@Ganymede said in The Game Game:
I have literally never staffed or run a game where the main purpose was to become a player's main game.
Neither has anyone else.
Saying "each game WANTS to be a player's main game" is not the same as saying "the whole reason people open up, staff, and maintain games is to be the primary game".
No. People open these games because they want to make some creative/fun sandbox and it's boring if the other kids dont wanna play in it.
Not to be a dissenting voice here, but TBH I think the upper NE United States and the general New England setting as a whole is pretty played the fuck out.
I can't say that if the change were in my hands that I wouldn't have gone with a new locale myself.
@Altair said in The Game Game:
I don't want people to humor me or force themselves to stay on my game if it isn't what they need or want. I want a playerbase who is on board for what I'm doing and the way in which I want to do it. If in this scenario, people are off on Arx and not populating my events, then I do not want to "do something so I can get them to stop being over there and drag them back to my game." Which is functionally what would have to happen. I would sooner keep running the game I want to run and then, if I missed playing with the absent people, go roll a character on Arx with them and enjoy some RP where I'm not an admin.
Counterpoint:
No ones saying to keep players on a game despite not having fun, nor them feeling stuck populating events on a game they dont enjoy. I've seen that happen; it's unendurable. Ugh.
Competition isnt about keeping people that aren't quality or aren't having fun/are absent. Competition is about wanting the game to have:
A) The best/active role players with as few drama problems as possible
B) More fun/events than other places to keep the momentum going
You cannot run a game without players, no matter how great you think your ideas are, if they're choosing to spend their time somewhere else. On some level to maintain whatever playspace you're paying for, you have to be a "draw".
TBH I'm kinda getting the sense that some of this non-competitive talk is probably aversion to the word lest games OPENLY talk about competing with one another, because I have heard plenty of competitive talk on staff channels and in private. I've seen staff wanting to boot problem players to competing games to strengthen their own playerbase draw, staff looking at other games for headcount, we've seen drive-by BBPOSTS of competing games on boards, etc. Theres a whole unspoken etiquette on how to make sure posting an advert (advertisement, key word here) for WoD game B on WoD game A's MU.
In fact, I'm willing to bet some people that are like "ohhhh it's no competition" aren't also secretly like "those fuckers are stealing my playerbase" but STATING it as a competition looks ugly next to people who say it isnt, so it happens on the quiet.
It's a thing you're supposed to say, but the reality is that all these WoD games have always been in competition with each other for time and attention, whether they chose to view it as a competition publicly, privately, or not.
I'm about to passive-aggressively lure people into my tent for post-parent death BDSM rp...
...because I'm a very sexual person and prefer my rp to involve, naturally, domination and submission elements, especially in Transformers settings.
I think Three-Eyed Crow hit the nail on the head.
The moment your p2p Mu* starts making money, and is using either an intellectual property OR dice system that are not open source, you open your game up to all kinds of trouble ranging from actionable cease-and-desist letters to lawsuits. If the IP owners allow a p2p game to exist, it could set a legal precedent that would remove their protections if someone decided to make an MMORPG using their IP. They MUST act or risk losing protection of their IP.
Having said that, I also think about the number of Mu* I've been on and some of the self-obsessed, batshit crazy staff I have met. Sure, I'm sure Mal and Inara from SerenityMush seemed okay at first...and then months later I was getting calls from Mal begging me to login and entertain his RL wife.
I wouldn't trust 60-70% of any musher I've come across with my personal phone number let alone to believe that any money I paid for a mush would be used they way they promised. People are needy and greedy and the Mu* community is loaded with people who are at-home shut ins with warped concepts of the way actual humans communicate with each other. Rational, mature adults are in the minority. So would I roll the dice to pay for a Mu* only to find the owner of the Mu* was using the cash to cover his rent so he could stay home all day and harass women for TS? Fuck no.
Precisely. When you RP as an antagonist in a shared RP space, there are ways of doing it without sending out IT WILL BE DIFFICULT TO RP WITH ME signals. People don't want to RP and just get shit on by the other player, and like some people mentioned earlier in the thread, the game is under the assumption that there aren't really any new faces. So reason stands that any person outside of said "antagonist's" social circle could be a potential ally, so immediate hostility is just really, really, really hard to work with on a MU.
I'm sorry that I read this thread before morning coffee.
@Auspice said in Alien RPG coming soon...:
You should uh....
....run an OTT.<.<
Only for people who upvote me.
(Edit: This was a cheap joke for getting upvotes. When the time comes I'll totally ask for PMs)
I think @Three-Eyed-Crow hit something important, too. It always helps to incorporate the other players into your interests. A player can tell when someone doesn't give a shit about them in favor of meeting their RP needs. Players who tend to ignore other people's poses or follow the flow of a scene tend to make others feel like they're really just roleplaying around someone, rather than with them. It's very important to gauge how active or passive you intend to be in a scene, and to always remember to share the stage.
Another point? It's sometimes very hard to incorporate new players into RP when their character designs don't fit the feel of emotional gravitas of a scene/game. A bubbly, pacifist cartoon fan who fails to notice there's even a war going on, on a genocidal Battlestar game, might leave players feeling like they're being distracted from the energy they're trying to capture in a scene.
So before you chargen a character who has no interest in dramatic scenes, combat, roleplaying around sad characters, or wanting to follow military protocol might not be the right fit for the game, and that's not anyone else on the game's fault that it doesn't mix. You have got to ask yourself, during cgen, how the character will fit. It's for your own good.
@HorrorHound GREAT EXAMPLE.
Take Commander Adama ( Edward James Olmos) and Admiral Cain (Michelle Forbes). Both were the military figureheads of two different Battlestars, the Galactica and Pegasus, respectively. To Adama, Galactica was a family, a family that sometimes needed a father, a disciplinarian, and a friend, but ultimately their responsibility was to place their lives before the fleet and protect the last of humanity at all costs...even if that meant running and hiding. Cain's Pegasus was a warship in a time of war, and the Cylons were the enemy, and she turned a blind eye to the rape and beating of a Cylon captive as a means to fuel the fire to take the fight to the enemy. The needs of the fleet were to provide soldiers, and the mission was to fight or die. Cain wasn't above executing soldiers for refusing to follow her orders, because in wartime, cowardice/treason could be legally punished with death, and she was in charge. She wasn't evil, and she was matronly, but she was an iron fist.
BOTH existed in a genre that was gritty and fatalistic. The theme's whimsical moments were vastly outweighed by themes of survival, mourning, heartbreak, and sacrifice.
My favorite BSG character I ever encountered on any of the given mushes was a disabled engineer in a wheelchair. Like Vriess from Alien: Resurrection, she was rendered without the use of her legs and was bitter as hell about it, but she could still function. What else was she going to do? A disabled naval officer not working would just be sitting alone in some room, praying the ship didn't blow up.
It's just a setting where happy characters, unaffected by the war and are pacifists simply don't make sense. In war, even a wrench turning technician could be called to fire an assault rifle, and characters don't get to choose what they do and don't do. THAT is the spice of the genre. No one wants to fight or die, for the most part, but swearing an oath and suffering the whims of commanders who may or may not be making the right call with your life makes for a kind of obligated terror roleplay.
It was really hard roleplaying with characters who just simply didn't get why that slight film of depression and fear covered everything.
@faraday There really is this unspoken contract, though, isn't there?
I come here for fun, but need other players to roleplay with. Therefore, to BE entertained, I have to be ENTERTAINING in hopes that I will accrue another scene. If I run out of roleplay partners, then I run out of roleplay.
I've always felt this underlying, invisible social contract when mushing that cannot be ignored. I think maybe this above concept is half of the reason I began this topic. At what point is entertaining others required to become entertained yourself, because if we don't work hard and/or try to keep a game populated, we have to hit this RESET button on our fun and start someplace else.
It's just unwieldy for me, this concept. It's where 90% of my burnout comes from, this feeling that I've worked hard to entertain others, but because of X reason (interest in other mushes, multimushing, cliques, selfishness, boredom) I end up being that guy that's going what the fuck happened to this game??? when it inevitably dies out.
@thebird said:
I really think that a lot of drama and "feelings of not being wanted" on MU*s can be mitigated simply by not assuming things, and adulting enough to speak to each other. Instead of sitting around and taking gossip at face value, or assuming something typed was meant offensively, someone is ignoring you for some epic reason when really they were just afk, etc.
I tend to read in to things too much, and one of my best friends gets grumpy and such, and we agreed early on to just talk, rather than sitting and moping/getting mad about whatever.
Point is, communication is key - online, real life, everything. Easier said than done sometimes, but still...
(I got through a whole post without forgetting my point! Yay! =D )
I perceive this to be a huge part of the problem.
I would say half of the people I've mushed with, or at least a third, ask me something like: "Hey, did you play <insert name> on <inset game>, because your poses seem familiar." And then when I explain I'm not that person, its: "Okay good, because I swore I'd never RP with that person ever again, he did this and this and this and this and he's horrible."
The amount of energy I've seen some players donate trying to read between the lines on what someone's OOC identity, OOC motives, OOC wants seems staggering to me, to the point that it always seems hard to distinguish the player from the character, because the player is so god-damned busy fretting about the OOC aspect. WHAT people think of them. WHO this new person is and whether or not they played Bumblefuck on JackdogMu. WHAT the player means when they decide this or that IC and whether or not it's OOC motivated.
There's this old saying that goes "when you point a finger, you point three fingers back at yourself", and when it comes to a lot of this OOC paranoia or trying to " game the game", these people are accusing people of doing to them the things they are constantly doing to others.
@faraday said:
@Ghost said:
Some players will get uppity on an OOC level about it, but the ones that stay will be your good roleplayers who care about things like metaplot, art, and story over whether or not they're getting their super sekret quasi-cheating romance escape.
I think that's an gross mis-characterization. I am against involuntary character death, but it has nothing to do with romance. I care about metaplot, art, and story. But when I'm playing a MUSH, I'm writing my character's story.
I'm taking a little longer to write this so that I can word it correctly, because I really appreciate you and enjoy the time we've spent together. So, this isn't a kickback to you in any way, okay? I heart you gurl.
...but the MU game is not a story where one person's character is the protagonist. Each character is, effectively, a supporting cast member for every other character. In a self-penned story, this may be the case, but in an environment that is to be shared, when each player writes or feels as if their character in the MU is the main character in their story, then a FUCKOFF HUGE problem arises:
The "my character is the main character in my story" approach, I feel, works very well on smaller MUs with more closely knit buddies running and moderating the game. When you're friends with the staff and it's a smaller population, you can afford to turn your character's long term story or endgame into a communal effort. On larger MUs with open invitations, it is all too easy for people to become lost in terms of importance and have to constantly feel as if they're jockeying for attention so that staff takes stock in their character and story.
It's just a big mess, but I agree with Seraphim on this one.
Other players are rarely, if ever, concerned at all about whether or not other players feel like their characters are main characters, because many are so damned busy focusing on their own characters. So, how do you write a character, your character, as the main character in your story, while extending time and energy to make your character a supporting cast member in someone else's story where their character is the main character?
!=
@bored You make a really good point here.Mall Cops (who presumably do not want a higher risk security job) do not occupy the same arena as Marine Force Recon. If the player isn't into the idea of risk or PC death or negative consequences for their character, then they shouldn't be involved in higher tier risk ICly. Period.
In my long years mushing, all too often I came across people that wanted to be IC leadership, or super awesome pilots, or super deadly assassins, but when it came time for the sense of risk and destruction they were so eager to inflict on other players or NPCs came to risk their own characters, a sudden avalanche of rules lawyering, OOC drama, and RL angst accompanied those episodes.
If I were making a Space Lords and Ladies game, or any game, I would definitely hold players of higher risk IC action/job/politics to non-consent for high risk rewards/failures. You cannot, cannot, allow players to gamble with monopololy money while other characters are gambling with hard currency. It breaks games.
EDIT: Also, to note, players that don't want to involve in combat, risky politics, or dangerous metaplot events like the big battles of Fifth World have got to understand that, when they choose to abstain from the high risk arena, by means of dramatic guidance alone, their characters are not central to the main story. Staff is infinitely less prone to write plots around characters who don't want to heavily affect, or be affected, by the central theme. These players have got to be honest with themselves. If you're playing a pacifist character who wants to maintain a horse stable and farm on a game whose main focus is intergalactic warfare, then your character really isn't important to the story the game itself is trying to tell as a whole. This character may be important to you and your friends, but you have GOT to understand that when it comes to furthering the metaplot, your character is simply NOT important to that major story piece. Choosing to not partake in that is your choice, and because staff isn't straying from the metaplot they're trying to manage to whip up sandbox pacifist horse stable plots doesn't mean you're less important, it just means that you chose to tell a different story than the game, staff, or plot had ever intended.
I've got a few minutes in between work tasks, so I thought I'd preach to the masses about how being referred to in the 2nd person creeps me out. Most of us agree. So this is probably nothing new to you, but it just gives me weird-chills. It creeps me out.
So please, dear god, if you type "you" when referring to a character, pleasePleasePleasePLEASE pay attention:
Here's how it goes down in my head. The pose will be in bold. The italics will be what I'm thinking.
She steps out of the car and takes your hand, and looks you deep in the eyes, and says "You mean so much to me." BECAUSE MY FUCKING HUSBAND CAN'T BE BOTHERED TO SPEND TIME WITH ME AND I'M GETTING REALLY ATTACHED TO YOU. HEY. MAN IN THE BOX THAT BRINGS ME RL FULFILLMENT AND JOY BECAUSE MY HUSBAND WON'T WATCH MOTHERFUCKING GILMORE GIRLS WITH ME??? YES. YOU? DON'T EVER LEAVE. I WILL CHASE YOU BECAUSE GOD DAMNIT I NEED THIS!
...run away. I must run away.
Fuck. How do I get out of this without coming across like an asshole? I hope to god I'm not some kind of proxy husband or loneliness fulfillment engine, because I put a lot of firearms skill into this sheet. I wanted to do a lot of combat in this game, but there's none of that shit going on so there's filler RP that includes potential nudity scenes, which seemed a really good idea at the time...
<NAME> pages: Hey, are you there? Can I throw another pose in real quick? I hope this doesn't make you uncomfortable, so... OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. Please don't.
She turns and pushes open the door and leads you through, where her super lavish, super comfortable mansion's bedroom is. She turns and tugs some kind of rope behind her neck and all of her clothes come off so that you can see my naked body. "I need you. I love you."
Okay, nope. nopenope. Does she even have enough resources to have this kind of place? God, I hope she doesn't wig the fuck out when my character turns this down. Time to find a way out of this one.
AvP by Dark Horse was badass.
Machiko Noguchi for the god-damned win.
Then it's not a game.
I don't say this to sound combative, but there are people who approach this hobby like playing a tabletop RPG, using the tabletop RPG systems, but with more fleshed-out roleplaying features, and others who approach this like RP without the G.
It's just usually best for a game to flesh out exactly where it stands on that spectrum.
Personally? I don't seek to kill off characters. I just believe that risk needs to be actual risk, which means the possibility of failure, and when I GM games, I will allow characters to fail, because games that do not do so tend to become snowflake fests. Bear in mind that characters are not required to risk themselves in all settings, or can rely on other characters to mitigate their risks.
One player, or multiple players, having predetermined the outcome of their story (be it predetermined or decided on the fly that "whatever this is doesn't match what I want for my character, so...no.") means that the decisions of other characters may be met with a wall of refusal. ICA then fails to meet ICC, and it's no wonder why so many people butt heads on these games.
Ram A on a log says: "This is my story"
Ram B on a log says: "Correction, this is my story."
They butt heads.
Both rams say "That bitch is a cunt and I'm not roleplaying with them anymore."