@rucket said in The Wheel of Time:
Why the hell did that Aes Sedai call Lews Therin 'the dragon reborn'? He's not, he's The Dragon.
No, he's the Dragon Reborn. Always has been. Part of the opening of the Eye of the World is Ishamael reminding him that they've already done this a million times and will do it a million times more, and Ish is already tired of having that conversation. It's a big cycle, just goes on and on and on.
@krmbm said in GMs and Players:
I've definitely never paged Zuckerberg and asked him if he could give me any pointers for getting involved in the plot.
Because that's not what Zuck is there for.
And that's kind of our point.
You don't page Zuck about how to get involved in MU plot and you don't page a MU admin about your off-game interpersonal issues with another player unless they become an issue of game rules.
@reimesu has already seen us take action against players. we're not averse to it. But she brought us evidence and laid out a case and we said 'ok, here is what we are going to do', and laid out a path to be followed. The same as we would do for anyone else.
@mietze said in GMs and Players:
I also think it is apt and also telling that in the mcdonald's example, the person with the history of being abused is "yelling" and acting crazy (instead of just turning around and leaving, which is the much more likely response on a game) while the person who is stated to be the abuser is "chill". How many times do we see that play out on games, where the "chill" dude just is so awesome, these crazy jealous chicks are always trying to get him in trouble.
Sunny was free to turn around and walk out of the game if her ex husband showed up. I'm not going to stop her.
That wasn't the example she used. And I altered her example to make it a restaurant instead of a MU.
And in that example, she wasn't reporting abusive behavior that occurred on the game, which is a very different beast. Which is the point we're trying to make. How she's perceived isn't actually all that relevant, because I'm not interested in how she and other dude feel about each other or what their interpersonal dynamics are. I'm interested to know what happened, substantively, that is against our rules, which our in-game tools report quite easily.
I don't have to like you to take action against someone being a douchebag.
@bear_necessities said in GMs and Players:
would pick up the phone and call the police and put the woman somewhere where she can feel safe. It's like, the very basic of what a decent human being would do even if it's not expressly in your job title or whatever.
Yeah, you would call the police because the police are there to deal with shit like that. Which is also kind of the point.
Well, I enjoyed it for what it is, through the whole ride. 
@meg said in GMs and Players:
Do you honestly think that on a small game, the only way someone can affect you is by contacting you directly?
So you just skipped right on past that 'some other kind of shady shit' sentence to call this one out?
I already answered this question.
I'll go ahead and start this thread with: Willow
I have been watching this movie for literally as long as I can remember. It's one of the first things I ever remember watching, and man. I am so here for this show. I cannot wait!
@il-volpe said in GMs and Players:
@tributary I wonder if people aren't kinda forgetting that VASpider, in their heyday, had, like, all the bona fides and then some. So if they were saying Abelard was abusive, you'd also have at least half a dozen Flying Spider Monkeys confirming it, and assorted fans saying, "I know VASpider, they would never lie about something like that," and very likely your own experience of an active, helpful, and fun-creating player who didn't seem like the sort of person who'd accuse someone they barely ever saw of harassment. So you might not believe Abelard at all. And if you did but there was a level of ambiguity or a common 'both of you have been dicks,' type situation, well, Spider had the goodwill points.
So! Westworld is back on. And so far I'm pretty happy with the story being told. It has enough twists and turns that it keeps me guessing a bit, even if I'm anticipating some of the things that they're throwing at me now.
I had a feeling that we'd see some of the same things they used in S1 come back again, and that part didn't disappoint at all. Trying to avoid too many spoilers for those that haven't had a chance to get caught up to the latest, but overall I'm pretty satisfied with what's going down.
Anyone else watching? What's your take?
@tributary said in GMs and Players:
Because they absolutely thought they'd get away with things, just as you say.
But they did get away with it on other games. How long did they basically run the Reach and its various iterations behind the scenes? I know they did similar on Haunted Memories. IIRC there was a game set in St. Petersburg that suffered from the same issue, though that one was shorter-lived.
Even as a known figure it got glossed over in favor of 'this is not my problem player look at all the fun she creates and all these people willing to back her play'.
So I think the original point still stands. As much as it might chap some people's asses to think you can't just take someone's word for something and bring down the hammer of god -- we've seen how that can go wrong. Even with highly visible examples, over almost a decade, over several games. The more subtle ones probably never get called out.
@Derp ugh I'm so far behind. I'm still at Samurai season. I keep getting derailed but the promos for this season make it look like I've missed so much good stuff.
Dude you have. Get caught up and we'll gab!
@faraday said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
@il-volpe said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
If that's not enough, everybody starts having auditory hallucinations of Bob Dylan, for pity's sake.
Yeah on BSGU we had a policy that was like: OK try not to reference glaring things like Star Wars please but don't stress.
We understand that it's utterly impossible to eradicate all cultural and historical references from the entire freaking English language.
Wheel of Time is even worse.
Siobhan sits on a bench eating her peach.
Psst. Peaches in that world are deadly poison, you might wanna reconsider...
Back to things we're thankful for -- I wanna give a shout out to @Coin, @Eerie, and @Thenomain. Eldritch was, from behind the scenes, an immense labor of love. I don't know who else was involved in its creation, but they were the three around when I got there, and you could really tell they put a ton of effort into it when you peered behind the curtain and started looking at the sheer depth of detail they had added to the world. It was a very exciting thing to see, and that trio was a great team to work with. Thanks for the memories, guys!
@reimesu said in LBHeuschkel's playlist (cause why not):
I never got to meet you as Esteban, but I have to tell you, your legend lives on. A LOT of people still playing miss you more than I can begin to tell you.
Can confirm.
@DnvnQuinn said in Let's talk about what makes a Mush succesful or a failure in regards to the questions presented herein.:
They guy hosting my server suggested Rhost. What has the most code I can steal?
In my limited experience, MUX has tons of code that you can steal. What's going to work for a Fallout game?
....um...
...well...
You might need a coder.
@Misadventure said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:
@Coin said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:
@Misadventure said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:
Okay, I bought it. It had better be worth it.
Or what!
Or @Coin gets it!!!
Like @Coin will turn down free books.
Oh, wait, is that what you meant? Crap. Stupid English ambiguity.
@greenflashlight said in Dune:
I plan to find to a copy to see if I actually hate it as much as I remember hating it back when I was a kid. Take that for all it's worth.
I think, after having read it again not that long ago, that if I had read it as a kid? I would hate it too.
It takes a minimum amount of very specific life experiences to appreciate some of the themes in that book. Feeling trapped in relationships with people you don't love, the sheer legwork it takes to seed those kinds of mythos over centuries, over planets, the very real feeling of doing something that you don't want to do, that scares the bejeesus out of you, for the sake of your family because a power greater than you wills it for no particular reason...
The cultural clashes of the fremen, the love-hate of Atreides and Harkonnen with Jessica and Leto / others later.
Like -- as a teen/child there is simply no way that you have the necessary life experience to appreciate just where the adults in that book are coming from, or where this teenager is going.
Caveat: I have epic amounts of school crap to do, and haven't read all 5 or 6 pages of replies, because a lot of it seems focused on prp's and storytellers and people generally +1'ing at length. So some of this might have already been covered and I missed it in a quick skim. Apologies.
But now, for my (probably not mainstream) opinion on this:
@GirlCalledBlu said in Leadership, Spotlight, and PCs of Staffers:
- Staff should not play characters in positions of IC power; by default, they have OOC power because they are staffers, but abuse is always a concern when a Staffer has both OOC and IC power, and that IC power comes through their PC; if a Staff PC does end up in a leadership position, their character should be the minority (i.e. if they end up on the Senate Security Council, they should be easily outvoted by non-Staff PCs on the same council). In general though, Staff PCs should not hold IC positions of power.
I have the opposite opinion on this. I don't think that PCs should be the ones in positions of absolute authority. There are a variety of reasons for this, but at the end of the day, they really come down to two main points:
PCs are not the ones that are, for the most part, determining the game's direction. That's staff's job. Therefore, when you have your Top Tier Dude with a vision, and that vision doesn't jive with what Bob the Prince/HIerarch/Alpha/Whatever has in mind, you end up with tension, where the story/sphere/game as a whole would have been better served by having an NPC in that position that can actively serve to help direct things the way they should be going. Having to wrangle a player with some sort of authority into line with the story, or try and follow the authority-player's logic to the point where essentially staff's story is subservient to the player's desire, creates nightmares and headaches. Especially since everyone seems to insist that these people be elected in some sort of democratic fashion, rather than vetted through staff about who's going to be the actual best to serve in that position for story needs.
Staff are often putting in a lot of work on the game. They deserve all the same opportunities to advance their characters that everyone else does. If you don't trust the staffer's character with responsibility, then you don't actually trust the staffer with responsibility, which means... you probably shouldn't be playing there.
- Staff can play characters on their games, and these characters can have their own story arc that is significant to the character's development as long as this story arc does not violate point #1 or take a significant role in the metaplot.
Since I disagree with the first point here, I think that my response on this one is "Staff can play too, full stop."
- Staff can play their characters in metaplot events, as long as they are there to to participate solely as just another PC (i.e. "I'm here to blow shit up" or "I'm here to get pissant drunk and sleep under the table" [or any other variant]).
They should be able to participate as any other PC can, I think. They shouldn't be the one running the scene, of course, but they should have as much opportunity as others. All work and no real, enjoyable play makes for burnt out staffers that leave players without an actual staff.
- When a Staffer is on their PC, they are not operating as a Staffer, but as another PC on the game. There should be a clear boundary, and the PC bits should not be used as an arm of the Staffer. If the Staffer has something to say/do, they should say/do it on their wizbit.
It's the same person. And given the nature of transparency on who plays/does what on most games, this shouldn't really be necessary. I mean, it's not a major deal, but if someone says 'knock it off and stop being a dick', then you shouldn't have to resort to a wizbit to back that up. I mean, you -can-, sure. But either way, the message got sent.
Ultimately, I think the question here is... what role should Staff PCs have on a MUSH, and how does their role differ from the roles of non-Staff PCs?
Staffers are players who stepped up to the plate and are putting in the work to keep things running, for the most part, and as such they shouldn't be penalized for doing so. While whether they should be rewarded for such is a seperate question of gaming philosophy, I don't feel like penalizing the people who try and help make things better is ever going to move us in a positive direction.
Ok, so coming from a polisci background, let's just go ahead and throw this out here. I think the term 'antagonist' often gets used as some kind of Black Hat v. White Hat sort of deal, and that's the way that it's done on MU in most cases -- but it's not really feasible in the long term. If we're playing PvP on a MU, then the simple fact is -- fantasy conflict won't work, and we need to look at real world conflict and work with that accordingly. Let's look at a few things here that hopefully help explain the reasons:
Black Hat v. White Hat Only Works In Stories With Definitive Ends - Most MU's are not designed with a definite end in sight, unlike the tabletop games that most of them draw inspiration from. MU's are much more dynamic than you're going to see in most fantasy scenarios. The people change over time, the vision changes over time, and the ultimate future is often left rather nebulous. There is no way to win a MU in 99.99% of all MUdom. It's just getting that leg up for the time being. Which brings us to...
Most Conflict Is Not A Zero-Sum Game - While it's easy, in a story with a clear beginning and end, to have two people/factions fight it out for supreme control of the galaxy, in the real world it's not so simple... and MU's are pretty good approximations of the real world whether they intend to be or not. You will almost never have two people duking it out for all the things, where one is the clear winner and one is the clear loser. They're both going to win some, and they're both going to lose some in nearly every situation that conflict arises in. Be prepared to deal with that in a mature way. You won't get the whole pie. And speaking of not getting the whole pie...
Coalitions Are A Thing - In most conflict, this is what you're going to see -- a group of people get together and pool resources toward a specific goal if all of them in some way benefit from that goal. You will see opposing coalitions more often than opposed individuals. No individual is capable of doing All The Things by themselves, and games should be set up in a way that encourages these sorts of coalitions to form. These coalitions are also fluid -- just because a group of people work toward the same goal for one thing doesn't mean they're going to be working toward the same goal in others, and can often find themselves both allies AND rivals simultaneously. Political parties are perfect examples of this -- no one person can make all the changes that need to be made, so they have to work together, but their ideological stances even within the same party are often at odds on certain issues.
Coalitions Are A Thing, Part Deux - Nobody in a coalition, even the one that "wins", gets the whole prize. Coalitions fall apart when people get less than they expect from them. You have to be willing to compromise both with the opposing coalition and the people in the one you're working with, whether this be shared access to The Thing or divvying up The Things between all involved. (See above re: Most Conflict is Not Zero Sum).
This Is How People Really Work - It might be called Game Theory, but I promise you that you can model Games for real world situations. People have been doing it for a very long time now, and the results are often staggeringly accurate. When any group of people are put together in the long term with limited resources, Games are the natural byproduct. And while we might be playing fantasy games or whatnot, the way we play them on a MU is not the way they are played in a tabletop. Like, full stop. You can want to tell a story all you want to, but stories really do have endings, and MU's... end, but not usually according to any plan, or shape. So the typical narrative elements don't apply, and we need to look at other things.
I think that if we keep those things in mind when designing conflict in MU's, we'll get a whole lot better result, just because we've set some very unrealistic expectations of what conflict should look like as it resolves. We like to try and do it as a story, and in a thing with no real end, the storybook method just doesn't work. It falls apart. We've seen it countless times.
So, I guess the TL;DR is -- set realistic expectations, and understand how conflict really works between people outside of set, patterned stories. Adjust accordingly.
See, I would be cautious here. While having an answer for every little thing is sometimes neat, there are many instances where "Things work like this because magic, and nobody is really sure why..." adds interesting dynamic to the world. Some things really do need to remain a mystery, and the more questions you answer, the more awe and mystery you take out of it. You need to know how it works. Not why it works.
