Posts made by Arkandel

@coin I haven't read the books so I don't know how interesting the source material is. But Peter Jackson seems to go either way... either he's inspired to greatness or he gets distracted to visual oblivion.

This looks good.

Mortal Engines - official trailer.

@roz I know.

@tinuviel One thing I did like from both seasons is that it gives us a compelling reason for that oldest of gripes about highschool movies/TV shows in general: "Why doesn't she/he go to an adult? Why not tell a teacher or go to the police?"

Well, that's why. The whole series is very consistent about how much leeway and benefit of a doubt is given to certain kinds of people compared to the burden placed on everyone else, and the extent they are punished even when it's shown they crossed the line.

@surreality said in Managing Player Expectations:

I'm kinda with Lotherio on this one. It depends on whether they want to be involved with the metaplot or not, pretty much. They may just want to chill out and play the bartender who hears all the crazy stories that come in from chaos in the metaplot, or be a team medic who is just struggling with patching up the people who keep coming in bruised and bashed around.

I think there are two ways people view people not participating in the metatheme at large:

• People who're just off doing their own things completely. Maybe they're running PrPs for each other, idlying in a room to harvest automatic XPs, or they're just TSing. Whatever it is, this is usually viewed in a negative way.

• Players who simply don't draw from the metaplot. They could be playing against type (the cowardly squire in a game of brave knights), the lone wolf who refuses to join the war effort, the pretty wallflower who wants to host parties in the gritty post-apocalyptic hellscape, or the bartender you mentioned who fills a different kind of niche. Reactions to these are usually flowed, and it depends on their RP's quality on how they're received.

What I'd be curious to know though is what some of such players' expectations are to begin with. I can guess it for some but not for all; the player who joins a Vampire game but hates and avoids vampires, or the group who purposefully insulate themselves from the game and runs plots for each other, or the guy who comes seeking exclusively sexual content on non-sex MU*... why?

Until we have a convincing answer as to why these approaches exist it's tricky to manage the expectations that come with them.

@derp Since it's been a year+ since Season 1 came out there's no need for spoiler tags. It's about a girl in high school who gets bullied, commits suicide then sends out tapes about why she did it and who contributed to it... and the fallout from that among school faculty, friends, etc.

S1 was good. S2... I felt it stretched things a bit too thin to squeeze another series out.

@derp said in RL Anger:

Also, they don't run stories about suicides after the CDC found that running stories about suicides caused teens to try and copycat the dead one so that they could be dead and famous too.

Ugh, 13 Reasons Why's second season is trying so hard to cover their asses about that. Warnings before, disclaimers after, I'm surprised they don't have breaks in the episodes to alert the audience.

Double post! But I read something interesting on Slashdot just now (which I linked since the original includes actual links for fact-checking purposes), so I'll paste it verbatim here:

"Do you screen the games your kids play for deer crossing the road [youtube.com]? Would it surprise you to learn that deer are more dangerous than school shootings?

There have been about 250 fatalities from school shootings over 18 years [washingtonpost.com] (excluding suicides and gang violence). That works out to (250)/(18) = 13.9 deaths per year. Since there are approximately 51 million K-12 students in the U.S. [ed.gov], a student's odds of being killed in a school shooting in any given year are (51 million) / (13.9 per year) = 1 in 3.67 million.
About 120 Americans are killed every year by deer [vox.com]. (325.7 million Americans) / (120 per year) = 1 in 2.71 million.

So a student is more likely to be killed by a deer than from a school shooting. Where are all the walk-outs and protests advocating deer population control?

For some perspective on the scope of the school shooting problem, look at the stats the CDC puts out. For 2015, the leading causes of death [cdc.gov] among the 15-19 year old demographic were:

3,919 deaths - Accidents (mostly automobile accidents and drug overdoses). 282x more than school shootings.
2.061 deaths - Suicide. 148x more.
1,587 deaths - Homicide (mostly outside school, and gang related). 114x more.
583 deaths - Malignant neoplasms (cancer). 42x more.
306 deaths - Heart disease. 22x more.
195 deaths - Birth defects. 14x more.
72 deaths - Influenza (the flu). 5.2x more.
63 deaths - Chronic lower respiratory diseases. 4.5x more.
61 deaths - Cerebrovascular diseases. 4.4x more.
52 deaths - Diabetes. 3.7x more.
41 deaths - Complications from pregnancy and childbirth. 3x more.

A protest over excessive rates of teen pregnancy could potentially save 3x more lives than a protest over school shootings. Likewise, teaching kids not to each too many sweets, to exercise, not to smoke, get the flu shot, use sunscreen, not to join gangs, to buckle their seat belt, not to use drugs, and offering them counseling for depression, would all be much more productive uses of our time and effort than worrying about or debating school shootings. For that matter, controlling deer populations to reduce the number of fatalities from striking deer could potentially save 1.35x as many students' lives as lost to school shootings.

If you want to tackle a life-threatening issue that students face, probably the best choice is suicide. It results in more than a hundred times as many student deaths as school shootings. But when's the last time you saw the media run a story about teen suicide? The only reason school shootings are even on the radar is because of the media using them to play the "think of the children!" card against guns."

@darinelle said in Arx: @clues:

As a player I LOVE theories.

I haven't played on Arx in a long time so this might be different now, but what I didn't like about it was people theorycrafting over pages or channels, or even at times breaking into OOC conversations in the middle of RP to the detriment of actually playing the game.

This isn't a game-specific issue by any means. The same sometimes happens on Mage for example - players spend disproportionate amounts of time chatting about how spells A+B+C could do whatever than actually being on the grid doing IC things (or, hell, discussing the same things but as characters).

More to the point, I had ran into at least one person who simply wasn't interested in scenes which didn't promote that agenda. Are there no new +clues to be harvested from a scene since he knew everyone there who wasn't a newbie? He openly said there was 'no point' in being there and declined to join.

Obviously these might be solved or anecdotal issues, I wouldn't know.

@tehom said in Managing Player Expectations:

What I'm curious about is the approaches that people might take to try to address the problem, if they think it's one that can have a solution at all. Should it be done culturally, with help files, onboarding of new players or the first time they participate in some staff-run plot, or something else that informs them to manage their expectations? Should it be something coded, where the scope of impact they could hope to achieve from some given action would be clearly delineated? Should it only be addressed on a behavioral level by talking to players who are clearly outliers? Or something else entirely?

In my opinion these are some important steps to take - from a staff's point of view in order to address this issue.

• Be honest with yourself upfront; how much time and effort are you prepared to put in it? You can't manage other people's expectations unless you're aware what they can expect from you.

• Know what your game is about. Is PvP a major element in it or are the sword skills for fights with NPCs? Is it a political game and are upper IC positions up for grabs by players? Even whether you are trying to make a large, popular MUSH or a smaller niche one matters.

• Be clear. There's no such thing as fair but you should be very upfront about the way things (ranks, titles, XPs, rewards, etc) are going to be distributed. Even if you say "I will give stuff as I damn well see fit" at least being honest about it mitigates latter complaints and lets people decide if your game is what they want.

• As long as you're spoiling things for your players, stomp on false expectations. If some things definitely won't happen in the scope of your game inform players early OOC. "No, you guys won't find a cure for the zombies and restore the world to a pre-apocalyptic state" is a fair thing to say, then they can then still work on that IC, but you did your part. "You won't discover gunpowder and invent muskets in my fantasy game". Done.

• Write and be consistent with your policies about both staff- and player-ran plots. What's the scope? Is there a risk/rewards ratio or are you rewarding participation and running the same across the board?

• If you reward plots - that's what carrots are for - but break down the numbers - this is important. Assume some edge cases; say a dedicated ST will run 2-3 PrPs a week, does that break your game's balance for their group? Are you okay with that given the activity it generates? Don't be surprised by the effects of your own policies.

• Groom your STs. Along with coders they are rare and very important, so keep communication lines open; if they facing any challenges you can help (say, they're not very good with the mechanics, or they can't handle large groups of participants, or they're getting harassed by certain players, etc) take care of them to the extent of your own abilities.

Just a few simple things, but they can make a difference.

@surreality said in RL Anger:

Clearly, guns don't kill people, trench coats kill people. </sarcasm>

As the guy said, guns don't kill people... but they sure help.

@thatonedude said in #WIDWW pt 2 - ST, Player, or staff?:

Right, but again... Perception of intent/attitude. I don't know the player that did this job in the example and I only know @Arkandel from his posts here.

Sure, but why does that matter? This isn't a post about that incident, I'm not exposing someone for being a jerk or anything (they weren't), it's just an example.

With that said: What if that player didn't know how to move forward? What if they asked someone else what they should do and that person said open a job and CC the person that ran the event/plot? What if a million other things that wasn't the person being a tool was what really was going down? Granted I know there is the possibility this person /decided by fiat/ but there is also the possibility that he/she didn't.

None of those things would have mattered because this anecdote wasn't meant as a witchhunt for that player. It was to illustrate that STs in the nWoD/GMC needs to oversee control of certain story elements - in this case pacing and exposition - in order to use them as seeds and hooks into other arcs - and then try to frame lapses of that control have a larger effect for the overall setting.

To use a more abstract example, imagine if I'm playing Sam in your Supernatural game using nWoD rules. You present me with an unknown creature type I've never seen before and plant a potential resolution path for me; in fact that could be the beat and bones of the story, going on a quest around pawn shops, redneck psychics and infiltrating the local police department's evidence room to find all the missing pieces. Sure, I might have missed clues (in which case you can either remind me somehow or feed me information through some other plot device) but deciding on my own I will research this on my laptop and the answer has to be there because I got 1 success isn't an acceptable outcome. It trivializes the content.

Worse than that, in fact, is that since Dean (or the rest of the party, since we're talking about MU*) doesn't get to come along and do stuff too. I, alone, handle all that by rolling.

My point is as a player, that attitude is felt and it has to be part of what makes this whole thing a problem. The ST/Player/Staff "issue".

It's not an attitude. It's just how the interaction between STs and players works. There needs to be some chemistry there, and sometimes it works but other times it doesn't. If you don't like your ST then you can find someone else to run stories for you instead - and I don't mean that in a negative way.

@thatonedude said in #WIDWW pt 2 - ST, Player, or staff?:

But ... more fun for who?

Hopefully everyone involved?

I'm not sure where you are going with this.

@thatonedude said in #WIDWW pt 2 - ST, Player, or staff?:

Do you staff on Reno? This post reminds me a lot of the way they run their game.

I do not.

Woe is me, players are the worst.

I'm unclear why that's what you took from this; players aren't a homogeneous bunch who all act and behave the same way, but certain behaviors aren't great and they should be pointed out, examined and if needed remedied.

Why would this person try to do research or use his / her skills/merits in a game? They should just sit and wait to be spoon fed whatever it is the ST is providing.

On the contrary, PrP participants should be proactive - that's much appreciated (and fairly rare). The problem in this case was in not consulting with the ST first to discuss the scope of the roll, or to accept the range of information they received out of it; that could have served (and even after the fact I tried to nudge it that way) as an introduction to a PrP about finding a different library to do research in, discuss the time it takes to go through the material, and so on.

The expectation to break a plot wide open with one roll of the dice is what was unreasonable. Being unable to do so doesn't take anything away from player agency, it simply allows the ST the ability to pace the story as it transitions through its arcs, and hopefully it makes any achievements more meaningful.

Sure, the entire thing could be unlocked by one person with 1 success on a downtime +job, but it'll probably be more memorable - and fun - if the characters had to sneak into their own boss' headquarters to get access to materials he had explicitly forbidden them to read, find ties to a conspiracy, figure out how to eliminate evidence of their presence and race against the clock to get out before they are discovered.

@seraphim73 said in Earning stuff:

I think that works great for the people who play 3 nights a week (which is about what I can manage at my best), but for those people who play 5-6 nights a week? That's somewhere just shy of one crazy-awesome thing each week. That means they're in every plot, which in turn means that one less person can join those plots. These are also that same vocal minority that has to be involved in everything, so if they're asked to sit out a plot or two, it's clearly the most awesome plot ever that they're missing, and they're hated because Staff wanted someone besides them involved and WOOOOOE IS MEEEEE.

That's a very common thing in MUSHing. It's not the exception since it happens often.

Look, it might be the hobby or online gaming online but there are some players who simply get to invest way more time than average into it. And it's only human nature for them to expect a return for that investment even where none is owed.

This leads to all kinds of issues both for them and the game in general. It's why activity has to be one of the first things for staff to cap in terms of rewarding, and I don't simply mean by limiting XP, else it will get out of hand. Fast.

@coin said in Earning stuff:

Also, and I guess this wasn't clear in my initial post, these aren't things I believe are conscious; they're unconscious expectations, and when they aren't fulfilled, the frustrations manifest and the causes are misattributed.

They are also not necessarily unfair expectations. It's how we are brought up - there are simply very few paradigms outside of MUSHing in our pop or gaming culture that prepare a player for not being one of the main protagonists of their own setting. Books, most movies and TV shows, video games, fairy tales, short stories... there's a plot and it revolves around a relatively small cast.

Most non-RPG board games? Same thing - you play to win, and very little separation between you-the-player's success and your in-game one.

Hell, the very table-top games most MU* are based on are teaching the same lessons. The coterie or pack are the true movers and shakers of the world, and they're fundamentally involved in every major plot around them by definition - those arcs are major because they involve that plot. So when I decide to take Bloodsucker Jack from my table-top campaign and put him on your game as a complete newbie, how would I know I'm actually not supposed to act the same way and expect the same involvement as before?

From a certain point of view our expectations are unreasonable. It's not natural for players to change the way they think literally everywhere else other than in MU*.

@apos @apos said in Earning stuff:

A lot of people are like, 'well why didn't you just let people build a rocket and die to the space slug, or correct this', and that's really missing the point. Those people definitely aren't going to be any happier if their characters die. They are after the achievement and admiration of their peers.

Do you think it's a oversimplification to break it down to this:

"Players want things which are rare and special. However if many possess them they are neither rare nor special."

Because of it's not then it's at the heart of our impasse. We are deadlocked between giving no one anything cool, making things uncool by handing them out generously, and facing allegations of favoritism if they are are handed out selectively.

Different games take different takes. My understanding for example is @faraday has picked the middle road, you've chosen the latter approach, and many WoD games took the first one.

https://theoutline.com/post/4739/allen-texas-high-school-arming-teachers-metal-detectors-columbine-school-shooting

Additionally, administrators announced the would begin enforcing the dress code more strictly. We weren’t allowed to wear all-black clothing anymore. T-shirts for artists such as Marilyn Manson were banned. Trench coats were out.

One brave student raised her hand. “If the Columbine shooters had been wearing Abercrombie & Fitch, would you be banning that?”

“If the shooters had been wearing Abercrombie & Fitch, this wouldn’t have happened,” the administrator replied.

@coin Sometimes people like to play a game of chicken. Am I going to kill them off in some random Wednesday evening PrP? No? Then hellz yeah they'll stick around to fight when I say "you can hear reinforcements arriving! Thankfully after you rummaged through the Bad Guy's desk you discovered a secret passage out" two and a half hours after we began.

Some throw the rulebook in my face. Anecdote: Back on BITN I ran a PrP about a portal into some weird-ass mystery dimension. One of the mortals in it afterwards made a +job (without consulting with me first), CC'ed me to it, +rolled Academics into the +job and then paged me to give them the answers about how the portal was made and how you can open one or close one yourself. When I tried to work with that by offering some tidbits of information it turned that no, they wanted the full thing. Look, Academics, Library 2, 3 successes, gimme the full manual goddammit.

Obviously as you get more experienced you learn to handle these people but it still serves to explain why STs are hard to find, new ones are shy to start running things, and the ones already playing run things for their own circles since they won't have to handle anyone.

It probably also helps explain why new games keep running into the same loop of trying to do something different thematically but end up looking like the previous five MU*; it's because the players they get are treating it exactly like their last five MU*, too. There's a lot of effort of behalf of staff to change that mindset, and it's not surprising most don't even try.

like @Arkandel says (god that hurt to type)

Your pain... it sustains me.

I thought we could have threads specific to some of our favorite novels or book series. That way we can showcase them for others, else they get buried somewhere in the 16th page where only MSB archaeologists can find them.

If you've read something really cool lately and want others to know, please feel free. It's not a forum rule or anything, just a suggestion.

My recommendation: The Demon Cycle Series by Peter V. Brett. It's a five book fantasy book series, based on a world being actively invaded by demons for thousands of years. When it begins it's a bleak, hopeless place - the demons are winning, slowly pushing humanity back with only distant memories of a glorious past when the Deliverer, a mythical figure of lore, rose to lead them into fighting back using magic long since lost. But by now humans have grown accustomed to the fact they just need to live in fear, yielding the wilderness to their enemies with only a brave few traveling between cities at great risk where they hide behind the few defensive Wards still known to keep them at bay.

That's about to change. The author does a great job providing us with some really interesting and different characters - men and women - as well as a deep, intricate political landscape between radically incompatible cultures and viewpoints, but I really liked how he came up with a very cool magic system revealed to the readers pretty much at the same time as his characters discover or learn it on the fly. That way he's avoided hand-feeding a lot of his world in barely disguised lengthy exposition, and it's pretty fun to see the same people grow from hapless victims as they come into their own and emerge as leaders.

It's one of my favorite series. It's bleak but not grimdark, it keeps surprises in store for when they'll promote the plot it keeps the reader guessing what's going to happen next. The demons themselves begin as mindless monsters but even those get detailed in time so they come into their own as the ultimate antagonists - and in the mean time there are plenty of humans to be the bad guys.

Anyone else into these books?