Best posts made by Caryatid

@arkandel That's the thing. I trust both you and @Ganymede to give legitimate apologies, apologies which do not blame the people they're offered to, when you realize you've fucked up. People make mistakes and I have a lot of respect for those who know how to function after doing so. That is a huge component of being a reasonable adult and people who can and will constructively apologize automatically go high on my respect list.

It doesn't matter what the error was, if someone can approach me and apoligize like a grown-up, I will be willing to hear them out on whatever else. I think that's true of many people here because we do collectively have a lot of experience with being in this situation (both staffing and in fucking up).

I also think this situation makes it clear @auspice does not have that ability. She had several opportunities. She chose to use them in questionable fashion. But it's still salvagable if she puts the work in.

Adding to the list: Dragon Age: Inquisition.

Echoing @tez and @tat, when I leave a game for good (in those cases where I am still invested in the characters I'm playing) it has almost always been due to

1. staff malfeasance or behaviours that I find toxic or unethical and
2. being utterly unable to then get away from those people and just do my own thing in a corner with people whose RP I still enjoy, playing characters I still love.

There have been games where I haven't become invested due to any number of other reasons (sterile atmosphere, obnoxious players, setting didn't click for me). But when I love a game and leave it anyway... it always comes down to no longer feeling comfortable condoning the game and/or staff by remaining there. Once it gets to that point, the bridge is burned for me.

I would play the hell out of this.

Supernatural critters rounded up and shot to the moon or Mars to lay the foundation of a colonial mining/energy gathering operation.

The political focus Vampires in Paris after a large scale destruction of the Praxis idea that @vanderlylle and I were working on.

A dynastic generational game (can be vamp or werewolf) through the Dark Ages into the Renaissance with a focus on dynastic houses or packs over individuals.

Changelings in WWI-WWII Russia.

A game set in Arcadia. Players come in as freshly snatched and their arc is transformation -> destruction (or resurrection). They win by succeeding at an eventual escape attempt and that character shifts off the board.

@ganymede Oh no, I haven't actually seen anyone targeting you for this nonsense. I think your no-nonsense style of interaction goes a long way towards helping that and it's something I've tried to model with varying degrees of success (mostly less) because I think it does help act as a sort of... drama prophylactic.

But there has been high school drama whirling around you and I've seen it pass notice, or need to be explained because you missed it. The ghoul player on RfK, for instance, who chased Cai on two separate characters and was trying to wedge me out because she resented Nora being there (she mavved a gloating page to a buddy of hers into the all-game meeting about me leaving the game when staff fuckery reached a head there, for one instance of her constant shenanigans targeting me as an evil cockblocker).

It's not a bad thing. Or a bad superpower to have. But not witnessing it doesn't mean it isn't widespread.

I'm definitely going to be giving this a try. If anyone wants to be magic buddies, hit me up. I'll be playing the owner/artisan of a touristy botanicals and beauty shop inherited from her mother.

@tinuviel I love you, man, but quoted from the first post:

"Log-in and character creation will be turned on Wednesday, January 9. We hope to see you there!"

They told people when the game was going to be open.

Staff clearly underestimated the response and they had to make a hard choice. I didn't think I'd make it in because of my schedule and had I missed it, I'd have been pretty damn disappointed too. But I will never fault people for recognizing what they can and cannot handle, and sticking to that line. My respect grows for people capable of doing that, it doesn't diminish.

@tinuviel That is rank pedantry. Your complaint was that they did not tell people when they would be opening. They declared the game would be open today. The game did open today.

Jackson.

Also I'll cop to re-using Sabine as a name several times. I am one of the offenders.

I'll be trying it out too, I just have to get through chargen.

Tragic. I wonder who laughed at his unsolicited dick pic and started him down this sad, sad road.

The proudest I've been on Arx was when I finished writing and building and enacting the working Crown government. It was designed specifically to support both delegation and RP-creation with a wide spectrum of characters and @orgs, while also being something people could take and spin into their own brain-baby. I've never written a government from the ground up but I'm happy with this one.

But it was definitely not written with the thought of one person ruling them all because that'd be fucking impossible. Exhausting, too.

@Ganymede That was the sweetest thing to wake up to. Thank you.

You are a great person to RP with and your characters are invariably interesting on a molecular level. If someone like you thinks I'm wise, then I will never stop trying to be so.

I always come back for the people too. Without the people, there'd be no click and rush of creative fire, when you hit on a collaboration that really, really works. When I think back to my favorite characters, I almost always am thinking about their relationships, the ones that were so damn good (or bad but good!) and the people who made that happen behind the screen.

I keep saying, if it weren't for the people around here, I'd have been a novelist decades ago.

@buttercup Log everything, and when you do find something actionable, submit it. I've submitted one complaint about him so far, involving his alt plagiarizing/copying my character's crafting works, and then harassing me to let him continue to do so (reworking my work in his style so it would match his bookshelves :P) when I caught him at it and told him to knock it off. Eventually staff is going to have to see the pattern instead of counting each individual incident of bad behaviour as an individual incident.

@ganymede

I WANT IT SO BAD PLEASE SOMEONE

Sure, there are ways to try to game it. However if the game starts with it in place and that is the accepted, known, and understood culture, then it becomes the norm and people trying to exploit the system are not going to have shadows to hide in for very long. With good staff, attentive staff, non-defensive or burnt out staff, it creates a transparent setting. Players know that if there's something bothering them, at the very least there is a venue in which they will be heard. Staff know that there is a venue allowing them to keep track of what's been said and done so it nips staff shopping or favouring their friends in the bud. There is a place to post if new wrinkles turn up in a situation.

Yes, there will still be players who are like "I don't knoooow, maybe this isn't worth posting", but those are the same players who usually chime in after the fact when someone else makes a complaint.

Yes, there will be people like Spider who pick and choose their complaints for maximum effect, but with it all right out there in front of staff and players alike, the pattern can be spotted and it limits how much on the ground among the players politicking those jerkfaces can do because again... public venue, the other side /will be posted/.

The older I get, the less tolerant I am of having staff-side/player-side behind different veils. We should be fostering and supporting empathy between the two sides because they're the same pool of players, dang it.