Best posts made by Devrex

There was a cool Bingo game that one of the players (Maia, I think) on The Network came up with, where they rando-generated a bingo card for players with prompts like uh..."I Thought You Brought It," and "Is This Real or Is It a Simulation" and "The Book Was Wrong" and a bunch of other tropes. People rando-generated cards and put them on their profiles and tried to get a bingo.

This seemed to encourage folks to come up with wild and crazy and fun things to do for and with each other just to make those tropes happen, and everyone had lots of fun with it. Stuff like that can help. I just remembered it just now!

@hella @RightMeow You're right, that is what she said. My apologies, RightMeow.

I don't know, I am not sure you can "systemize" the incentivization. To a degree you can...I have found I am happy to take my beat in exchange for critical failures on a CoD game...but...my trust for the GM or player across from me and how they will handle that failure makes a huge difference in how happy I am to take the licks. When I'm playing with people I trust making a better story is usually enough regardless of what it does to the numbers. And when I'm not, no amount of number finagling or XP award makes a huge difference. There's a lot that is actually packed into the "trust" bit, but I won't write that essay here. The primary point here is that the incentivization is ultimately a matter of building and growing relationships. Which is hard to do. It's impossible to quantify. And there's no guaranteed system you can implement to build a culture that will foster it. You can lead by example, but that's about all you can do.

@Macha, I've found the same.

While there are times I really miss the art form, I nevertheless am finding I spend more time on RL friendships, cleaning my house, building my business, and writing my fiction. And, of course, there's more peace and less stress in my life. I've even rediscovered my love for tabletop games.

I won't say I'd never play or launch a MUSH again, but I'd think long and hard about what that would cost me before I take that step.

You can do just about anything and make it fun if the attitude behind it is right and if you're not just out to get players. I think it's not so much the good guys must win is that there must be somewhere to go other than the doom hammer dropping on the character and the character being taken out of play.

Death is the absolute most boring thing you can do. Imprisonment is fine in the short-term, if you're providing some sort of RP experience to go with it (perhaps a fight in the prison, etc).

"Win" also has a lot of different definitions. If "win" means death or imprisonment and that's all it means to anyone then yeah...problems.

Destroying a reputation/career. Stealing something important. Blackmail. Forcing your rival to work for you/do your dirty work for you/give up something important. Humiliating your rival. Being the bad guy who stands up and donates a huge amount to charity while smiling smugly at the good guy who is about to show up and shout "j'accuse." Driving someone insane. There's a lot of room for story here. Force the other side into a bad deal or bargain.

If you can get folks out of the cycle of capture/jail torture/beat up kill/kill then you can tell a wider variety of stories that everyone is a lot happier with and both sides can walk away with wins and losses. And yeah, characters might just die eventually, it's a risk, but it doesn't have to be first-off go to.

And the harder it is to make the world a better place the more satisfying it is when you finally do.

And this is germane both to PvP and PvE environments, since...GMs/STs/area leaders/IC authorities could also at times stand to get a little more creative in these areas, and to check their attitudes. When I sense someone is just extra excited about "getting" my character or bringing the doom hammer down on them or whatever I shut down; I'm not in it for people to dole out what they consider to be some sort of punishment for whatever. If I sense they want to tell a great story with me and that means my character gets totally screwed for awhile or suffers a major loss? Then yeah bring it on, I'm here for it. Trust is pretty key, building that trust is pretty key. Building on "Yes, but," or "no, but" (in addition to 'yes,and' and 'no, and') is helpful.

Players are perfectly capable of this, of all of this, but it does take work to set up a game culture that promotes it.

@faraday Well I think the idea is that nobody would go to a movie where the main character wins every interaction. So what I think we're grasping for is "how can we tell better stories," how can we do a lot more "yes, but" and "no, and" and "no, but" when what many players mostly want is "yes, and also yes."

The question may be less about failure and more about "how can we get players to feel safe enough to engage in the ups and downs that will allow us to tell richer stories."

But not everyone is there for the same thing. I was shocked to realize a whole swath of players don't really give a fig about telling stories, they're after something else. So you're just not going to create a universal solution here. You can offer tools, you can set an example, you can find your people who like telling the same sorts of stories you like telling, but you're not going to get a pure wish fulfillment player to enjoy taking the beat down or to want to, you're not going to get the pure relationship-RP player to even want to go disarm the bomb in the first place or pay attention to it.

It's sort of like...uh...well the best analogy I can come up with is running a daycare. You can set up a bunch of stations and put a bunch of toys on the floor and the kids are going to run and go play with what suits them. You might love coaching kids through art projects, but there is no art-project method you can employ to make the kid who only wants to play with the fake food day in and day out come over and try out the tempura paint, and if you try to make that kid do that the kid is going to complain bitterly the entire time that they're being made to do something that's not fun. You might as well just let that kid enjoy their fake food bliss, keep an eye on them, and then go right on running the art lesson.

Kaiden is doing good! I just spoke to the surgeon. He went in at 3 AM this morning. They had to do some very light interventions once in there but the surgeon says he's doing really well, already eating, drinking, and pooping. We can pick him up later today!

@arkandel As a fellow enthusiast of this specific theme (though it does strike me as being way weirder about gender and a dozen other things than it did in the 90s) I'd say one thing I notice about WoT games is that they don't typically enforce the drawbacks of being Aes Sedai very well.

These women are not supposed to use the power as a weapon save in the very last defense of their lives or against Darkfriends or whatever else. Moiraine literally hid her face and let Lan handle most things because people would come out with pitchforks and torches if they knew an Aes Sedai was among them. This consequence almost never shows up in these games; it's almost never emphasized by storytellers, and half the time game runners have ignored the fact that canonically, Aes Sedai received no weapons training whatsoever. Seeing AS wear pants is pretty common on these games. Seeing them carrying swords is equally common. You could enforce some by not letting them take brawl or melee or ranged; yes of course the Green Ajah fights but they fight with the One Power and they train to fight Dreadlords and Shadowspawn, not the rank and file.

This makes the warders helpful and relevant again.

If you're not in Tar Valon they should definitely be rare; I only have seen a handful of games where they aren't, and if you're trying to focus on the day to day lives of people in Andor or the Borderlands or something then you probably have to just make them an NPC-only role so that when Plotrelevant Sedai shows up it's meaningful and important and oh she needs the PCs to do a thing (or is bad news bears and the PCs need to find a way to arrow her in the dark or whatever).

If you just go out into some part of the world where they're not relevant and you wanna go Aiel or something then being very clear about the social rules, norms, and mores and only approving concepts that fall within those could help.

And maybe even just saying in your documentation: "Hey guys, we want people to actually want to play warders (or whatever else you want played) so can you please consider RPing your character in ways that doesn't render them utterly irrelevant, here's some examples...could help. Nobody's making those choices maliciously, they're making them cause they seem really cool at the time and because they're being allowed to make them.

@ghost This is exactly why I favor dice but also encourage that it's okay for people to step up OOCly to say "Hey can we negotiate a little here."

Not about whether your gun hits me, but "Ok that was definitely a hit, you're badass, but I don't want to lose my character, can I take it in the knee and can we work out some reason why your character has to leave rather than double tapping?" I think that's a pretty reasonable thing to do.

Or as @Tirit noted: "Ok happy to go to prison but you're not going to leave me there with zero RP right?"

The presence of dice don't demand that we throw the negotiation baby out with the consent bathwater. The absence of dice, sadly, tends to send babies and baths and everything in between straight into the fire. I've seen some awesome pure cooperative storytelling, but it was the result of a very large group of RL friends playing together and getting very excited about selling one another...not something I would expect to occur, organically, in a million years, on most games.

@faraday Agreed.

Of course, I'd also tell staffers, hey, don't craft plots that depend on any character type. Make a fire ant hill, drop it in player's back yard, and make it actionable by anyone who thinks to do something about it.

Like who cares if the person who turns the hose on the ant hill is working XYZ fictional job? There are probably some jobs that are helpful for handling certain types of problems but it doesn't really matter. What matters is they have the will, heart, and willingness to pay attention and use the tools to get something done.

This does not negate my shopkeeper comment of earlier.

Because what happens there is this...I'd run the Dungeon of Doom for the shopkeeper if they send in a +request saying well I'm grabbing my spelunking gear and going, but they usually wait for the Dungeon Delver characters to invite them along to said dungeon, and no responsible Dungeon Delver would do that. You, the staffer, cannot force Dungeon Delver to make this super irresponsible and stupid decision that goes 100% against who their character is which is: bringing Shop Bob the Noncombatant to The Dangerous Place.

And you can even say "Well maybe Shop Bob goes of his own volition and just runs into them?" and that's not what (in my experience) Shop Bob wants either. In my experience what is wanted is to feel wanted and staff...can't...do...that.

All staffers can do is: provide opportunities for story-based RP, provide frameworks using best practices that allow people to grow their own RP when the staff-RP on offer does not suit, adjudicate the rules when necessary, and answer +requests in a timely and fair fashion when players make use of the tools.

This discussion has gotten far afield of my original question but...I think it's just important for players to realize that even the best, most dedicated, fairest staffer in the world cannot provide folks with a tabletop experience on a public MUSH. A private game where they've hand-selected and invited their playerbase, chosen how many they're going to try to serve, yeah okay, you can get close and maintain all the nifty character development advantages that tabletop can't always offer. But a public game? It's just not possible. What is provide-able is a MUSHing experience, and on a MUSHing experience it's really important for players to meet staff halfway.

In my opinion death is just the most boring possible thing you can do to a PC or to their story.

You can create consequences without character death being the consequence.

Maybe the NPC they love is going to die.
Maybe they are going to end up caught up in a deal they don't ICly want to be caught up in.
Maybe they'll get blackmailed.
Maybe they wake up at the bottom of a well with a rainstorm coming in.

I prefer PC complications over PC death.

The PCs are supposed to be the heroes of the book, movie, or TV show. We know the MCs just aren't going to randomly die for no reason because of some random dice roll on all our favorite shows. We know that Spock's probably getting out of today's dilemma alive. The fun is in watching how he gets out alive, and what he has to give up, and whether he actually saves the day, and whether or not he ends up in trouble with Starfleet after he does. That's the story rhythm.

XP dinosaurs are their own sort of problem, sure, but why would you penalize an active, long-term, loyal player for being an active, long-term, loyal player? If they're being obnoxious to the point that new players feel squeezed out, what you do is talk to them quietly and ask them if they can start sending newb PCs to do the footwork. Sure, Detective 500 XP, you know that the next step is talking to the Johnsons. Sure, you could schedule that scene, but maybe what you do is send Officer Newb to do that scene and report back to you. You're still doing the thing, but you're sharing the love. And you as an ST can always say "This event is for characters with less than 100 total XP/Level 1 to 5 characters/whatever." You can control whether or not XP is a determinant of where story goes.

Consent vs. Consequences is a whole other are of conversation that has nothing to do with PC death, actually...because death isn't the only consequence that can come about.

A MUSH is like any other site.

You set your Terms of Service. And on a MUSH they're hopefully clearer, less ambiguous, and less in fine print than any other site on the Internet.

If someone violates the ToS, you get rid of them. Clear, unambiguous, a standard that is fair to all. Especially on sites that let you collect evidence as easily as pushing a button.

If someone violates the ToS on another site, then it's on the other site to deal. But no site is going to respond based on anything other than a violation of the ToS; and they will use their own tools on their own site to investigate it.

If someone does an RP on Gdocs and moves the log to my site, fine, as long as the log is in line with our theme and PRP policy that's fine. If they want to RP something else-site and don't expect any XP, story favors, or whatnot from it, and then set it up as a memory, that is also fine, it doesn't impact anything. But if something goes wrong on Discord, then they need to use Discord's reporting tools. Or Facebook. Or Gdocs. Or on that mountain with the smoke signals. When they go off-game, they are bound by that space's Terms of Service.

Why we expect more out of MU* runners than we expect off of any other site or service or app you log into is way beyond me.

I'd also note that "players will automatically play stupid unless they know death is always on the table no matter what" isn't necessarily the case. Bad players will. Good players separate what their players know (my character probably won't die unless I'm so over-the-top stupid that there's no way to preserve the fiction without allowing it to happen) from what their characters know. And all their character, creeping through the parking garage with a gun in hand, knows, is that there are five gunmen out there and if he's not careful and quiet and canny he's not going to make it out alive.

I find this "is it a game or is it a story" divide to be false: MUSH was never Warhammer, and I find that arbitrary character death is just as stupid on a tabletop D&D too. Taken to its extreme it just means that you no longer really care about the fiction that's unfolding; life is too cheap and you know not to bother to get too attached to anything your character is building or accomplishing. It's just as damaging to the fiction as "nothing can happen to your character ever."

I have killed my own tabletop characters and MUSH characters...when it mattered...when it offered a dramatic, meaningful sacrifice...when the time was right. When it served the fiction.

Without the story, the fiction, the dice are meaningless and boring; without the dice (I really favor dice games over diceless) there are few surprises. I want both the fiction and the surprises.

What I don't want is to have to start from Square One because some GM decided he wanted to have a TPK night, or because someone inexperienced decided to run a scene and shot the challenge level up to 11, or because some staffer doesn't like me and is gunning for me.

Square One means:

• As @faraday mentioned, having to go through the work/stress of generating a concept that is fun, fits in theme, and will be accessible to RP...
• Yes, having to flesh out and build their relationships with other PCs, which often means, ye gods, another 3 months of mostly small-talk and getting-to-know-you scenes, which are often the least fun kind of RP to do (IMO)...
• ...Dealing with the fact that some players liked your old character but kind of aren't inspired by your new one, so yes, losing a fair amount of your RP group...
• Losing your hooks and ability to get into anything substantial, often for about two to three months...

Compound all that with: MUSH is not like a tabletop where you know you're going to have the same amount of attention from your GM no matter who you're playing.

It takes time to build momentum on a game, and that momentum is often where the fun really starts. Trivializing it as "just grow up and roll a new sheet, bro," just doesn't work for me.

@selira Am I? Have I called anyone a name? Show me where I've said someone is a bad guy. Show me where I have even said the word clique until this very moment. I'll wait, because I know I never have. That's not how I engage with this place. And what's funny is you're putting up another Set B, because "Nuh uhh shut up" is not what anyone you're trying to call out has ever done that I've seen. I haven't even really seen that out of people who personally I disagree with on the regular. So again, we're back to "let's use hyperbole to change the narrative so we can villainize some folks" and that is, I'm afraid, a bad faith tactic.

Saying I'm doing something really really passionately does not make it something that I am doing. And if the only time you can ever think of that anyone has ever misinterpreted opinions is when it's yours that's...well that's a blind spot. It suggests that you're the only one who has ever been misunderstood. I think that sounds a little suspect. Everyone has been misunderstood at some point in their lives. That's the human experience.

@misadventure I go in with zero requirements. Just a situation.

Here, players, is your situation. There's a 40 story building, a bunch of gunmen, some hostages.

Mixed movie metaphor:

"What do you do? What do you do?"

I don't have any clue how or whether they'll solve it. They tell me what interests them and what they'll try and which if their skills they bring to bear. It's only my job to narrate the consequences of their attempts and to make sure that it's interesting. Sometimes knowing the general shape of what's there makes this predictable to me, but I don't go in married to anything.

@kk Of course it’s ok to do some wish fulfillment! I think it boils down to how that is balanced against other aspects of the RP and how considerate you are of other players. I surely have wish fulfillment going on with all my characters even when I try to make them different from me. They are all hotter and tougher than me.

You can do just about anything if the attitude behind what you are doing is right. People can pick up on that. If you care about others fun you are usually golden.

@wretched Especially when eye contact can be physically painful, holy crap yes

@hella Yeah I felt it too. Often feel it too. Just...I gotta raise an objection to "I didn't read what you said but what you said was definitely wrong." Just...what? But the dread? The dread I 100% get.

@arkandel Sometimes it has a lot to do with the culture of the game. I spent a lot of time playing Coulson on superhero games, and of course his superpowers are leadership, mundane spy crap, and being Best Dad Ever in a world where everyone else is throwing cars.

But I was in a culture where there was a lot of emphasis on "selling" each other's special. So the people I was playing with would make room for him to resolve situations with words, or would make room for him to sort of leadership them into a bigger better team, or the GMs would vary up the threats or indeed make "overcome obstacle," in a very freeform way, basically the same thing. For example they might have a giant thing that needed a car thrown at it up there defending the giant bomb that Coulson needed to be down there disarming, and so I'd get to dart in to do that while Superman or whomever was up there lobbing Priuses at dinosaurs. (While making Dad jokes about it. Which is key).

It was nothing that was put in policy, it was just how people played, it was just the culture that was fostered, and it was a lot of fun.

If I were standing in a very different culture where doing that relegated me to being the "guy with no purpose in this scene" I wouldn't do it. I don't need my character to be the biggest badass in the room, I just need him to have a function in the story that matters to that story in a way that I can identify and that I feel like other players can recognize. And I'm pretty big on designing my character to match the play experience I want so I take those things into account.

But that gets into a whole other area of discussion about how to build a game culture intentionally, and unfortunately that's an area where you can only foster-not-force.

@ominous Honestly if my character isn't mine I can't imagine caring about playing that character that much. No matter what other tools existed. If someone else could touch my character and make decisions about them then my own sense of investment has been destroyed. I'm not saying your idea could never work or that there aren't people who might not be interested in the more overarching story or whatnot, but I am saying this is what would turn me off the concept as described/as I understand it. Shared NPCs are one thing, with one or two highly trusted individuals, but shared PCs? Why? I no longer get to experience the story as if I'm there, I'm just writing a book at that point, and if I'm going to do that, well...there's two or three unfinished projects in my Gdrive that I could just go finish and try to make some money off of instead.