@ganymede said in The Desired Experience:
If I were a GM, I would leave Sandwich Club alone, as they apparently want. They would be eligible for no position which would require them to RP out of their circle.
If I were part of Sandwich Club, I would want the GM to just leave me alone.
This.
Donal Finn is the one on the left?
Barney Harris, his current actor, is the one on the right.
@ominous said in The Wheel of Time:
@three-eyed-crow said in The Wheel of Time:
@arkandel
Yeah, all the quotes about it from the cast/crew have that really weird 'we've signed an NDA, stop asking about it', too. It's a bummer, the actor's good in the role. I hope it's nothing too bad, whyever he left/was replaced, and that the new guy isn't too jarring.I though I read somewhere that it was going to be Cavill, but maybe that was a joke.
It'll be Donal Finn.
@faraday said in The Desired Experience:
Can we maybe just agree that the potluck analogy is imperfect?
This is why I used 'community theater with unlimited stages'.
@greenflashlight said in The Desired Experience:
All this talk about how relationships with other hobbyists should be transactional feels really weird to me.
Same, sub 'transactional' with 'obligatory'.
@il-volpe said in The Desired Experience:
Also, saying, "Bringing only four sandwiches and giving them only to the same four people every time is not cool," is not the same as telling you who you must give your sandwiches to. You can only bring as much as you can bring to the pot luck, nobody expects you to make it a hardship on yourself to bring something, nobody is saying your having only four sandwiches reflects badly on you.
So to summarize:
Nobody is saying that everyone has to play with everyone.
But you can't play with a limited number of people.
Except that you can absolutely play with a limited number of people if that's all the time you have.
It just can't be four people.
Except if those four people are the only ones you can play with.
What the hell are you even saying at this point? Because you're starting to contradict yourself now.
Is there some lower bound? Some theoretical limit at which 'not cool' and 'totally fine' diverge?
@il-volpe said in The Desired Experience:
You're describing a situation where sandwich clubs are invisible and harmless.
Who anyone else is playing with and why is not any of your damn business. Therefore why does it matter who can see what?
@arkandel said in The Wheel of Time:
And once things start to uh, happen, will we care?
Did we in the books?
I definitely remember not really giving a damn about Siuan until way, way later, after all that went down and we got to know a very different Siuan.
@arkandel said in The Wheel of Time:
@derp I'm too big a purist to be okay with them changing any of the book relationships, dammit.
By the way I thought they handled the gay (bi?) Warders scene pretty well. No big deal about it, it flowed organically.
The one at the inn, too, where Rand was all, "If I wanted a man I could do better than Mat."
@three-eyed-crow said in The Wheel of Time:
@arkandel
Yeah, all the quotes about it from the cast/crew have that really weird 'we've signed an NDA, stop asking about it', too. It's a bummer, the actor's good in the role. I hope it's nothing too bad, whyever he left/was replaced, and that the new guy isn't too jarring.
In my wishful-thinking head it's because we're going full AU with a Perrin-Mat ship and the actor wasn't down for that so they had to find a new one rather than allow it to change.
But this is me being thinky and wishful or whatever.
I mean -- it's really not that complicated.
Rule 0 or Whatever: Nobody owes anything to anyone other than what they willingly agree to. Period.
It doesn't matter what complications or mitigating factors there are, what they have been diagnosed with, how badly their divorce is going, how much their job sucks, what happened to their playgroup, what the game thinks of them as a whole. Unless you have made a clear commitment to someone to do a thing, you don't owe them anything, regardless of what their circumstances are.
You just don't.
It only gets complicated when people try to think up reasons why the Rule 0 above doesn't actually apply.
It always applies.
@rucket said in The Wheel of Time:
@derp Oh for sure. I have no real issues with the changes that have been woven in, just a nitpick here and there. My only thing is I just wish they had more time in the Two Rivers to explore one or two little things before everything went nuts. Not a big deal in the grand scheme, and I think Episodes 3 and 4 had a lot more character building which is what a show like this needs.
Yeah, it absolutely did, though I'm gonna shameless rip off from Devrex who is my WoT guru and say they've set up Perrin's whole 'hammer or axe' arc in a very visceral way which I greatly enjoy, and I like seeing the direction they take Mat so far.
Rand was about as flat and boring as I'd expect him to be, though (again, stealing shamelessly from Devrex) I like how they lampshaded that when Mat was like, "Oh, what, you're funny now? That's a new wrinkle."
The problem with your analogies so far is: you're viewing a MUSH as a party where the host expects you to interact with absolutely everyone. And it's just not.
A MUSH is a place where you get together with friends and tell cool stories. It's essentially the world's biggest community theater with an all but unlimited number of stages. Not a party.
And if four of those actors want to take up one stage and put on their own little productions, they are not hurting anything.
In fact, when it comes to rudeness, it's the ones that jump on stage with some weird, hard to follow concept that just decide to insert a part into their play that are actually the ones being pretty damn rude.
And that's been my experience. The ones who insist that everyone has to RP with everyone? The ones that insist that people be in public rooms, on the public grid, in open scenes that they can just divebomb their way into? Those tend to be far more problematic than the little friend circle that sticks to their own little stage in their own little area, not fucking with other people.
Because the dive-bombers and hte ones that insist that everyone should be playing with everyone? Those are often the ones that have annoyed the fuck out of everyone else, and can't get RP any other way than by coming in to what is essentially a captive audience. And that's way more problematic for any game than the little friend circle.
So while people might think it's rude so say, "No, go away until you learn to suck less," it's pretty fucking rude to put them into a position to have to say that to you in the first place.
@devrex and I do watch parties for this. It's been so much fun so far. I mean, yes, sometimes it can feel a bit rushed but when you're staring down the barrel of twenty books, you don't have time for one season per book. You've gotta get to the point.
ETA: And this thread is fine. WoT is big enough with enough of us knowing it that the Good TV thread would get completely drowned in short order and would require lots of spoiler warnings and such. People clicking on this thread should know what to expect.
@devrex said in The Desired Experience:
It's not always about Cliquey Elitist Snobby Mean People, sometimes it's anxiousness or creative exhaustion or a number of other issues which can arise.
For me, it's just a literal matter of time.
My job is hard. It requires a lot of brainpower. My RL is hectic. I get home, and I have maybe, maybe two hours in which I can reasonably do something with full brain capacity. My weekends are not that much better. And I've had other obligations that just come before storytelling.
I'm not looking to have a huge friend circle. I don't need to be involved with every single other character on the game. I don't want to spoil their fun. But I'm also not responsible for it, either. I just wanna log in, grab the people that I know and trust, and do a thing before utter mental fatigue carries me away, often times while doing something else.
(You and I have played a number of times while I am cooking, or doing laundry, or dishes.)
I don't want to worry about what new people think of me. I don't want to worry about trying to keep it up near the top of Dunbar's Number.
I just wanna do things with the four or five people I trust, and maybe put a few new feelers out every once in awhile if the mood strikes.
And absolutely nobody is going to convince me that I am responsible for including the rest of the game and being responsible for the personal fun-factor of people other than me and the handful of people that I want to deal with on any given day.
@tinuviel said in The Desired Experience:
If we're only responsible for our own fun, and that's it, then our fun is going to trounce all others' when in practice this isn't remotely true.
And if you choose to trounce everyone else's fun, then you are likely going to be removed from play by someone who made a commitment to others to ensure they are having fun. Because when you joined the game, you made a commitment to the staff that you aren't going to try to trounce on anyone else's fun, express or implied. That's part of the package. And the staff made a commitment to players not to let a disruptive presence trounce their fun.
And then you will no longer be having fun, thus sabotaging your own efforts to be responsible for your own fun.
An argument could be made that by choosing to join in that group you made a commitment to that group. But your argument is only valid while you're a part of said group.
@tinuviel said in The Desired Experience:
These two things aren't the same
They are if you already know you aren't going to click with them. Or just flat out don't want to play with them.
@tinuviel said in The Desired Experience:
Make an effort to be inclusive and provide fun for others, but if you know you're not a right match you don't have to keep trying.
You don't have to start trying. That's literally what I said. You are under no obligations to anyone, at any time, except the people that you make a commitment to.
@tinuviel said in The Desired Experience:
Everyone is responsible for everyone else's fun, to a point. If a player mentions that they're not having much fun, then do your best to accommodate them in your play - but if they're tiresome or playing a concept that doesn't really jive well with what you're doing, that's okay. You've made the effort.
Not sure that I agree with this one. I would say that each of us are responsible for our own fun. None of us owe anything to anyone else by default. The only thing you owe to other people is the commitment you voluntarily make. If you know for a fact that someone is not going to click with your style, you don't owe it to them to try to bring them in. You don't have to make the effort. You don't have to suffer for their fun.
Making your own fun almost always requires roping in others. But you are under absolutely no obligation to do so for anyone in particular, especially for people that are going to diminish your own fun.
As Arkandel said: If you're fun to play with, people will play with you. And if you aren't, then staff can't help you with interpersonal skills. We don't have any lending copies. Ours are barely legible.
@macha said in The Work Thread:
@faraday I may have said to my boss that "Leave without pay suggests I was free to leave."
Your workplace is gloriously fucked up.
@faraday said in The Desired Experience:
Why should you have to though? Just because somebody had no idea what to play and you said "Well we don't have any Raptor ECOs at the moment", that doesn't in any way oblige you to drop special plot points just for New Guy ECO.
Not just this, but -- I mean, honestly. How in the world is staff supposed to know what the hell is going to be fun for you, the probably brand-new player that they've only just met and likely never interacted with? Or who you are going to get along with / disagree with? Or whether or not you would even be good in any role?
Maybe stop expecting staff to make your fun for you? Craft something that you would enjoy playing. Staff are not diviners. They cannot foresee your future. Do the thing you wanna do, try to find a way to make it click, and if it doesn't work -- I mean. You know you best. How are staff supposed to do better than you yourself?
(Proverbial you, naturally. Not you-Faraday. You-Faraday seems to have your shit together.) 
@tmr said in The Desired Experience:
What also happens (ask me how I know) is that a player asks "what kinds of characters are needed?" because they have no fixed preference. Then the staff says, "well there's an important shopkeeper role in town we've been wanting to fill" so the player does so.
And then gets no RP.
And then complains about not getting RP.
And then quits the game for lack of RP.
This is absolutely not on staff.
Staff can point you to a role that is available. They can tell you what might fit in with demographics, and where you might be able to carve out a niche.
That's it.
What you do with that character to attract RP from that point forward is on you. You can be playing the most important character in the known universe, and if people don't want to RP with you? Then they won't RP with you. If you don't give them a reason to want to RP with you, in particular, in that role, then there is absolutely nothing that staff can do to change that.
As a staffer, I would not RP with that character either. Precisely because I pointed someone to that bit. Staff characters already get the celebrity treatment: the target of constant speculation and gossip, no matter how innocuous of a thing they're doing, and endless rumors about favoritism and TS. And even barring that, if we dare to take a day for ourselves to just, you know. Play, and have fun with our characters, then we're slacking at our jobs because god forbid other players aren't getting instant gratification.
So, no. This is not on staff, even if they point you toward that role. They cannot make RP for you, they cannot predict whether you will play the role in a compelling way, and they cannot force people to play together who don't want to play together.
That's where your skills as a player come in. Staff can only help there so much.
@macha said in The Work Thread:
@ganymede No, they took me out of the chat for the work that was causing me anxiety. They took me off that task, and put me back on what I was originally supposed to be doing with the new training.
I went from taking incoming calls with pissed off people back to outreach where I actually get to help people.
This was actually what the accommodation asked for, to put me back on outreach. (Though I know they are hoping I fuck it up so they can write me up for being a PITA)
