Best posts made by Ghost

They just announced a live action Warhammer 40K TV show is in the works. It's made by the people behind "Man in the High Castle" and will focus on Eisenhorn/Dark Heresy/Inquisition.

I think you need to ask yourself two questions. ONE: How many characters can reasonably fit into the setting and TWO: Does this setting/population reasonably allow for a large player base. If the setting calls for a smaller cast, then invite-only or limiting the number of available players might be the answer for you. Get 7-10 active, productive roleplayers and keep a roster of people you want to invite in the event that players drop off or start to idle.

One idea I had for a zombie-genre mush was to have 5-6 grids within, say, 200 miles of each other. Have staff randomly roll (d6!) and drop their character in one of the zones. Like Walking Dead, you could have Alexandria/Prison/etc styled factions who could choose to work together or not. Assign a GM/ST to each region, so each region has their own disconnected stories, different housing, and different wants/needs that could cause them to unite or fight amongst each other as they saw fit. Oh, and NO ALTS. It will keep the rp pools a bit more pure. Sure, someone could decide to leave or be exiled from a faction and after the harrowing experience of wandering away from old faction, another d6 could be rolled (reroll if prior camp is rolled) and voila!, a new face arrives.

Sometimes tiny communities and factions make sense

If we ever did an MSB Fantasy Football League, here are some prospective team names:

• Jill
• Social Rolls are my Forte
• FORTEtude Check
• I Butkus Staffers
• Demarcus +Warn
• The Faradelphia Eagles
• My MLB plays BSG
• Bill Belliclique
• Surrty Yard Penalty
• Into Tight End TS
• The Shangri LA Rams
• FS3 Point Conversion
• Page Interference

@Misadventure I remember on some game back in the day, can't remember which one, I was roleplaying a character who was naive to a plot/danger. I was allowing the threat to expose itself to force a reaction, but with nothing in-scene suggesting my character should be alarmed in any way, I just roleplayed ignorant to the threat. Someone actually paged me to ask "Why are you doing that to yourself? Are you trying to get your character killed on purpose?"

Some people game for xp/winning, some people game for sex, and some people game for story. I have my preference, but when you mix GM and players with different preferences, it gets awkward. My own tabletop group has said many times that they game to relax, to have fun, and to feel good, so they don't like losing, and so I have a lot of issues where nearly every d20 roll comes up 17+

I read today that the voice actress for Minnie Mouse (Russi Taylor) is going to be laid to rest in a...

...mausoleum.

/gallows humor

@skew The Hills Have Eyes...in the sewers.

Toni Morrison

When it comes to the Hog Pit, the 'shame game ' isn't really at play, save for maybe horrible descs. Unfortunately, there are plenty of roleplayers on MUs who use the semi-anonymity (or at least, the fact no one knows who or where they are) as a means to pull some very petty, creepy, self-centered, or outright rude stuff. Some of these players cheat on their games, or harass other players into doing what they want.

Unfortunately, some players take this golden opportunity of anonymity and opt to, rather than be chill, to pull some self-centered bullshit at others' expense, and sometimes the only way to get a pinky finger under the problem and hoping it will stop is the Hog Pit.

Relating what happens here to 'shaming' in a modern Social Justice Warrior sense might infer that what's happening here isn't, at times, the only way justice can be meted out in this hobby. Like the post a few months ago where people were calling out the guy for ooc rapey behavior, or the Rick Sanchez types.

Can you think of a situation where you have mistreated others on a game and gotten away with it, or perhaps a situation where you were mistreated and due to staff/player collusion had no choice to leave a game or dislike it? Are there any staffers you avoid? Why?

You're one of us

@Admiral said in Dead Celebrities 2019:

@Auspice Steve Irwin was a jerk who ran around sticking his thumb up animal's buttholes until one finally had enough. That stingray is a hero.

WAT? It's not cool to do that?

fml

But let's be clear here: The Hog Pit isn't about 'shaming' people in this neo-pop-psychology 'OH MY GOD STOP TRIGGERING ME!' millennial sense. Set ALL of that pop psychology for big bucks aside.

The glory of the internet, and in forums, is that people cannot be silenced mid-flight. On MSB, you can put your thoughts out without being interrupted or hushed.

Some people use this to take out their aggressiveness on others in a way that allows them to land punches with very little fear of damaging response. The people that do this tend to be a little sadistic, but are ultimately cowardly.

However, the internet and the MU community is fiiiiiilled with self-centered types who pull all kinds of stupid human tricks for whatever their twisted point of view is. Some of these people don't practice what they preach, or jockey for their own gain at the expense of others, or just spew all kinds of hypocritical nonsense. SOME people stalk female players OOCly. SOME people lie about what theyre doing as staff or as players.

The Hog Pit is mayyyybe 10% shaming to 90% getting it out on the table so that people can't hide behind a wall of fake, political bullshit. We don't get this ability to place these bullshit things on the table server-side, because we ALL have horror stories about corrupt staff silencing naysayers, because at the end of the day, the person who pays for the server, bat shit crazy or not, wields the ban hammer.

Like the time Mal(Brice) from SerenityMush froze my character and held it for ransom until I was willing to admit to him, via phone, that I did something ICly to his wife's character out of anger at myself. It was crazy as fuck that he did this...and I told him to go fuck himself, and let the character go. This stuff happens.

(Edit/note: Yes, he literally tried to teach me a lesson about his feelings on my own inward self-esteem, and held my character over my head until I agreed with his assessment over why I chose to do something IC.)

'Shaming' infers a want to make the other person feel shame. No. A lot of these posts are about 'STAAAHP YOUR BULLSHIT NOW, YOU'RE RUINING THIS HOBBY FOR GOOD PLAYERS!' There is definitely a difference.

It's an acronym.

F.Y.I.
B.T.W.
O.M.G.
C.I.A.
W.O.D....
...at okayMaybeNotWoD (OGs call it "Whad")

Just say the fuckin letters.

@Tennyson said in The Shame Game:

@Lithium said in The Shame Game:

@Tennyson Only thing downvote worthy in that, is the assumption that all countries have the same rights as others.

Oi. Tooootally separate discussion. But yet another reason why Americans behave like overpriveleged children. They don't understand just how good they have it when compared to a large portion of the world.

I think it's sad that Canadians and the English and the Germans and the French and the Swiss and the Swedish and the Australians and the Luxembourgish don't have freedom.

They, like, must be reallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreally jealous of America having it written on a piece of paper that we're allowed to talk, because those dudes are clearly not allowed to speak.

Edit: Found and shared a gif, because in Wales, they get put in jail if they gif and I wanted to show off how great it is to be free.

@BobGoblin said in Dead Celebrities 2019:

So to clarify, you hate him because of his lack of 'humanity' so you shall express your hatred by ... showing a lack of humanity at his death. Logical.

While I am not a fan of Koch and look forward to a future without him personally affecting politics, BobG has a pretty solid Vulcan/Buddhist point, here. If you dance on the grave of "bad men", you are still a grave-dancer.

Again, not a fan of Koch at all, but philosophically who is worse? The man with the money or the corrupted politicians who got quid-pro-quo with him?

Conflict of Interest needs to apply to both staff and players, and if staff writes plot that their PCs are the main handlers, decision makers, point of resolution, then the perception is that the plot was written for the staff PC.

I call this throwing the ball to yourself.

Constructively, staff needs to be careful when they have PCs involved in their own plots, because if their PC is a major player and the plot has a predetermined outcome (I.e. scene must end with X bad guy being captured), and their PC is used to ensure the outcome is met (Staff PC rushes in and captures the bad guy before the non-staff PCs, who wanted to kill him, can affect the outcome), then the perception is that the non-staff PCs are secondary to both plot and resolution.

When staff PCs are spread out as major players and are IC plot leaders (I.e. heads of household, battlefield commanders, team leads), and the end result of scenes involving those staff PCs are predetermined (railroaded, etc), then the player base will likely come to feel as if their characters are less important than their attendance in those scenes.

So, in summary, staff needs to never forget to pass the ball to their players, and not themselves.

"The pieces of skin around Morgan Freeman's eyes are not skin tags. Long ago, Morgan Freeman and Seal got into a fight, and Morgan Freeman grafted the torn skin to his face, which he now wears proudly as a trophy."

@Sunny said in Leadership, Spotlight, and PCs of Staffers:

Even when "just" a player, I don't run scenes / plot that involve my own character. In the example of Yolo, I would never approve that for anyone in the first place. If Fred wants to run it for Yolo, great, that's fine. If Yolo wants to run a plot where Fred's NPC family member is murdered, fine. Yolo running an actual plot about his own NPC family member isn't acceptable in the first place.

Agreed. When I run scenes or Tabletop GM, I do not involve my character, and if my character would logically be present, I push them into the background or as a support-only role and allow the PCs to be the big part of the show. This keeps the plot direction and decision making in the hands of my players and keeps the players from feeling as if my preferred outcome still would have been met had they not bothered to show up at all. Doing this makes them feel important and necessary.

Example: I have a PC in a war campaign, but I'm running a major battle in that war campaign. I will place the PCs where the heart of the action will be, and my GM/Staff PC will be there, a bit faded into the background, as potential backup/story fodder if requested. I allow the PCs to win or lose, regardless of my hopes for the outcome of the scene.

Usage Example: Lord Blackheart's (My staff/GM PC) garrison is fighting on the western flank and holding the western flank, so the PCs do not need to concern themselves with the less-important western flank, and can focus more on the center, where the enemy hero is leading the assault. If they radio Lord Blackheart for assistance if they're losing, then I'll alter the scene to being about them fighting a pitched battle and holding out long enough for reinforcements to arrive. When Blackheart arrives, he will then keep X percentage of the bad guys occupied to free up the PCs to focus on the major resolution points and get their job done.

I pass the ball to the PCs.

If I railroaded the plot to be my preferred outcome and then used Lord Blackheart to fulfill that outcome above and beyond the desires of my players, I would be passing the ball to myself.

Edited for minor highlights and punctuation.

Hands down: World War Z.

WWZ is written in the format of first-person interviewed accounts of zombie survival. So there's amazing stuff in the audio book version like:

Mark Hamill as a soldier who survived a massive zombie assault.

Henry Rollins as a mercenary who was hired to guard a reality show

Alan Alda as the man tasked with undoing unnecessary technology (stealth bombers decommission, cargo planes are the hot new thing)

Best audio book casting and narration I've ever heard. Period.

@GirlCalledBlu said in Leadership, Spotlight, and PCs of Staffers:

So, if I'm reading these responses right...

A Player -- Staff or not -- should never "GM" (because I can't think of a better word) a story that leads to the development of their character, large or small, significant or insignificant. That a character's development is dependent on someone else running plot for them, and that the player of that character can't put a plot in motion for their character that may or may not have significant impact on their character.

Not a fan of your tone here. Can't put my finger on it.

There's nothing wrong with a GM running scenes that could develop their own characters. In theory, every scene should help develop characters regardless of who is running it. Developing characters isn't the same as making staff-run characters the forefront players in a scene/plot. Also, just because a staff character doesn't gain power/xp/wealth IC (in a scene run by their own staffer) does not mean that said StaffPC hasn't gained. Sure, the staffbit didnt get xp/wealth/equip/power on their sheets through the staff scene, but the bit/staffer gained other things: attention, focus, the final word on the decisions that govern the scene, options for future rp, etc.

Not all benefits from Coi come out on the charsheets. Some of these benefits include never ever having to want for RP while non-staff players are flubbing thru scenes because their chars are unimportant, because the plots are focused on the staffPCs. On some of these games, especially FS3, sheet development is slow and the bumps to the sheet aren't very crunchy. So it's easy for staff to say "I'm not gaining!" but through constantly being the focus of plot, making all the decisions, writing all of the plot, holding the playbook, always having scenes where staffbit chars get stuff done, etc...gain is definitely happening.

There's also nothing wrong with scenes here or there being about the staffbit, or the staffbit having their own shit going on. That's fine. No one is suggesting staffbits cannot develop without someone else running the scene. The suggestion I'm reading here is more that the general metaplot, plots, etc shouldn't be an element of FUBU by the staff.

Thank you, phlebotomist, for being super rough with my arm. I always wanted to look like a heroin addict. I did.

Super Hero MUs pretty much exist to alter canon. I remember that I once applied for - and was approved to play - Nova (Richard Ryder). He was famous for being Marvel's ad-hoc Green Lantern steal, and his previous love interests include Gamora from Guardians of the Galaxy.

About 15 minutes after approval, I started receiving hopeful pages asking me if I was going to be continuing his ongoing homosexual orgy scenes with the other gay characters on the game, many of which were never canonically LGBTQ.

SO...Yeah, there would be plenty of Red Skull/Dr Strange buddy cop strip club scenes. Potentially.