Posts made by Devrex

I'm far more a fan of: "K guys, I'm running a party scene in a very large location. Here's location A, location B, location C, they're close enough to get to and wander in and out of but far enough away from each other that your character wouldn't notice something on the other side of the room. We're just going to agree nobody's going to be screaming bloody murder at this scene cause 20 person scenes aren't the place for that. And go have a one-off breakaway scene using this as backdrop if you wanna." It allows people to meet randomly which is the only real reason for a 20-person party scene and to forge new character ties, but it also allows folks to have a quieter scene where they aren't getting lost. And if the GM does want stuff the whole room can react to, they just sit in those rooms and skim for people falling off tables so they can emit that to every room.

@juniper said in Too Much:

Every single emote had a response to everyone else in the scene, it was chaotic and nonsensical. Nothing ever got done.

I have this habit (trying to respond to everyone), mostly cause I'm really paranoid about making anyone feel left out or ignored, and I am only now starting to realize it could create problems. This is good to know though!

@lotherio It helps me, and I've done it, but it depends on the scene.

Multiscening is miserable for me if I'm trying to run coded combat. It's fine for me if I'm doing up to 3 small freeform scenes that are mostly centered around 'same conflict, different parts of the map.' 4 is pushing it and I'll feel fried at night's end. But I have to be in the zone to do it at all, lots of energy and momentum and engagement from players, rested and fed and happy. Otherwise I'm best sticking to GMing one scene. I can GM one and play one no problem. I can do two non-GM'd scenes in two windows no problem, especially if they're moving at different paces.

In my younger days, lol...I could do all sorts of shit. Six windows with 7 players each and lots of insanity reigning? No problem! Let me just enter a sort of mania-trance-state and ride the high, I've got this! But these days that would be a recipe for disaster.

@l-b-heuschkel True, and that's something I haven't enforced. I say 24 hours and then get really uncomfortable moving on. Especially if 24 hours have passed and nobody has posed.

@Ghost I've sort of jury rigged maps and stuff into some of my scenes some of the time, and it worked well (sometimes with an utterly terrible Google Sheet that nevertheless got the job done) I certainly wouldn't say no to some sort of integration that let players move tokens around on one and let me present some information that didn't solely rely on text without forcing them to go to some other site.

@faraday Yeah I struggle with the same things in async unless it is straight up just a one on one scene.

Like one of the suggestions here was to async GMing. I've tried it but man do I hate it. I run on energy and excitement. If someone doesn't pose for four days I conclude they are bored and I am doing a bad job, and don't have any of that energy-excitement gas it takes to keep going. I finally had to stop offering them for that reason. Maybe it's just a brain weasel and they're having a great time and that's really the fastest it can go, but it's still a struggle.

@L-B-Heuschkel does a great job of GMing async and making it really fun and I'm not sure what his techniques are there or what he's doing differently that I'm not doing (or if he's just wired differently as a GM) but.

@misadventure I am, I have often thought that just a mechanic like on Discord that says 'someone is typing' would be helpful for any number of reasons.

@macha I also suffer with migraines and pretty severe depression, and I'd say...call the doc cause either you'll get an adjustment you need, or you'll get the reassurance you need that this might be an expected side effect for a few days and either way you take one more fork out of yourself by getting the answer.

@lotherio Eight is about my limit, and I prefer four to five...for the same reason. My attention span just can't keep up with more, and as it is I'm reading poses and jotting down notes that boil each pose down to the action so I can call for rolls and write a pose that includes everyone at the end of a round. Ideally everyone feels like they contribute something to the scene or at least has the opportunity to do so if they want to (sometimes reaction is all a PC can give and if it's fun for them that's still a success). The more people in it, the harder it is to offer ways to make that happen.

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

@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.

@rightmeow For heaven's sake, if you didn't read the comments how the heck do you know what anyone is saying?

@rightmeow Dude was kind. He was kindly and calmly continuing to help with technical issues while abuses and slanders were heaped on his head. He made a pro-choice statement but still got called misogynistic. As I can see the other board just fine I can see that the nastiness continues. Raw, cruel nastiness. Which. Cool. They have a spot for that now but equating “let’s stop the cyber bullying over here now” with what’s being said and has been said is an egregious false equivalency. And this whole group of folks once told me with straight faces they would gladly accept a ban from a game just so they could abuse Derp some more (yelling at him for a policy of asking for evidence of a violation prior to a banning on a MUSH while calling him a misogynist for that statement). But I guess that was said by them thinking they were all too righteous to ever worry about bans. So in my opinion? They should put their money where their mouth is. So please just stop lecturing the admin over here about how much nicer they need to be. Gamy got abuse too, and Mietze didn’t get the one thing she asked for because abusing her co-admin was way more important to folks than her mental health. They have been nice and kind and understanding and evaluative to the moon and back.

When many of us started MU*ing, we were in college, had far fewer responsibilities, and had far more stamina.

Now most of us have demanding jobs and a whole passel of responsibilities. Homes to clean. Errands to run. In some cases pets to take care of. Or kids to take care of. Or elderly parents to take care of. Or gardens to take care of! Some of us have chronic illnesses.

Stamina is at a premium for most of us too.

But many of us still enjoy text-based RP, writing, storytelling. And I've been thinking for a long time about techniques that could be used to help a game, overall, be more do-able for more responsibility-laden hobbyists.

Have you seen things that worked on other games? Had thoughts about what would help you? Had things you thought were worth trying? Would love to hear about it!

If y'all like a good D&D podcast, my son also has one (cause the post about the Delta Green one made me realize this would be the place to tell people).

Critically Chaotic is an actual play podcast by gamers who wanted more queer representation in gaming podcasts. They are heavily focused on the characters and the interpersonal relationships weaving their way in and out of the adventures, so if you like stories with strong character arcs this might be one you'd enjoy.

Available on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Google Podcast, and Spotify.

@bloodangel That's completely uncalled for and about 9 kinds of not okay.

@ghost Oh yeah, for sure there is a lot of crazy and I've had some similar experiences. Bad people suck and ruin it for everyone else, and obviously it's not easy to know which you're going to get. Some of the behavior on your list wouldn't really bug me as long as there was neither repeat or reprisal if I asked them to cut it out, but obviously some is just plum over the line.

I basically agree with everything on your list except posting every single log...I only do sexual RP with people I trust, even as a writing exercise there's some feeling of vulnerability there for me, and I don't necessarily want to share that with all 70 people on the game or whatever, cause I def. don't trust all 70 people.

I've also seen gamers be super mean about it. I don't really need color commentary on whether my X-rated writing is very good, or people jumping on Discord to read it aloud to each other in funny voices, or people trying to shame me over the RP. Hell, I have had people downright call me names over very non-sexual RP I've done, RP that had content warnings all over it and they didn't even have to read so that's one of the things I tend to be up front about...we can do it but this part doesn't go up for the consumption of all and sundry.

And yes, totally, 'I want to have an affair' is writing direction, it's totally fine in my books. I don't even require the discussion...but it also warms me when someone says 'hey, thinking about this, are you cool with it and what would you want out of it', which to me is basically right in line with treating me like a collaborative writing partner and a person.

@ghost In my experience it can be "just writing" but that takes conscious effort and communication of expectation. Conscious effort: reminding yourself, whenever emotions happen, that it's a game, it's a writing exercise, this is not a real relationship no matter how dear the characters are to me.

As for communication...

Things I like to talk about with a romance RP partner:

• Expectations for RPing together
• Expectations for getting into or out of the relationship
• Where that player falls on the spectrum of 'let IC unfold without worrying about it' vs. 'let's talk about anything major OOC'
• Standards on creating or manufacturing drama
• Comfort levels or desire to do sexual writing together

At which point they'd hear from me:

• We do not have to be joined at the hip; I want to RP with other people still and expect you will too, and that's a good thing as it gives us things to talk about. Thoughts?
• The only thing required to stop this relationship is for one of us to want to stop RPing it, no explanation or warning needed or required on either side. This one is a non-negotiable for me. That said, working out what that looks like in-story is more than acceptable.
• I mostly roll with the punches IC and react to things IC but getting the chance to OOCly discuss things like the fact that your PC is contemplating having an affair with another PC is a good thing. Thoughts?
• I like conflict that has been brought about ICly but not manufactured drama...I prefer it if anything our characters fight about be something that happened ICly, not something you made up just now so we could 'not be bored.' IE, if Janet thought my character's behavior was bad at the party then by all means let's RP the discussion, but if you want to have Janet make up some behavior my PC did so Janet can scream and browbeat my character over it about it I'm not here for this (has happened). In addition, if we can't RP together for awhile I'd prefer you to act like things are just generally going well unless the last RP scene(s) indicate otherwise, not to start acting like my character is ignoring your character when we do not in fact RP every waking minute of their lives. Thoughts?
• Can take or leave, I have been in romances where it's RP'd and I've been in romances where it's all FTB and I'm honestly chill either way, but I'd like to know what the expectations are. These days I lean a lot more towards FTB but I also understand that the adult content is sometimes very good story.

That way each person knows where the other stands and can come to some compromises about the ground rules for their unique writing experience. Ethics then become more a matter of "did you agree to our ground rules and then refuse to honor them" than a broad sweeping generalization.

@greenflashlight I see a lot of labeling of opinions as misogynist without them actually being at all misogynist.

Certainly the most recent dust up shared that problem. I wildly disagree that there was anything in the Set A words that was misogynist.

I saw a lot of weaponized victimization in the aftermath of that post. The actual opinion? The actual words? Were at no point actually engaged with.

And I object to that.

Logging out now for awhile as I'm finally starting to feel genuinely angry, which will be the reason for silence on my end as this conversation continues.

@selira Is it twisting your words to ask for clarification? I asked you to clarify your position, you did, which was good. For one thing you removing the perception that you were attempting to silence me makes me feel less frustrated about this conversation...and I am quite frustrated at the moment. But less so. So we're getting somewhere.

I am asking you to stop the name calling. To anyone. To yourself even. I would ask you and others on this board to be civil. What can calling someone a nasty name do other than verbally abuse them and make them feel bad? What does it accomplish, exactly? What are you going for with that? Other than perhaps a momentary catharsis? One can disagree with a person's position without doing that.

@rightmeow For my part, I am only speaking to folks who are still here and who are still beating certain drums, and speaking to behaviors which I continue to see happening to some degree. I can see how it might be read as piling on to those other folks, and for that I certainly apologize.