Posts made by Ghost

@Arkandel said:

@VulgarKitten said:

@Thenomain said:

You are not contracted, obligated, or otherwise forced to do so, but if you include people in your character's play-space, you will become more popular and you will enhance that person's experience knowing that they will do the same for you.

This is such a lie.

Well, lie is a strong word. I doubt Theno was trying to intentionally misrepresent the truth or anything. At worst it could be incorrect, which is a whole different matter.

But well, I need to agree with him it's a good policy to have in general - including others, letting them into your story, allowing them to play with your toys. It's not needed by any means but as ours is a highly interactive, collaborative word-based hobby I don't see the problem with it. It might not work as well or often as we'd want, but what does?

But the connection between mushers, good mushers or bad, is highly symbiotic. There is no such thing as a successful game with only two players. You need the other players as much as they need you. That's why these conversations and gripes about selfish players explode, right? It's the roleplay equivalent of a guy telling a girl I'll get you back after she gives him a blowjob. Ive referred to it at times as Unrequited Roleplay.

Maybe it isn't the best term, and we could argue which words are better all day, but I do believe that there is an unspoken social contract that exists between mushers. If I had to put it into words, it might go something like this(bear with me I just woke up):

"We are providing each other with time. Time we could be spending other things, but we choose to be here. So, I expect you to try to be entertaining, copacetic, and a fair player. In return, I will provide you with this as well."

But that's why fucked up players drive us crazy, right? We love the hobby, but we need other players, so when other players are twinks, power gaming, disruptive, self-centered, and drama-mongering fucktards, they're effectively polluting what would otherwise be a very awesome writing hobby with their negative bullshit.

Some motherfuckers just don't get that they have a place in the unspoken, symbiotic contract. It fucks things up.

@Ganymede I like that approach. It's a very sexy, between the lines approach. Bravo.

@Ganymede said:

@HorrorHound said:

...The Hedge transforms PoohBear into Naughty Bear and starts hanging entrails around like Yule decorations.

That's cute and horrific, but misses the point.

If you're going to play a game based on paranoia of being whisked away to another land to be treated like a Tzimisce meat-puppet, there should never be a Pooh Bear Happy Dwelling in the first place. It's one thing to clamor about "wrong-fun" over-policing, and another to stop people from taking a shit on every part of the thematic material.

Aha! But what about the element of Grimm's Fairy Tales?

I think, when it comes to Changeling, it's perfectly fine to, say, come across the embodiment of what was the basis of a fairytale, hell, perhaps the very vision of influence that influenced a fairytale writer, only to find it goes "Grimm's Style" or has been used as a means/lure to procure children and tasty mortals in a horrific way.

The sweet little old lady in the woods who offers you sweets and then tries to lock you away to devour you piece by piece is a very in-theme thing for Changeling.

@Roz Agreed 100%. The best roleplayers view any given scene as a team effort towards the game/plot/story.

@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.

This all kind of brings up an interesting point, though. I've seen multiple posts about how some mushers can be hideously self-centered in terms of roleplay, and how some mushers don't seem to care at all for others beyond what they're getting out of the deal. Hell, I've played on some games (Fifth World) that felt like playspaces where the owners really wanted to RP their game, but needed other players to participate because they couldn't do it alone, but had very little interest in players other than themselves impacting the very fabric of the game.

But it's true, right? We log into these games because we are seeking to be entertained. For some people that means sharing the rp experience like an improv acting troupe; that what we are trying to recreate on some level is a bunch of drama-interested playwrights writing stories together. For others it's I want to be entertained and if I'm not having fun, even if having fun means everything goes my way, then I walk.

But on some level, we log onto these games because we seek to be entertained.

To be honest? I kind of feel like, without the sex element, xWoD would never have flourished. The various settings are such a magnet for sexy roleplay that True Blood, Eclipse, or Anita Blake likely wouldn't exist had it not been for online vampire roleplay throughout the years.

I say this because my tabletop group doesn't want to gather every other week to roleplay depressing shit. One of my players is a cop who has seen some really depressing shit. So they like their pretend funtimes to be swashbuckly with the feeling of Han Solo and/or Firefly. I tried to pass WoD/BSG past them, but they weren't interested. They like Call of CthulhuTech because it's short term horror, and I'm sure they don't feel comfy getting into the sex element of xWoD around a bunch of bros and my buxom, tattooed significant other.

People don't like to roleplay depressing shit all of the time. It's hard on the soul and it isn't an escape from our already depressing, aging, someday-to-be-wormfood lives.

So, without the sex element, would xWoD have become so big, or become so big online? I don't think so, and I think the Winnie the Pooh giggletimes Changeling players roleplay cute stuff as a means to let off pressure due to a lack of want to truly embrace the themes of horror, destroyed lives, and quicksand darkness xWoD provides.

@Cirno I'm laughing. You can't hear it but I'm laughing. LOL be er means the person is actually laughing out loud, but I got a good laugh out of this.

Thanks for the good addition to the morning, Cirno.

@Cirno Holy shit, Cirno, it's a good thing I didn't open that WHILE IN LINE AT MY COFFEE HOUSE WITH A BUNCH OF CUTE GIRLS BEHIND ME!

F.M.L.

@Soresu You really shouldn't do that. It's unhealthy. Please, don't lean so much on what I think. Let me worry about that.

@HorrorHound Changeling is World of Darkness, not Muppets of Darkness

EDIT: I'm still kinda twitching from VASpiders beau's character: Reggie. The adorable WW2 era prop-plane fighter pilot who was an OTTER WEARING A LEATHER PILOT'S CAP. He had a magical bug biplane in the Hedge that carried everyone around like a magical school bus with wings. There was nothing of Darkness about that character. He only RPed in scenes with Spider anyway, or scenes where they were going to go his way, and it was a lot of "cheerio good chap. Let's give the Axis a good rogering, oy!" stuff.

@Soresu It's a deterrent, mostly, due to the sometimes self-centered nature of such efforts. It's okay, though, my feelings on ragequit games don't require your acceptance.

@BobGoblin Ooh, good question. Is this a RageQuit game? I mentioned this as a game killer for me in another thread.

@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.