@Shlappy You're making a different point by saying that but for games like KD I suspect there are quite a few players who really don't give much of a damn about big plots, as what they're after is to roleplay pretty people, go to parties and make big poses.
@bored See, while we agree on the approach I look at it from a different direction as well; that if FCs are important then staff ultimately has to pick the best players for it and who can they trust other than people they know and respect? In that scenario it actually is in the game's interest to make the right pick that way, so it's the price for it that makes it important for them to not have to pick at all.
The same way applies to high IC ranks. If you are choosing a Prince of course you'll want to grab the best player available (which by definition means 'among people you know well'), so of course it will be seen as favoritism and treated negatively by some. It's neater to keep an NPC at the position to steer theme and avoid the whole damn mess in the first place.
@Thenomain Do you consider the discussion of whether those toys should exist at all a separate one?
For instance another version of the same question has been asked in this form: "Who should get IC ranks?" And one of the answers has been "Only NPCs should".
I'm not saying it's an one-size-fits-all approach, for instance in a L&L game it'd probably be a very bad move, but it still belongs in the conversation.
@Thenomain said in Dragon Age: Smoke & Shadows:
Yeah, but in my experience, if staff is honest then they tend to have honest friends. If their friends aren't honest, then honest staff is intelligent enough to know this and will not feign surprise nor create drama when their friend digs themselves a hole and doesn't have their honest staffer bail them out.
At that point though we're no longer talking about whether staff is handing out all the cool toys to their friends and more about whether those friends are worthy of said toys.
The way I perceived the problem some folks had in this thread - and I could be wrong - is that the method of distribution itself was flawed and as such, feature characters should not be allowed (with the possible exception of superhero games since there's so many of the buggers around). I mean, no one has argued Hawke would be given to bad people, just that those people would be affiliated with, if not played by, staff.
What I am arguing for is that although there are probably benefits to having FCs around, the drawbacks outweigh them. It's not worth it.
@DnvnQuinn I am no sage but probably because no one has made one.
</sage>
@DnvnQuinn See, I'd like a game set in Dresden-world as long as it contained no Dresden-support characters (except maybe some of the villains and groups, but exclusively as NPCs).
@Admiral said in RL Anger:
Finding out I work for the same company as the guy who did the shootings.
And then having to listen to people joke about us going on shooting rampages.
Assholes.
Do they want to be locked up?
Because that's how you get locked up.
@VulgarKitten said in Kushiel's Debut:
Anyone else experience this?
I don't know if it's age making me more mature (snort) but I've grown a lot more thick skinned than I ever was. Things that used to bug me barely even register these days - it's more like "oh, they're trying to troll me" than actually reacting emotionally to whatever.
Basically I'm better now better at getting over it, whatever it is. Maybe MSB had a hand in that.
@Coin Your mom likes learning new systems from scratch.
It's a matter of preference. Some people like more number-crunching, mechanics and systems in their games (in fact it's often a big part of how and why they pick to play one in the first place). Others don't.
Neither means players care more or less about theme, character development or roleplaying quality - such qualities are, as far as I can see, orthogonal to the preference above. Some pretty great roleplayers I've met love to use dice and some rather poor ones are rather elitist about their absence.
I probably fall deeper into the second category these days unless I've absorbed enough mechanical knowledge via osmosis from freaks like Coin or Misadventure, in which case I'm more ambivalent. But I hate learning new systems from scratch.
@Fantom Explain what you mean by a dialogue CGen please? Use an example if you don't mind.
I didn't put my wallet in the gym bag when I was packing the bike bag to get to work this morning. Dammit, I hate asking to borrow money even though I'll return it in 24 hours but I'm ravenous and of course today is the one day in the week I didn't bring lunch either.
Bah.
@Cobaltasaurus said in Washington State dog foster?:
I'm a little too far south, I think. Also I have two cats. One of which has only interacted with a dog once and that was to try and attack it through the sliding glass door, and to be EXTREMELY pissed off that there was a dog around at all.
My cat is an asshole too. We fostered an adult declawed tomcat for two weeks and I ended up having to lock the poor guy in the bedroom, she hounded him every time. And he was the sweetest cat, he didn't do anything to her. She was a total bitch to my second dog too when we brought her in, and beat the crap out of her until she finally realised she was here to stay at which point she just decided to ignore her.
It makes it so hard to foster any extra pets although we got room and want to help out.
@Thenomain said in Dragon Age: Smoke & Shadows:
Morbid, hell, I think it should be required information. Knowing the perks of staffing is one of the checks against staff taking more advantages than players, or getting in the way of players having fun.
Yes, but in my experience - which admittedly might be anecdotal - the problem is less staff alts (staff tend to be pretty busy and can't play their own games very consistently) and more staff friends, which is a different issue altogether. Because then what is a 'staff friend' defined by? A good reliable player? Their buddy? RL bf/gf? To some extent any player trusted to play an important feature character has to be at least known by staff.
And that's without even factoring the subjectivity and petty jealousy some players are naturally inclined to demonstrate in MU*. Did Theno get given Hawke which I wanted? That fucker is obviously TSing/sucking up to staff.
@DnvnQuinn I don't think it's so much that there are no unique themes/systems around but that usually they aren't that popular. And that means they are harder to launch in the first place unless you can already code (Theno will probably not spend weeks of his time coding my LittlePony/Harry Potter high-brow concept) and that there are fewer players ready to jump in and play it which limits word of mouth and, of course, finding others to play with there.
MSB might not be the best place to find what you're looking for. I don't have good alternatives though - is TMC still a thing even?
@Three-Eyed-Crow said in Kushiel's Debut:
Sunny's account of what actually happened as far as the plot goes isn't, to me, that awful. It's not great, but these kinds of oversights happen and, in my experience, they aren't malicious a lot of the time. I'm also fine with the GM not involving the entire game in something (though something world-changing when you aren't running other events regularly is something else).
But the FB comments and that email posted here come off as nasty, whatever happened, and the responses in this thread from KD staff have been really tone-deaf. I'd like to think this is a heat-of-the-moment response that they'll look back on when things have cooled down and regret, but it still isn't good.
I concur.
For starters the moment I think a L&L {tm} MU* is bound to have some people be more special than others. It's just the nature of the game, it attracts players who want to play that sort of role - when I made a character there, something which I enjoyed, I pretty much took it as a given. There are no objective ways to stand out and when everything is very subjective a lot of social ladders become popularity contests both IC and ultimately OOC.
A plot like this was, to my understanding, never possible to include too many characters directly. It was always going to involve a few. I'd even go as far as to say some of the people complaniint the hardest now, had they been part of it, would not be championing the complaints of those who didn't - in fact I'd expect their protests to be worded similarly to what staff on KD did.
But contacting people to bitch them out outside the game and after they left was inappropriate. As for the demand that such players go back and subject themselves to the inherent authority of staffbits on their own games rather than engage them on a public forum, that was not the best thing to do.
I mostly dealt with Asherat there and she seemed like a very reasonable person so I don't know @Skaldia that well. But the impression he's giving me is that he's the kind of staff who will very rarely admit to making mistakes and who might be very unused to people talking back to him without the recourse of shutting them down. That... is a problem.
I liked my time on KD. Which makes all of this sound pretty disappointing.
@bored said in Dragon Age: Smoke & Shadows:
Yeah, to people ( @Arkandel and maybe others) saying its the # available, my universal anti-FCism applies in the typical WoD/SW/L&L/etc-game usage of it (ie 'cool overpowered plot-shielded char that gets given to a staff buddy') and not the Comic FC vs OC sense where if there's tons of FCs, they're totally fine (probably even the norm).
The difference to me is made by the answer to this question: What are FCs there for? What purpose does their existence as PCs serve in the game?
The impact of anyone one character on the overall direction should never be inherent in the design phase. It could happen organically, but if staff is planning for any figure to be integral to the story and drive it forward then they really should make them an NPC. If they don't then yes, far more likely than not one of their friends is bound to end up playing a very special sanctioned snowflake.
@Cobaltasaurus said in MU Things I Love:
I love the process of making a new character. >.> I love making wiki pages. I love choosing music, and played bys, and fiddling, and yes. That. All of it.
You know, I like making a new character from scratch on a game I'm excited about and even PBs (and conversations leading up to picking one) can be fun, I've even even been known to hunt through my notes and the googlez for appropriate book quotes that fit the concept... but music? I can't find and wouldn't even know how to start looking for a soundtrack if I tried.