Posts made by faraday

@Tinuviel said in Consent in Gaming:

If I play a criminal, and you play a judge, and you want to run a trial and I really don't want to sit for hours posing "he sits quietly" over and over again... I don't think I should be compelled to. There are some parts of a story that can be glossed over.

The problem with that is that by glossing over the trial entirely, you're basically depriving the judge PC of the opportunity to do That Judge Thing. It may not be the most fun thing for you to do, but you'd be a good sport by doing it anyway so they can have fun too.

It's not about compelling people to RP things that aren't fun for them. It's about expecting some degree of reciprocity as part of an implied social contract.

By playing a criminal or a screw-up, you're essentially initiating a storyline that affects other people. If you then say that you're only going to play out the high points of that story (where your character shines) and none of the consequences of that story (the cop wanting to question you, or the CO taking you to task, or your buddy arguing with you about how you endangered the mission, etc.) then that's just poor sportsmanship IMHO. Good RPers give as well as take.

Also, you can have an interaction without making it an ordeal. The cops/COs/judges of the world can work to make it fun for the other players too. Keep it short and sweet. Make sure it's not a soliloquy. Strive to engage with the other character and provide some character development for everyone.

For example - on BSGU I did a trial. I had all the witnesses submit a "testimony pose" ahead of time, so their players got to participate in the trial without forcing everybody to sit through 27 rounds of questioning. The on-camera portion was just the dramatic conclusion.

@Auspice said in Consent in Gaming:

man how many times did the Trio get chewed out in Harry Potter?

And those scenes are important to the story. If you never saw Starbuck getting in trouble on BSG, then you could walk away thinking what she did was acceptable.

Also just to note - the original point was about opting out of anything embarrassing or humiliating for the character. This could mean anything from a prank to an argument with a SO to disciplinary action. I saw that as a general theme for avoiding RPing out negative consequences. It's not specifically about getting reamed out by a boss.

@Thenomain It's come up a couple times - I believe Sunny mentioned it originally. But regardless, my point isn't about length it's about the prevalent sentiment that it would inherently be boring and is "exactly the sort of scene that would mostly be glazed over in a book or a movie". (Which is not really my experience with books/movies either, but that's neither here nor there.)

So I don't know how we got sort of fixated on the "CO yells at subordinate" as this hours-long ordeal of boringness, but that just hasn't been my experience at all. I had plenty of scenes on BSGU (here's one) where folks actually willingly engaged in getting taken to task by the CO. The players were good sports, the scenes were kind of amusing and reasonably short, they moved the story forward, and they spurred other RP and deeper character connections that I don't think would have happened if the parties involved were just "yeah whatever, you got yelled at".

@Arkandel said in Consent in Gaming:

I think the disconnect here is trying to create a catch-all rule that applies forever to all situations.

Sure, but that's not what I'm saying at all.

As with any social endeavor, there are any number of reasons why somebody might want to bow out of doing a thing. I'm tired. I have work to do. I just don't feel like a bar scene tonight. My kid just woke up. I have to be up at 6am. Whatever. Literally nobody is arguing that somebody should be chained to their keyboard and forced to RP.

But when you come up with lame reasons to get out of social things, there are social consequences for that. "I don't like to RP out negative things happening to my character" is a lame reason, IMHO. YMMV of course - that's why it's a social consequence and not a disciplinary issue.

There are also various reasons why games historically have preferred/insisted on certain things happening on-camera. I mean, is anybody seriously arguing that off-camera incidents have the same dramatic impact as on-camera ones? If that were the case, why RP out anything? I've even seen it taken to an extreme on some games where "If it wasn't RPed, it didn't happen". Personally I think that's silly, but I do get where they were coming from.

All that, to me, is entirely different from having protections in place to let people opt out of content that is potentially triggering/upsetting.

@Sunny said in Consent in Gaming:

And it's my opinion that FTB doesn't have to be for a 'red flag' event. That it's OK to use it surrounding 'this scene isn't fun'.

That's okay - we just see things differently is all. When I write a policy for my game saying "you can always FTB out of a scene that makes you uncomfortable and nobody is allowed to give you grief about it", I intended that for the red flag kinds of scenes. If you want to nope out of my boring staff meeting or party at the bar because it's just not fun for you, that's a completely different level of social interaction IMHO.

I'm not saying you should try to strong-arm somebody into RPing a scene where they get in trouble. But if I'm playing Captain Authority Figure and I page you saying: "Captain AF was pretty pissed after that last mission and would want to talk to Bob about it. Can we set up a scene?" And your reply is: "Nah, I don't really feel like getting yelled at on-camera. That's not fun for me. Let's handle it off-camera." That's gonna lower my opinion of that person, player-to-player.

@Sunny said in Consent in Gaming:

I can see your perspective, but I don't think there's a problem with somebody opting out of something even if it's just 'that's not fun for me' as a reason.

It's one thing to say: "Nah, no thanks" to a RP invitation because the plot/scene/whatever doesn't sound like fun. You can't force people to RP. That to me is different from raising a red flag on the scene using a rule designed to protect people from uncomfortable, potentially-triggering events.

@Sunny said in Consent in Gaming:

I do not understand. Why would it lower your opinion of them?

I probably spoke too broadly. I can imagine certain types of humiliating punishments being triggering to some folks - e.g. Cersei's "walk of shame" in GoT.

But setting those situations aside and looking at the more general case, it strikes me as poor sportsmanship to use the FTB clause solely to avoid scenes that make your character look bad. It suggests an unhealthy level of either character bleed (I'm gonna take IC punishments too much to heart), competitiveness (I can't let you get one over on me!) or selfishness (I'm really just here to look awesome, so no I don't want to play that.)

@Apos said in Consent in Gaming:

@Auspice tbh I was thinking of active posters on this board, and Firan, the Reach, and Fallcoast more than my current game because I've leaned so heavily away from conflict mechanics

I only know those games by reputation, which is really.... not good. So I'd venture to say that the issue is more the atmosphere/environment of specific games geared around antagonism than a widespread issue within MUSHing itself.

If you're going to allow non-consent IC rape/torture/abuse on a game, I don't think default-FTB is a viable option anyway. Those things have serious long-term consequences for the character it happens to. It's not like you can FTB one scene and then go about your normal business.

@Apos said in Consent in Gaming:

An awful lot of people want their opponents to RP out scenes uncomfortable for them. Embarrassing and humiliating ones.

We're here to tell stories and roleplay. Generally speaking that means actually playing the scenes. It's one thing to avoid a torture scene because torture makes people squicky. But somebody 'nope-ing' out of a "get yelled at by the commander" scene just because it was ICly embarrassing is cheapening the reason why the FTB option exists. I'd still honor the request, but I think it would lower my opinion of that player considerably.

@Ominous said in Space Sim w/Economy:

Do you think you would get the same enjoyment if...

Everyone is going to have a different answer to that question based on individual preferences. But from a game design perspective, you have to ask yourself why you're adding sim elements. There are a variety of valid reasons (not an all-inclusive list):

• System regulation. Example: IC economy to limit how much money people can accumulate and spend.
• RP Aid/Guide. Example: Die rollers, or +combat to help resolve a mass combat faster.
• Immersion (to make the world OOCly feel more like the IC one). Example: IC radios, dynamic grid/space systems so you can wander forever.
• Theme Enforcement. Example: Hard travel times, or code that limits vampires from going out during the IC day.
• Time Killer Mini-Game.

There's no right or wrong answer here, and nothing is going to please everyone. It just comes down to what kind of game you're going for.

@Darren said in Space Sim w/Economy:

It wouldn't be possible. You would need to have an actual ship equipped with a cargo bay and a market/cargo console.

Yes I realize that. What I meant was that the ships have enforced travel times. Therefore anyone on a ship is stuck if they're in the middle of a cargo run.

Also I've been on space-sim games where the only way to travel was via coded ship, which meant enforced travel times for everyone. Some like the immersion and the shipboard RP.

@Darren said in Space Sim w/Economy:

So long as the game is primarily focused on RP, there is no reason not to have something like this as an alternative means of travel. IMO of course.

Sure, but this thread was specifically talking about a space-sim game with an economy system. Those tend to be less flexible about travel times just to keep folks from zipping around the universe making a zillion credits in a day.

@Ominous said in Space Sim w/Economy:

MUs tend to be oriented to RP, so what happens if the person you want to RP with is a few star systems over?

It depends on the game. In many space-sim games, you're just stuck. Hopefully you have an alt or someone on your ship is online so you can RP while you're traveling. That's what turned me off of those kinds of games years ago.

ETA: You can have the same effect even without space-sim code if you have geographically separated factions/planets/whatever. It just tends to be more prevalent in space-sim games in my experience. There's nothing wrong with that if that's what you're into. Just not my thing.

@Ganymede said in Consent in Gaming:

I think it is healthier to expect players to set their own limits and be comfortable in doing so. To do that, pointing out that someone is not a wet
blanket for setting limits and encouraging players to do so is a better policy than expecting players to somehow know where a limit is.

This is where I'm at. The "wet blanket" worry is a thing in ANY social endeavor. Sometimes, yes, you suck it up even though you're a little uncomfortable for the sake of other peoples' fun. Sometimes it's a big enough deal that you need to say something and 'nope' out. That's a judgment call only YOU can make, and doing so is just part of adulting.

I used to think "FTB if you're not comfortable" was a pretty well-understood unwritten rule, but lately I've taken to spelling it out in game policies outright. Beyond that, it's up to the players to set those boundaries. It's not fair to expect others to guess what they are.

I think it also depends on the kind of game you're running. For instance on most of the games I've been on, players almost never rolled skills against each other in any meaningful way outside ST-driven plots. (I'm not counting the odd baking contest or pyramid game.) So the nebulousness of the roll mechanics wouldn't really have been a big issue.

There is no perfect system. It's all about picking the one that fits your vision for your game.

@Ghost I agree those are complications that need to be addressed but most TTRPG systems have similar mechanics that need to be adapted to MU environments. I don’t think that constitutes falling apart.

@Auspice said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

When people ask me what I'm doing, my go-to answer is: 'text-based roleplaying.'

That's great unless you're also talking about people who are already into text-based roleplaying (e.g. forums, storium, discord, tumblr, MUDs, etc.) It can be helpful to have some way to explain how MUSHes differ from that, and how MUSHes differ from each other.

For example - in Storium there's a standard template that games fill out to establish things like:

• Writing tense
• Is power-posing allowed
• Expected speed of moves (though nobody pays attention to this one in practice)
• Trigger warnings
• etc.

That kind of thing helps get new people involved.

@Jennkryst said in Whatever Happened To Star Wars MU*s?:

To be fair, you didn't actually use FFG. Well... you did. You used Genesys. Which was the equivalent to, say... advertising a SAGA edition game, but using the first edition d20 Star Wars rules, instead.

That's not really a fair comparison. The chargen and die roller mechanics of Genesys are 95% the same as the Star Wars Edge of Empire rules. For Genesys they just took their FFG Star Wars system and made it a little more generic.

I disagree with the notion that it's not a MU-friendly system. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered implementing the MUSH code for it I think it does suffer from some of the same things Fate has in terms of requiring a bit more negotiation in player-to-player interactions about how certain perks / die roll impacts take effect. It may not be for everyone (no system is) but it's hardly a deal-breaker.

@Griatch said:

and you just described an RP-heavy MUD.

Double post sorry... @Apos expanded the description in a good way. I do think there’s a subtle distinction between the two. But they’re points on a continuum not too far apart.

By no means do I think that terminology is our biggest problem, but it is kinda interesting to talk about. I also think it's relevant. Being able to coherently describe what it is that we do, and how it differs from Play By Forum/Tumbler/Storium/MUDs/etc. is useful when describing the hobby to new folks. Imagine a conversation with a friend that starts with: "Hey, you should try out MUSHing." "What's MUSHing?" "Welllllllll....."

@Ghost said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

is because the people in this conversation know that trying to get people to knock it off with obsessive/ego behavior isnt a task, it's a war that will be more difficult and trying than it's worth; it would likely result in the community at each other's throats.

I talk about technology because that's something I can control. Changing social behavior is more of an individual effort. We can't control how crappy staffers run their games, but we can certainly control whether we play on them.