Topics created by Auspice

@Auspice not sure on that one. I'm the idea maker, @krmbm is the "put my ideas to life " person lol

@Ghost said in All Our Heroes:

there should be no OOC angst.

And yet there always is. And it always comes back to the same thing. Some people will use any means necessary to win the MU and that includes using ooc as a tool/weapon.

You have to get rid of the root of the problem, not just hope the problem suddenly decides to become reasonable.

Damion, Daimon, Damien, and all other spellings.

Dante or some spin off Dante.

And you gotta have a name with a Z in it.

Mine's probably a little different:
alt text

The widescreen is my 'primary', the little one to the right of it is simply a result of my obsessive need to know Everything. It's a touch-screen dealie whos sole purpose is to run monitoring software (Currently has the Graphics statistics in this shot because I ended up having to replace that card for overheating)

@insomniac7809 said in PC vs Player Assumptions:

@Arkandel I'm not saying that you can't have a dungeon crawl with RP elements.

I'm putting forward that a rust monster is a thing that exists to fuck with the players, and expecting this fuckery to be met with 'well, my character might not know how to respond to this!' seems a bit disingenuous.

Yeah, now I realize I posted in the wrong thread. Uh, ignore me. If you weren't already. 🙂

clean bones

Who is stoked about season 3?

@ZombieGenesis I forget the title off the top of my head, but their shorts series around the 'cursed record' was actually pretty different and interesting, too. Have to agree; it's one of the things that's worth it. I don't bother with any of the others, but that one has a fair range of stuff, and it's good stuff.

In the first set of things to do, you have to fight someone with your fists. And the FPS fistfighting system was painfully stupid.

Like, I don’t mind a learning curve. And I don’t mind fistfighting. But this part was so frustrating, it turned me off the entire game.

@Ghost

harambe

shrieks

@Jennkryst I have never really gotten that code to setup. Though tbh it has been ages since I worked with MUX.

I totally jumped to the wrong conclusion about what this thread is about and I immediately came here to post:

If someone rejects me, even if it's my best effort, I view it as a sign that I should definitely not spend my time with that person and sigh in relief because I don't need to add people to my schedule.

But after reading.... the same response is mostly applicable. If I apply as a character that I want to play and it just doesn't fit theme, or it's too over the top, or the staffers don't know me well enough to know that I'm not going to go FULL SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE on them then that's a sign to me that what I want to do isn't going to be right for the game and I appreciate that in advance.

As a staffer? It's harder, because I swear some people make trolly applications just to troll.

@Testament said in Audiobooks:

Just finished Tiamat's Wrath in The Expanse series. Now I need to listen to something else while at work. I'm open to suggestions if there's anything out there that's Expanse-like.

https://www.audible.com/author/Marko-Kloos/B00BUVDP8M
Frontlines series.

@Auspice Yeah she was an immediate favorite. Sincerely, The weird kid.

@Ganymede I agree that the lack of pose order in FS3 combat is definitely a feature. I think it's awesome. And while I wouldn't call it a bug, I do think that it's a contributing factor to lessened interaction in the midst of a combat scene -- even if I agree with Fara that the size of the scenes is probably the larger factor.

Don't be afraid to make mistakes

I've often encountered a presence of perfectionism, or the mindset of staff must always be right, often times to the point where it becomes confrontational. Iunno, for myself I'm actually walking into this situation embracing the mindset of screwing up. Because of this I'm not afraid to try new things or out of the box approaches in plots. If they don't work, that's ok. No one is going to lose a limb over it ... unless they rage punch their computer I suppose. But really, the fear of screwing up can sometimes push people into this box of refusing to admit when they are in fact wrong. I don't want to be that person.

Highlight the Good
I'm a professional educator, and one of the things we talk about is classroom management. Really, a MU isn't terribly different than a classroom. Lots of people with different backgrounds, different individualized goals but trying to coexist and cooperate. It's really an appropriate analogy. So I brought some of the pedagogy we use into the design of how we interact. Every week we highlight the positives we see from players. I think it's a good way to let people know we appreciate them and to show other players the sorts of things we're looking for. These range from behaviors on game to working with staff through issues or handling plots. If you see a behavior you like and want repeated, bring it to the forefront.

Expectations
I don't think any of us like that unknown expectation. This ties in a bit to the first one, I try my best to make sure my expectations are clear; but I'm also going to make mistakes. If there's confusion on them, it may well be my fault. I'll own the mistake, clarify the expectation and roll on. But when everyone knows what we're trying to accomplish it makes things a lot smoother.

Purposeful RP
I'm still experimenting with this. One of the things I've been working towards mentally and now in execution is how to make plots meaningful and rolling. I kind of place my expected plot time to be around 2 hours. That's not a lot of time to get something in. So one of the things I'm doing is asking players to be very specific about their goals. A player who asks to 'look around' isn't being specific, they're fishing. If the player is having to fish then I'm not doing my job as a Storyteller. I want players to be focused in on something. If I haven't given them bait, I'm wanting them to guide me into something they're interested in doing...and I haven't done a great job of expressing that expectation yet; one of the things I've been drawing feedback from players on. But regardless, this is with #1; I'm screwing stuff up but having fun doing it and I think (based on talks) the players are having fun helping me work through things.

Feedback Loop
I run a plot, I ask for feedback, I use said feedback to adjust what I'm doing to run the next plot a little bit better, then get feedback... this is the cycle. The biggest challenge I'm finding is getting players to give feedback that isn't always positives. Believe me, I get a huge smile when they tell me how much they enjoyed something (and I like that a ton) but I can't improve on positives; sure I can do more of them and certainly plan that in, but I'd also like to address areas of deficiency. The feedback loop also works the other way, I try to give players direct ideas on things to pose about. What would be useful for me as a Storyteller to know regarding their character at that time. The challenge lies in that this is a bit different than we're all used to in some regards so breaking those habits may take some time, or restructuring.

Ask for what you want
If you don't ask for it, you won't get it. I tell players I'd like X Y and Z in their pose, I tell them I want a specific goal from them in their pose, I tell them to be specific about what they are investigating so I can give them a specific roll. All these took was simply asking for them. And the more I've asked, the more they've done it and it's entered a pretty good interaction relationship. I want poses every 15 minutes, I stick to that. One of my big goals right now is 6-8 GM poses per scene every 15 minutes (so 1.5-2 hour scenes). That doesn't provide for a lot of 'fluff' time, but rather we need to get to the meat of the plot; which requires us to be focused. All of it is circular I guess, and again, far from perfect but like I said in point #1, I'm ok with screwing up and making mistakes.

@zombiegenesis Oh, when I can get my hands on them, yes. Good. just hard to get here.

@Thenomain said in What do you enjoy about STing?:

@krmbm said in What do you enjoy about STing?:

@Thenomain said in What do you enjoy about STing?:

Does that mean you can't also be appreciated for your work?

Yes. I definitely didn't mean something benign like "no need for accolades, it's a labor of love." <.<

Who said anything about "need"? I don't know why you can't accept a complement, but you do you.

I'll take his compliments.

@Tinuviel said in Asynchronous Plots in Ares:

@Groth I get the idea. But that doesn't really make practical sense. What if you were killed in your day-to-day RP? Or started dating someone? Or any number of other things that could dramatically change or invalidate any "it hasn't happened yet" RP.

The concept already depends on people being okay with finding some way to justify it. We already bend time, as Tat puts it, when we say what time of day or if something can happen after or before some other scene. We used to have “night zones” for Vampire players. Time bubbles with combat time stops (as horrible as those wretches were). We’ve gotten in some good practice.

So if you can let go the idea that Mush time is strictly chronological, then it should be manageable in those rare times where something that divergent does happen.

I understand your level of concern (Ares Discord is tired of mine, so boy do I understand), but I don’t think it’s worth putting too much worry into besides as a conversation piece.