@Goldfish I love doing this too! It's one of my favorite things. LOVELOVELOVE. And when I have a vignette that I wrote a year prior, and it is suddenly relevant and I get to share it with people like BOOM!
And they like it?
IS THE BEST IS SO GOOD IS HAPPIFYING.
@Thenomain You're not wrong, so instead I'll say this:
Everyone should have equal access to the tools used to interact with the main plot(s). Those tools should be resolved, and stories progressed, regardless of how well liked you are or aren't by staff, but rather based on your use of those tools.
If a mage, a werewolf, and a vampire walk into a plot, then their interaction with said plot should be dependent upon their actions and their abilities and their relationship to what's going on. Equal access doesn't mean the same outcomes or story, just that if I say: "The sun is shining and the sky is blue and also there was a huge explosion on Main Street," then a vampire might come and scent the blood and hear the screams of the dying. The werewolf might show up and scent who planted the bomb, and try to track them away from the scene of the crime to figure out who did it. The mage might come and magically try to reverse the damage, or see what happened.
That is, to my mind, equal access.
If I, as a GM, decide to engage with Susan The Good RPer Who I Like about her boyfriend who was trapped in the rubble, and she goes through a plot to search for him, only to find out that he wasn't even there because he was stuck in the Hedge because he's secretly a changeling and now what will happen to them?
That really doesn't have anything to do with the main plot, and it's something I want to tell on my own time. While I'm resolving the actions of the werewolf, the vampire, and the mage, I can still tell this other story as relaxation and refreshment without, I think, veering over the lines of what is ethical. The main plot isn't really affected by Susan's plot. It's relevant to HER, and it's representative of her relationship with me that I'm interested in telling this story, and she gets a good depth of character development for it too, but I don't think it's a problem either.
Instead of being really general I'm going to be really specific.
I ran this scene yesterday for Harm and Gertie on TR, and fuck if it wasn't relaxing, enjoyable, and fun to run. They both took the scenario - which could have easily gotten them in major trouble (but required no combat) - ran with it, let their characters react with it, gave me things to play off of too, and we all had a great time. I LOVE when players do this, it makes me even happier to be STing for them.
Sometimes we're so busy focusing on the bad and what's broken (there's a lot of it) that we don't step back and enjoy the good - and there's a lot of that too, at least there is for me.
@faraday said in Plot session duration:
Some of that is based on the audience - I'm sure it would be different in a politically-oriented L&L game - but I think a lot of it is universal. MUSHes share a lot in common with tabletop RPGs, after all, and a lot of those emphasize combat. Fighting and gear often represent a huge chunk of most RPG rulebooks. Combat and downtime are all a lot of people are interested in.
can_confirm, it is definitely different in a politically-oriented L&L game. At least in things I've GM'd people will stay long after I've closed the log to do RP, or they'll page me 2-3 days later with RP they're doing about that plot. Even when it's a plot arc like a PRP, not specifically metaplot related. I usually end my sessions with "okay, this is beautiful but y'all need to GTFO my office." or "I'm going to bed, stay as long as you like but I'm done with the GMing part folks." LOL. Player enthusiasm to RP definitely outlasts my ability to be present for it most times. Note that this also includes combat-oriented plots, though they're usually eager to also find a healer when I'm done with them.
No idea why.
When dealing with characters who are antagonistic to me or who I might have to work in direct opposition to (or against whom I'm already working in direct opposition), I find the number of people who can handle that and also be friendly oocly is very, very small. There's often that level of "oh, you betrayed me/my character, I thought we were friends!" that is shitty because I try really hard not to talk about IC things OOCly. (I don't always succeed but I do try) So often if I'm friendly oocly it's not until after the player has proven their ability to deal with a shitty hand and not freak the fuck out, and until that happens I'm standoffish.
Also, you were a good Tovell. You'll be missed.
I really like the almost unknown Revanche Cycle by Craig Schaefer. It's a four-book arc, that arc is complete, all the books are published, and it's political fantasy that doesn't make me want to punch a baby and whose author doesn't kill literally every character I even like a little in the first hundred pages.
@Misadventure said in How much plot do people want?:
I like plot, but I like subsequent consequences even more. A plot is fodder for scenes. Results are fodder for thinking and getting in tune with the actual goals of the game.
SOOOOO much this. I don't like plots that don't give the people involved in them some way to go RP about it. Not just in a "look what I did" way but also an "and this changed <these things about my world or my character or my understanding or life as we know it" plots. If the goal of a MU is roleplay, then plots should enhance and encourage RP. If you make your plots an end to themselves with nothing connected, then what's the difference between your plot and a repeatable daily quest in WOW?
@sab AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I saw your post on the MU Things I Love and was about to reply to it about how I had this awesome scene yesterday where the emotional quotient was super high and meaningful and it was awesome and wasn't it just great when people were awesome.
And then there it happened to be that scene was literally with your char. ALRIGHT THEN.
I empathize with your story, but I thought of you. Perhaps this is your time to shine:
@SG and @Lithium too - I think this is vitally important. The other thing to remember though is you need four things for this to happen:
GM Buy-in, in that the GMs have to accept that the world is going to change, and not always in ways they expect. That means that plots that are set forth can't have ONE TRUE SOLUTION, they have to have problems and then you have to give players the agency to solve them in ways that you may not have thought about.
Player Buy-in, in that players have to take an active role in coming up with solutions, interacting in the world, and being willing to let what happens affect their characters. And to be proactive too, not just waiting and checking with some nebulous NPC about what the solution should be, or waiting for NPC orders. They have to actively think of things.
Communication. If I as a GM don't know that you ran a PRP and that this was the outcome, then I have no way of letting that affect the world. Which is not to say that recaps of every bar scene need to be done, but "Hey, I've been RPing about this thing for a month now, and I'd like to include the benefits of that in this scene in this way" is an important thing to communicate.
Trust. Sometimes it's not feasible or possible to show all the things players affect without spoiling the rest of the plot. Players have to trust that when you say "no, this was really a big deal you just don't know it" that it really was. Also players have to trust GMs to be fair and to be kind - if they try something really, really stupid it's awful to see that "stupid" decision that was made with (usually) partial information and (often) bad advice humiliatingly evident in emits or for the whole game to see, like the GMs are making fun of them instead of helping them rethink their character's life choices.
I guess it all boils down to collaboration in the end. Are we telling a story together, or are you trying to force me to GM a story I hate or that isn't consistent with the world theme, or am I trying to force you to play out a story where you have to look like a fool because you mistakenly chose a character who was a fool? AHAHAHAHA SUCKER.
I like telling a story together. It's my favorite part of MUing.
I'm Puffin. And Sapphire. And Leona (though she's gone for now). And a few others. Oy. So many others. All the Marin'alfar, though I suspect that will change at some point and I'll just play Ayllish and Rhaine and Venteri.
But I'm not Orazio any more (and I apologize for the state of the @mail, I received it that way and never went through and deleted)!
@Auspice Your other option is to post openly about the behaviors you survived and got away from. Maybe say you were inspired by your friend's struggle (hers) and how well she's doing - how strong she is for getting out of that situation, and you draw a lot of parallels. Talk openly about the behaviors of your ex, and how it started. Because it's never right at first, it's the sympathy and empathy and false, manipulative bullshit that start so easily and turn into that.
And how you're never going back, and you're proud of her for making that break. Sometimes our friends don't need us to tell them what not to do, they need us to tell them what they've done right. And how proud we are of them. It is a less confrontational way to call him out while building her up (which it sounds like she both needs and deserves).
@saosmash said in MU Things I Love:
@darinelle I'm sorry I had to go to bed!!
I should have gone to bed too! lol. But you were part of it too and so
@Faceless I really only posted this so you'd stop asking me who I played in which games, and then acting like it was the first time we'd ever discussed it. 
So Wednesday I'm getting a fourth cat. Because one of my dear friends got a pig, and the pig has upset this one cat's reality to the point that it is shitting everywhere and miserable. And none of their friends would take the cat, and they were going to take her to the ASPCA and it's a really nice tuxedo cat and black cats don't do terribly well at the SPCA anyway and it's fucking freezing so she will die if she has to be an outside cat too.
I don't even like cats, y'all. I don't dislike them, but I don't actively like them. 
@roz It's not that we're plotting your death, it's just that you might die. TOTALLY DIFFERENT.
@shincashay I liked the Revanche cycle for political fantasy. Winter's Reach is the first book and is on Kindle Unlimited.
I love the Bannings board on Arx. It makes me seriously happy, because it's not "here is the person and here is the list of evidence various people collected over X number of years." It's just - "This person did this thing, and we don't do that here." Done.
It's a quick guide to culture, it's not a bunch of horrible drawn-out drama, and when people disappear it's easier to be able to look and say - welp, they weren't banned so they're either on another character or left the game" rather than wonder.
I didn't get a puppy this week.
I wanted a puppy. I have pictures of the puppy I almost got. I had a name picked out.
But I am going to be very busy in the next year and it wouldn't be enough time to spend with the puppy so I'm doing the adult thing and not getting a puppy right now and I want to CRY because puppies are the best and the world needs more puppies and I need more puppies.
Dammit.
@bored said in Period Piece Face vs Modern Face:
I think the historical dopplegangers thing (which blows my mind every time I see it, but also really just confirms that there's a set # of human faces) pretty much disproves this?
A lot of it (OP lists a lot of women, particularly) may just be a makeup thing, also.
Well, so I think it's more a matter of what people find attractive. Some things are classic looks that are still considered handsome or beautiful, but there's a specific subset of beautiful now that didn't look beautiful to the tastes at the time, so they don't fit as well with period sensibilities.