Posts made by Aria

@wizz said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Aria

Very much how I want to approach it, but it's always the "coding it for an eight year old" part that is difficult, haha. It's a very complicated topic and I definitely want him to understand why without making him feel awful, so...I dunno. Maybe I'll sleep on it.

@auspice

That's a great suggestion! It's hard to know if he would appreciate the distinction yet, but it certainly couldn't hurt to look into resources.

Here's the thing that I think lots of people forget:

Kids are really smart. Like, a lot smarter than we give them credit for. Definitely the coding it for an eight year old is difficult, but... I think a lot of times, adults get way more worked up about stuff than kids do.

We used to see all this hand-wringing about "OMG, how do I explain the <whisper> gay lifestyle to my children?!?" and it's like... look, Susan. No one is asking you to explain leather daddies or something to your four year old. You can chill. The few times I've had to explain what 'gay' is to a kid, it's pretty much a case of "Well, they love each other just like your mommy and daddy do. It's just that they're both girls." And usually the kid is like, "Okay! Can we color now?"

I think the emphasis on "because we don't want to make other people uncomfortable" idea will resonate pretty well if you can word it in a way he relates to.

@wizz said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

My third-grade kiddo's principal just called and said he drew a bunch of naked women in his math book.

I am completely at a loss. He is really into art, draws all sorts of things, but I have been really careful as to what he's exposed to in terms of age-appropriate content in shows and movies and I have no idea where this would come from. (Just curiosity, I guess?)

I also have no idea where to go for guidance on this stuff...I know my super conservative fam would go the shame route and I really, really don't like that and won't do it.

Just sucks feeling like I am fumbling around in the dark on this one...this is a subject that seems very easy to fuck up.

I'm not a parent, so definitely take my advice with a grain of salt, but.....

I think the best approach would be talking to him about how curiosity about bodies is natural, but there are appropriate times and places for that. Not because it's bad or shameful in any way, but because bodies are very personal things belonging to the people that inhabit them, so it's important not to make other people uncomfortable with unwelcome displays or unwelcome questions.

But, like, some kind of eight year old translated version of that?

I literally met my husband playing one of their games and they were both always lovely, intelligent, and kind the few times I interacted with them.

Donated and shared.

@aria said in Good TV:

It's NYE and what am I most excited about, besides 2020 fucking off?

New Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.

<weeps> No. Nooooooooooooooo.

It was so bad, you guys.

@arkandel said in Good TV:

@aria How about the third season of Cobra Kai?

I haven't seen any of the seasons of Cobra Kai!

It's NYE and what am I most excited about, besides 2020 fucking off?

New Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.

@rucket said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:

@aria Yeah that's fair enough. But having spent a goodly bit of time on the eastern coast, you just hear a LOT of stories about Philly Sportsball fan (from throwing batteries to booing Santa to braining a dude with a bottle of vodka while he was climbing a street light to dropping F bombs on local media because they're super hyped). There's not really anywhere else in America with that type of fan. Frankly, I find a lot of the antics utterly hilarious.

Ask me about my "Megadeth Security" shirt some time. It's actually a Flyers shirt. >.>

@rucket said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:

@aria said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:

@rucket said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:

@aria said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:

....Unless you're going to set a game in Philadelphia. Because then I expect you to do my city proud and set the Four Seasons next to a crematorium and a dildo store as Ben Franklin intended.

Plus plenty of opportunities for interesting NPCs for Philly MUSH: https://nypost.com/2018/02/05/eagles-fan-thinks-eating-horse-poop-is-cool/

Believe me, there is nothing horrible you can say about Philadelphia that Philadelphians haven't already said themselves.

I wasn't actually trying to say something horrible! Philly sports fans are so f'n crazy you can literally make some wild and crazy NPCs for any sort of modern day MUSH.

Oh! Well, yes. That is very true.

Meet the perfect example of the standard Philly attitude above. Being sandwiched between New York and DC, we definitely have a chip on our shoulder about being forgotten and overlooked despite having plenty of good things. The assumption is that if outsiders are talking about us, they're talking shit (in this case literally) and only we're allowed to do that about our hometown.

Also, everyone and everything is just a little bit extra here. Love it or hate it, we're going to let you know. The city is pretty much permanently set on "These speakers go up to 11", whether we're celebrating or rioting. They tend to look very similar.

@rucket said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:

@aria said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:

....Unless you're going to set a game in Philadelphia. Because then I expect you to do my city proud and set the Four Seasons next to a crematorium and a dildo store as Ben Franklin intended.

Plus plenty of opportunities for interesting NPCs for Philly MUSH: https://nypost.com/2018/02/05/eagles-fan-thinks-eating-horse-poop-is-cool/

Believe me, there is nothing horrible you can say about Philadelphia that Philadelphians haven't already said themselves.

@warma-sheen said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:

I've never understood why people are willing to blindly accept all kinds of supernatural ridiculousity in a setting, but then something like its setting is just untenable. A million people? In one city in Maine!? That's ridiculous!!!

But... it makes sense that supernatural monsters/creatures have been around since forever and only a teeny tiny sub-percentage of the population has ever been aware of them because the one thing people do really well consistently throughout the history of human existence is keep secrets well.. That part makes sense. Why would anyone question that.

I honestly don't care. It's not a matter of "Wahhhh! This isn't believable." At least not for me. It's a matter of "What game am I supposed to be playing so I make sure my character fits?"

....Unless you're going to set a game in Philadelphia. Because then I expect you to do my city proud and set the Four Seasons next to a crematorium and a dildo store as Ben Franklin intended.

@krmbm said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:

Our last game was set in a small, economically depressed town in the Pacific Northwest (listen i like tropes don't judge me you don't know my life), and we definitely ran afoul of that: why would this town have a four-star Michelin restaurant in it? Oh right, it wouldn't.

Yes! And these things drive me crazy!

I had two PCs on the Reach and I put some solid thought into "Why would these concepts I want to play live in this little town?" and would strip out or add things to their background as needed. Like, my Mage's cabal was there because they were a two-bit shitty punk band that was "on tour" (read: living out of their van as they drove from dive bar to dive bar in towns no one ever heard of) when it finally broke down and they had to get jobs so they could fix it. They ended up squatting in an old farmhouse on the end of town where a major icky rip in the spiritual fabric was because they figured the horrible atmosphere would keep pretty much everyone else away.

Bu then I would run into the max Resources and max Fame actual literal movie star and be like, "....This is hurting my heart whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy please stop. Stahhhhhp. No. :("

@krmbm Oh! Okay, so....

Basically the Reach was, from what I recall -- it's been, like, five years?? -- written to be set in Maine, in a fictional town called Dunlin's Reach. Not even as big as Portland, with it's ~60,000 or so people, and IIRC, had an apocalypse storyline connecting all of the WoD lines set on the game into what was supposed to be a single metaplot.

The thing is, it became huge, by far the biggest WoD MU* on the net at the time. All of those things I mentioned - a major television studio, a casino, masses of nightclubs, etc, - were all things players created. And set in what was supposed to be a very Lovecraftian small town. So as I said, it got super fucky and weird pretty quickly and that thematic drift got worse and worse the bigger the game got. I'm pretty sure the legacy of that game is why you see so many MUs set in the Northeast trying to anticipate the possibility of that by adding in "But there's also a big city!" and some do that a whole lot better than others.

So my bad on assuming you were in alpha and still working on things. I legit was asking that question - and making the suggestion of a big grid if you were trying to both run with that stereotypical Maine feel and accommodate players Doing Things (tm) - because I was on The Reach, wanted to understand what you were shooting for, and trying to help make sure you didn't have to deal with that level of hair-pulling theme drift.

Players will always surprise you! Sometimes it's super awesome and fun. Sometimes you hand them the magic sword to slay the dragon and then watch them stab themselves in the face with it. Either way staff ends up working with whatever players come up with and I figured "Here's a suggestion that will hopefully give you fewer nosebleeds when someone decides they want to set up a NASA launch station in their mansion's backyard." ¯\(ツ)/¯

@ganymede said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:

@aria

You can really avoid this sort of theme drift by creating a setting that you want and forbidding players from fucking with it.

It’s not too hard, but you have to be willing to say “no” and too few staff are willing to do this.

^Bingo. Like I said else-else thread: 75% of the grid playing chess while the other 25% runs off to play Monopoly. It makes it super hard for staff to deal with unless space for both has been built in deliberately.

@auspice said in Why are there so many MUs set in Maine?:

@wildbaboons

I was literally talking to @Aria about this.

My theory is that people are drawn to it because of Lovecraft and Stephen King, but feel like they need a CITY for their WoD/WoD-Lite setting.

The thing is, small town was sort of why those stories worked. The lure of Maine, for me, is that it's quiet, remote, etc. I mean that just makes things even more eery if you're going for something mildly horror-ish.

But I guess people feel that a game must have a city to work, maybe?

This was legit why I was asking in the other thread. I don't think the ad or the game was a bad or anything. I had just read that, scanned a few pages on the site, and wasn't sure if they were skipping the default image of Maine that people have, if the addition of a massive city like that was meant to try to counterbalance the sort of fucky and weird that The Reach turned into when they tried to build a game on what was supposed to be the cultural shorthand of American Gothic horror set in sleepy towns in the Northeast and then players came in and went "Major TV studio! Casino! 48 nightclubs! Whooooooo!", or what.

I like the concept! I thought it was cool.

I also wanted to make sure I hadn't misunderstood something because I do think a game can take a split-the-difference approach as long as that's actually what staff is trying to do. But I would rather ask than be the dude who builds his 114-floor skyscraper for his multibillion dollar telecommunications firm in the middle of Paducah, KY or the person who decides that it totally makes sense to plunk a Red Talon cairn down in the middle of Central Park because there are clearly so many wolves living wild in Manhattan.

@krmbm said in A Regency MU (Conceptual):

Not for nothing, but if @Pyrephox's perfectly reasonable questions, phrased politely and inquiringly, made you feel torn down? Running a game is gonna be brutal.

<blinks>

@testament said in The Woodward Agency:

I have no horse in this, but is having a city of 1 million people important to the game? Genuine question. I live in a city of 500k and I can tell you it's definitely pretty damn big.

In relation to this, what sort of feel are you going for?

I ask because if it's "quiet stretches of big woodsy areas where creepy shit happens", which often seems to be what game-runners are going for when they pick Maine, that can be hard to balance against a city with a massive population.

You would probably need a pretty big grid to do it! Or at least a grid that describes being stretched out over a pretty big swath of land. Otherwise things start getting weird like they did on the Reach.

@roz IME, the two fastest ways for a game to spiral out of staff's control is a) taking on more players than they can handle and b) not communicating (or maintaining) a fairly tight theme re: characters and their backgrounds. There's a tendency to want to be inclusive so as not to stifle creativity or be perceived as "mean", but it just makes it harder to GM when you've got the narrative equivalent of a dozen people in a room for a chess match but three of them have decided they want to go play the Monopoly minigame instead.

FWIW, I didn't read the comments and questions as being particularly critical or negative.

I did, however, read them as being hyperfocused on a level of historical accuracy that it seems the game wouldn't be interested in recreating as indicated in Auspice's original post mentioning satire, comedy, and modern sensibilities because -- as she said -- most of us aren't intimately familiar with the nuanced details of Regency society (do you know the social significance of arriving in a phaeton over a closed carriage?!?) and also because frankly, the Regency era (and broad swaths of history, really) sucked a whole lot for basically anyone who wasn't either wealthy or landed, preferably both, and also preferably both while also being white, straight, and male.

Oh. And born first. Let's not forget the unfortunate lot of the third brother who gets shunted off for an unwanted career in the church because the man needs to have a living!

So basically varying levels of "hot garbage and no fun" for pretty much everyone except those ten people.

Given the general readership of most Regency novels and audience for costume dramas in comparison to those demographics, I sincerely doubt that most potential players want to have 87 scenes in a row of sewing circles, nothing but sewing circles as far as the eye can see, and that a decent amount of realism was going to be punted into a corner never to be mentioned again for the sake of actually being, like..... enjoyable to RP.

And for a final kick in the teeth, 2020 has decided that four of my family members all need to have COVID at once.

Specifically, the family members out in Ohio that I can't do very much to support or help.

The ones who already lost my aunt after she died rather horribly in part because of neglectful hospice care this summer.

There are not enough swear words for this year.

So there's a game called Marrying Mister Darcy that you might want to check out. It's a card game, not a MU*, but I think it could provide some interesting inspiration on setting up characters with, like..... guidelines of what would and would not constitute a 'good' match for them based on certain characteristics they're looking for and things you can do in game.