Best posts made by Ghost

@WTFE said in Where's your RP at?:

This is a VERY different statement than, and I'm quoting here:

Then it's not a game.

Games do not have predetermined outcomes. They require skill, tactic, risks, and some luck.

Stories do not require the player to invoke skill, tactic, risk, and luck. They merely require telling. When the winners and losers are predetermined, or decided with a handshake, then it's not a game. It's a story.

Stop scratching and trying to twist things.

When Mike Tyson and his management work out a deal before the prize fight that his opponent will go down after one punch and quietly collect a predetermined dollar amount, it's not a game.

When Mike Tyson has zero goddamned clue whether or not he's going to win or lose, but goes into the ring anyway and hopes for the best, then it's a game.

A fair economy for a game with a large number of players, in an online setting, without dice to determine winners and losers, is a fucking mess. I just don't think it's possible, either.

Sooner or later, on every MU, you're going to come across PlayerA thinking it should go one way and PlayerB thinking it should go another. If it's about story, then the resolution of the scene comes down to PlayerA vs PlayerB, not CharacterA vs CharacterB. It's ultimately an argument about who is right and who maintains creative control.

It takes a very tight, very team-based environment to survive that. This is, IMO, why so many of these games turn into throat-punch festivals. When it's down to deciding what the players want, no one wants a 50/50 coin toss or some staffer who is ultimately going to be called out for potentially playing favorites to be the tie-breaker.

Light systems are great for this, too. Light systems are harder to hack, like FS3, but still allow some measure of IC challenge/conflict resolution to keep things IC and not being hashed out OOCly.

But, then again, we've all seen plenty of examples of players refusing to accept the IC resolutions, even when dice have determined the results. For this hobby to work well, it requires a fair-play understanding that sometimes, CharacterB won the scene.

and we have derailed the fuck out of this thread

EDIT: I am also proud to announce that this is my 1000th post and I have EXACTLY 1000 upvotes.

I AM KILLING IT NOW THAT THEY TOOK AWAY THE DOWNVOTE BUTTON.

@Seraphim73 said in PC antagonism done right:

Keep it IC. Always.

Let me rephrase this.

• Keep the antagonism IC. Always. Being an IC antagonist doesn't work well when you're an OOC bag of dicks.

@surreality said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

To tell someone they are not welcome in this hobby if it is possible for this to happen to them is as ignorant as telling them they shouldn't participate on these games if they have ADD, or OCD, or depression, or anxiety... the list goes on and on.

No, there is a difference.

It is wholly reasonable for someone to to have empathy if a trigger gets, well, triggered? All kinds of people have all kinds of personal shit. That's a universal concept that everyone can understand and empathize with. If I run a scene and it squicks someone out? Hey, I didnt mean to squick you, that sucks, my bad. is reasonable.

There's a fine line about 10,000 miles wide between, say, running a violent gunfight scene (within acceptable use) that might trigger some Afghanistan-grade PTSD, and a GM forcing surprise rape RP upon a character. Call it a favor or something that should be standard, whatever word works best for you, but so long as we paint within the lines of agreed upon behavior and content, the responsibility of how that content is dealt with on a personal level is not the responsibility of other players.

Let me be perfectly clear.

I did not suggest that players who might be susceptible to being triggered should be told that they are not welcome in the hobby. Scratch this from any realm of intent.

My stance is this:

If a player is incapable of separating themselves from IC content to such a degree, then they have a responsibility to decide to accept the risks of triggering, agree to the behaviors and content when they type +accept, or move along.

It is not the responsibility of every other player, effectively strangers on the internet, to be responsible for every other player's triggers and ability to separate IC from OOC, levels of obsession, or other things that are unhealthy in this hobby.

So, in short, telling someone that if they have the "potential of being triggered then they're not welcome" is way different from saying: "If these games tend to compromise your ability to remain objective, behave in line with conflict resolution or behavior guidelines, or result in emotional responses that are upsetting to yourself and others, then it isn't a requirement that you play these games any more than it is a requirement that other people are subjected to your personal problems."

@Paris said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

If people have a problem, log and file a complaint. If folks don't feel safe talking to staff, they shouldn't be playing there, imo.

+10

Log and file is necessary and if people are unwilling to report unethical behavior, then the behavior persists. If they're uncomfortable with staff to such a degree that they fear repercussion (or if the complaint is about a staff alt), then why continue to play? Throw the log here, or something. Fuck them.

No one should continue in this hobby under duress or threat of ramification. No form of entertainment is worth being stalked, abused, harassed, or threatened.

@bloodangel

...if I didn't know better I'd accidentally assume that response was meant to be an insult of some kind, but was done so under the guise of a gif to avoid using one's actual words...and thus potentially be held responsible for those words.

@bloodangel I can see clearly that you view yourself as "the little man", with your big behaviors designed to misbehave and be held accountable for it, and then claim they were fascist for acting on rules you chose to agree to when you chose to stick around!

Yanno, it's been a while.

I just wanted to point out and say how much I appreciate how civil this forum has become, and how it's become a lot less stressful to check in and see what's going on over here.

If there ever comes a time when someone is considering shutting the place down or turning over the DB to other people, hit me up.

@Pandora Nah, fuck that. It was just a place where people were literally allowed to bully others without any sort of checks and balances. If you want that kind of action it's available on another forum.

...however

Most of the usual bullying targets didn't join the other forum and I think it's probably best for the mental and emotional health of people who don't want to be bullied to have a space safe from those people.

Fuck bringing it back. Delete it and nuke the history.

Idea: Perhaps a different approach needs to be concocted for WoD MUs.

One thing I've noticed is that single sphere-type nonWoD games often have some pretty good cohesiveness. Take the BSG games, for example. I've also heard good stuff about HorrorMux. There are lots of other examples.

I've noticed that multiple sphere games (be they factions, mostly houses, or supernatural types) begin as LETS TRY TO KEEP THINGS ORGANIZED and very quickly fall into FUCK, I DUNNO WHO IS DOING WHAT AND I'M NOT SURE IF 3 OR 4 FACTIONS ARE EVEN PLAYING THE SAME GAME. I've seen this happen in Star Wars games with Republic|Empire|Sith|etc factions, Firefly, WoD...

(anyone remember the Star Wars Mandalorian pirates in hip-hugging blue jeans, lip gloss, and baby doll tees?)

What the single sphere games have in common is usually a tentpole metaplot designed for all players to involve in, but also have mutual stake in. When you spread out your players, as well as their interests, some players simply don't understand that the further they distance from the GM-run realm, the less viable their characters are despite the players still wanting to have a meaningful impact on the game.

Rhetorical Idea: I know some people are die-hard Changeling fans or Vampire fans, but would more staff metaplot and less sphere options create a more cohesive gaming experience?

I'm talking about the classic VtM setup, for example, where everyone is either a vampire or a ghoul. Staff may control the Prince over the city. PCs focus on clans and coteries within the city. The problems of the city become the metaplot that EVERYONE has stake in. Werewolf NPCs are sniffing territory, ghosts in the subways, vampire hunters in the city, shifting mortal politics, ancient vampire rumors living in the sewers, the Ventrue Justicar is visiting...all with Storyteller cohesion focusing on clan leads as opposed to spread out sphere admin.

Have places tried this? Feedback?

I just can't help but feel that sometimes the spread of spheres actually seems to make it harder to get a large group roleplaying together, as well as getting an entire cast of characters to give a shit about something.

ETA: I know that WoD works this way. I.e. This game focuses on the lives and times of the Kindred of Chicago where Werewolves and Changelings are visiting plot devices to explore. Then, if so inclined, you don't open the game to Changeling Pcs, but instead create a second venue/game altogether where Vampires are the NPCs and all PCs stick together. I know this works with LARP and TT. So...run it like a LARP.

MIRA.

...INVENTED POST-ITS.

@Testament said in General Video Game Thread:

Ubisoft and Red Storm is giving the limpest answer on whether or not The Division 2 is making a political statement with its narrative(it is).

WAT???

You mean to tell me there might be an undertone of politics in a game set in a quasi-apocalyptic DC quarantine zone while getting into gunfights in the Lincoln Memorial against a faction of America obsessed good-ole-boys (Called the Lost Sons)?!?!?!?!

I am beside myself with shock. Shock. Absolute shock.

@ThatOneDude That's precisely what I was referencing, thank you. I didn't have it on hand.

When I run WoD for my tabletop groups I like to think of how Underworld has been shot near entirely over a blue lens filter, or the sequences in Blade when Traci Lords was driving to the Blood Bath with that douchebag, how the camera would cut to an alley where someone was having their throat ripped out.

All in all, I don't think (my personal opinion, here) WoD works entirely well under the filter of our own reality. I think the social/political enemies, while topical, aren't good enough to put the setting into the right mindset.

In my head, the World of Darkness is one where it's just not safe enough to go into town after dark, where it rains all of the time, like just around the corner Eric Draven is killing TomTom and Funboy, and another block down, graves are being dug for fresh Sabbat bodies, and while no one knows entirely what is out there, the only safe time is during the day...is never.

That in stepping over from being mortal to whichever monster-splat you're playing, you gain a modicum of ability to survive the blue-filtered nighttime, only to find that there are still darker and scarier things than what you've become...

...which I feel is the basis for why so many of the WoD creature types all have some stat to try to hold onto who they are. Because before it all began was a more innocent, more pure time that you can never go back to, but if you lose yourself to this new life, you'll become that which used to prey upon you.

Very poetic, IMO.

New idea:

A game set in the "WARRIORS" universe where groups of themed street gangs set in a dystopian NYC where gangs have assumed rule of law, thus cutting the boroughs off from the mainland.

CAN U DIG IT MUX

I apologize to a few players back in the day, whom I won't name specifically for their anonymity. I believed it's just a game and what is IC stays IC, so I muscled through a few things, putting IC first. After all was said and done, I realize due to OOC issues, angry pages, etc, that it wasn't JUST a game for you. Regardless of my feelings that IC should always stay IC, looking back, I can't help but feel like you were another soul on the other end of the keyboard, going through whatever kinds of shit that led you to get triggered.

I was playing a game and doubled down on what I thought was proper for the game and for my character, and I can't help but wonder sometimes just how real the hurt was on your side. For whatever reason the hurt existed, or why, I hope things are going better on your end, wherever you are.

In the end for me, it was just a game, but it doesn't matter how justified the hurt on your end was. I know better now than I did years ago how personally invested some people get, and I regret that my character choosing X or Y set another living human being into that kind of headspace.

I know at least four or five times, I went "fuck their moody shit" and turned off the empathy because I wasn't willing to dig through OOC weeds with strangers.

Earlier this year, I reunited and made amends with someone I hurt from 5W, and in retiring from the hobby, it might be one of the most soul-rewarding experiences I'm taking away from it.

The Zork source code has been found and has been uploaded to GitHub

I'm a strong supporter of social stats and social combat

I think physical and mental skills (more physical than mental) get a regular pass because most physical is up to a roll of the dice and stats which can be optimized. Many players like to base the mental knowledge of their character based on their OOC knowledge or ability to Google, but neither really require much panache on the user-end.

In roleplaying or in MU (prose-based roleplaying), the expectation is that your words, actions, and intentions matter when getting your character's personality out there. It is a CORE element of the hobby that needs to be in place, but also, like GooglingKnowledgeSkills, replacing it with a quasi-meta agreement system and diceless pass/fail is a step in the wrong direction.

Really, the core of this topic is winners and losers, and when it comes to social combat, it doesn't matter how convincing the player feels their argument is. THEY are not the character. They are feeding lines to their character and rolling to determine, all dialogue validity aside, how convincingly deceptive, persuasive, or impressive their character translates those lines to their IC audience.

Many of these games are an ever-present source of stalemate due to entire crowds of players avoiding each other due to an inability to concede loss or victory because both sides want to win those situations, and doing away with social stats, dice, and social combat will solidify said 'You win when I say you do' approach as a standard.

It is my opinion that, instead, we work the other direction and start enabling people to have more IC social victories at the cost of leveraging IC risk, and one way we can achieve that is by letting dice aid in that process.

And, of course, never allow dice to justify things that are banned behaviors on the game.

@crayon I think the major difficulty with zombie mushes (as opposed to tabletop, where zombie games like ALL FLESH have quick character generation) is that zombie fiction is based around the deaths of major and supporting characters. The genre hinges on high danger/mortality where characters get bit, recycle with a batch of new faces, etc. I think it's fair to say that mushes are very anti-PC death. So zombie mushes have a lot of PCs trading clout on who is supporting cast, main cast, and would prefer the deaths be focused on NPCs.

I'm gonna say flat out (IMO) that because of this zombie apocalypse themes are simply bad for mushing altogether.

I wrote and backspaced a response 2-3 times because I wanted to make very clear what I am saying in this response. So please, read clearly and try not to nitpick or over-analyze what you're reading right now.

1. I opened this thread, specifically in the "Shout in the Dark" section, to provide what I thought would be a positive platform for people to air out those occasional regrets about how they handled something. My intention was a rather hippy-type "It never hurts to come clean, and you never know who might appreciate it"

2. Any statements I made concerning regrets or apologies were never intended for community approval. These apologies were not for you. I find it very selfish and ugly that some people couldn't resist the urge to sour something meant to be sincere.

3. In my post that people are going back and forth on about whether or not I was being sincere? I worded it, perhaps ineloquently, but I was careful with my wording because giving specifics on the triggering involved would have made it seem like I was parading whatever damage or hurt was displayed my way, and I felt that wouldn't be proper. I was apologizing, and not that I was inconvenienced in any way, but because when I look back, I feel as if my shutting off of my empathy, from a certain point of view, was cruelty. When one person hurts, for whatever reason or however valid or invalid, and the person they are reaching or displaying their hurt to cuts off their empathy and says "fuck it", a sort of cruelty happens. I regret that. Someone hurt because of my involvement, and that sucks.

4. There was a thread a while back on the hog pit about what is and isn't an apology. It seems the people that had a few days of enjoyment mudslinging have resumed their arguments on what constitutes as a proper apology to this thread. I very much so wish you could have gotten over yourselves and appreciated the attempt myself and some others made to do something positive without the need for venom and trolling.

5. I have nothing more to say about how anyone feels about my "shout in the dark" apologies and unloading of old ShouldaWouldaCoulda before exiting the community. I don't care what any of you think about them, even my good friends like @Auspice and @surreality. This isn't for them. This isn't for props or to be the most charming or charitable person in the room for five minutes. This was, and was genuinely, about setting out a few regrets and hoping that perhaps just one or two of those people would skim the topic, nod their heads, smile, and have a better day tomorrow than they did back then.

Knock off the witch hunt and let something be nice for a change, please.

I will not be responding to this thread any more unless it is another "shout in the dark" type apology.

If you're looking for a chill game on steam, check this one out. It's like "Legos in reverse" as you play a salvage operator in outer space having to use tethers, cutting lasers, and pull/push tools to dismantle space ships.

At first it is simple: Cut parts off, send the slagged pieces to the furnace and the good pieces to the reclamation bay.

It evolves to procedural steps to detach tier 2 fusion engines (do it in the wrong order and BOOM) but also having to deal with some sections of the ship that might be pressurized....so you have to deal with the pressure or else cutting in could result in a shotgun blast of O2 that sends you flying into an incinerator and becoming salvage, yourself.