Best posts made by faraday

@Ganymede said in When communication is too long to read ...:

As the parent of a ND person, I do remind them that others won't know their needs unless they speak up. Thankfully, they do. Sometimes, in inappropriate loud ways, but, hey, they are young, and they've got some time.

That's awesome, sincerely. But I am also the parent of a ND person who isn't that adept (as you say - they are young, they've got some time), and I know other ND people who are stuck by one or more of the reasons I mentioned before. So I still implore folks to approach the situation in a compassionate and constructive way instead of rushing to judgment.

@Kestrel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

But Bob's IC absence remains an IC fact, which I would react to. His IC absence has already become a part of the RP, whereas in a MUSH, the RP simply does not exist.

First off, let me say that this thread has been very interesting, seeing MUSH customs from an outside perspective and examining them critically.

I was thinking about that statement of yours though, and you may be interested to know that the desire for OOC communication and accommodation is not always based around wish fulfillment or stuff like that. Sometimes it's actually motivated by wanting to put IC first. Here’s an example similar to yours:

A, B and C are on a small ship crew (think Firefly). C’s the ship’s doctor. A and B do a scene where B gets hurt, and they go bang on the doctor’s door. C is online and in her room, but OOCly is AFK cooking dinner.

Now from a MUD perspective, as I understand it, the thing to do would be say: Well, we RPed knocking on the door and C didn’t answer, then we RPed looking around the ship for her and couldn’t find her, so we’ll just continue the scene with A in a ‘OMG we have no doctor’ panic trying to patch up B himself.

Maybe that works ICly, depending on the circumstances. But if it’s a severe injury, and the ship is in deep space, then there’s no logical IC reason why they wouldn’t be able to find the doctor. I mean, what, did she take a really long space walk? Even if she’s asleep, wouldn't they just open the door and wake her up?

So the desire for OOC communication here is because the doctor is not Schrodinger’s Cat. She is somewhere, ICly, regardless of where her player is. And if there’s an OOC way to figure that out - either by paging C or paging one of C’s alts, or firing off a google chat to her (not everyone does this, but among friends it's not unreasonable) - then that is considered preferable for the sake of the IC story.

This may seem like a contrived example, but something very similar actually happened to me. I was C, and was offline for a couple days, and returned to accusatory “OMG where were you, we needed you” RP. It was kind of silly.

@Lotherio said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

they don't want to waste on-line time having to fathom some IC excuse for why they were absent.

Yeah, I really don't understand where this became about wanting a favorable outcome or not wanting to fail. I don't care about that. What I care about is being forced to come up with a preposterous explanation (I fell asleep in the crawlspace with noise-canceling headphones on!) for something that is an extremely routine MUSH event (someone not being online at the exact moment you want them).

I was just trying to illustrate that sometimes OOC communication is done in the interests of IC continuity.

@Pandora said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

At what point is the line between 'reasonable assumption' and 'preferable outcome' crossed? It's not a black and white issue.

It's absolutely not black and white. Where I tend to personally draw the line is where there is no plausible reason.

A single knock from a would-be murderer? Easy. I was asleep. I had my headphones on. I was in the shower.

Being absent for a single night when the ship's in spacedock and there's an accident? Also easy. I was getting take-out. I was at the bar.

Saying multiple ship crew members failed to find you on a tiny ship when there was literally nowhere else for you to be? Saying you abandoned your clan because you didn't log in for a couple days and something big went down? Saying you're ignoring something huge that happened to your IC spouse just because you haven't been able to RP for a week? Saying you don't know how your sick mother (who you live with) is doing just because she hasn't logged in to update you with her status? No. Sorry. Those I draw the line on. (And these are all situations that have actually happened in games I know of.)

I like @Wretched's motto:

If someone is OOCLY unavailable, never give them dickish consequences or treat them like an abandoner.

@Pandora It's a dickish consequence if I'm forced to concoct some idiotic explanation for why C wasn't able to be found when no plausible reason exists. If you don't think that's a problem - that's fine. I agreed it wasn't black and white. As I said, I was just illustrating where I believe that OOC communication can help with IC continuity.

On one extreme you have the situation on the Firefly ship or @Wretched's safe house where it's silly to assume the char is absent just because their player is.

On the other extreme is @Arkandel's Slaughterhouse or the "I'm going to wait to murder you while the police PCs are offline and assume they were taking a siesta" where someone is abusing OOC absence.

The vast majority of scenarios fall somewhere in between and are far from black and white. They require a case by case judgement call. Using the extremes as straw men arguments doesn’t get us anywhere.

@Thenomain said in New Player Onboarding:

What in hell is the difference between typing in a Mu* client and typing in a web client?

The MU Client.

No, seriously - I'm not trying to be a jerk here. But have you put yourself in the shoes of a never-MUSHed-before-in-their-life player and looked at what it takes to find, download, install, configure and connect to a game in a MUSH client? It's wacky, many of them don't have great UIs, and there are hardly a plethora of tutorials out there.

I'm not saying it requires a degree in rocket science or anything, but compared to going to www.mygame.com and clicking 'Play'? It's not an insignificant barrier.

And then once they get past that barrier, and a second barrier of actually finding a game to play on, then there's the third barrier of the command set itself. +finger, @desc, help, +help.... it's bewildering to a new person.

And then there's the barrier of learning how to actually play ... the unspoken rules that vary so widely across games, as the MUD/MUSH culture thread so aptly demonstrated.

Given the state of technology and culture in the hobby, I think the only viable method for new player onboarding is to have a very patient and outgoing mentor.

Edit to add: Oh, but in the "something is better than nothing" category, there's my attempt at explaining "how to MUSH" to my writer classmates for a class project: MUSH 101.

@surreality said in Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.:

But I don't feel 'give people a little leeway to allow for creativity while preserving player comfort' is tantamount to 'now anything goes, it's all a worthless travesty, you may as well hand-wave everything because the sacred truth has already been despoiled', which is a worrying notion that seemed to emerge in the other thread.

A lot of people really do feel that way though. On my western game, I approved people on individual merits. Want to be an abolitionist? Freed slave who made their way west? Female ranch owner? Female Pinkerton agent? African-American doctor? Sure. All these things existed in real life history.

Did all of them exist in one single small town in Wyoming though? No, of course not. So it ended up being like Twin Peaks the Western. I got a lot of flak for how preposterous the characters were and how badly it broke the Western theme.

Saying that the PCs are the exception to the rule only goes so far. Unless you've got people really exercising the "mainstream" NPC viewpoint, the exception becomes all you see and therefore becomes people's mental rule no matter what you say. So you get this weirdly-jarring discontinuity when the person claiming to be oppressed by totally valid IC prejudices ends up looking like a looney since it never happens on-camera. (or if it does, the poor NPC is quickly smacked down by all the modern-sensibility PCs.)

But for me I wouldn't change a thing. It was far more palatable than trying to enforce a world where 90% of the playerbase had to be racist/sexist jerks or farmers/manual labor. Didn't seem like much fun for me, as a player or a staffer. So YMMV.

@ThatGuyThere said in Roleplaying writing styles:

@EMDA said in Roleplaying writing styles:

B) Carl approaches Rick, sidling around to stand between the other man and the nearest exit. Crossing his arms, he asks, "Where were you on the night Christy was murdered?"

I'd want to play with the Carl in B way more than the Carl in A.

While I somewhat agree on your point on pose style, in a scene I would have huge issues with pose B. The reason for this is the assumed success that impacts what my character can do, by getting between Rick and the exit.

Really? I didn't read it that way. It said "moving to stand..." which I interpreted as "in the process of moving with the intention to stand...

I see that sort of thing constantly in MU*s and have never regarded it as power-posing. It's not like the classical "Carl punches Rick in the face" example. If there's a problem with it, it's pretty easy to just pose back trying to out-maneuver him to keep an exit route open. Or throw out an OOC comment if it's really an issue.

At some level everything we write is just an attempt.

Jane attempts to sip her tea, providing Rick doesn't knock it out of her hand in mid-sip.

@Arkandel said in Logging your activity:

For all I know there are people here who read other people's scenes for fun or even IC profit (if roleplay is on public record then by perusing it like that you can nitpick details to use for your PCs, the same way we look over Donald Trump's tweets iRL).

Or maybe they're just a waste, dunno. All I'm saying is, someone out there may find use for these little hoops we get to jump.

I enjoy reading good logs just because they're like reading good stories about familiar characters. I also find them useful.

As a staffer, logs help me to be aware of what's going on in the game and steer plots accordingly. If I know that Bob and Suzy are chatting about X, maybe there's a way to work X into a larger plot (of course, I'd talk to them about it first). Or maybe they don't realize that Harvey is also interested in the same thing, and they might want to coordinate. If Bob and Suzy just did a giant barfight, I might post something on the Rumours bbs so everyone knows, or update the room desc with some battle damage. It also helps to know who your active players are.

As a player, logs help me find people who RP well or have interesting hooks that I might want to talk to them about. "Hey, both our chars are X - let's do something with that." Sometimes it can also be used for assuming what would be common knowledge. Like, if there's a log where Suzy tells Bob she's breaking up with him, you shouldn't assume knowing that. But in the aforementioned giant barfight, I think it's entirely appropriate to RP, "Hey, I heard there was a big dust-up here the other night." Especially if it's a small town. Or if you work with Suzy and you saw a log where she's in the hospital, it's probably safe to assume you know she hasn't showed up for work.

Yeah this totally belongs on a different thread. Sorry OP. But since we're on the derailed train...

I totally agree with @ghost about setting expectations. Consent/control is not binary; it's a scale. On one extreme you have a fully consent game with no GMs. If players can't sort things out, the only resolution is for someone to take their ball and leave. On the other extreme you have a fully-coded system with no GMs. If the system says you die, you die. No negotiation.

Most games fall somewhere between these two extremes. And since everyone has their individual preferences, it's important to set an expectation of where on the scale you fall.

My standard policy regarding consent is this: "This is fundamentally a non-consent game, but we encourage cooperation among players and staff. We use the FS3 skills and combat system to resolve conflicts when players cannot agree. Although bad things can happen to your character without your consent, we try to avoid character death unless you really paint yourself into a corner. The coded combat system cannot kill you outright."

I have been running games with policies like this one since the early 2000's and during that time have killed maybe 2 PCs without their consent (both very extreme situations). Are these games for everyone? Certainly not. Are they perfect? Certainly not. But I think the assertion that such games are massively unfair and result in disgruntled playerbases is simply demonstrably false.

@Arkandel said in How do you keep OOC lounges from becoming trash?:

Why have an OOC room and not just the OOC channel? What's the upside?

Some people are going to log in without intent of playing immediately. Where do you want them to be? The upside of providing an OOC room is that it gives a better feel for the true RP activity level in the game and can help find RP easier. You have a reasonable expectation that Bob is on grid because he wants to RP, not because he's waiting for Suzy to log in or just chilling while cooking dinner. A channel doesn't accomplish that.

@Arkandel said in How do you keep OOC lounges from becoming trash?:

Aw, come on. Anywhere. Give them personal rooms or 'quiet' rooms they can idle in without spamming each other. ... Then let channels do what they're there for, with a history function so they can be monitored by staff for abuse (as opposed to 'X said Y ten minutes ago' and sending logs back and forth after the fact).

Personal rooms don't fit every game theme, and as previously mentioned I already have a quiet room if you want to opt out of chit-chat. Also you're assuming the history function is enabled, which not all games do.

I think there are far better RP-finding tools than the OOC room - in fact that's probably a mediocre one, and its function can be easily substituted by ... well, a channel. RP-seeking flags, grid incentives, public +events, hell the +where command, these are all more effective ways of finding a scene.

In my experience, that's not the case. I've had a Looking for RP flag in my codebase for decades and can count on one hand the number of times I've seen it used. "Does anybody want to RP" type questions on public often go unanswered when people de-spam for RP... I could go on with other examples but the TL;DR version is I think our experiences are different.

If you don't like OOC Rooms, that's groovy. I actually prefer to hang out in the Quiet Room myself personally because the OOC chat gets too spammy. But there's a big difference between "I don't personally like X" and "X is a net down-side to a game". Some people like OOC lounges, some people don't. As long as there's someplace for people to flee to so they're driven to a more quiet place and not driven off the game I don't see the problem.

@Derp said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

Nobody is preventing people from other games posting? If it'still heavily WoD, that's just because the active people play WoD games. Feel free to start discussions about other active games?

Nobody prevents it, no. But it's sure not fun to do so when so many discussions turn into a holy war about the only 'right' way to do something - a way that is often heavily biased toward the type of game that most of the active people play. Differing viewpoints are frequently ridiculed or "grilled and shredded" (as @surreality pointed out) without stopping to consider that just because it doesn't work well on WoD doesn't mean it doesn't work well on any game ever.

@Meg said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

To be fair, MSB owners/admins do not encourage any such behavior. Nor do they discourage it. As ES said in the thread, they provide the framework, we are making MSB what it is. (With some exceptions, of course. Like trolling and the like.)

I respectfully disagree. I believe that having the Hog Pit expressly encourages such behavior, and the absence of moderation tools for anything but the most egregious spambots and trolls IMHO is tacit encouragement to continue. But I understand your POV.

@WTFE Electric Soup lasted for 5+ years. If you consider that to be "died on the table" that's your prerogative I guess.

@surreality Yes, you're quite right. I like your wording better: 'Use tact and do not be deliberately hurtful'. You can write a movie review that says a movie is horrible in a tactful way.

TGG's combat system, designed by @EUBanana, was amazing. The whole "high death toll" and "short campaigns with new chars each time" thing wasn't quite my cup of tea in many ways, but I loved it anyway. It was a unique game with a unique atmosphere that I haven't seen before or since.

@Auspice said in Course Corrections:

The issue wasn't the concept of Legos. It was her need to use the brand name (in IC dialogue) and have everyone else warp theme to do so as well (for them and other such items), for her.

OK, yeah, that sounds obnoxious now that I have more info.

But still, back to the more generic point... LEGO is a particularly glaring use (like iPod would be), but it still seems a weird thing for folks to get upset over. I mean, where do you draw the line? Like @ThatGuyThere said -- what about 'tennis shoes' or 'aspirin' or 'kleenex' or 'okay', or 'getting to third base' or calling someone a 'casanova' or saying you're going to 'go postal'?
There are a bazillion common everyday items/expressions that have their roots in specific RL historical events or brand names. Trying to be the Theme Police for all of that just sounds exhausting.

@surreality said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

That separation going !!!KABOOM!!! and causing a flashback or panic attack is the actual thing that occurs when an actually real trigger gets tripped. As such, if it possibly might happen? Then, yeah, the way you initially put this... they are simply not welcome.

There is a huge difference between saying: "This game has mature themes. If that has the potential to stress you out, then you should take steps to protect yourself." and "You're not welcome here."

I have immense sympathy for anyone who has to police their own entertainment for the sake of their emotional well-being. I can only imagine what it might be like to walk into a movie and not know if you're going to half a flashback in the middle of it. That's horrible.

But I still don't feel that anyone has a right to foist the responsibility for their well-being onto someone else. Be proactive. Communicate with plot runners. Communicate with staff. Make your needs known. Most people, I think, will be reasonably accommodating.

Expecting people to fill out a "what might bother you" questionnaire or expecting people running an improv scene to try and forsee all possible triggers in advance just seems unreasonable to me.

@Thenomain said in FS3:

Just a little context shift can change a lot of perceptions. I recognize and will call out that Faraday said that she didn't know how to stop it from happening, and then WTFE offered some statistical recommendations.

Well, yeah, except 1.5 of the things (don't roll for trivial stuff and luck points) are already in FS3 I only counted the 'trivial stuff' as 0.5 because I realize that WTFE's way of doing it is different. But it's trying to address the same basic problem.

The bit about people seeing that a game is FS3 and will immediately say "no" seems to me, a complete outsider, nothing to do with statistical probability curves.

The three big complaints I get about FS3 are:

1. Die results (perplexing, but maybe they just haven't played on other dice-using MU*s to realize that you fail just as often/more often there?)

2. The Chargen/XP balance thing that comes up on pretty much every FS3 thread here. I get why people don't like it. I don't care. I like it and it's my system. I respect their right to hate it just as much as I hate starting off at level 1 when my friends twist my arm into playing D20.

3. Having had a bad experience on a game. As @Three-Eyed-Crow pointed out, there have been some pretty weird FS3 setups out there. Giant "Action Skill" lists, bizarrely low chargen point limits, befuddling rating limits, imbalanced combats, trying to graft on superpowers... the list goes on. Some of that is on me for not providing good enough guidance on how to use the system effectively. But even the guidance I did provide was often ignored. So. Meh. Perils of making an open toolkit I guess.