Posts made by GangOfDolls

It's not that there are PCs teenagers with an abject lack of social skills and a refusal to get along with other people IC, there is a niche in this specific theme that caters to that. There is, however, something to be said regarding the art of playing an asshole that makes it enticing to come back and find out all the interesting reasons why they are a magnificent asshole.

The source material has plenty of magnificent assholes but we see their humanity because the show writers craft those little views into their humanity on purpose. This is in order to make us invest and make us care what happens to this PC because they are going through something that we wouldn't otherwise know about if the writers didn't show as a series of flashbacks and narrative exposition.

The closest thing on the game to that is Memoirs section and maybe some people read those, but just as easily most people don't read them and especially won't read them if the Memoir is about a PC that has run them off.

The art of magnificent assholery is poorly understood and the players who are taking it too far, who think they're building an air of mystery that's meant to intice us to come back and peel away more of the onion? They are often creating a bar so high that not even the people that can sing the high note in the Star Spangled Banner can get over it. And the reality is -- no one with a little self-respect for the way they want to spend their limited free time to play in a game after a certain point is going to enjoy bashing their head into the same wall over and over and over again just to flatter your mean as fuck with no apparent upside PC.

If you're rude and shitty once IC and there's no interpersonal basis for it, I certainly write it off to IC forces beyond my control and insight. If you're rude and shitty a second time IC, I start to wonder what's up this. If you're rude and shitty a third time IC, I am likely going to assume that you are just an asshole, you don't want my PC to build rapport with yours and whatever reasons that may exist for why you are a shitlordly dillhole in this game are now in the 'I don't give a fuck' bin OOC.

There is such a thing as being too precious with your exacting interpretation of a terribly behaved person in character and it is sadly often the case, that the players doing this are so fixated on how precious they are being that they fail to see that they are now actually alienating players.

And this can actually have a negative impact on the cooperative elements of the game, especially if those same PCs stand in the way to another PC's ability to interact with plot or affect story elements.

Yeah, I mean, warning labels are helpful. Definitely. If you put on your +finger or +wiki, that your character is the wooooorst then I will decide appropriately if I want to take that in, in character.

I think essentially what this distills down to for me is giving most people a fairish shot ICly and as @Miss-Demeanor has already noted getting a one note feral trick pony back every time.

My PC: Hello, how are you? What's your name? I'm Bob. Lol, we're in a forest. This is weird, right?
Their PC: SNARL SNARL FROTH FROTH ARRRRRAWRAWRAWRAW CUTTING INSULT SMIRKY SMIRK
My PC: Cool. Catcha... later?

A few days pass.

My PC: Hello there again. Uh, are you interested in looking for wood for a fire with me?
Their PC: CUTTING INSULT SMIRKY SMIRK VEILED THREAT SNARL SNARL FROTH FROTH
My PC: Yeah.... uh. Peace.

Like, wtf, man?

@ixokai said in The 100: The Mush:

@GangOfDolls said in The 100: The Mush:

Oh, yeah, I do see your point. And it may just be a matter of play style. I've played some major dicks in my time (as have we all) but as I get older and crankier, I do find that sometimes its not always in the interest of a game or a character to lead with uncompromisingly aggressive behavior IC when the PC on the receiving end hasn't done much other than be there at the wrong place, wrong time. Like sensibly, even people who very traumatized and behaviorally stunted, do not as a whole walk up and emotionally roundhouse kick a total stranger for just sort of standing there.

Provoking that kind of reaction is another thing, totally.

There's a charisma and chemical alchemy in a way to playing a PC who goes out of their way to be mean to strangers usually because their approach is very nuanced and you see the humanity underneath this PC that makes them charming and ultimately relatable. And I think for some players, how they think their PC comes across and how they really come across, are very different and they don't see it.

TL;DR: Dealing with a jerk necessitates an upside to dealing with a jerk. No upside? People will avoid your jerk.

Hmm. One thing I notice you mentioned twice is -- stranger.

The thing with the 100 is... almost none of these people are strangers. Now they don't all know eachother great, but they aren't strangers. You're new to the game, but your character has been around for the last two weeks, everyone probably knows his or her name, some details. Depending on how long they were boxed, they might know more.

I tend to have my character assume a certain familiarity with new people, and just try to work them in as if we at least passingly know eachother. No one's a stranger here.

I think we are working with two different ideas of what stranger means generally and more specifically to the game.

So here's what I'm coming from?

A real life example first: I work for a multi-national corporation. On the days I'm in the office, I see a lot of faces of people who work on my floor that I have no actual contact with other than maybe in the hallways and the elevators. I have no idea who these people are, what their names are, what they do, or what their basic personality traits are. They are visually familiar but that's doesn't make them actually familiar.

So in effect, they are strangers. I don't know this person from a hole in the floor. I just know that they happen to occupy the same space as me but other than the fact that we get our paycheck from the same place, I don't even begin to justify that as having some kind of relationship with them that elevates them beyond a stranger other than seen in the same place as me at the time.

A game example: Some people are not open with theirBGs on their wikis. They want people to find out IC about their PCs, including major BG points. No issue with that. But as a different tack, I have elected to put it all out there on the wiki and let people decide if they know my PC at all: friends, frenemies, lovers, haters, polite remove. Like, whatever. Because of the starting premise of the game, it does make sense that we should be at least a little bit aware of the other PCs who were all sitting in the same SpaceJail with us for some length of time before we fell to earth.

The experience of my reality with that? In all my interactions on the game, not one PC so far on the Delinquent side has made even passing mention of anything they could reasonably in the most cursory way know my PC based on BG information that is all free to be known. I want to be clear that I certainly don't expect that (but in terms of RP flair its certainly pretty cool when it happens) but I bring this up only as a response to your 'well we all know each other in some way' thought.

In my experience, most people on games don't utilize open notes about BGs that way about PCs when they don't have a particularly established or direct tie to another PC (either through page discussions beforehand or until after the PCs do get to know each other to some extent). It's neither good nor bad-- it's just not a thing that mostly happens. In my short years of playing on WoD games where the premise where we all came from the same creepy town or village, there were plenty of people who appropriately didn't go out of their way to be overly familiar with my PC (or me them) just because we had the same mailing zip code. Like, almost never in my years of online gaming has anyone said or metaposed to my PCs that I didn't already know in some way:

Oh, yes, Bob--- my neighbor from three doors down. He owns a silver minivan and doesn't take his holiday lights down until July.

It would be great if more people did this in some fashion but... they don't? Because most people just don't operate this way.

@deadculture said in Cybersphere Nostalgia Thread:

@GangOfDolls If their wiki is current, both the griefer gang (Cyberfuckers) and KiNGs are still active apparently.

Cyberfuckers are in the 23 year span of the game (right? mildly boggling!) newer. They certainly popped up after I stopped playing in earnest. The KiNG$ have sorta never technically died, it would seem. It seems like Lewski mostly 'ran' it in as much as a bunch of thugs can be ran but I do remember brief periods of time where other people temporarily took over as Lewski wasn't logging in or bored with it or whatever.

The wiki is newish, too. The old cs.vv.com website disappeared a few years ago. I think whomever was primarily overseeing the game from a wiz bit position moved a few things around. The old website was maintained by Incognito, who doesn't and hasn't logged in a long time but says he still gets occassional pings from the databases about things. Kingfox also has mentioned the same to me.

@Chime

Yeah, that's.... not usual. I'm sorry you didn't have the greatest experience but the culture of the game was kind of a weird mix of plot, people who RPed the shit out of their goofy as fuck PCs, and then also a lot of MUD PK culture griefers who would log in and take a running start at Mick the bartender NPC and literally anyone else standing around. Age differences between these two groups were pretty obvious in terms of most characters. The RPers tended to be older (relatively) players who were in college and in entry level careers. The PK griefers were largely teenage boys logging into the game during high school computer labs and shouting 'bewbs!' a lot on public channels. Eventually, IPs that were linked to high schools were banned. Also it was an 18+ game so there was no incentive to allowing kids to hang around.

You were probably attacked for your cyberwear, since corpse looting was a big thing in terms of how to get cyberware you couldn't afford. Many established PCs with nice stuff didn't advertise their nice stuff unless they absolutely had to because you could be easily cornered and dog piled.

The culture of rampant PK and IC death was mitigated by the fact that if you could afford it, you could get a clone which was sort of the resurrection card that was intended to take the sting out of death. There was an instituted temporary brown list on your login so you couldn't immediately log in and start melting down in pages at your murderer. The problem was that getting randomly attacked while standing outside the Sindome for no reason still was pretty galling to enough players, that they'd just log into a guest account and go to town on their attacker. Staff at least when I was around were pretty good about jumping in and @booting people who were doing that.

As part of the character creation screen, staff eventually forced an +accept function where the language included the fact that this game was tough, the learning curve was going to be hard, and to put on your helmet. I don't know that it actually helped anything but at least, the game was WYSISWYG about what gameplay was actually like.

Last I logged in, which was not recently, Lewski was still around.

That blew my mind a little.

Oh, yeah, I do see your point. And it may just be a matter of play style. I've played some major dicks in my time (as have we all) but as I get older and crankier, I do find that sometimes its not always in the interest of a game or a character to lead with uncompromisingly aggressive behavior IC when the PC on the receiving end hasn't done much other than be there at the wrong place, wrong time. Like sensibly, even people who very traumatized and behaviorally stunted, do not as a whole walk up and emotionally roundhouse kick a total stranger for just sort of standing there.

Provoking that kind of reaction is another thing, totally.

There's a charisma and chemical alchemy in a way to playing a PC who goes out of their way to be mean to strangers usually because their approach is very nuanced and you see the humanity underneath this PC that makes them charming and ultimately relatable. And I think for some players, how they think their PC comes across and how they really come across, are very different and they don't see it.

TL;DR: Dealing with a jerk necessitates an upside to dealing with a jerk. No upside? People will avoid your jerk.

I'm enjoying the game except for one thing.

And its a small thing but it's a thing that has been bugging me on the Delinquents side. I had a late entry into the game after the landing so much of the very early days scramble had already passed. I also came in by myself so I didn't have a group to experience the game with, which definitely helps.

I totally get that the theme by its nature is a bunch of badly behaved kids who were in SpaceJail are now turned free on earth. And I totally know that the show canon which probably influences this through season 1 was: NO RULES NO RULES I'M GOING TO FUCK AND FIGHT ALL THE TIME

But there are a number of PCs who are often not even passingly nice to solo PCs who aren't established/in a group/generally new players. It's one thing to be petulant teenager who is knows everything because there are some who do that will excellent, slouchy aplomb. But I seem to keep running into PCs who are kind of relentlessly horrible to other PCs just because they can.

The upside is that most players are very nice OOCly but I get the sense there isn't a lot of self-awareness in finding a balance between cooperative play and being overly exacting on their interpretation of their character of being a mouth foaming rabid dipshit. But early days, so I'm hoping most players who are doing this will wear themselves or see themselves out.

@surreality said in Cybersphere Nostalgia Thread:

@GangOfDolls It wasn't actually a MUD/MOO hybrid. It was pure MOO.

The code for stuff like combat and wandering monsters was, from what I gather, all Quinncode. It's what GhostwheelMOO used, with minor tweaks and a setting shift. (This included a combat engine, wandering monster puppet parent, stat system, etc.) The two places ended up then diverging sharply from there.

You can, last I checked, still get the Quinncore MOO db (which has the Ghostwheel stuff, stripped of player stuff and whatnot) somewhere on the interwebs. If there wasn't so much I'd want to tweak in it system-wise, and I had a damn clue how to get a MOO running on this comp that allows inbound connections (apparently more of a pain in the ass than I'd hoped), I'd seriously tinker with that shit for shits and giggles.

To be clearer, I wasn't talking about the code. I was talking about the culture base.

I mostly miss the infinitely satisfying weirdness of Zeek, Simon, Darius, Bullseye, and Graye.

@tangent The height of staff murder while I was around was that hippie decker chick, Ix, getting airlocked by RSI.

ETA:

I'd forgotten about this but Kingfox started saving and displaying truly bad player BGs:

http://users.drew.edu/rsprague/cs/badhist1.htm

(The context is that because you'd have so many people just churning through Cgen with cyberpsychosis and monowhips to die instantly, they required that people actually put some effort into their character in exchange for your high class free clone, mods, and weapons. Since it was a MUD/MOO Hybrid, some hysterical non-efforts resulted.)

I played in the very early, pretty golden days when vampire chalises teleported you around the grid and the server would go down because someone at Netsville would unplug the server to vacuum.

The Deal With Dark Spires:

It's been around for a long time (3+ years-ish) and like games who've been around for a long time its been coasting around on whatever former reputation it had and that at some point maybe, possibly Jim Butcher logged in and looked around (or someone who was impersonating Jim Butcher because maybe, who knows, on the internet you can claim to be anyone lol).

My first contact with the game was a while back when a player was sexually harassing several female players OOC. When staff was confronted by the overwhelming evidence to this fact, staff wrung its hands, quibbled, victim blamed, and refused to address for it a long time because the player doing the harassing claimed to have some kind of head injury and that any and all of his bad behavior couldn't be separated out from having a literally broken brain. So, y'know, sorry players who are being made to feel like shit by this player but he says he has a brain boo boo so I guess we're just gonna let him keep on doing this ¯_(ツ)_/¯.

Eventually he either was asked to leave or left of his own volition as a sort of split the baby resolution (I don't remember anymore) to the escalating drama but he's back now and I'm told back to his old tricks. I left shortly thereafter because I was just kinda bored with the game and a lot of other players were leaving because of this and other reasons and it seemed like at the time, the game was going through its last gasps. I guess it was able to pull up out of its stall but I don't think the game can be considered 'improved'.

This is a problem for a couple reasons but included in this is the current game is full of social justice warriors in the OOC room that like to sit around and make lists of all the terrible things happening to every marginalized group in the world but refuse to acknowledge that someone who has a documented problem has been allowed back in. That, and even though there's a fixation with being the type of game culture that doesn't stand for racism -- they sure do approve enough kind of racist concepts into the game as my last tour of the wiki seems to suggest.

My point is: It's the kind of feel good "social activism" that doesn't require them to really address any of the salient problems that actually exist in the game or within its players. Sorta like being overly concerned with your neighbor's lawn decorations from inside your burning house.

Magic users are way overpowered last time I checked but the fixes to these problems are often over reactions or under reactions or this doesn't make sense reactions. The headstaffer Magdalen isn't around a lot these days I guess but when they are, it's mostly to declare weird fiats that basically over correct known problems (like above) and create a new kind of suck or new fiats that create new balance issues. The wheel: they like to re-invent it.

Blackstaff has been a staff member for kind of a while I think but has never, I'm told, interacted with the game population. It's not even clear what they do if they do anything at all as a staff member but staffing generally implies that you interact with the game you staff on but I guess that's not a... a thing?

There is plot, which is good but plot is basically you and 29 other PCs all packed into a plot scene. 29 is an embellishment but seriously not that much of an embellishment. The last time I visited in consideration of maybe returning to the game there was some kind of plot scene happening. There were by my count 14 PCs in the scene and one staff member. Why? I have no idea why but I can't think of any good reason to ever run a 14 person plot scene including combat, unless you have 12 hours at a go to do nothing else with and you're unemployed because this is apparently a regular feature of all plot on the game lately. Early vanilla WOW dungeon crawls take less time than these plot scenes. So basically this is plot if you're unemployed and snorting Adderall; otherwise there is no plot you can participate in with any sort of consistency unless you enjoy scenes that include you and 17 of your closest IC friends.

So yeah, TL;DR:

Dark spires was about as good as any urban fantasy game can be for the genre and the medium (warts and all) but that came and went and now it's just a checked out staff, terribly run plot, and notably nightmare players mixed in with a few people who just haven't gotten exhausted of all this bullshit and left shitshow.

I travel a lot for work. I am also terrified of flying. Enter Prince Xanax. He and I get it on every flight.

I have to fly in a couple weeks for work again, this time 6 hours over open water. 6 hours. Open water. I am already having stress dreams about this and my doctor doesn't want to refill my Xanax prescription until I come into see her. Which is fine except there are no available appointments until 6 days after I come back.

I will not be held responsible for how blackout drunk I get both ways.

To add to these:

Set expectations in advance. It's best to be up front about threat levels and pose time limits in advance. Seriously, if the scene is going to be super hard and will probably kill some PCs, don't downplay that fact. It's super not fun to have players come to scenes who aren't paying attention and start losing their shit OOC when they realize they're in over their heads. Similar if there's PC death and they really thought this was supposed to be a social scene. Set explicit upfront expectations about this stuff in advance.

It's okay to limit participation. I've been on games where STs don't feel like they can say no to everyone who wants to come to a scene or they feel like packing people in like the plot is some clown car is some sort of proof that they're a good ST because they're so popular. No, not even a little. They are actually usually very bad STs, even if their storyline is good. Packing PCs into scenes like their sardines is disrespectful to everyone's time and participation. A few rounds of social RP with 15 people takes hours to get through. Combat is a 12 hour nightmare. Don't do it. Trust me. 5 people max is a good crew limit.

Don't progress the plot until it's baked. You don't have to go from Scene A to Scene B if you feel like the plot hasn't seen advancement. It's okay to do several Scene A scenes around one plot point until you feel like the story should move on.

@Warma-Sheen said:

@GangOfDolls said:

I saw the Hateful 8 in the theatre. There is liberal use of the n-word for those who haven't seen it that is trying to make a point about something but mostly, it doesn't add to any part of the story.

Aw, that's cute. You've never seen a Tarantino movie before?

Gross.

I saw the Hateful 8 in the theatre. There is liberal use of the n-word for those who haven't seen it that is trying to make a point about something but mostly, it doesn't add to any part of the story.

The constant use of it caused the huge pack of teenaged boys in the back to giggle like nervous little girls every time it got used. Every. Time. Which was a lot of times, so it made everyone else furious.

Several people of color got up and walked out in disgust at various points. I, also a PoC, was sorely tempted. I stuck it out but I should have went because I kept waiting for some kind of plot payoff for all this build up. No such animal exists in this movie.

I've been on the more negative end of this kind of scenario. A new player apped into a game and reached out to me and other PCs to let us know that she wanted to base her BG on a shared background history. Our PCs didn't know each other in the BG but came from the same group/location.

I should have asked for more information but just... didn't. Work, life, an assumption that the player wouldn't be crazy about it. But no, they were totally crazy about it and turned into a gratuitously grimdark bog of awful that included human trafficking and torture porn.

So when the PC wanted to RP on grid, my exact response was 'fuck no, take that elsewhere.'

I'm not saying that's what happened here to that extreme but there may be something about the PCs background that Sam is in disagreement with and they're uncomfortable with RP with the PC as a result? This might be worth examining.

It's when RL couples who are also an IC item become weird echo chambers of behavior or ideas-- that's what gets weird feels to me.

Example:

PC has a harsh, slightly creepy, overreactionary, not fun to RP with reaction to in game events. In most cases, you can just say: welp! IC opinion noted! That's creepy, I guess I won't go out of my way to interact with that!

Except the spouse if this player who is also the PC partner has adopted the same position based on what I assume is a little bit of finding out IC but mostly OOC discussion about it.

So now, it's two PCs going overboard and overreacting. I mean, all it's going to do is make it unattractive to RP with both of them but there's often a certain groupthought that takes over. It happens in playgroups of all kinds, though where the view of one PC or its player becomes the unexamined mascot for everyone else connected.

Looking for the player of Toby from No Return. If anyone knows how to locate him, your help is appreciated!