Best posts made by Darinelle

So there's this player who created her own character, and decided to create this problem for her character. And then she decided she wanted her character to overcome that problem, and put in an @action to be able to figure out how, officially and outside of her own personal sandbox, to fix it.

So I wrote up a response for her. A poem that encompassed a quest for a magical tea to cure the ailment.

And she took this poem, and spent a year of RP to get people involved, to go places, to explore, to research, to learn. She used this thing that she created for herself, wove a compelling story, turned it into a thing, included a metric fuckton of people, and made this wonderful story arc for her character and everyone who interacted with her.

I am so happy about this. The arc concluded today, and it was so much more satisfying because of how much RP she's put into it. I can't wait to see what she does next. I think it'll be great. It's not always about the MacGuffin - but the rich story you can create on the journey? That's where the magic lies.

@biggles - So here's the long answer I was going to write first:

It's hard to be in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't, and also damned if you compromise" scenario.

I could eschew live-GMing entirely, which is one of the main reasons I became a GM in the first place. It goes against the grain for me to respond to so many things with an @action response, even though they can be beautiful and poignant and amazing - even though sometimes scenes aren't really needed. But I try to live-GM as much as I can because I find it beautiful and fun and collaborative. Despite my sometimes crankypants attitude on MSB, I really enjoy the time I spend GMing for people.

I could just GM for, say - half the people in a crisis who take actions. But then how does one choose? There are people I could GM for every single night. There are others I don't want to GM for even twice a year. But if I pick - do I just pick the people I really like, and leave the others (or the unknowns) out? That's a quick path to cries of GM favoritism, cliques, and the sort of really toxic environment I watched tear Firan apart.

I could GM for everyone, one at a time and either it would take a month where I did nothing in my spare time but GM, or it would take six months. I am sick, I've always been sick, and I need my gym time and my fighter practices and my art to help keep my health (mental and physical) from confining me to a bed (as used to be the case). So the first won't work. But we also don't want to spend 6 months on a single piece of a metaplot arc either.

I could GM for everyone, but then sometimes I miss things, and sometimes I don't respond as quickly as I would if I were single-scening.

So I choose the last, while we bring more storytellers on board. It's a slow process, and a careful one. To tell metaplot stories means you have to have a great deal more information than players have about the metaplot and things that go bump in the night. One scene I'm passing off for example involves unicorns. To an average player, unicorns are beautiful magical creatures that need to be protected for... reasons. To the storyteller, she has to know things like - why are unicorns invisible during the day? What are the things around their horns? How do they function? What's the purpose of attacking the unicorns in the first place? What's the overall aim here? WHY is this happening? Also, what is being sent? What are its powers? From a mechanical standpoint, how is combat run? What level of risk is acceptable?

I'll probably spend more time working through all this than it would take to run the scene - and when you're looking at 35+ scenes to schedule, that's a daunting thing. More than that though, it IS important to bring more storytellers on if we can find ones that fit the rigorous criteria KQ mentioned earlier, because live GMing is fun and it really adds a lot (in my opinion) to a MUSH. Not just in actions - but also when NPCs can walk the grid and engage with players, show up at the occasional event, bring a bit of magic in here and there. It's fun and immersive and that's one of the things we all really enjoy, but it's hard to do that when there are a bunch of actions outstanding and such.

So that's the long answer - there aren't any good answers but there are less-bad answers. I'm not afraid to tell people no. I do it all the time. But in this case I chose the path where the most people could get something special and fun. And these are highly risky actions. Three PCs (and lots of NPCs) have died so far in this crisis. If people are risking actual character death, I try to make sure they have a scene where they can at least have choices and get a good story out of it.

At the end of the day, I'm sorry to hear your friends would rather bitch about it to you than actually talk to me and say something like "hey, I feel like you're not really present here - should we just reschedule?" I'm not sure what night it was that it happened - I'm not sure if it was the night before you posted what you did, or any night in the past two weeks - I've been doing lots of scenes in those times, some singular, others not. Some of them have been linked scenes, and those I've really enjoyed though - where people are close enough to hear what's going on with the other scene in snippets, and I can weave things so that what happens in one scene affects the other, and vice versa.

So now I'm left wondering - is it one of those that made people mad? Are they not enjoying that weaving of a coherent story together, those plot hooks that give them people to talk to about what happened and what will happen? Or is this one of the single-setting ones that was lackluster? There were a couple where I was just feeling uninspired for it not from being overworked, but the chemistry of the people involved was off, and people were going in multiple directions at once - was it one of those?

And who are you? You won't say. Are you the person I suspect you are, who I've spent plenty of time writing story for, who I've worked with on NPCs, and responded to actions, and talked down from ledges? I hope not. Who are your friends? I don't know that either, only that they were so unhappy they just paged their friends about how much the GM event sucked.

So. That's my thought process. It's a glib response to say "better to not have actions at all than to have my friends page me all upset because they are having a shitty time." It's equally glib to say "hire more staff!" Unless you know the details of what we do and how we do it and why, that's not a helpful solution either.

So here we are. I didn't deserve it but it's what was said. I'll be a long time forgetting, because it's particularly hurtful when you're giving of yourself to try to do nice things for other people and the response is "well, but no one really likes it they're just telling you that they do, and I'm here to tell you that you're doing a shitty job and hurting more than you're helping." Kicks in the face like that take a while to heal.

I hope your friends read this and find a little compassion in their hearts for me. If they're really that upset they can always page me and we'll work through it and if I missed something we can certainly talk about how to incorporate that moving forward or a way to make things right. I'm sorrier than I can tell you that they had a miserable time.

So - apology accepted. It doesn't really fix anything, but I appreciate the apology.

Professional behavior and professional committment are two separate things.

When I am staffing, you should absolutely expect me to not be unethical, to handle things in a timely manner, etc. That's behaving professionally.

When I am staffing, I am not going to feel bad for taking a 2 week vacation (it was glorious), for not logging on 5 days a week, or for not spending all night every night doing jobs and making stories for other people. Some nights I log in and play. Some nights I don't log in at all. Some days I do a bunch of jobs, some days I don't do any. When you start looking at my efficiency and a quota and I have to start making project plans for stories and I have to do X amount of work I don't like before I am allowed to do Y amount of work I DO like, then we have a disconnect.

That is also a reason I quit games. Don't make the game feel like my job.

When a problem player who walked on the edge of banning actually turns it around and becomes a decent member of the community and fun to GM for.

Sometimes it's nice to be wrong.

@Wizz said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

Or even worse, putting YOURSELF through that mindfuck, especially if you're inebriated or have mental health issues?

Which is exactly what happened to you on Arx, since pretty much everything you think was going on wasn't actually going on. The only differential among what staffers can and can't do is that Tehom and NV lock down some of the delete permissions really hard, to prevent staffers like me from inadvertently deleting critical things that force them to revert to backups. But that has nothing to do with view permissions. Oh. And all staffers know who other staffers play and what is an NPC and a PC. Also as a player, if you @sheet char and nothing comes up? It's an NPC. And the PCs you think were staffbits really, really weren't.

I hope that gets you to a healthier place, because the last few days have been weird with you and I'll admit I'm a bit worried. Take care of yourself, wherever you decide to play next.

@Derp

I've avoided responding to things that do not require my attention from players who have been so abusive to me that I would ban them except that their behavior has been limited directly and specifically to me. If staff as a whole have discussed player behavior, and staff as a whole does not ban someone, but I am pretty much done with their accusations and bullshit and madness? Someone else can answer their actions and handle their jobs. Could I do it? Absolutely. But why would I? That's part of why no GM is an island, right?

Regarding equal access to NPCs and such...

My reward as a staffer is getting to tell the stories I want to tell. Those stories still center around players, not my NPCs - but I will continue to tell them with the people I enjoy. It goes in cycles - I'll tell stories for this group, and then I'll tell stories for a different, non-overlapping group when that arc is done, and so on. That's what I do for relaxation. (Other than spend a lot of non-computer time in armor)

Everyone should have equal access to the main plot. That doesn't mean I can't tell stories in my off time. They're like PrPs, but as a staffer I have access enough to metaplot and secrets that it can feel like it's super super super hella important even if it doesn't affect the whole of the game. Sorrynotsorry, I'm not going to stop using my relaxation time to tell stories, and I don't always want to find a different game that will let me tell PrPs as a non-staffer.

If I give a game, say - 30 hours a week of staff time (this is an incredibly low estimate of how much time I spend staffing on Arx) and I want to spend 3 hours telling a story that's basically just lore and a PC's personal story and collaborative RP? I'm going to do it, and I'm not going to feel bad for not inviting Fred Who Makes Every Scene An Exhausting Drag to join it. I'll probably have already resolved Fred's action anyway.

@saosmash You don't owe anyone your story. It's perfectly okay to just sit there and lurk and know that you're not alone in struggling to be whoever you are.

When someone just goes ALL FUCKING OUT on a particular course of action, and it results in a beautiful thing that happens, deep and rich and meaningful - and then you wake up in the morning inspired to write a bunch of lore and things because of it, and something awesome comes into being RIGHT THERE because someone was awesome and cool and brilliant.

Goddamn.

I'd tag him but as god is my witness, I thought turkeys could... no wait... as god is my witness I cannot remember like 90% of the names-to-characters here. W/e.

He knows what he did.

That moment when you're GMing a scene, and the characters are talking about various clues and metaplot things and pieces of information they've found from RP interactions and pulled together into a cohesive story - and then someone adds in a piece of lore you wrote that you loved so much, tying it into what's being currently done and using it to carve a new path in the middle of the scene that you hadn't expected at all. And the whole group plays off it and goes with it and it turns a scene into this haunting, collaborative, beautiful story with depth and meaning and gravitas.

That moment right there. That's the one.

Last night, between two players and me, in a large-scale plot that brought to a conclusion the first part of a major metaplot arc:

Player A made a choice utterly consistent with his character.
Player B also made a choice utterly consistent with his character.

Me, to Player A: You realize that if you do this, your character will die.
Player A: Well, I'd hoped not, but you gotta do what you gotta do.
Me, to Player A: Well. I'm going to give him a goddamn heroic death then.
Player A: <cracks knuckles> Let's go make MUSH magic.

Me, to Player B: You realize that if you do this, your character will die.
Player B: That's what he'd do. I'm okay with this.
Me, to Player B: Okay. Let's do this. Here we go.

It was glorious. It was heroic. They saved other people's PCs. They saved NPCs. And in the end, when the time came and I dealt them both the damage they would have received? They succeeded their checks to stay alive through crazy damage, and managed to make it out looking like the badass heroes they are.

Last night was magic. People in pubchan were glued to the log, frantically refreshing to see what was going to happen. People in the scene were hoping. The poses were epic, the story fantastic, and all because of players who let the moment infect them, and inspire them, and weren't afraid to look certain death in the face and just go all in anyway.

You know who else gets credit for that?

There was one character who was going to have to make a similar choice. She made her pose and waited. And then these first two players moved in and distracted the bad guy, and she.... let them. She didn't struggle. She didn't force it into trying to make him deal with all of them. She had her moment. She did some heroic things. And then she let them save her, letting their potential sacrifice take the spotlight.

So - MU Things I Love - people who will go all in on a story, will risk death not because they want to take all the spotlight or the story, but because that's what their character will do, and who are willing to share the glory with others. That kind of collaboration makes greatness. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

@bananerz said in @Arx: Anonymous Messengers (:

I'd be very happy if someone is being a dick that it pretty much lowers the difficulty in finding them for the other person. I still think if someone OOCly is being a dick and wrecking a character, get them the hell off the game. But good idea!

I still don't think you understand. We have 400 active characters. On a given evening, we have 200+ unique accounts logged in.

Now, suppose you do something that even HALF the game doesn't like. Take it down further, even a QUARTER of them.

Now suppose they all take a moment to either condemn (if we still had it) or send you an anonymous messenger.

Now you have to what - spend your AP to find out who those 100 anonymous messengers were sent by, and have 100 scenes of "why do you hate my character" or also "you have no goddamn idea what I'm actually doing what the actual fuck"? Or alternately, just be shit on anonymously by 100 people for making a decision that isn't the most popular thing and doesn't make everyone universally happy.

Keep in mind that we (GMs) deliberately make it so that choices have to be made, and especially as a leader it's unlikely that you're going to have a lot of "please-everyone" choices to make about major events.

As @Sunny says, it's not the fringe cases we care much about - we can just boot and ban people if it's a one-time thing. But having 100 conversations with 100 people about "hey, maybe think that yes your character wouldn't like someone but also how fun is it for a character in a positive to make hard choices to also have 100 anonymous people telling them they suck day after day after day" is exhausting. And yes, we can make a news post but no one ever thinks it applies TO THEM. Because of course, they totally have a super important REASON. IC IS IC.

Yes, IC is IC. But leader positions already are hard. Let's not also make it filled with a shitton of negativity you realistically have no way to respond to in any meaningful way.

Sidenote: If you want to send an anonymous message? Put in an action for it. Then the person can get it anonymously, we know what's going on, there's a track of it, and if someone investigates who sent it, we can adjudicate whether you were stealthy enough for it to really be anonymous. It's a valid use of an @action.

If it's not that important to you? Then maybe it's not really that necessary.

@Arkandel I'm going to comment on this from someone who isn't IN IT but works in Finance (and lord above that field is so old-white-male it's not even funny) and buck the trend a little.

Yes, you should hire someone who can do the job. I would bet real dollars that a woman who seems to meet your criteria will be insanely more qualified than most of the men who seem to meet your criteria, because of the differences women and men tend to create resumes and apply for jobs. THAT BEING SAID, assume you hire a woman because she's the one who can do the job the best and now you're trying to smooth that transition.

First - it's not going to be smooth. Just expect that.

Second - no woman wants to be treated like a mascot. I'm glad you're not planning to do that.

Third - it is not "treating women like a mascot" to have an open, honest discussion with her when she joins your team. Mention things like - "we hired you for your skillset, but I want to make sure we're not unconsciously hampering your efficacy. So I'll be keeping an eye on meetings and groupchat to make sure that you aren't getting talked over, and that when you suggest something we don't ignore it until a man says it, and when you ask questions they get answered. But if I fail, please feel free to either say something directly in the meeting, or if you're not comfortable with that come to me later and discuss it with me."

Openly discussing the elephant in the room isn't making someone feel like a mascot. It's proving that you know what the common pitfalls are, and you're aware of them and working to make sure they're not a problem. Doing it in that way makes sure she knows that she not only has an ally if she needs one, but that you're interested in making sure that the reasons you hired her aren't going to be wasted by the stupidity of men not being accustomed to listening when a woman speaks.

My previous boss had to call meetings for me with our IT guys so that they'd show up to the meetings and not blow them off. My current boss had to sit through IT meetings with me and literally repeat everything I said until people responded to it. And I am not a shy and retiring woman. It has gotten better with time. I call my own meetings with IT now and they show up. When I speak, the ones that have been through these exercises listen and pay attention, and now get other people to stop talking long enough for me to speak. It's a process, but it starts with awareness. Whatever woman you hire will be aware of the imbalance. Acknowledging it before it becomes an issue, creating a plan to deal with it if (when) it is an issue, and then acting on it will be the key to establishing a smooth, cohesive environment.

Ribald jokes are the least of your worries. I can brush off a ridiculous joke or a smarmy attitude (that doesn't involve touching, don't fucking touch me at work). But being ignored and talked over in meetings and having to wait for a man to repeat my ideas will destroy my enjoyment of what should be a good job, and honestly it's doing a disservice to the team because you've now hired someone and then forced her to underperform because you won't let her. Don't do that thing.

When I can turn things going horribly wrong IC into terrible, wonderful, fun stories, and watch the RP spread out and reach totally unrelated people, change things in organic ways, and see people using the marginally twisted things I come up with to deepen their characters?

I LOVE PEOPLE THAT DO THIS THING.

@brent I see you've met Tolamar Brand, the big bad guy of Season 1, who began life as a minor detail in the middle of some other information entirely but the players Just. Couldn't. Quit. Him.

@admiral said in MU Things I Love:

It's easy to roll with the punches and mature as a character when you know that staff will protect you from real consequences and feed you all the best plots/RP that others don't get.

That may not be the case here but in my experience most players are pretty much the same. We're all capable of the same things. The ones who 'perform best' are just the ones that staff decided to favor.

When I say "In my experience" on Arx, it is literally impossible for me to "favor" everyone I GM for. In the last year, I've run 122 logged plots (at least), and that doesn't count even half the NPC-scenes, off-the-cuff GMing, and lore pieces I drop in random places. That's just regular GM plots. I won't say I don't have my favorite people to RP with or to GM for, but those aren't the only people I GM for by a long shot. And yet - I see lots and lots and LOTS of players who do this. While this particular post was calling out a handful of players specifically (known only in my head because I'm not going to point at them here), it happens quite a bit in Arx at least.

I'm not perfect. There are people I like better than others. But I try really hard to spread plot love around.

Have I forgiven someone in this hobby? Goodness yes. LOTS of people. There were a lot of people who said and did really shitty things in Firan - both to me as a GM, and to each other where I as a GM saw it. It was a problem. Those people though - most of them weren't bad people, and pulled from a toxic environment I see them in a different light. I've enjoyed RPing with them in other places now (not limited to Arx) and interacting with them in other ways and they're better and good to be around and, in many cases, lovely to RP with. If you've done something to me and I literally can't remember it? I probably am willing to just clean the slate and start anew.

The people I haven't forgiven in this hobby (and really have no plans to) are twofold:

1 - People who took their attacks and their evil outside of the in-game shenanigans, or who attacked me as a person.
2 - People who I had (or have) to deal with on a regular basis for preying on other players.

This hobby has terrible people in it, much like every other hobby. We are not automatically exempt from this because we're geeks or nerds or whatever you want to call yourselves (I'm not the identity police here). But those two above are my biggest rules. I'm more likely to forgive the first than the second, but in both cases you have to be willing to put up with me being suspicious, cold, and standoffish for a while until you prove you've not only given over a decent apology but also you're willing to not do it again and in fact have changed your ways.

This is what makes me crazy about the internet - and why forgiveness is so hard on the internet in general. I believe that everyone can change for the better (and for the worse). I believe everyone should be given that opportunity if they earn it. But that doesn't mean you can say "Sorry, I didn't mean to do that" and we're instantly okay. It means "I hear what you're saying and while I don't believe it I'm willing to extend you enough time to see if you've actually changed your ways." The problem with the internet is that it's a platform of anonymity, so it takes a willingness to drop that anonymity if they're going to show you they've changed. And the internet is an instant platform - instant communication, connection. Which means that people expect that change to happen - that forgiveness, the changing of ways, the wiping clean of the slate - to happen instantly too and that's just not how any of this works in my world.

That moment when you do a thing at midnight and then just wait to see the world start burning. But quietly tho.

@arkandel said in MUSH Marriages (IC):

"Hey, I play alts whose RP is separate than the RP we have together. I do different things sometimes, it doesn't mean I don't like the RP we have." If there's any pushback on it, offer to figure out a way to transition out of the RP you have with that person - and if there's more pushback I'd advise to turn the offer into a mandate. Don't argue the point, just declare it; this signals your boundaries aren't up for debate.

This, so much this. And also:

"I play my character who is with yours ICly, but that doesn't mean I play my character with yours exclusively. I do different things and RP with different people, but that doesn't mean I don't like the RP we have."

And lastly:

"We are not OOCly married or together. Do not treat me as though we are."

Those three boundaries are huge and should be instantly respected - and anyone who pushes them is an instant no from me for any sort of deep, meaningful relationship.

There's a particular type of character and RP I really, really enjoy. It doesn't fit in Arx even remotely, so it's a really big deal for me to have a character now that not only gets to be that TYPE of character, but to engage in some of the quirks and foibles of that arc that just make me happy as a person.

Also - random scenes that could have been stilted, awkward, and basic turned into a really great introduction to two characters, with two RPers who added depth and found a lovely balance between "we just met" and "we're best friends" that resulted in me wanting to see those characters again to learn more, but not feeling like a slog between two people determined to run that gamut in one marathon session.

ALSO ALSO to people who know how to end a scene without belaboring it because they just can't let go. (Which is a love from both Arx and Gray Harbor)

@kitteh said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

And while I am sure staff doesn't consciosuly think of it this way, you do get the subconscious reaction that combat is 'honored' while asking to do something impactful with another skill often gets you side-eyed as overreaching.

This problem, and the way it devalues social-only or social-main characters, is the entire reason the system is being discussed. We want social characters to be able to have something impactful to them, that they enjoy, that has effects on the metaplot/game world.

Which is not to say we don't run social plots. As GMs, we believe social/diplomatic characters are not only important but are important enough to build plot around. We've created systems that tie players together for RP, I know we've run diplomatic and social plots that have a meaningful effect on the world. But we want MOAR for the social characters. Glory that people can refer to. Reasons for houses to stop being shitty about people wanting to buy pretty clothes and not armor, because there's "no coded benefit."

Reasons for combat characters to think - you know, maybe I could slaughter this person but in a social setting maybe I shouldn't be a douchebag because I have a sword and could do anything, because that person will get me laughed out of this party. Or shame my family. Or have some kind of meaningful impact.

I'm not saying all combat characters do this (#notallcombatbeasts) or that everyone is a dick to social characters, but we want our social characters to have shiny things to play with and reasons to feel badass with what they do, and not just "hey, we're just biding our time until the combat beasts take care of business." That's seriously uncool and it's not very inclusive.