Best posts made by GangOfDolls

@kanye-qwest I think it's more - sometimes doing nothing is the right call. I don't think its about the partner so much as intuiting when hard lines being drawn in the sand or not even just that but trying to communicate specific ideas in that moment only causes the whole thing to spin out a lot more.

I think we've all seen those meltdowns generally in games where someone is upset, people are trying to get to the root of the problem, and doing so - the person who is upset doesn't feel like they're getting the situation untangled, they start to further unravel because now there's a spotlight on the problem which means there's a spotlight on the person having the problem.

It's anxiety logic which isn't logical.

Having experienced this myself, wanting to help and literally making it 100x worse for trying in that moment - sometimes all you can do productively is to stop moving and let it pass before any further decisions get made.

Also I tried to do the whole 'here's a list of games' thing. I keep meaning to get back to it.

But I got a job man that likes to shove me on airplanes and shit.
And friends (allegedly) who are mostly sure I am not a stack of cats wearing a trenchcoat.

So, I tried man. I tried. Sorry.

ETA: The constantly rotating GIF above me of Cap America throwing the arrow is a) huge and b) annoying as fuck because it is constantly rotating. Constructively, I request that people maybe not put up pagewide gifs or shit that literally never stops animating?

Mastery is intended at least by theme to reflect a lifelong dedication to study and practice in a particular Arcana. Because of power bloat and Joneses Keeping Up With, it's treated like junk food in a drive through - easy to get and with very little effort.

It's always jarred me a bit that 20 year old Mages are running around - fully inducted into their Legacies and Life masters when in reality, that's all really more intended to be a mage career phase where they're maybe just starting out as journeymen and some aren't even done with apprenticeship level training.

I'd prefer it if PCs were limited to one mastery only and it took a lot of effort to get but then again, in my hardline world - a 20 year old mage shouldn't be at a point where they can even be a master.

Tacking on to feedback @Ghost and @Lotherio both provided, I would say that the setting of game isn't necessarily as important (to me) as the type of game. I think the genre of this game works best when:

• There are real risks and you might actually die. The environment is trying to kill you while the surviving groups are also trying to kill you because of resource competition and you're adding to these chances by having to get from A to B by deciding if taking the dubious rotting bridge over a raging river is safer than going all the way around, which sets you back by hours but means you're stuck out in the wilderness when the sun disappears.

I can't really speak to games I'm not familiar with but I tried No Return and in addition to what @ghost said: there was literally no risk to this game. Sure, people died but they were dying because the players were shelving them because they were bored or they had a flaw that required them to die by x time. And even the unlucky players who were the victims of bad rolls and gotten bitten by zombies, still had to do a check to see if they turned and even then could take a serum that would cure them of permadeath. There was little risk inherent to this game and it mostly resulted in a lot of playing house and having babies and ignoring a lot of basic cooperative survival needs like making sure the PCs had a secure fence.

Staff on the game kept trying to course correct these issues through very hamfisted plot devices but they often ended up over correcting where it became railroady staff fiat in the form of IC punishments or the plot devices were so drastic and theme breaking that, most players literally didn't want to deal with it, ignored it and just kept scavenging for canned pears in light syrup.

Which feeds into...

• Active plot staff or active plot runners. If the staff are the kind of staff that don't want to run plot that doesn't basically react to players ignoring previous staff fiat and want players to do it for them largely, then empower your plot runners to keep running plot that moves the game's story arc forward. Otherwise, again, you literally have nothing to do but scavenge for lawn chairs and ignore theme. This can be avoided by just pushing the main story line along on a proactive basis.

• Set a date for the game to end. Most of the survival genre is counter intuitive to this (the author of the TWD has stated that he planned to keep telling the story for as long as he could which is turning out to be a very long time and not necessarily for the better). A game with a beginning, middle, and end in this genre sends the message that you don't have time to sunbathe on top of the abandoned mall when you should be stock piling ammo because the Reavers are coming. It gives players a chance to make more meaningful and strategic choices and if they blow it, well then they blow it. Losing is fun, I think.

Once upon a time, I liked WoD a lot. The system as all systems do had its quirks and its low points but I really felt like there was a lot of room for creativity and interesting storytelling dynamics even when if the game was sometimes uh, mechanically overburdened.

And then... I didn't like it so much. It's a combination of things, really. I as a player got older and some of the types of tropes that seem to be more frequent in WoD became less interesting to me. And well, if I'm completely honest, I really started to feel weighed down by the some of the crazytrain that comes rolling through WoD games. I feel like I was way more equipped to deal with it or just ignore it better but at some point, I found that I just couldn't and logging wasn't something I wanted to do any more. It just became a bummer and distracting from any sort of story magic.

So, I took a break from WoD online and I just realized that it's been years since I wandered off. Recently, offline, I started playing in a friends bi-monthly TT Technocracy game and I'm starting to be reminded about all the things I enjoyed about WoD. And I find myself entertaining maybe putting a tentative toe back into things and seeing what happens.

But I'm struggling a bit with feeling gun shy about wading back into WoD MU*ing. I have no frame of reference for how most of the games that are up and running at present are doing other than what I read on this board. And most of my online gaming buddies have all bailed out of WoD for the above and other reasons and have no interest in going back so I don't really have immediate party feedback about how things are going.

I don't want to pre-poison my experience based on the past but I also, I think, want to be more mindful of my experience and how I want to spend my time when I login. I think I'm looking for some helpful tips or insight into how most sorta view WoD game communities as they exist now, if the communities are better, worse, or the same, and how people survive and thrive in those communities?

1. RP from Staff PCs should be solely to help other PCs grow/develop.

Not solely, no, but they shouldn't be in positions of IC power. Example, if your PC is nominated to run for Mayor of Munchkintown, you have an obligation to find an IC reason to decline the nomination and not participate in the IG race. It can be as simple as 'I don't want to be mayor but thanks' IG.

2. Staff PC stories should be minimized, and PC story arcs should be mostly downplayed.

I don't agree with this fully either. The issue is one of optics. Your PC should be able to participate in story and personal PC growth but it shouldn't be a story or growth that solves the crisis of the moment with your PC as the chosen one, for example or pre-destines them to a particular greatness. It's more any PC benefits or suffers based on IG outcomes of the efforts of PCs on games and most especially in plot but the staff held PC probably shouldn't benefit or suffer any more than any other PC.

3. Staff PCs should not receive any mention in the metaplot (for good or ill). A by ill, this could be an Staff-controlled NPC being an antagonist of a Staff PC, or results within the metaplot actually causing bad consequences for a PC of a Staffer.

On this one, I think its not just about baring participation or receiving things. It's more that as a staff member, you know things about the metaplot. You might know all the details. It seems to borrow a lot more trouble than its worth to participate in ways make your PC essential, so it's best to again find an IG reason why your PC cannot. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me cause a lot of strife and drama among players as a staffer for something that should be pretty fundamental to any game around metaplot. It generally only results in your undermining your own authority as players start to look at you with a suspect eye. The running of a metaplot as a staff member has a price of admission: your PC shouldn't participate in a central capacity. That's just how it is.

Ultimately, I think the question here is... what role should Staff PCs have on a MUSH, and how does their role differ from the roles of non-Staff PCs?

Staff should play on a game, as both an outlet and as understanding as to what it like to be a PC in their own game world. But they shouldn't find themselves in positions of opportunity or power or stand to benefit in ways that other PCs can't access.

@Arkandel

Oh yep, I see what you mean.

I don't see them as unrelated but they do need discernment. My intention behind 'don't be a dick' vs. more explicit do/don't is that 'don't be a dick' is a more subjective proposition. There are some people who genuinely don't see some behavior as inflammatory or are so literal in their method of operating on games that unless it isn't explicitly stated that you can't do 'a thing', they reason that its a tacit allowance to do 'a thing'.

I generally concept burning down a game as the sort of thing that happens with intention, after some point. It's rare in my experience that someone trips headlong into polarizing a community possessing no intention to cause any sort of damage. I can't be certain that it hasn't happened ever but I wouldn't classify that as a majority happening. And burning down a game is often a multi-factor destructive swath that involves some combination of making oneself so utterly socially toxic and administratively unwanted and rule breaking that there's almost no way this can't be on purpose. And I qualify being stunningly self-sabotaging as a willful act and therefore 'on purpose'.

But I mean people who reach that level of game detonation are so variable in their actions per local game conditions but so steadfast in their reliability to do so that lays the groundwork to getting to that point but much like Justice Stewart's threshold test for obscenity: most rational people know it when they see it.

@Kanye-Qwest said in Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.:

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

@Kanye-Qwest said in Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.:

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

At least with the rape scenario, it fits sorta loosely under the premise of "plot" but this is just some PC dudes being a garbage fire in character for no apparent reason.

Wow.

Go on?

Edit To Add: You're having a reaction to this, which I get but I'm asking what's bugging you about this.

I don't think "John decided to rape Jill because John is a rapist" is any more valid of a 'plot' than "Bob is a racist dickwad so he's out in public trying to make black people feel bad about themselves", and I found it kind of shocking that you'd assert it is.

Okay, I see and this is a fair point. Hopefully you'll allow me to expound a little?

My statement was owing to what the OP set up the scenario as. That this happened in game, there was a lot of RP around it, including people going on a man hunt, and there was an +event that resolved it (i.e. the trial). The presented format: A then B than C and finally D happens could be constituted as a plot only because its a series of public, serial events open to participation.

This versus some PCs walk into a bar for no reason and get their hellish asshole on.

I don't think this constitutes plot either and were I staff, its not something I would label as such or even allow in my game for public consumption and also hope that this is not a thing that's privately circulating in a play group on the game (I've seen this happen in games with no public plots of this nature policies). So yeah, I don't think its plot either but I was responding to the OP and how based on the presented information, I didn't see these situations as nearing equal based on various elements.

My view is that the writing of cultural analogues has to keep two things in mind:

1. Does it make sense in the game theme without having to argue a lot of justification?
2. If you were the worst player and not the best player, how would you interpret this information?

To the first, if you have to really work at explaining how it works in a theme then it probably doesn't. Some things slot well into a game theme but if it feels like its a lot of work to bolt it on, then its probably not a good fit to start with.

To the second, I think you do have to think several moves down the line about how someone who isn't going to spend any time googling things much less think critically about a nuanced culture scheme is going to do with it. They usually do the opposite: boil it down to its most reductive and offensive tropes. And they're not being trolls, they're just drawing from what they don't know and filling in the blanks and the result is your highly considered theme gets reduced to a pile of eugenics and racism without any one realizing that's what they're actually doing.

Also, I don't play on Arx but so I'm lacking context but I'm not sure what added value this culture would provide to the game as a whole? Another culture option? Just something new? Something else?

@auspice

Belatedly (apologies, work travel) yin is mostly a seated practice. It goes beyond flexibility and building core strength and looks more at holding poses for 2-5 minutes that release connective tissues that go beyond muscles and gets into the joints.

Most classes I've been to tend to be quieter and often there's some kind of relaxing music going on and they turn off the lights. The studio I currently go to gets super crunchy granola on the spiritual stuff which I don't personally put a lot of energy into but I like the intent.

My best friend calls it 'Nap Yoga' which is half true, because it feels less active than a Yinyasa/Flow class. But it can be tough sometimes, when you're trying to get stuff to release that's all bound up. Getting stuffed into an airplane a lot wads up my quads and hip flexors so sometimes getting that stuff to release isn't painful but it can be intense. When I'm done with a class, you feel pretty great.

I always go to classes but I think Udaya.com and YogaAnytime has online yoga at your own pace classes. I've never used them so I don't know how good they are but they are definitely cheaper than monthly studio passes.

I am totally here for cap limitations. It sucks to feel walled out of the sphere you wanted to play in temporarily but I'm not sure that feeling like Mage PC #431-9 in a sea of other PCs all clamoring to get involved in the same IG opportunities is fun, either.

There's a lot of reasons why Mage player environments get can rough but I think having more PCs than resources definitely encourages people to get tribal and exclusive.

How much of the game would wander into what happened at the end of Angel? A lot of really interesting stuff happened in the last season that Angel was on the air that ties into the Buffyverse with cliffhangers that didn't resolve until they started up the comics.

Have you thought about how you'd handle this part?

I used to work close to the intelligence community. There are metric ton of gamers in the defense and intelligence communities. A lot of the TLAs like it when you have military experience and know what a D20 is because it means you can follow a chain of command but can also think critically.

There are a fair number of gamers who have high level clearances where you are explicitly told to never log anything on the internet in terms of hobbies, activities, or the like. If your personal computer is ever compromised, you don't want to give anyone kompromat and pretending to be a werewolf ain't the same thing as pee hookers but still, best avoided.

Spitting in public. It makes me want to vomit in public.

Bad elevator etiquette. People who carry on loud conversations on their phones or invade my personal space.

Personal space invasions in general.

People who are mean, cruel, antagonistic to serving staff at restaurants.

I'm thinking of switching to a chromebook for my next personal travel laptop. I'm considering it because I'm mostly only using cloud-based and internet based applications when traveling and I'm tired of dragging around a 5 lbs of largely unused laptop.

Is the Chrome OS able to support MU* clients? Anyone had any experience with such?

I mostly just observed it to be a huge feedback loop.

Provoke PCs icly.
Provoked PCs react with understandable dislike for being goaded.
Blame PCs for reacting in reasonable ways to being provoked.
Antagonize PC players OOCly for not doing it his way.
Rinse.
Repeat.

It's not that hard to figure out.
If you keep getting into the same conflicts with the same people over the same things: you are the problem.

And this is just Life 101 but has amazing game applications where Groundhog Day Failures to Get Along exist.

But you need self-awareness to have the clarity to see and stop it from happening again and for all the IC and OOC pushback I saw pitched his way, he was never the problem.

So.

Belatedly so apologies if I missed this previously stated in the comments...

I personally appreciate games that set down a meta/OOG expectation for players holding positions of authority as part of the responsibility of holding the IG position. These tend to center on minimum expectations of activity. I know some people feel like this gets too close to sticky entitlement issues but I've seen more than one game gridlocked by players with high positions who disappear due to burnout or real life issues or some combination of that and other things going on. There is an element of 'do I really have the time at the pace at which this game moves to do this pretendy thing?' that players tend to evade honesty with themselves about in the excitement of the position that their future self will only see as fuel to stop logging in when the burnout hits. So, games that real talk the player's ability to really give this a shot is worth the otherwise constant churn of the pointy hat in the big chair of the week.

That said.

I've seen games that tack too far into giving the person in a role of big responsibility too much free reign in how they organize their position. There are some iron willed, in for the haul players who find this stuff their absolute jam and game staff tend to love these people because it makes their lives easier. The downside to this though is that when this player stops playing or the PC dies/retires - staff doesn't have a clue what's going on because it's all in the head or the game logs of the outgoing player who may or may not be available to explain or transition any of it and much of the very high level, sensitive, intricate information that is essential to keeping one or more huge secrets in the air and going is now officially a black box.

This isn't the fault of the exiting player and more of a game design flaw.

Relationships - Romantic, Familiar, Otherwise:

I got burned twice in this department. Once pretty badly and once wasn't that big of a deal but it was frustrating to have to RP around it like it didn't happen because I didn't know how to explain it in game. From these experiences, I tend to think that there's a self-responsibility in creating a 'dead man's switch' that kicks in if the other player ghosts or things get ugly OOG. If you keep it simple and relatively blameless(e.g. 'Oh yah, Harriet moved to Cleveland to join a slam poetry society and breed labradoodles- I hope she's happy'), then it makes easier for everyone to move on.

My step-sister has a long history of uh, bad choices. Some of these things are related to being relatively young, entitled, and being born to a teenaged mother, who went full Gilmore Girls and raised her child like a friend. I know people love that show but the real life products of the Gilmore Girls parenting method are often a codependent, boundary optional dumpster fire rolling down a hill.

My step-sister is married and made some choices about when to have kid that were not, uh, ideal. Specifically, they couldn't really afford to have them but decided to go forth and multiply immediately after getting married. This has happened a couple times now.

For the most part, I've just said nothing because its her life, you literally can't put multiple toddlers back in the bottle, and I do enjoy my nephews and nieces. However, she's decided that she wants to be a stay at home mom instead of going back to work. And really, this has been her dream for a long time. And I get that, I have no issue with people who really want to dedicate their lives to raising up some little people.

I get frustrated though that she feels that this is a good idea when they're on public assistance, struggling, and aren't in any real position to do this. I think my brother-in-law is too stressed out working 2 jobs (3 in the winter) to try and keep things from totally derailing financially to fight with his wife about it. So that leaves the rest of us to get into argument after argument with her about how this is really a bad plan and if something significant happens to them financially, they're literally dollars away from homelessness constantly.

My parents are dealing with a health crisis. I live 1,700 miles away. My brother is in and out of the hospital with his own medical issues. None of us are in a position to help them if something really bad happens.

I'd be totally for them figuring out how to have this kind of lifestyle when they're financially set-up for it but they're just not and my sister reacts to the suggestion that she even get a part time job (their church will provide free child care) that we're betraying her on some fundamental level.

This is exhausting.

(Zooooooooombie thread riiiiiiiiiise aaaaarrrgggghhhh)

Okay so, I didn't want to post this to Gingerlily's apology because not the place/time.

But here's basically my thing:

My regular games are all hitting holiday horselatitudes.
My family just hits ffwd on the holidays so we don't do much.
I normally disappear into an MMO or something about now but I can't find anything that appeals this year.
I just want sooooooomething to do for a bit and the premise of KD sounds cool even though it sounds like a dumpster fire in other ways. I read through all of it and oy, but I figure I might be fine if I just show up for the lulz and don't get attached.

So is it even worth it that much?
Is this game still a thing?
If no and no, does anyone have any non-WOD/non-superheros/Transformer recommendations?