Best posts made by Ghost

THE PITCH: Mid-30s male with a personality that fluctuates between hippy sage and moronic sarcasm is willing to play a really hot female character with none of the RL player's personality traits. Will wiki-stalk @tragedyjones across multiple games and put together a style and PB based off of no less than 20 logged scenes across 3+ games in what will be the worst, most monstrous trophy wife, the likes of which hasn't been seen since Weird Science.

• Will promise to page/@mail @tragedyjones once or twice a while while on the shelf and being ignored so that tragedy can have that realistic neglectful experience
• Will constantly ask for descriptions of IC penis like it matters.
• No less than 20 clothing descs keyed into multidescer, but to save @tragedyjones from having to type 'l <charname>' I will just page them whenever I change them
• Will lie and say oocly that I'm a female so it isn't weird like that
• Totally is cool with whatever and has no triggers
• Not played by VASpider

Edit: typos galore because between doing 230am on-call IT work and my phone's autocorrect...WTFuuuuck

That reply had so much salt in it, you could fight demons with it.

@Nein ask yourself this on a seriously introspective, zero bullshit level:

Are you wanting to give this advice for the player's benefit, or because you and others you play with are annoyed?

From what you've written, I'm sensing a high dislike of the player's take on the character and their behavior despite the way other players react to it. So, I'm sensing a little bit of being sick of it, which is far different from actually caring about this player's enjoyment of the game or their role play options.

Don't give disingenuous advice to someone under the guise of being what's best for them, when the end result is aiming for something better for yourself.

You'd be better off being honest and asking the player if they mind some constructive criticism, telling them objectively your feelings about their interaction on the game, and letting the dice roll on that.

@tragedyjones said in Tragedyjones' Harem-a-thon 2016: Reno Edition:

@Ghost I doub I have 20 logged scenes on 3+ games anymore that aren't me STing.

That's cool. I came up with a concept for you to approve:

Vaguely 24 y/o Asian girl with an Irish name. Former special forces but now holds down small jobs as an auto mechanic, librarian, waffle house employee, stripper, and assassin that specializes in corporate wetwork. Wears mostly short skirts, string bikini tops, and ironic slogan tee shirts that say things like: Got No Time for Tragedy, Dr. Jones.

Drives a Mini-Cooper. No gag reflex.

Resources 5, so your character won't have to worry about paying for beer.

FCs are awesome quest givers. That's kind of the golden "badass" standard on MMORPGs. Once you're getting your quests from FCs, you know you're important. Always been a fan of FC quest givers/NPC plot devices/etc.

I'm a strong believer that when running an RPG, it's always more fun for players to RESCUE Han Solo than it is for them to ASSIST Han Solo.

In my GUT CHECK thread I said a lot of things, but the one I feel most strongly about is to keep the roster to X-TYPES ONLY

A more inclusive roster will just repeat what fails on these other games: too broad a scope.

If everyone is x-sphere and the game gives a reason for no more than 2 factions to exist, then they're all kept together, role playing together.

If you add in Avengers...more splintering
Add in space: more splintering
Add in Asgard: MORE splintering
Add in a magic faction: MOAAAR SPLINTERING

Next thing you know, you have a game with 32 characters role playing as part of 20 factions, and no one role plays with anyone outside of their preferred clique.

Dont be afraid to say: This is an X-Sphere game. You love the mutant civil rights drama, the characters, the setting, the history. Come here and play mutants

Then allow NPC cameos of the big bads and outside influences:

• The Avengers come to enforce registration. Time to fight the Avengers
• Sinister, Apocalypse, etc are all great for plots
• Doom visit Utopia

Long and short of the idea is to keep the PLAYERBASE focused on one aspect of the super hero world to keep them together and make their characters important. While you may have mutants that use magic (Magick, for example), doing this will keep Magick's character functionally important to the other PCs, rather than creating some Strange/Constantine/Zatanna hit squad that pulls the character further away from the core of rp for exclusive time.

No, instead make Magick important to the mutant community, one of their few magical experts, which will come in handy when Mephisto sucks them all into Limbo to fight demons. (Kyle/Yost/Young New X men run)

If FCs are no different, even stats-wise from OCs, then why differentiate between the two? Why apply for FCs? Why do FCs typically get handed off to friends of staff and favored players?

If there is no difference, stats-wise, between FCs and OCs, then what is the point?

The answer:
FCs come prepackaged with guaranteed roleplay opportunities and "main character" time in plots. FCs are automatically roped into game metaplot, whereas OCs need to find their own roleplay and means to being roped into (and more importantly, relevance in) metaplot

This is why people hate FCs. Their character sheets are irrelevant to the guarantee of importance, activity, and plot effectiveness, and many MUers feel as if they need to struggle to be important to metaplot on most games.

ModeratorAlpha
ModeratorBravo
ModeratorGamma

I'm repeating my suggestion, because I think that had @Arkandel said it and not @Auspice this discussion would be happening differently.

I'll also note that this is the second time someone has cried foul at @Auspice using ModVoice, and the rate is seeming disproportionate to when Ark does.

I mean, FFS people, she was just trying to point out that someone reached out to her as forum moderation to let her know that someone was allegedly planning to use MSB as a way to bring the game down. This is exactly the kind of information you'd expect a moderator to receive, and if it were your favorite game you'd appreciate someone getting involved to try to stop the space from being used as an attack platform for selfish purposes.

My Spider-Senses are tingling. In my experience, this may not be so much a complaint about the use of ModVoice, but that the use of ModVoice is possibly the justification for a round of mud slinging.

Anyone have any cool "great moments" to share from their TTRPGs? Nothing negative, but moments where it was magical, or as a GM you felt like you did something amazing for your group?

I'll start. This is actually a story from this past weekend.

I'm running V5 Vampire for an in-person TTRPG group of 5 players. It's set in Chicago using the "Chicago By Night" module, and I'm taking FULL advantage of all of the canon characters (Portia, Annabelle, Gengis, DuSable, etc). Now, 4 out of the 5 players are old-school VtM players so they know a lot of the lore, and the 5th is brand new to Vampire so I am LOVING being able to introduce them to dark, scary, evil lorepieces for the first time and see their reaction.

However, in V5, there are some new things, and one of them are "Thin-Blood" vampires, whose vampiric blood is so thinned out that they can survive the sunlight better, often have warm breath and flushed skin, and could often pass as a mortal. My "OG" players had never encountered one. They don't have typical vampire powers, and instead dabble in a kind of "Thin-Blood Alchemy" that the other non-thinbloods don't have access to.

So my vampires are following a drug dealer suspected of peddling a new drug called "Ash", which appears to be made of blood and ashes. They track him to his apartment, see him leaving. He's got pink skin, warm breath, and so they approach him like he's a human. Now, "mortals" don't really get a resistance to the vampiric "Dominate" powers, but other supernatural creatures do. So assuming he's mortal they decide to roll on up, get eye-contact, and "dominate" the drug dealer into being quiet and walking with them.

It went like this:

Player: Okay I look into his eyes and say "Be quiet and follow me".
Me: "Roll a rouse check and then roll your dice pool to dominate."
Player: "But mortals don't get a defense."
Me: "That is correct. Roll the dice."
The whole table: "Holy fuck please don't let this be a werewolf."

I had them all eating out of the PALM OF MY HAND as they had no idea what the fuck they'd just rolled up on. They eventually were able to wrestle the thin-blood down after he used some sort of strange power they'd never seen before on one of the PCs. They basically beat him up and dragged him back into his apartment.

They search the apartment and find a secret basement where occult circles, chemistry equipment, and books in a cramped, filthy space. At the end of the basement is a shower stall with an old "Spongebob" shower curtain concealing something shadowy.

The looks on the players' faces was PRICELESS as they peeled the shower curtain back to find a missing Toreador from court, suspended upside down, staked, and with tubes in all of their major arteries and an empty bucket underneath with dried blood residue lining it.

They'd just stumbled into an alchemical drug lab where the blood of their peers is being used to make a street drug that works on vampires.

They're eating this chronicle up and loving it, and it feels really good.

Ultimately, I think it's important to never forget that your fellow mushers are essentially strangers with similar interests. It's not like this is a philosophical or religious support group. We aren't bound by common interests related to ethics. It's a hobby, and with that hobby comes regular depictions of relationship drama, sex, and violence.

We've had discussions about Why X game is better because it allows sex with characters depicted as minors and whether or not rape scenes should be permitted on game.

So, with this in mind, it's important to remember that these people are strangers. They could be anyone: Ex-cons, sex offenders, people with obsessive/violent histories, undeclared mental and emotional disorders, or the classic bitterness that comes from dissatisfying personal lives. You can never control what these people do or how they react, or to what degree they will try to satisfy whatever sense of vindication they feel is due.

So, unlike twitch streamers, we have the ability to use email, lack of names, lack of pictures, etc. This will make it harder to socially engineer all kinds of threats on a data/personal/family level.

Just never forget that these people are strangers, and when it comes to the dangerous ones, a stranger can become someone more dangerous very quickly over any manner of social sleight.

I've seen prince charming become a stalker in 2 seconds flat.

Please, god, for your own safeties, never forget that these people are strangers.

@Kestrel Or....you could compose an opinion without thrown shade and deliver it respectfully and not have to worry about any of that?

Edit: Really, there's a number of global issues that even people you -like- are probably contributing to. So what do you think would make for a positive/welcoming community where behaviors like this are a thing of the past?

Man, this set my brain on fire.

I'm now thinking of a character who spends 99% of the year as a boring CPA out of Council Bluffs, Iowa, but when the Juggalo Gathering comes...

DJ RobotFingaz comes out. He specializes in 8bit Kid Rock covers and performs entirely in Optimus Prime armor made out of Faygo Cans. He never turns down performing lap dances for anyone, and is known for making sweet-ass weed chili and is a backyard wrestling powerbomb expert. He is also roughly 350 pounds (2% muscle...ladies) and covered in rub-on tattoos.

His wife occasionally calls and he tells her that he's at a State Farm in northern Michigan working out car accident settlement claims.

Just running my brain-meats here. Churning.

I think the issue with MU is that everything is so stretched out.

• Lots of time waiting for/arranging scenes
• Waiting sometimes 30-60 minutes in between poses
• It's hard to feel relevant in massive scenes with other roleplayers, waiting for 30-60 minutes to take an action that may or may not be relevant
• Responses from staff can take days

So with that in mind I think that IC failure would be much easier for the MU community if the pace was a bit faster. Think of it this way.

• 1 massive scene with 30-60 in between poses to -attempt- to do something relevant (and then failing) feels like a complete waste of time, but what if it was 10 minutes in between poses and you got 4-5 other attempts to pass a roll or do something relevant?
• Limited availability of "important" characters creates a "Waiting in line" feeling (like the horrid "trying to get a Jedi slot" from back in the day), but what if a weekly cycle happened and all you had to do is get on the waiting list and wait for your turn?
• Failing a roll only to see another player (more or less popular, it doesn't matter) do the SPECIAL THING in the scene is disheartening, but what if scenes were faster paced and designed so that each character had a skill/job in mind that was their special sauce?

I honestly feel (reflectively) that aversion to "IC failure" was a little bit of people just not wanting the negativity of "not being successful", sure, but I also think that the absolute time sink of the hobby and wanting to feel something in terms of return on investment was a huge part of it. A lot of players failed and it was "WELP, ya failed, so sorry, have a good night" and including some sort of element in failure that led to other RP opportunities always seemed to resonate well with the players I knew.

@Kestrel said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

I'm calling bullshit on all of this. You're a phony. Using the language of the oppressed while siding with the oppressor is textbook fascist baloney, and while the current crop of useful idiots might eat it up, I am not buying any of it

If one was interested in making a fascist baloney sammidge, is that purchasable at a grocery store? That sounds delicious.

Oh, and could you also please communicate with other people without calling them racists, misogynists, fascists, crypto-fascists, homophobes, etc etc etc etc etc etc? I don't think everyone on the forum is a fascist.

@Bellecourt Great feedback and I'm happy to chat with you here. I also 100% agree with your approach on the hate chemical. I've believed for a while now that a certain amount of the negativity was coming from that kind of thing.

I'm a survivor of domestic abuse, but I'm also that kid who was bullied early on in grade school who mitigated the bully by becoming a bully and then later course-corrected out of it. To add to this, a lot of my nastier moments on these forums was while I was in the middle of domestic abuse, and around the time I was in therapy with my abuser I pulled back from attacking others as a direct result of revelations from those sessions.

Ultimately, I know a few things to be true.

1. Abusers will often make it YOUR fault that they are abusing you, and go to great lengths to justify their behavior not of their own aggression, but because their victims are responsible for the abuse they receive. Abusers often go through a lot of work to justify and vocalize this to excuse accountability for their assault.
2. Bullies ultimately are translating their own personal issues into attacks on others, but in the sense of the schoolyard bully they NEED an audience. The existence of the audience both gives them "positive" (airquotes) feedback from people cheering them on, but also makes sure that others are able to see what happens when you hurt the feelings of the bully: you get mistreated in front of others.

Now, I'll freely admit there are people I ABSOLUTELY think are abusers and bullies. I'll admit there are some people I just flat out don't like or occasionally have made jabs at their behavior because I think it's extreme or ridiculous. Some of those people in the hobby I used to "run with" but ultimately stopped associating with them because I didn't like seeing the way they treated others and I was starting to "get off" on the schoolyard bullying and I didn't like how I was behaving.

I do feel at least reflecting on these concepts could help people get out of those habits. There are no elites in the community; everyone is just a "regular joe", but I feel some are locked in a cycle of abuse/schoolyard bullying, so realizing what that is and setting your bar at NOT joining in on that is a balancing act, but it's important to keep your eye on that ball.

Edit: I would also like to add that I think removing posting access to the Hog Pit paired with rules about personal attacks has mitigated the concept of the schoolyard bully's audience and is ABSOLUTELY key in driving down the hostility factor on the forum.

@hobos said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

To those who have been upset in the past due to being unfairly character-assassinated, is it possible to realize you are just collateral damage to a society struggling to keep itself safe? The personal attacks are difficult to stop taking personally, I know. But realization where it comes from and why might be a good step towards healing -- on an individual level, at least, if not a community one.

Constructively, I don't think that accepting oneself (or being susceptible to bullying/abuse) as collateral damage in a "community trying to keep itself safe from bullies and abusers" is an acceptable approach because it removes accountability from the people who are actually performing the abuse. That approach ignores the fact that abuse is being used in the name of combating abuse, and innocent people who have done nothing wrong should never accept abuse on the basis of "oh this person is just trying to protect themselves", because in this scenario the targets of unfair character assassination are rarely exonerated and the people who perform said character assassination are often cheered on for it and rarely face accountability for it.

Absolutely not.

Or, in short....

I've been held at knifepoint in my own home. The fact that I want to take steps to never be held at knifepoint in my own home again doesn't make it any more okay if I go next door to my neighbor's house and assault them to ensure it's less likely they'll ever hold me at knifepoint. It also shouldn't be some sort of consolation my neighbor that even though they were innocent I beat the shit out of them.

The honus of responsibility absolutely needs to be on the abuser. Accepting that concept of simply being collateral damage ONLY works if it's also accepted that the abuser was in the wrong, acting against an innocent person, and is held responsible for it. This approach, nor that healing, will ever happen if you just let it go and the person continues to abuse others.

@Ghost said in Intersectional MU* Community - Discussion:

@Kestrel What happens if for any reason the members of the community wish for you to leave it?

This isn't snark. It's an honest philosophical question.

I didnt get a response, so let me ask this a different way, because I think anytime an exclusive-type ethical organization gets created, an interesting philosophical question comes to light.

Is this a concept that you've created that you intend to turn over to a quorum of like minded individuals to democratically vote/maintain the mission, or is this an organization of your creation that membership and the direction of ultimately comes down to your discretion?

I think this is a very valid question about how this organization will work, but also provide some insight whether or not the need for the space is more relevant than being its owner.