Best posts made by Arkandel

@Three-Eyed-Crow Sure, although I can't quite say why it'd be the case. Giving the ST some idea of the circumstances that might lead or enable your character to join the story seems pretty reasonable to me.

The kick-off of a new story arc from scratch is often the hardest part. After the PCs have bought in IC it's much easier, but bringing the band together in the first place is often a pain in the ass, and can involve some liberal amounts of handwaving to get it done. I don't think "well, I'll be at the harbor because my character likes the sound of the water and long solitary walks in the dark" or "well, she's stalking rich guys to rob at knife-point" is too much to ask just to help that poor ST out.

@buttercup said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

I hope other players who currently feel the same way will at least make it known and it's enough of an issue to do something about it but I recognize that my current solitary case is not likely warranting of action.

They have. I have. Many have left the game because of this guy. Nothing was done.

There's a line past which the attribution of blame has to include staff as well.

@Ghost said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:

Depending on who you ask, the level of value as to what is on these games and how lasting that value is, even if the game is only open 6 months, varies from person to person. It is, however, very likely that these unapologetic repeat offenders view this hobby as sandcastles made of ether and code where people merely donate their time, and that there is no actual, lasting value aside from what your own self seeks to get out of it.

There is no value we can get out of games other than entertainment and, if we're lucky, some friends made on the way.

It's a really common fallacy in online gaming when it takes up big chunks of our time that there needs to somehow be some sort of return for that investment; is it possible after all that you'll sink 20+ hours of your week (which is easy at 3 hours a night) into something, into anything and see 'nothing' for it at the end? Yes. Yes it is.

I was there when WoW launched its first expansion. There had been players actually shocked - and I mean you'd see reactions ranging from stunned to genuinely angry - because they had sank months of their lives getting amazing gear with finely tuned stats... and now casuals were getting better stuff than that dropping from random regular mobs on opening night. Well, yep, that's a thing. Just like it's a thing in MU* that you could bust your ass for a while only to see the game go down. There's no permanence, implied let alone promised; we get what we put in.

But having said that it IS damn hard to not have that subconscious expectation regardless. You're doing all this shit, it can't really have been for nothing... right?

Right?

@Tinuviel Look, for all we look for supervillains on MSB the truth is most people aren't out to create utter havoc and be dicks to everyone around them. The majority of the time it's just us nerds, some with assorted deficiencies in social skills, being awkward as shit to each other and coming off the wrong way.

That's why I advise staff to have more tools in their bag'o'tricks than the banhammer. It'll still come in handy eventually, they should have it for those occasions, but not every case will be about a complete shithead; the majority won't be.

@Rook said in MU and Alternate Channels:

@Arkandel
So you would no-contact two players after one incident, to the point of banning public RP?

Nope, that's not what I said. What I did say is that staff have to make difficult choices based on - often, and necessarily - limited information.

You glossed over (for the sake of argument, I get it) the 'why' and 'what' that the Aggressor did, in your example. So help me understand your example here. Are you saying that the Victim would write up logs that never happened? Yes, that is something that Staff will be hard-pressed to catch or even prove, I agree. That is a hell of a lot of effort and underhandedness, a surprising amount actually, just to 'take someone out' of the IC scene for your own personal advancement. Shit, is that the type of crap that we're talking about, the extremes that happen out there?

Although faking logs are a thing that's happened, let's exclude that possibility for now. In my experience it's usually hearsay, third party testimonies, maybe a disdainful or dismissing attitude on public channels, indications of OOC metagaming, occasional convenient lack of dice rolling when it's in their favor, whatever it is. You know this stuff.

So what I'm saying is if there's no smoking gun where the guy sent someone a dick pic or whatever then staff need to make a call; is the person contacting them being too sensitive? Are they actually trying to use them to get out of an IC bind? Or are they simply justified and there's actual dickery going on?

And if so, what do they do to fix it if it's not clear enough? You said you don't like no-contact rules, but what do you go with? You're staff, you got to make up your mind - even inaction is a decision.

In fact inaction is a very common decision.

@Ganymede said in MU and Alternate Channels:

This isn't an issue of proof. You have to presume that it is true because the issue is: should staff take action if a player is telling truths to affect another player's RP.

But that's reframing the issue because my - primary - concern with it is the lying part; of course I want to know if a guy is Rex. I wanted to know Max was Custodius when I was told.

Circumstances do matters, but up to a point. For example if I'm stalking you, and you go to a new game hoping to keep a low profile but @Meg outs you to me then it's a nasty thing to do, but I wouldn't say it's an actionable one - unless she's staff, and she abused her position to do it.

Spreading false rumors and allowing the consequences of people's actions to catch up to them are two different things though.

@Z-01 said in MU and Alternate Channels:

EDIT: Not suggesting that @Meg here is one of those people, I have no idea what happened with them.

@Meg has five fucking monitors. She can take anything we throw at her.

@surreality I admit my awareness of that situation past my own brief window of involvement is minimal. I was mostly messing with @Ghost, I don't actually know a lot about what happened.

The keys to a good social confrontation system (for me):

• Ease of use - if it's too complex it won't be used.
• Clarity of result. People shouldn't use them as mind control ('I win! You're no longer catholic.')
• Overall use; this is tricky since it's a cultural trait, but the game should be encouraging social risk, PrPs and metaplot as much as the physical equivalents.
• Allow flexibility. This always bugged me; you can be a specialized 'niche' fighter ('I'm a swordsman') and still be generally super useful in nearly every combat scenario, but the 'social arena' is so wide it's hard to be good at intimidation, diplomacy, manipulation, catching lies to match an equal range of social challenges.

Anything I missed?

@Paris said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:

After I left my SO (and that game), they, their friends, and this person especially, tracked my IP and kept a list of known sightings and updated IPs, and either got me banned, or hunted my PCs with their alts while using their staffbits to track me while I was unfindable-- even if we'd never interacted before. They were allowed to do this until I took a long break, and then on my return changed my writing style and the type of character I played. I was able to avoid them for years after that, but about ten years later, my ex found out who I was, and started right back up.

Wtf do you find these people? Between that and the person who reported you to staff for the plot (she?) repeatedly asked you to run... damn. That's some big bucket of badshit crazy right there.

@HelloProject said in [A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like](/topic/1618/a-constructive-thread-about-

So, if nothing else, I do understand the fear, even if I've only experienced a few race things in MUing.

The only weird thing about race I've encountered that stands out is how few non-white PBs are used overall. It doesn't seem to just be that we 'play what we know' because lots of people play the opposite gender, or green-skinned aliens or robots or whatever. It always seemed strange though.

@Tinuviel I would buy that more if I wasn't on St. Petersburg to see all those Russian stereotypes ("everyone drinks vodka ALL the time... comrade!").

I see where you're coming from though.

@HelloProject It's all different, but that doesn't mean it's better. It definitely doesn't mean there's no racism, in fact just the opposite; in Europe racism is a powerful, ascending force that's threatening to take over governments.

For example there are apartment rental ads on newspapers openly stating "no Albanians"; hardcore stuff like that aren't hidden well beneath the surface. Or someone's economic status could be assumed from their ethnic group; in countries flooded with refugees seeing a brown skinned person might be instantly associated with someone who's broke, looking for work or panhandling.

Politics are also closely associated with reality - there's very little buffer between what you see on TV and what impacts your life. The USSR falls apart? There are suddenly Russians everywhere trying to make a living. War breaks out in the middle east? Thousands of refugees are showing up in boats (or drowning in your seas) within a few short weeks. It's all ... direct, in your face. It's not necessarily happening to you but it sure does affect you right away, something North American folks might not be used to.

@Salty-Secrets I think sometimes we attribute people-problems to system-problems.

@surreality said in Social Combat: Reusing Physical Combat System?:

@Coin They're definitely out there, yeah. (Especially irksome are the ones that love to talk endlessly on channels about the ninety things that they could do to <any random person>, but flip their shit if there's even a snowball's chance in hell that someone could do something that might have an impact on them somehow. )

I've found people love to brag on channels, and that those more prone to doing so are those who actually play the least; they just like to imagine what they would do with their stats and powers, but it's rarely to the point they put that to a test. This often comes with comments like "I'm considering making him pay for what he just said!" - but always exclusively on the channel and where the target of that ire doesn't have access.

It usually don't mean anything. People, as noted, don't like to 'lose' even if 'losing' is actually a net gain.

@surreality Yeah, some amount of flexibility might be a good thing anyway even if it increases complexity, for very specific cases.

For example you might want to have two rolls - a Persuasion one to convince Molly you it's okay if you just go into her boss' office for a minute to drop off a memo and a Subterfuge roll to make it sound like you'd be in trouble if she told on you ("sighs I forgot to do it last night, I'm so dumb!") to keep her quiet. Failure on either could produce different results - not being allowed into the office, or letting you in but telling her boss afterwards to cover her ass, or both.

@HelloProject Try this 20-page thread about an XP-less system instead then.

But all I meant is whatever you do has consequences, good and bad. For example you can also consider 'open' systems to be XP-less - they can be stat-less, or everyone gets a certain amount of points and they distribute them, or anything else. It's easier, it involves less work from staff, you're probably reducing CGen to nearly nothing so people can get on the grid faster... but you eliminate the carrot of progression. Is that better ? For some games, maybe? For others not so much? You're the judge, headwiz person!

@Rook The problem is rarely that some players pick more optimized builds than others, simply because PvP is a rarity.

The real issue is very often PrPs are tuned for the upper echelons of twinkery, which sets the bar pretty high. If I'm making sure my scenes so they can challenge combat monsters whose every XP is surgically spent to maximize their dice pools then the regular Joe (whose concept could be also combaty, but who hasn't taken extra care) might very easily get stomped hard.

Then suddenly you have PCs who're supposed to be generally on par with each other - created around the same time, similarly focused, and about the same activity levels - be on completely different levels of competence when entering plots.

I've never in my life used any of the Virtue/Vice/Archetype/etc values for anything.

To be more heretical, I never liked alignments in D&D either, so there.

@7Wonders said:

I can't speak to their offline backgrounds but as a victim of rape in real life, I have a hard time finding anything remotely sexual about it. Even typing this makes me feel queasy, though your personal constitution and outlook may vary.

I am truly sorry about what happened to you. And no one here can blame you for not finding the thought of it used in RP appealing - but that's not an argument, unless someone was trying to insinuate you should.

However, I often am struck that in certain situations, the use of rape as plot device does read as kinky sexy typesex fun with something dramatic to RP about later. When it comes to that, it feels then like a player is trying on or working through a sexual interest at the expense of other players, often not with their consent.

You lost me there. A number of players do all sorts of sex-RP things (including this) primarily because it's fun but consent is implicit since no one can force someone else to type stuff they don't want to do. Are some people creeps who'll try to guilt-trip or otherwise convince others that they should RP whatever their kink is? Yup. That's what makes them creeps. Is it wrong? Damn right it is. Are these people who end going along with it doing so without their consent? No. As long as we're all adults we're all responsible for our own choices. There's

Those people who want to typesex the fetishized concept of rape, while I can't quite get there personally, I get that its in a thing in the world and people do this. But I'd really rather they seek like minded players and explore this topic privately and just leave everyone else alone about it.

It's a fair request. I am just trying to point out that there's a fair number of valid requests based on what each player personally dislikes; for example I've spoken to people who hate IC relationships in general ('this is the World of Darkness, not Twilight!'), I've been myself an elitist who grumbled about people not having fun the right way ('it's a post-apocalyptic world and you're running an +event for a beach beer party?') and it just goes on. You can't expect things you don't like to never happen anywhere near you, because that's just not how games work; we're all sharing the setting.

If you don't like what's being played currently, walk away. Play somewhere else, and if needed with someone else. Everyone occasionally run into crap we don't find fun, we just do what it takes to fix that.