Best posts made by bored

@arkandel You've fixed the... newer banishing.

The original thread, that was the ad thread, got banished to Hog, forcing people to start a new one in Mildly, that then itself yadda yadda <- this is what you're talking about.

Anyway, that specific situation aside, I still think we need a Reviews section, or a 'Deconstructive' section, or whatever. Even if the rules end up being similar or even identical, words matter, the names matter, etc. "Constructive" suggests... exactly that. It conjures to mind the holy land that @faraday (rightly!) desires, where we sit and engage in intellectual debate about game design and the future of our hobby. It is a noble ambition, that should be supported.

But we also need a place where we can be deconstructive, without being banished to the dark. There is, at this point, nothing constructive to be said about UH. So having a mildly constructive thread for it is really a fiction. I suggest removing that fiction. We can still do it without a certain threshold of bad words, but we need to be able to tear down that which deserves nothing better, and do it in the open.

@faraday

I don't want anything from you, proof wise or whatever. It's simply not good argument and I'm criticizing it as such. @ganymede coming in and sharing her view is valuable, the mysterious 'other people' are not.

Beyond that, I believe your friends exist. I don't believe they're significant, largely because I don't think they'll ever join without changes that completely redefine the forum (ie, ban the Hog Pit). So while you insist you don't want to take anything away... you say you're 'saddened' and you want these people to be able to join, but I don't see how that would happen without much harsher moderation than we even have now, which is already getting pushback.

You complain about people telling you to leave if you don't like it, about 'splintering' things. But let's be honest, you want a forum that isn't this one, a forum to suit your friends. Getting rid of people who value the board as it exists is just as splintering, probably far more so.

@faceless I'd be happy with that as an alternate solution too. I'm not really too picky about how we handle things, I just don't want bad reviews hidden from the public eye.

@auspice Sure.

But we didn't use to have independent proactive mods, we basically had group consensus 'this is a flaming shitpile, can we get it moved?' The board was essentially self-policing, just not enough for some people's tastes.

As it stands, it's far better in my mind for there to be clear guidelines and well-delineated areas for the mods to enforce if we're going to have them, not murky things where you and Ganymede just... get to decide if something is 'constructive enough.' I have nothing against you, but your individual judgments do not represent the prior spirit of group consensus.

@auspice I mean consensus. I've never been directly involved in having anything moved because I'm not personally all that sensitive to it. But I've been in enough scraps to how the board works. In the past, it's generally happened when it was clearly getting out of hand and people could see it was clearly getting out of hand.

The problem with your method is, ok... you're having a conversation between the 3 of you and one side of the argument. Where exactly does the other side figure in? Just this alone very much suggests a policy favoring the most sensitive, most likely to be aggrieved parties. I am OK with those people having a sanctuary but I am not OK with them taking over the entirety of the board -Hog.

@ganymede said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@saosmash said in Regarding administration on MSB:

I thought in this case that the error was giving credence to a complaint without any reality behind it, thereby loaning it legitimacy it might not otherwise have.

This is a reasonable conclusion, but it is true that, in the past, predecessors of this forum have gone to games to "raid" them, so to speak. There was talk of this earlier, which was dissuaded by Arkandel. To deny the possibility of a WORA cabal lurking here to commit nefarious things, however remote, is to deny that past.

I just can't agree with this. While the behavior may have happened, the idea that it really has much to do with the forum is still silly. There are cliques and groups of players here, and those groups may decide to disrupt games, but its not 'MSB' behind it, its the people. You'll never control that, which is part of what makes the post seem so idiotic and tone deaf.

Beyond that, by visibly denying it, your (collective) mod post has probably done more to boost the idea of a 'hive mind' and its ill-intent than any actual wrong people from the board have ever done. It looks like the sloppy, obviously guilty spin-doctoring you'd see on any TV news interview (or like one of the UH staff's 'No problems here folks!' bb-posts).

So, I think it was reasonable to say, as an official statement or otherwise, that the vast, vast majority of us, if not all, do not support this behavior. Its placement is questionable, but I understand and support the sentiment behind the decision to say something.

Bold mine. Did you guys actually discuss this and agree on it? Because the placement seems so obviously silly, and your wording makes it seem like it wasn't as much of a group decision as it's being presented as.

@deadculture Yeah, as much as people counter 'realism' with 'omg magic and vampirez how can realism?!!' verisimilitude of setting is still a thing. If you're trying to depict something historic (even in the, I'll steal the term, 'Netflix costume drama' level of historic), it is notable when any obvious, prominent aspect of that historic setting is changed. Entire genres can be built on this trick (Steampunk), but in the same way that someone walking around with red basketball sneakers in Victorian London would visibly be 'off', a woman taking on the cultural/social position and trappings of a man would be visibly off.

You can make a 'historic-ish' game with any number or severity of deviations, but the more of them you make, the less identifiable/resonant the setting is going to be with the original. Per the Steampunk example, this may be OK or even totally awesome, but it's a design decision that has pretty serious implication on what exactly you're making. And at a certain # of changes, you're no longer making a Netflix costume drama, you're making a fantasy game.

Again, it's an OK choice to choose to do this! But it is what you're doing.

Separated these posts out because of length!

@arkandel said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

I chalk this up to players not being able to properly separate IC from OOC very well, which is a way more widespread issue. It happens everywhere, too, across the board and on nearly every game I've even seen.

Sure? I mean, I agree asshole players are a thing everywhere, and bad behavior etc etc etc.

Buuuuut there's still something specific to this, and the potential RL connection I mentioned. Certain players gravitate to this stuff for certain reasons. And it isn't just the -isms. It's also the class/power imbalance of L&L, and how those let you belittle and dominate your social inferiors in game. In a way, some of these games are basically built around these modes and motivations and play.

Even where there's no real 'race' per se or mindset for someone to use when picking a faction.

You even see it in Horde versus Alliance on WoW, like there's a kind of player who chooses one over the other. It's how we are... tribal creatures who need a 'them' so there can be an 'us' we then get to be part of.

So if someone's bitching about them asshole halfies or whatever it is... that's on them. I can't honestly say it's the game's fault for having a freakin' halfling race. If they had werewolves instead it'd be them asshole furries or them asshole bloodsuckers or whatever the hell. If you want to stick a label on others badly enough you'll figure out what to write on it.

Sure, kinda? I mean tribalism is definitely a thing and players in rival factions dehumanize each other. But I think it doesn't quite encapsulate it entirely. Faction is often OOCly a play-style / character theme choice in games. IE, you play a Ventrue because you want political play, or a Daeva because you want combat/hot TS. You play a Werewolf because you want those character options. And this may put you at conflict with the non-Werewolves, but it puts you at conflict with them on the (presumed, game balance aside) even footing of rival major-archetype PCs.

Basically, 'die Werewolf' is, somehow, not quite the same thing as a racial slur (even a fantastic one) despite being the same thing? WoD races or WoW factions can't quite encapsulate it because they have some kind of presumed equality even if they're opposed. The closest thing I can think of in WoD is maybe how minor template (ghouls, kinfolk, etc) characters are sometimes treated.

Firan-wise, it was the difference between how Gold Dragon and Griffon players (for the non-initiated: hugely rival clans with a bloody history) treated each others, and how people treated halfies. The OOC vibe was not remotely similar, despite both the levels of IC antagonism and OOC factional-separation being similar (arguably it was more intense for the GD vs Griffon).

@surreality Yeah, all the IC horrible aside, some of the OOC staff stuff was even creepier. I'd give better than even odds one particular person having been an RL predator.

Memories!

I think @faraday's 'Taurons and Capricans' hits exactly why fantisizing it isn't actually that much of a cure all.

Especially there, the RL links are all too easy to draw, between the rich, high-class, sophisticated elite group and the rough poor agrarian / oh yeah they're criminals too group.

Heck, it allows it to push RL buttons even more widely because it's not specific to an earth race and yet hits a lot of markers of common rhetoric toward a variety of RL races. Bonus points!

I think game genre/overall play design/'what is this game about' is also a pretty big factor in terms of how you define IC leadership and OOC responsibility levels. People will complain about all kinds of inactive leaders, but how justified those complaints are depends heavily on what their actual function is supposed to be on the game.

If the faction/org is part of a major axis in the game's conflict, then high expectations are reasonable: if these people are supposed to be navigating IC conflicts, organizing responses to metaplots, meeting regularly with their rival counterparts, etc... then it's normal to expect them to be involved, active, and available. Absences will cause IC consequences and OOCly disrupt everyone's fun. In this case, it's prudent to have lots of redundancy (proxies, lieutenants, etc) and to have easily-exercised removal/replacement clauses. Relevant examples here are anything from top-level nobles in conflict-heavy L&L, office holders in Praxis-politics focused Vampire, to small org or sub-org leaders (packs, military squadrons, whatever) etc.

On the other hand, if the organization is a background edifice or wide-scale and passive player grouping, then these expectations are often kind of silly. These are often positions that could easily be NPCs. While some might argue that in that case you shouldn't let people play them it's just as reasonable to ask: well, why not? Even if the player isn't super active, if they're active at all they're taking work off some staffer's shoulders and providing background color that the game wouldn't otherwise have. Examples here are often top-level figures in games not actually about their decisions (ie, a town mayor in an urban supernatural game or even a King on a more fluffy, marriage-simulator L&L who has no real duties, a ship captain on a sci-fi game that's all about smaller away missions, etc), or required 'org leaders' for large/mandatory umbrella orgs that encompass huge numbers of players but aren't really in conflict (one that springs to mind is old-school Pern Weyrleaders).

I feel that complaints about idle leaders in #2 scenarios often comes from little more than status envy; people are annoyed that this person has a title and isn't 'doing' anything to justify it. But if the status is merely an IC fluff detail and not a structural one, these people should probably just learn to stfu.

@thatguythere said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

@bored
I don't see how linear advancement eliminate the gain for min maxing, if Character A has ten points to spend and spends 4 on pie chart creation (wacky example skill) and spreads the other 6 around, and Character B spends his ten points on 8 pie chart creation and dumps the other two else where, at equal rate of XP advancement A will still never catch up he will always be 4 points down unless B decides to spend else where or hits a system imposed limit. the advantage of the min maxer is still there.

First of all, I don't claim anywhere that these different approaches invalidate all value to min-maxing. Obviously, having the highest possible value of some useful skill (Swords 5, whatever) is always very valuable. Indeed, in almost every game, some mechanic will be the best and focusing on it will probably yield a more powerful (or narratively useful, a big issue in MU) character.

However, two points. First, see the bolded: many games do in fact impose system limits. In a basic WoD-clone mortal game, these limits are actually very low. This tends to be true in L&L games as well.

But point two is the more important thing here. You're looking at it backward. The issue isn't whether or not the generalist can (or should) catch up with the specialist. It's probably perfectly fine that they can't, and assuming there's infinite places to spend XP (possibly true in WoD with enough splat books), the specialist will stay ahead in either linear or geometric.

The issue is that in a mixed linear-CG exponential-XP game, the CG specialist can catch up with the CG generalist faster than the reverse. Because there often are skill caps (see above), this means that after a certain time period, the CG specialists cap out their peak skill, and then go back and buy all the generalist stuff. Because of the disparity between CG and XP costs, they do this much more cheaply, and will have all the skills the generalist does long before the generalist matches them in peak skill.

At that point, the generalists often find themselves pushed out of the story spotlight, because why bring the guy who can sneak, handle security systems, and negotiate, and is an OK marksman, when the elite sniper can also do all of those things.

I've always wondered about ways of doing this without dislodging / upsetting the playerbase too much, though more in mind toward time-skip. Of course, a sufficient time skip is basically a reset.

I figure the easiest-to-swallow version is doing it the smallest amount. A 6-month or 1-year skip at the end of a plot arc, giving time for the event's conclusions / ramifications to play out and create a new scenario, but not so long that anyone's player becomes unplayable. If you do this regularly, it could become normal (it might also be an alternative to a time ratio). A maybe-relevant real example here is Pendragon, where at least system-wise, you skip (and just roll some results) for Winter. Though the game I played fell apart before we actually hit Winter to see how it would go.

@deadculture Yeah this is largely why I enjoy it, and the buy in thing from that thread. There's no game outside the theme, and if you're not into the theme that much you can wait for the next one. You're not waiting on plot, because it's all plot. Etc.

Its funny, because it made the predictable behavior of the probable-Custodius that much more laughable. Who are you even min-maxing to beat with your ridiculous, paper-thin character, brah? What do you think you're gonna win?

We have some try-hards, sure, but if anything more people seem in it just to get a lulz-y death.

@testament I don't actually think we're that unforgiving, at least not as a community (individuals surely hold grudges). If anything, a theme that's come up recently is how someone can repeatedly get away with the same kind of bad behavior on many games, time and again. The only requirement is that they have some friends to back them up, give them cover, etc.

What we are, is a school playground writ large and populated by a good portion of seriously dysfunctional adults. Just like everywhere, we form our particular cliques and tribes and we defend them, and those groups definitely take their enmities seriously, even the tiniest slight or 'she took mah man!' spiraling into ridiculous drama, backed up by personal hit squads spreading rumor or blacklisting people from RP. But the people who end up on universal shitlists are few and far between, and it usually takes decades of behavior, multiple destroyed games, and then pissing off enough of the key game-runners and so on, to actually end up disgraced (ie, a situation like VASpider or Custodius).

The other thread is a pretty mild example, that blew up because it was someone random insulting someone well-respected. True pariah-ship in our hobby really takes some impressive heights of being an actual real-life sociopath to achieve. So I'm not sure we need to be more forgiving generally, so much as more forgiving of minor slights and less forgiving of negative behaviors that impact the game.

I, for one, want details for the popcorn value.

I remember that Star Wars log, pure gold.

@Derp That's moving the goalposts a bit, isn't it?

Assume two people who have equal access/connection/whatever to an NPC (ie, two people in the 'small group' that interacted with your drug dealer). If you were spending 4 hours a night TSing one of them, there's zero chance that would take away from the others in that small group?

So, taking both @Thenomain's general 'hey design it better' and this particular problem:

@surreality said in X-Cards:

It's hit or miss if I mention it on a wiki or otherwise.

For the people looking to build a better mousetrap, maybe this is where you should be looking?

IE, maybe someone needs to work on a new version of publicly available +event, +finger, etc code that supports preference tagging so that these things could be included at a level where they can't be casually ignored. IE code it to the degree that if you +event/join a thing that has one of your !prefs in its <subject> field, it flat out gives you a fail message about the scene including content you've marked as undesirable.

We could also make some improvements toward privacy (also re: @surreality's concern) over just 'here is some visible text on my character that says, 'Hey, I really dont like X.' For instance, it wouldn't be hard to make these lists private, and have code warnings merely show that a limit was matched, not which limit it was. Obviously there's always going to be some room for fuckery here, but I imagine the obfuscation could be useful.

The X-Card thing feels too thin to even be called a system; as it's really just 'saying no.' But giving people better tools to communicate about content seems do-able.

@Thenomain said in Consent in Gaming:

@Ghost

But if I'm playing a Private who thumbs their nose at the Commanding Officer, it's damaging to the brand of the game to let that go. I mean, why are we playing Space Soldiers?

I think 'This is the military, insubordination has consequences' is a matter of theme-enforcement, and thus staff's job. Leaving this in player hands is going to cause problems far more often than it's going to create great, memorable RP (even if it does on rare occasion). If someone is insubordinate, staff should step in and demote them in the org, and make it clear that their character is on probation and in risk of serious consequences. If it happens again, they lose the character to brigging, being taken out and shot, whatever.

I feel like this thread is kind of looping around two very distinct questions. I don't think the title helps.

One is not actually about design or play after the fact, but about communication and education, about relating extant information first to staff and then to players. I don't think there's any better solution here than communication: explain things, have things written down in easily accessible places, and continue to provide access to this information including in real time (a channel with both enough players to answer trivial stuff and staffers to vet those answers/chime in on more complex questions.

The other issue is the 'getting people to play the same way' problem (I think 'play the same game' is terrible phrasing- so long as you're logged in, using the game resources, and adhering to policy, you are absolutely playing the same game). This one is vastly more complex, and deals with modes of play (see academic crap like Bartle types), which are much more inherent to the players and not something you can just teach/enforce. In the latter case, I think it's better to think about these as you build your game and understand how you will engage or channel various player motivations, because you really can't filter them out.