology here, why is spotlight wanted - and in some cases, needed?
What I mean is, we're not really talking about entertainment at this point, or even giving people stuff to do. The issue isn't that a bartender has nothing to do - in fact in many cases it's easier for one to participate in plots, because they wouldn't need to answer questions such as "why would my High Lady be on a rowboat to catch a special rare fish" before they sign up. On a day to day basis a bartender can find scenes easier - they are already at a bar!
So what gives? Why are (some, and not just a few) folks driven to stand out by being assigned prominent positions?
For a lot of people it shows that the effort they put into the game actually mattered. It justifies the work they did, it's the pay off for everything they built towards. Other people are just as happy with numbers going up on a sheet, or numbers going up in some communal thing they are working on, whether that's a spaceship their character lives in, the amount of farms their noble lord has under their control, or the amount of ghouls under their vampire's control. It's about seeing dynamic change in a world that otherwise would be static, and that people -cannot do- in other RP environments.
Think about it. Players in MMOs roleplaying cannot show dynamic change in an environment, and for a tabletop, there's no way that dudes playing a different tabletop would ever know or care what you do. This is basically the only RP format that can essentially create IC celebrities. That's powerful.
@arkandel I've run a ton like that. The people that were gonna complain trend to grouse about the relative value of each part of the story and complain their own is not as big as they would like. You can be disingenuous and try to locally make it seem each part is more valuable than it really is but that is mostly delaying trouble than avoiding it.