Posts made by GangOfDolls

I have run plots for people, and rarely ever received a plot in return. So, I come to the point where I'm left with: do I wait around for someone to run something for me (even after I've suggested I could use a GM to help me out) or do I just get it done so I can keep moving forward with my character? Can't a player have a little agency in their own character's story, as long as they are not avoiding the sanctity of ICA=ICC, and not writing in monstrous successes, failures, power grabs, or reputation gains?

I think you're conflating 2 separate concepts.

As a good citizen of a game- any game and staff or not- you should have agency as a player. I would say that agency is a requirement of any player in order to be a productive, non-black hole on the landscape of a game.

But agency is not given from other players or staff. And you give it yourself with the understanding that agency requires taking responsibility for your character. That means that yes, you don't behave as a player or a character that makes everyone's experience a little worse by doing things that are ridiculous, immature, and damaging towards other players, plot, or the game in general. But part of that responsibility is also creating a character that isn't a wholly dependent concept on staff or other players or characters to amuse you or bestow character growth on your PC. You are solely responsible for enabling that growth and that includes being proactive about seeking out opportunities to do that.

I have run plots for people, and rarely ever received a plot in return. So, I come to the point where I'm left with: do I wait around for someone to run something for me (even after I've suggested I could use a GM to help me out) or do I just get it done so I can keep moving forward with my character?

This is not an either/or thing. It has nothing to do with reciprocation. Reciprocation in personal plot is a nice to have. It is not an obligation or requirement in a game unless staff sets up the game from the start that personal plot is 1:1 = to get one you must run one for someone else.

I would be careful in possessing this sentiment. It savors a lot of having entitlement about what other players are required to do for your PC. The fact is, you run plot for other people because you want to, you enjoy doing it, and you like telling stories with no expectation that you'll ever be paid back in kind.

Now, you can require personally as a player that if you're going to run personal plot that other players return this in kind and hopefully, if the player getting the plot is a stand-up sort, they'll agree in good faith or they will be up front that they don't want to/can't for whatever reason. But to have an unarticulated expectation will only lead to future interpersonal conflict and you feeling like you've been let down by something the other player didn't know was their obligation.

ETA: Yoking or burdening other players to a sense of obligation or reciprocity is never, ever a good idea.

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.

@GirlCalledBlu

I just want to point out that there's a difference between being a good storyteller and being effective at being a good game administrator.

I think we've all played in games that had excellent plot but had absolutely batshit management of the game going down. And because the plot was good, people put up with the batshittery far longer than they should have.

To be clear: I am not saying that your handling of the 100 was to that level.

I am, however, saying that while your storytelling chops were solid, your organizational prowess at running said plot and running the wider game were problematic. And when games start out on a bad administrative note, they tend to snowball pretty quickly when there's a lack of awareness or a refusal to accept that the feedback you're being given as a game runner is valid when its pushing back on things that are a problem.

My experience of The 100 in terms of game running was that of an echo chamber. Decisions would get made about timing or logistics IG and OOG that inconvenienced more players than it helped or were often bizarre/weird/nonsensical that it proved a distraction (sometimes really large) from participating in the story on offer. Sometimes these changes to format would happen midplot or midstream when PCs had already established their PCs as doing 'x' for months, making it harder for players to find ways to gracefully pivot on months of actions or RP to whatever abrupt change was happening just then.

This was often made worse by a lack of any communication about expectations or timing to players. Players would politely explain why they weren't tracking the leaderships logic or decisions about these things or why from a player perspective things were problematic.

You and @Seraphim73 would often say 'oh, yes, I see your point' or 'oh, yes, I apologize we didn't communicate this sooner but...' and then assure us that you were going to logistically compensate the situation. Players would then think that the situation was resolved and then the exact opposite of that would happen anyway.

And one time or twice is just attributable to miscommunications or misunderstandings but it happened a lot. To the point where it often seemed as though, you would collectively take player feedback, agree to adjust, discuss it amongst yourselves, and basically blow us off collectively. And perhaps that's not what actually what happened but it was frustrating to feel like at best, your attention span as game runners was highly challenged or at worst, you were pretending to listen with the intention to disregard player response at many turns.

Game running is a skill we develop, and I stand by my comments made previously in this thread that we improve over time from doing and @sunny has said the same. My assessment was that because your vision of the game was uniform enough, there was often not much room for effective alternative viewpoints or polite pushback. It created an echo chamber problem that compounded a lot of the other issues going on in the game. It makes me sad to think though that an opportunity for clarity on this issue was missed so often while the game was still running because it was all right there, just not recognized.

Good luck on future endeavours.

Thanks for the info! That definitely helps!

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.

As I travel for work a lot, the airlines I regularly fly on both sent me notice that they don't want Note 7's on their airplanes. Don't check them and if you carry it on, it has to be remain fully powered down the whole time (no airplane/sleep mode).

I have no idea how they plan to enforce this.

The game runners gave it a good shot. I can't be mad at them for trying because its hard to run a game, yo. They had good intentions. I think we've all played in games where it feels or is just plainly evident that staff doesn't have good intentions and that was not here. They also tried to run a game based on TV show premise that is generally not suitable for trying to turn into a game. It's not the theme, it's just more that the material because its a tv show is full of holes and dead ends and things that flat out make no kind of crazypants sense and despite all that, they tried anyway and got further than most.

That said.

For me, staff was usually running 2 steps behind. They seemed continually surprised by choices or development in game that they didn't seem coming and couldn't seem to catch up with things. So couple this with being total hardasses on things that had little overall impact or wasn't worth their time attempting to police and hand waving things that were actually important, there was a general lack of consistent decision making. You couldn't rely on their answer from one day to the next on a subject. That was weird and somewhat frustrating.

The plot rush thing was really true, sadly. They would run plots by having something happen to a PC, not wait for the PC to fully catch up, and then railroad past them if they were tired of waiting regardless of IC actions taken or conversations going on to coordinate movement forward. Orion was particularly given to this behavior and I think the later frustration with PCs not following up with plot was in part owing to players feeling like the plot was was on rails a bit and because expectations were not communicated by staff on plots and staff would flake out on running things on their own plots, people just gave up on trying to keep up.

Things for me started rough with the amount of PvP screaming match as the only abundant source of RP. It did get better. I don't think this was entirely the fault of players though what I said earlier on this thread about it, I stand by. Staff even admitted that they let certain character tropes and character behaviors into their game without questioning until it was too late if it was good for the game or compatible with their goals as game runners and their stated theme. Largely, it wasn't and the attempts to overcorrect the issue came too late.

But as @Sunny has already stated, running games is a learning curve and you hopefully learn to do it better than the last time.

Yeah, it's sad to see a game die before its time. The game runners mentioned their observations and reasons for closing, which boiled down to a mix of staffing failures to recognize and correct problems before it was too late, theme and cooperation problems, and rushing through plot.

No mention if it might ever reboot or try again but my sense is that it's not likely, at least under the current owners.

I'm not sure if this has been shared on other parts of this board, so apologies if this is repetitive but I thought I'd mention it here.

The game runners have elected to close The 100. The last day for the game will be this coming Friday, September 16th.

Just FYI.

I've been thinking a bit about this topic after a conversation about the natural lifespan of a game. By that I mean, a game starts, it trucks on for a while, and then it comes to an end. There's no real intended time frame in which this all happens because for most games their lifespan is kind unique. Some games make it less than a year before staff officially put out the call that the wrap up is coming and some games, though rare, last a decade or even longer. Most games, though, live somewhere in the middle of those two places.

But in those cases, these are games that have a start, middle, and end. The quality of these phases are variable, though generally games with healthy/functional staff and player bases tend not to come to an abrupt end but it's been known to happen every so often.

But this discussion isn't primarily about those games. It's more about the games that seem to be doing well or well enough and something happens. It can be a big thing that the game didn't necessarily see coming or had blinders on about and then it happens and they have no contingency in place to deal with it. Or it's a lot of small things. Staff makes a series of wrong turns in administrative decisions or game morale decisions that causes the game to start taking on water.

And often in these cases, the game is too in the weeds or too busy defensively circling wagons to see what's really happening. And usually about the time someone with a fairly objective point of view says 'hey, what's all this water doing in here? Guys?' ... that's about five minutes before the game cracks in half and sinks to the bottom of the ocean, no Celine Dion warbling included.

So, I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be a game runner and I think that also includes doing merciless health checks on your game. You have to scoop out your personal feelings and protective instincts and idea of good taste out as much as you can and set them aside and do a cold audit of what's going on, what's good and working, and what's bad and needs help and hopefully long before the game hits that premature point of watery death, no return.

I have this idea that most games die before their time because of things they don't see as a problem or don't critically connect before its too late. It would be maybe productive to discuss these shouldn't-have-been-a-surprise-but-wellllll.... events as it may be helpful to current, former, and aspiring game runners to keep these things in mind and look out for unconsidered pitfall so games don't have to come to a shuddering halt before their time.

A Note: The purpose of this thread isn't to trash current or former games, though some will offer up likely unvarnished critiques of things that happened that didn't go well. Imma try not to frame up anything I say as an attack but you do you boo boo.

@Fantom Because it sounds like your buddy DJs bat matzvahs but wants to get into running MU*s when you lead with that?

@Cupcake

I'm from the Midwest so allow me to be your passive aggressive translator. Trust me, being from the Midwest by the time you invariably run screaming away from your flyover state after high school, you have a goddamn fucking PhD in passive aggressive control freak ninja small talk and you can spot another one at 90 paces.

This lady? She just didn't want your dog in there.
Why? Because she is the unspoken arbiter of all things common sense and righteous aka 'the way she likes it', see also 'the way its supposed to be according to her'
How? There are multiple approaches. This a common one: the created false threat aka concern trolling. 'I am allergic to dogs and this is supposed to be a safe space for me and aren't you concerned that you might be making other people feel unsafe and what if there are children and and what if your dog bites them and and and...' Yeaaaaah. Another is the syrup sweet backhanded verbal stab, i.e. 'what a cutie! he looks so happy! I bet he's just counting the minutes until he can get out of here and go on his walk!'

If this lady were as allergic to dogs as she claims to be, then she could either a) approach the the manager and explain the situation and try to work something out if she didn't feel like she could near you without inhaling dog danger or b) come back later. B sucks a little more but again, if you're that allergic to anything, you're not going to do the backstroke in what makes you violently ill just to prove some stupid point.

So yeah, she's just a entitled ninny who has a thing about dogs being places.

Thanks for recommendations so far!

As a point of clarification:

I was super tired when I wrote this and didn't quite parse that putting Olde in front of WoD would declare that I'm only interested in OWoD games. I'm in interested in both! Actually, I quite like MtA (haven't looked at what's going on with the 2nd ed changes) but am wary of Mage game OOC interpersonal dynamics.

So either Old or New WoD, I'm interested in both.

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?

I am not a LootCrate person. I am annoyed by what I perceive as clutter and most swag tends to qualify as clutter. I'm fun at parties. That said! I think it all depends on how fandom you are about most things and if you care enough about a range of geek topics to want to subscribe.

Where I work there is an internal employee classified listserv and there are a lot of people trying offload LootCrate stuff they don't want, need, etc.

So it seems like for people who are really into the stuff they're getting, seems like a good deal but if you're gonna like maybe one item out however many stuffed in there, you might not enjoy it.

@Thenomain said in Dragon Age: Smoke & Shadows:

@GangOfDolls said in Dragon Age: Smoke & Shadows:

FC?

I probably know what this is and are just not recognizing the abbreviation but uh, whatzat?

Feature Character. It means different things in different contexts, but here it means a named "book" character, or character well-established in the fiction of Dragon Age 2.

Thank you.

FC?

I probably know what this is and are just not recognizing the abbreviation but uh, whatzat?

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.

@GirlCalledBlu

I have a question for you as the game runner that sorta tags on to the stay together/splinter group situation. To clearly state my preference, I guess I don't have one on that front mostly because both have merits and both have flaws and the game is too new to really say how one or the other is going to work out as the game matures.

That said!

The game has the potential to become pretty big. Already, by some player standards, its pretty big based on the number of PCs who are either Grounder or Delinquent. The game is super early days and the Ark hasn't plummeted to earth yet, we haven't met the Boat People, the City of Light people, Ice Nation/Azgeda people, or the Mount Weather people. Quite a few of these groups, I imagine, will stay NPCs for various reasons but potentially we're adding a semi-separate faction made up of adults from the Ark from the teenagers already on the ground and possibly Mt. Weather pcs in addition to Delinquents and Grounders. Potentially, that's a lot of additional PCs which could push the population higher.

On large population games, you do see a lot of unintentional, natural splintering. The population is just too large for most everyone to interact with and you do sort of find yourself often sort of merging into a play group based on similar PC goals (it helps if you like each other OOC as well too) or as something as arbitrary as world time zone and when you're able to be on. Most of the time when I come into a group alone and cold as I have with The 100, I do eventually gravitate towards other PCs because of all these factors and others as stated above but in doing so, it limits my interaction with other PC and PC groups. And often this is for no other reason than just not having the time to devote to really spreading myself around.

So have you and Orion given thought about how to deal with population pressures from causing groups drifting off from one another? Are you, for example, at some point cutting off the new Delinquent applications and routing new concepts into Grounder or Ark adults (when they finally arrive)? Or just regulating the number of Delinquents to Grounders to Ark adults on a steady basis? Something else?