Best posts made by Darinelle

@Royal - it's almost like this thread got... ninja'd?

I will leave a game if:

1. I cannot affect the world in meaningful ways as a player, OR
2. I cannot interact with or build or otherwise create stories for players as a GM that have meaning, OR
3. Staff are cheating assholes, OR
4. Players are cheating assholes, and staff takes no action.

Or any combination of the four.

Solutions:

As a GM, don't be so married to the idea of What Should Happen that you remove player agency. Create a framework where the players can solve a problem, offer them options, but be open to the idea of letting their ideas and plans matter. Create interesting ways to KNOW about those ideas - be it a healthy dialogue before events, or some more formal system, or some other way - so that you can incorporate them into the story. Operate under the "yes, and..." principle, rather than the "no that's not right, here's the real way" idea. Sometimes that's not possible, but where you can, look for a collaborative way to tell a story.

As a player, be flexible. Just because you have The Best Idea Ever doesn't mean it will work. Accept that there are probably a lot of things going on behind the scenes that you just don't know. Develop a good dialogue with the GMs, be willing to talk to them about your disappointments without immediately accusing them of being assholes who don't want you to have any fun. Don't assume the worst - assume ignorance unless you have proof of bias.

As both player and GM - don't be a cheating asshole.

As staff, take action against problem players before they wreck your game and ruin the fun of a bunch of players.

Kinda.

Yay here's to hoping things get righted soon!

@tez said in Reasons why you quit a game...:

You have to keep people around you who will call you on your shit. Everyone is going to make mistakes. I know I make them all the time. You have to be willing to own up to your shit, and do so publicly if need be, and apologize sincerely. I think every complaint you hear is worth examining, and gut-checking with others. Sometimes it's totally off-base, but there's often something worth examining or reworking in many.

I disagree. As I said, trust is the most scarce resource. You can't buy it back once you've burned it.

tl;dr: yes.

These are the three greatest principles of ethical staffing, period. If you do these things, you will succeed in most cases.

1. Keep people around who will call you on your shit, and be willing to own up to your shit and apologize as needed.
2. Examine every complaint you hear, and gut-check with others.
3. Earn trust and don't betray it. It is an extremely limited commodity.

Everything else is just window dressing and different paths to the same goal.

Homemade honey sriracha wings? YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

@pandora Oh shit. He was a Hydran, who got killed by Deltha, who was (I think) General or High General or something in one of the militaries. She was disciplining him for insubordination or something.

But I don't remember his name, he'd only been off the roster (and fresh out of CG) for a week.

@bored said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:

High tier nobles absolutely make the low tier nobles pointless. Staff will always claim that they're not, that they can agitate or band together and cause problems, but I've seen that happen organically precisely zero times ever.

Blame lazy staff, the ever present corrupt/just stupid need to give people feature characters, etc.

Why don't you blame players afraid to take risks? We've come close to civil war several times now, and each time so far as staff we've been like - "ooooooh, we might get to run a civil war this could be fun" and players go "yeahhhhhhh, I might lose a civil war so uh...... let's find a different way."

Which is fine, but it ain't staff that's the "problem" there. And when staff has talked to parties on all sides and says things like "we are willing to GM a civil war if that's where you want to go with this" then again - staff ain't the problem with that.

What I do see, over and over again, is a player mindset of "I have to ask <this person in charge> if it's okay to <do this thing> and if they say no then <it means I can never, ever do this thing.>" That's again - not a staff problem, especially when I feel like we've made it really super clear and obvious that it's okay to have agency, we're not interested in one person EVER being the gatekeeper for actions, taking independent actions is fine with us, and it's always easier to ask for forgiveness than to beg permission.

The most successful people, at least in Arx, are the ones who find a storyline they want to pursue and then pursue it, finding people they want to RP with and ways to accomplish things even if it's not "I asked my High Lord and they said it was ok to do." Finding unusual ways make for better stories anyway.

Of course, I'm also going to suggest that a lot of L&L players played that one game, where if you submitted a dumb action that was vaguely unthematic or hinted of fun at all, you generally got some humiliating emit to make you feel stupid and/or your character died in a terrible way. So there's a fair bit of brainwashing too in many cases, where distrust of GMs (and leadership characters, because most of those leaders - even the good ones - were played by staff) is ingrained and needs to be worked around, and any hint of fun personal story that might also be interesting and connected to the metaplot is to be avoided at all costs.

But I don't blame OUR staff for that either.

@auspice said in RL things I love:

@darinelle said in RL things I love:

Homemade honey sriracha wings? YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

gib.

<shares>

@pandora He was, as someone reminded me, Basina's brother. Maybe a search on Basina? She was also pretty new out of CG as I recall.

@deadculture said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:

@darinelle The family in question is the Firgaliks? Will take to PMs, actually, to not derail.

I just think that sort of piling on because so-and-so is a cripple or whatever is kind of fucking lame.

So this is a really great example, right?

They were sheeted to hate her. All of them except Jalil. It was thematic to hate cripples, because people weren't sure if that meant you had a partial soul or not. She could have been soulless and evil. She was a trumped up commoner because her father was a famous commoner who became High General and eventually won a marriage prize and then - well. There were lots of reasons, and theme, that said the Firgaliks should hate Portia.

I knew that going in.

What I didn't realize was that she not only didn't have any friends, that the only RP I would have with anyone on my actual sheet would be horrible, for months. That gradually changed over time, but there was a lot of bullshit that happened between point A and point B.

It can be thematic, and still be fucking wretched to deal with. Consider the player.

@auspice Are you stretching before you walk? Alternately, is that arch higher than the other?

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OMGHI.

@surreality said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:

@darinelle This.

This is absolutely a thing that happens, and it is maddening.

"That is clearly not the author's intent!!!"

"I am the author. You're wrong."

"I'm not wrong!" <continues making the same argument, usually with 'you're just changing it then because... ' accusation, the low-hanging fruit of this logic>

This is the reason I buy vodka, in a nutshell.

That I have never broken down and just trolled anyone pulling the 'not the author's intent' card when I am the author with, "What do you think the intent was?" "Really? Interesting!" and instead go with, "How can I make this more clear so this misunderstanding does not recur? Is there something you think would help clarify here?" is one of the hardest tidbits of integrity to hang on to, some days.

Sometimes I just let them misunderstand, because they're not going to hear me and any attempts I've made require more access to information they don't have. From a GM perspective, they can be wrong and misunderstand ICly and that's ok, and OOCly they're not hearing me so... they're just ICly wrong and maybe one day they'll realize it and maybe one day they won't but the setting is the setting is the setting, regardless.

@ganymede I. Feel. This. So. Much.

My current partner is of the "what you make is amazing, but also I love Taco Bell" variety so I can never quite trust if he means it or if he's just content to eat so he doesn't die and anything would be fine.

@tek said in L&L Options?:

@Caryatid Okay, so now I'm dying to know the drama that has you rejecting both Arx and Ithir.

I don't know about ithir, but if she's story-starved in Arx it's probably because we're WAY behind on actions and so everything metaplotty is on hold while we catch up. Slowly. Though I can't speak for her and there might be some horrible drama that I've totally missed during my shithole summer. But there is no overlap of staff between the two games.

@thenomain said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:

@darinelle said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:

@deadculture I mean I always /try/ to help. Sometimes it's just not possible.

Knowing that limit is one of the few true talents of making this hobby work. Congratulations on somehow being both understanding and reasonable. If you can teach this skill to those willing to learn, you'd probably do quite a bit of good.

I mean, I always /try/ to help. Sometimes it's just not possible. (LOL. I struggle with it too - but I'm getting better at it with age.)

Facebook. Messenger.

If you have sent me 3 things and I have neither seen nor responded to any of them, don't send me 15 more. Wait. Unless you only want me to read the last 2 things you've sent me, and to get annoyed when I see 18 messages from you when I finally have a moment to breathe? It's gonna make me super cranky. I am not your stream of consciousness.

@Faceless said in Darinelle's Playlist:

Also, stop stalking me across games. k?

Dude. It's what I do. Everyone knows this. DUH.

@fortydeuce Re: White Journals and Black Journals - when you choose a character to tie the journal to, these function as relationship updates. It's super helpful for me personally when I can just do a @relationship mychar=theirchar in game and see a history of all the updates I've made, for black and white journals both. It helps me remember little tidbits about the characters that I might not remember otherwise.

And 3 a week nets you 7xp so that's nice too, esp. once your two week @radomscenapalooza is done.