Posts made by Ghost

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@faceless said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

@ghost said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

I can't say that if the change were in my hands that I wouldn't have gone with a new locale myself.

Beaver City, Nebraska by Night.

I've been there.

When you're 15 that city sounds like exactly where you want to go, but no no no no NoOoOoO it doesn't live up to its name.

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.

Technically:

1. No one ever bothered RPing daytime scenes when playing vampire. The default setting for all scenes was night. That Miami has longer days means very little unless there was timecode detailing day vs night that vampires were expected to adhere to.

2. Werewolves aren't as tied to forests as they used to be (in WtA), but swamps apply.

If anyone in FC (who played Vamp) ever RPed indoors/outdoors based on coded time, please let me know, but I imagine like all WoD MUs, the concept of time is more a plot device than anything.

@lithium Watch me while I WEAAAAB

Sword Art Online had 3 arcs:

1. Sword Art Online: 10,000 minds trapped within the VRMMORPG where if you die in game you die in real life. SWO was very D&D.

2. Alfheim Online. Ellllves.

3. Gun Gale Online. Featured in season 3 of the anime.

Fatal Bullet steps out of swords and sorcery and gets into post apocalyptic gun badasssery. I'm loving this game so far.

I am thoroughly enjoying Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet.

A little bit Dot.Hack, a faux-mmo atmosphere, and a shitload of anime.

...my love for JCVD runs deep. DEEP.

...deeeeeeeeep

I would also like to throw this out (before I stop responding for a while to let other people get their thoughts in):

If we're going to define, or discuss "BAD" behavior by players, and if it's defined by very specific things such as sexual harassment, stalking, doxxing, etc, then I think we should take a moment to acknowledge the amount of hell some people have gone through on these boards for things like:

• Bad character descriptions
• Poorly written roleplay
• Unpopular character concepts

I think, in the grand scheme of things, it's ultimately fair to say that the same people who may be discussing the various fucked up things that people do, or (if my senses are accurate) slowly put together a word of mouth system to bar players ranging from "disliked" to "possibly serial killers" from games, then we should take a moment to observe the way some people have been treated by the people who would be making those distinctions.

We can all agree that a doxxer, stalker, or sexual harasser is bad, and no one likes to be made fun of, but if we're going to discuss negative behavior and the poor ways that people treat each other on games, we should probably ask ourselves if by dragging people's characters, wikis, and descriptions through the mud, are the people doing this not being bad themselves?

But define BAD?

I'm sure we can all agree that the following falls under BAD

• Sexual Harassment
• Doxxing
• Unwanted OOC tracking/stalking
• Abusing the game's code for personal benefit
• Quid-pro-quo harassment
• Giving personal information out on people's RL
• Other OOC abuses including slander? Pestering? Unwanted advances after being told to stop?

But even if there's a pattern of behavior, shouldn't the pattern of behavior be related to things that fall squarely under bad? There's a lot of gray area He-Said-She-Said that I've seen many people on this board suffer, myself included, that took a personal disagreement into the realm of personal attack based on disagreements about:

• Being inconvenienced
• A disagreement on what someone meant or intended
• A misunderstanding on what someone was trying to do/not do
• Lack of OOC communication on an IC situation

I think getting our collective heads together around what is actual BAD behavior versus a personality conflict could lead to a lot of good, including (and here's my personal stake in this conversation) protecting any of us from having a bad week turn into having to leave the hobby because of some kind of OOC/Hog Pit bandwagon?

We should define what is actually BAD, so that players will know some sort of suggested code of conduct. This would keep, for example, someone with a somewhat okay reputation suddenly deciding that @surreality needed to suffer because they were upset about a game situation (that was a misunderstanding) and use their reputation to "fuck her up" a bit on MSB.

The court of public opinion, the mob, is a strong factor in the social environment of these games. We SHOULD actively put together a habit of logging negative situations and reporting them.

Likewise, defining BAD and logging would also allow someone with a shitty reputation, be it their fault or not, to prove that people are being "BAD" towards them without these forums going "whatever, you were a shithead on XYZ game and I believe this person because we had fun on another game".

So that's my take on this.

One of the major problems in this hobby is that without the existence of logs, bad behavior is a matter entirely of hearsay that makes it hard to truly understand what's really going on. Over my tenure in the hobby I've seen some really openly bad behavior (Stalking, threats, doxxing, abuse to name a few), but more times than not I'm approached with rumors of these behaviors without evidence.

I'm going to say up front my answer, and then explain why.

My answer? YOU CAN'T, NOT WITHOUT LOGS

This is a text-based hobby, where there isn't any explanation as to why logs can't be presented. This extends even to Discord or any other outside-of-game chats. Sure, they can be falsified and edited, but in theory the person being accused could also present their own logs as evidence of edit. But the one thing that remains true is that you can't deny the existence of logs as a good focal point on determining whether or not bad behavior has happened at all.

Now for the part that some people might not agree with me on, but I feel very, very strongly about this.

• I've been on games where jilted players have used threats of badmouthing the game to fuck them over as a means to get back at the game for upsetting them (where do you think they intend to do this?)
• I've been party to some fairly excessive claims, without logs, that I later found out the other side of the story was a completely different take.
• We just had a thread show up on the Hog Pit where one player caused a stampede on another game on a theory that a player was OPP.

Like it or not, this isn't an environment where things happened exactly as a person claimed that they did because they say it's true. There are people who leverage their reputation over logs, and there are people who know that character assassination on a private, page-level campaign without the existence of logs can do absolute damage to a player or game that they aren't happy with...and it happens. We all know it happens, and it happens more than I think we pay attention to.

So my advice on this thread going forward is to understand that over the history of this hobby there have been some absolute people who deserved the title of "problem players", but there have also been some rather unfortunate victims of aggressive behavior from players who have somehow managed to avoid getting onto that list of problem players (due to cliques, popularity, ownership of games, etc).

How do I personally deal with problem players? I used to get annoyed or upset about it, but nowadays? I don't.

For me, it's simple. If someone does something rude to me on this text-based media, I can log it and forward it to staff. There's no reason to wrestle and there's no reason to lose my cool. I'll forward it to staff as a complaint, sever OOC communication with the player, and if I find myself on a game where staff isn't handling complaints about logged abusive player behavior? I leave the game. Ultimately, if this results in me having zero games to play? I do something else with my time, because at that point I'll have more fun away from MU than with it.

But we should be very, very, very careful to not create an environment where cult of personality results in logless courts of public opinion, and I feel that there should be more awareness and action taken against people who use the sideways means to attack other players.

So, there are problem players (Stalking, Doxxing, Abuse, etc) and there are players who use logless whisper campaigns of such to attack other players who have upset them. There's a difference.

@lithium By that I meant that a lot of existing FCs have been put through the ringer over years of defining what their powers can and cannot do, including weaknesses and personal kryptonite factors that have been written into existing canon.

OCs, even in my own tabletop games, tend to be very creative to put together powersets that can sneak up on you to be way more powerful than a GM had originally intended to allow. So, when it comes to powers, FCs are a known factor.

Are there overpowered FCs? Yes. With decades of explanations as to how their powers can be combated. In a hobby, though, where there are plenty of people who never like to lose and work to be extra creative to create something super unique and rare, you run the risk of approving Can Control Muscles and suddenly have a character that feels entitled to stopping the hearts of every person for a mile radius because "muscle control" was approved.

That's what I meant.

@tnp Then the answer seems pretty clear. If the game doesn't allow OCs as a means to focus on the characters in the comics, and you feel that the characters from that comic book production company doesn't properly include the social demographics of your choice, then I would suggest reaching out to DC requesting more representation.

Then, whichever characters may come out of that that meet your demographic preferences, they will be appable FCs.

@tnp Well, unfortunately not every game and every setting will offer every option desired. The point is that barring OCs isn't about social discrimination, it's about the intended focus on existing characters.

I think the point to an FC only game (and, yes, if this belongs on another thread let's do it) is simply to play the characters known and loved from the comics without so many personally-driven influences getting in the way.

In the case of G&M, DC has hundreds of characters across the male, female, and racial spectrum with mantles passed down. These are balanced characters with balanced powersets. Now, I'm not any sort of spokesperson for the game itself, but I can understand the draw of wanting to focus on these characters.

Unfortunately, OCs, especially on supers games, can tend to be an absolute mess. There's often too much OOC influence involved, imbalanced power sets, super weird desires for overpowered power sets, and in a lot of cases the lack of familiarity with an OC versus dozens of established FCs can make it hard to find ways to incorporate these foreign characters into an existing canon.

So, I think the point of barring OCs really isn't to exclude one of the 45,000 demographics, but that there is an established canon with balanced characters that works. The game is about the characters in the comics. So, since it is about the characters in the comics/setting, it's not about the ones that arent.

Bear in mind that taking some of the references from the TV versions of FCs doesn't change the fact that they're FCs.

Old DC? New 52? Rebirth? They're all comics with FCs, but there have been some drastic differences between each iteration.

Marvel has a lot of the same going on. Earth 616, Earth ####, and technically any Sam Jackson Nick Fury isn't 616 Fury but Ultimates Fury.

So, even if a few references from a TV show are taken (which I honestly suggest people do sometimes because it promotes source knowledge with a wider range of audiences, breeds familiarity, etc) they are still FCs.