Posts made by Coin

@Arkandel said:

@surreality said:

And if you do make a decision, that's precisely how it is perceived: as taking sides. Not making a call, not even 'reacting to the glaringly obvious breach of policy' when such is actually the case -- but taking sides. Which is not really a good thing, and generally it's assumed you're corrupt the moment you make a call, since one or the other of those sides is the one decided against.

Although you are correct and I agree, one of the things I am most peeved about in any kind of making calls are staff is that all sides to an OOC conflict in need of resolution are necessarily equal to blame for that. And the reason for it is that, although in principle it doesn't sound so bad, in practice our hobby is sometimes frequented by some toxic individuals unable to cope with even lax social norms if they don't conform to their wishes.

So ultimately there are situations where one party is grossly mistreated by the other but staff, doing their best to appear impartial, try to push things into a state where everyone is equally unhappy; again, a noble sentiment on paper, but one where folks who lucked into having to deal with some truly batshit crazy players are put in the same basket as them and are portrayed as being partially their own damn fault.

It's not only bad staff who're responsible for this. In fact some of the best people I've met in MU* have done this. Not wanting to take sides is a very, very powerful factor in decision making.

You don't even have to be batshit crazy for this to happen.

I've had otherwise sane people quit and take their toys or stomp off in a crazy huff or throw tantrums because I made a decision they didn't agree with, even if it was my decision to make.

@tragedyjones said:

I like to think I am doing a dope job of a hacker who still interacts. Even f at least once I spent an entire scene invisible...

Honestly, it's only a problem if your lack of IC sociability is hindering the scene. If two other people are playing normally and you're Obfuscated or whatever--you're the one missing out, ultimately. But if you are in a scene with a person and no one else... you need to be able to interact.

That's why if you play a hacker you inevitably have to play a hacker who does something else on top of it. Which is probably why you get hypersocial hackerz.

@Arkandel said:

@Ganymede said:

I'll bet you were pretty terrible at it too. Everyone is.

Play a hacker in my presence more often! You will be mocked.

(...then I wonder why people don't wanna play with me ).

Hopefully, after Mr. Robot, people will be less stupid about this.

(No, they won't.)

My hacker on The Reach mostly sat around writing scripts and programs that he never used. And the one plot with hacking (used here as the much more nebulous "doing things with computers most people can't," not the specific definition as differs from, say, "cracking") involved the storyteller actually knowing about this shit and making me make rolls and spend time--at one point he was like, 'okay, now pose waiting around bored for a while'. It was fun.

@Ganymede said:

@Coin said:

That's all right, I can agree to disagree. Or just disagree! I played a lawyer for YEARS and the amount of times actual lawyering came up were really really slim. I usually used it more as a springboard for behavior and topics of conversation.

I'll bet you were pretty terrible at it too. Everyone is.

Remember how we all bitched and complained about how stupid the Autumn Mantle 1 bonus was relative to every other Mantle 1 bonus? That's applicable here. The Dancer Kith is shit.

So, like, House Rule it, you nobs.

I don't know if I was terrible at it or not because the few times I played it out, I wasn't really worried about accuracy in my portrayal beyond "would this fly in a fly-by scene on a lawyer show?"

I did have actual lawyer friends who gave me advice on things, however, and one of the reasons I like lawyers as characters is that most of their work is not going to involve other PCs. My character spent time in court, in his office, in depositions, in deal meetings, etc., and all my scenes were, "coming home from court" or "on my way to a deposition" or "can we get on with this, I have a client meeting in ten."

My only real challenges were when other PCs were in situations where having a lawyer in that moment doing lawyer things in scene would be crucial (getting arrested, needing legal advice in a scene where handwaiving it would be cheesy, etc.), and most of the time, I looked things up or asked actual lawyers for advice--or informed the person: "I am not an actual lawyer so I'm going to pose this, and then if I figure out differently we can edit a little".

It's not that difficult to play a professional of any profession if you're willing to keep the actual minutiae (which tends to be boring as fuck anyway) out of scenes and as a base for the character rather than forefront details.

@Miss-Demeanor

That's all right, I can agree to disagree. Or just disagree! I played a lawyer for YEARS and the amount of times actual lawyering came up were really really slim. I usually used it more as a springboard for behavior and topics of conversation. But my character was a lawyer, even if all his lawyering went on off-screen.

@Bobotron

Pretty much, yah.

You're getting bonuses on three social Skills "where movement is involved", which while nebulous, can translate to something ridiculously useful, if you're playing a game that uses social rolls (a whole different issue we've discussed before and probably will again in the future).

I'm not arguing other Kiths aren't better--I just don't think it's particularly bad; unless you're trying to apply it to a medium of RP that isn't going to see any consistent practical use.

I can also argue that I've seen more practical situations where distracting people in favor of keeping whatever other PCs are doing from being noticed than situations where "understanding anything written in any mortal language". By this I mean situations in which it actually matters. Because being able to read anything in any mortal language in a social scene is about as awesome as being able to dance really well in a social scene, i.e. fluff.

I concede that it's one of the more narrow-scoped and nebulous and badly designed Kiths, but there's heaps of this sort of "practically useless" stuff in the games.

@HelloRaptor said:

@Coin said:

@Miss-Demeanor said:

Both and mechanic. Same stupid bonus to dance-related rolls. Having played a Dancer for years, I can tell you just how little it actually comes up. >.> Or matters.

This seems more like a problem with the concept of a dancer on a MU and how much actual dancing you'll be doing to make a mechanic practical and viable, than any actual problem in the theme or mechanic of the Kith itself. >.>

Does it? That was rhetorical, because no, it really doesn't.

It really does, though. There's nothing stopping someone from running a game in tabletop wherein a character with the Dancer Kith can make exceedingly good use of their Blessing. Especially considering that the new version provides the effect of making it really hard to notice anything else when a Dancer is performing in your presence--the possibilities for your friends are many.

What's the difference between "Dancer" and "Author"? Hell, in MUs where you can just hold events and have people dance as a performance piece, a Dancer seems like they're going to get to play their profession a lot more than an Author, whose profession is largely solitary and involves maybe rolling dice and then putting up a bbpost that says, "I wrote a book about [subject]. 27 successes. Super popular!"

Concepts are viable if they get play; if they don't, it's likely a problem with the medium or storyteller, not the concept itself. Sure, you can hyperbolize and find concepts this isn't true for, but in this case? Not really. if you make a dancer, chances are you want to roleplay dancing--and if you want to roleplay dancing, you should be looking for reasons to do that, and if you can't find them, it's not really an issue with the concept, but with the game/story.

@Miss-Demeanor said:

Both and mechanic. Same stupid bonus to dance-related rolls. Having played a Dancer for years, I can tell you just how little it actually comes up. >.> Or matters.

This seems more like a problem with the concept of a dancer on a MU and how much actual dancing you'll be doing to make a mechanic practical and viable, than any actual problem in the theme or mechanic of the Kith itself. >.>

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

I love the book enough that I've watched the entirety of the terrible, TERRIBLE TV movie version from 1980.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEczZOWJ7jU

All on Youtube for our...err...enjoyment.

Is that the one with Miguel Ferrer?

Oh. Nope. It's the one with Bud Cort. I was thinking of the 1998 one, which is... still pretty bad.

@WTFE
Gonna go ahead and assume fries aren't common in China?

@Bobotron said:

@Coin
God, you make me miss the days of the Harry Potter Greatestjournal RPG I was part of, which was one of the most fun RPs I've had.

People who've never done Journal-RP will never understand us people who have, man.

Actually, I've played from work on gdocs with people and then just pasted the log on the wiki later. It's pretty easy. Just open a shared gdoc, and come up with a suitable 'end pose' marker. Two dashes, a winky face, the phrase 'cockgobbler', whatever. And then just check the gdco periodically.

@Miss-Demeanor said:

Also... total agreement on the last comment. If you know there's a guy down the street that takes his rabid dog with him wherever he goes, and that dog always ends up biting someone wherever he goes... stop inviting the guy down the street to your parties.

Especially if the dog is named after an arachnid.

@Roz said:

Man, and I came over to totally yell about why we couldn't have a 1984 game instead.

That's it. @Roz, we need to make a game where there are three warring nation-states, one based on 1984, one based on BNW, and one based on F451; and these societies are all warring with each other trying to figure out which one is the most dystopic and can crush their citizens's sense of self more efficiently and with less dissidence. (It's a very cold war.)

We can call it Dystopia³.

@Arkandel said:

I haven't done non-real time roleplaying in ages but a problem I recall was some people either simply outpaced the rest by posting way more often or they were held back by having to observe a post order enough to be frustrated.

This is actually pretty much exactly the same as MUing, just on a different scale.

It's different, for sure. Handling stuff like combat should be an interesting experience, too.

Combat via forum RP is the worst. The worst.

@ThatGuyThere said:

@Coin said:

Most of the difficulties with making the transition from forum to MU is that people who play on forums are used to a much slower pace.

Slower as in pose speed or plot movement? Or both? Never did the forum rp thing, was recruited to mushing via college gaming club, so never tried much of the other online options.

Well... slower in everything. Usually getting in 2-3 posts a day is pretty good. I mean, sure, there are people who play forum games like they're MUs or chat Rp, posting back and forth at light-speed, but it's definitely not the norm. On LJ games, a lot of the "fast" RP happened in comment threads for journal entries and they were exactly that: characters interacting via comments on a fictional journal (I can't stress how much fucking fun this can be). The ones I played almost always ended up having the actual RP stuff happening in AIM chat (later private MUs).

Forum is just not conducive to real-time play. You post when you can at the pace dictated by the speed at which everyone posts, really, which is usually quick enough for something you're only gonna check in on twice or thrice a day, but compared to a scene on a MU, it's glacial.

It does lend itself to longer poses, even though I was usually a jerk and Hemingwayed the shit out of it.

@il-volpe said:

@ThatGuyThere said:

As a hobby we are very closed off and borderline hostile to new folks.

Borderline? Hehe. Watch what happens when I say,

"I'd like to try to get folks who are into play-by-post forum games to try MUSHing,"

I played on forum games. MSN Chats, IRC, forum, LiveJournal-with -AIM-adjacent... I even played on Ethereal Realms for a bit in their Exalted rooms. I met Holden Shearer there.

Most of the difficulties with making the transition from forum to MU is that people who play on forums are used to a much slower pace.

@WTFE said:

Orgy Porgy?

No, wait. Wrong Brave New World. Sorry.

i would play the shit out of a Brave New World with superheroes MU. At least until all the TS turned into drama. Then I would be sad.

@HelloRaptor said:

@Coin

Not to mention that it's pretty trivial to doctor a log.

It's pretty trivial to doctor the truth, too, so why even bother talking to people when you're dealing with a complaint? Just go with your gut and don't waste your time with people who could be lying to you.

I've had doctored logs result in me making some really terrible calls. People lying has done the same. That either of these things happen doesn't make logs, or talking to people, absent of value it just means you need to approach both with care.

No argument there. My point was actually more to call attention to the whole "logs are irrefutable" approach a lot of people take. "Oh, he showed me a log, it must be true" is really common.