Posts made by Devrex

@pyrephox I've been on some of those and they drove me a little crazy. I was running a thread where I presented a character with some NPCs to interact with. The guy proceeded to take control of every character in the scene. Every one. His. All the NPCs I was posting. And was confused when I said well...you've left me nothing to post after you and nowhere to go, because you were supposed to play your own character, not the characters I introduced to give your character something to do. And apparently I was the counter-cultural one there. And I still couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do or where I was supposed to go after someone had taken all these NPCs off in this crazy other direction. What was the right interpretation? There no longer was one. No baseline for me to use to decide how anybody reacted cause he'd already changed everybody's personalities around. I couldn't figure out what to do next. And he got mad at me for not posting next. And I'm like...but why? You can just keep right on writing in this set-up. You no longer need or want my input.

@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.

@icanbeyourmuse LOL, trust, all mages are not super powerful. As my mage shakes off the effects of a month of magical botches over minor cantrip-style stuff. Also got reduced to hamburger meat.

Many players are pleasant, but WoD is a huge, popular theme. Attracting a larger population means attracting more people who selfishly do not care about anyone's experience other than their own, is all.

I wouldn't put rosters on any game, because I've seen those same continuity issues play out everywhere, regardless of the theme. I never played on Arx, and maybe it and Thundergulch will be the exceptions that prove the rule, but I've seen it just result in broken stories and screwy continuity across a multitude of other games that have tried it. Nice idea to try to round out character types people don't think to play, maybe, looks great on paper, messed up in practice. Might be better served to provide a concept list: here are some neat concepts we've thought of that you are welcome to use as a starting point for your character, and that we'd love to see played.

Ares is the freaking bomb, and it saved my interest in the hobby. Also, Fara personally stopped to help me do my handle name change which I needed to do for vastly personal reasons I won't get into here and now. Was incredibly kind about it despite basically having a stranger poke and go hey, can you please help?

@runescryer I think whether or not it can work depends largely on what kind of support you have in place for that person.

Clear, written policies with a clear rubric for when certain things will be awarded, clear guidance and help on how to get and launch RP...the more crystal-clear the policies, the better this would go. And anything that looks vague should be tightened up.

@derp and I were talking about this last night. Say you have Tier slots for different characters.

Vague: Top Tier characters must foster RP in their spheres.

Specific, crystal clear: Top Tier characters must run 3 PRP scenes per month for that they do not participate in personally. This may be for any sphere as long as you're making RP for the game. Those PRPs must create RP for at least 3-5 people per session and at least two of them must have entirely different participants. RL happens, so you get a 30 day grace period. If you can't uphold your obligations you will be asked to step down from the Top Tier role and will lose all the benefits, even if this means putting this character on hiatus and being invited to app a Bottom Tier character. Top Tier characters may be reactivated after running 5 PRPs.

Then when the ombudsman/player relations guy gets:

"@Derp was totally mean to me! He dropped me from my tier role unfairly!"

Well now there's something to investigate and something to work with.

"Hey Derp, unhappy player ran his 3 PRP scenes last week, did you spot that? They appear to be within the bounds of the policy you wrote, man, is there something else going on?"

Or...

"Hey, I see that you tried to run your 3 PRPs but that third one had three of the same players from the first two so you're not in policy yet. Do you think you can run one that meets the criteria in the next week? This has never happened before, seems like a mistake. If so I'll ask Derp if you can have some more time."

Or...

"Dude you're way past your grace period. The policy clearly states you lose the character in this circumstance. I'm not going to Derp with this. Go run your 5 PRPs, and put in your requests to get your character back, same as anyone else."

If the policy isn't clear the Ombudsman themself has no leg to stand on other than gut, what seems fair, their own feelings towards player/other staff, etc., and you end right back up at square one.