Posts made by Ghost

I wholeheartedly oppose recycling of the same character between games that are not connected to each other.

By that I mean if MushA ran for a long time, closed, then opens as MUSH-A-PART2 where former players can continue their stories? I'm alright with that. To me it's no different than Firefly getting canceled and then the PCs are rebuilt for Serenity, the movie.

However, I tend to see a lot of weirdness and shenanigans in the wake of players who rebuild the same characters over and over again. Once someone tried to dupe me into remaking an IC romantic interest from 2 games ago. The players who do this tend to regurgitate story and attempt to get players to recreate the story elements that they want. There's also often little room for flexibility because the players who do this have something very specific in mind. In the end, there's very little surprise with recycled characters, and it's exhausting to me. Come on, be like the rest of the kids. Make something new. Have new experiences and put effort into it rather than replaying the same routine with the same character over and over again.

I make jokes about WoD players asking if they can bring "Their ________" (i.e. "My Tremere" or "My Get of Fenris") because it's a WARNING SIGN that you may also get slapped with an ubercharactercheese concept.

I have a RL friend that won't play Vampire: The Masquerade unless he gets to play His Gangrel, who is a 6th generation Gangrel with maxxed out stats, somewhere around 8 different maxxed out Disciplines (Wuuuut? A Gangrel with Fortitude, Auspex, Animalism, Potence, Celerity, Presence, Vicissitude, and Obfuscate? Ya don't say...).

So, in some cases recycled characters have less to do with a concept and more to do with recreating a character sheet of stuff some other staffer approved.

I just couldn't do it. For me? Fresh game equals fresh content.

Well, yeah, its the right idea in theory.

But we all know that staff remembers. Taking issues to the faux-BetterBusinessBureau or the hobby's version of a proxy YELP! is great in theory. I'm not judging Shel, I'm just saying that taking the issue to MSB and suggesting staff favoritism, it's a creature that's once it's out of the bottle is hard to put back in.

Heck of a way to show staff that after approval you're gonna be one of the chill ones.

Should probably just reconsider playing before/after taking it to the mats on MSB.

My spider-senses detect a hot scoop for the Daily Bugle.

We should seriously just alter the title to GoT Current Status (Spoilers). I don't mind using the spoiler code, but I have a feeling everyone in this thread is expecting spoilers.

Having said that...
***=Not NSFW content, but theories, which aren't spoilers per se but relate to Sunday's episode.***

@Wretched said in The OOC Masquerade ?:

@Ghost This just sounds like implementation and enforcement hell to cater to the 7 total people that still care about OOC masq. This just feels like more work, more hoops, more.... unnecessary. Morew work for staff to do in an age where there's already too much to do and holding onto staffers long term is already a shot in the dark every time. Now add on this? Layers of weird wiki masq nonsense and properly flagging pages and...

please no.

Yeah, youre probably right. Probably not probably.

It's a lot of data entry for something easily cheesed by cheesers.

@surreality I wonder if you could setup group permissions. Each character gets their own login and is assigned to a group (example: Vampires).

Only logins in the vampire group get access to the below-masquerade pages that give vampire details.

So my mortal login could only see mortal level stuff, but my vampire login could view data on pages tagged VtM.

Just an idea. It would be a lot of work for stuff people could circumvent merely by having an alt, but might be a neat feature.

@Thenomain Know what would be cool? WoD wiki pages being based on who they are on top of the masquerade.

Bob is a vampire Hunter by night, but works at a copy store during the day. Bob's wiki page is about his job buddies, his love of pro wrestling, is listed as a mortal.

Radu the vampire is a 450 year old Hungarian Ventrue who has seen the ages turn. He has feasted. He has torpored. He has dined with kings. Radu's wiki is for Timothy Steele, a mortal financial investment banker who enjoys owning box seats for the LA Kings, is an avid sailer on his yacht, and loves his prized mastiff, Archie.

Nevermind the fact that both of them have had to wash blood off of them in a shower in the basement of a YMCA for entirely different reasons.

@Meg Take care of yourself. I wish you the best.

***=Another Meme...***

click to show

#endspoiler

@Arkandel said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Ghost Hell, I don't even like picking up the phone if some barbarian actually calls me on it. Ugh. Just text or e-mail me like a normal person.

Same. 90% of the time my phone rings it's scamming. 5% is work and 5% is my mom or kid wanting to talk about drama (I still don't want to pick up on these).

One of the least satisfying aspects of my life right now is that I actually have to pay attention to whether or not my phone is ringing, because if it's an on-call IT call and I dont answer my boss will get mad. Sucky part? If I dont recognize the number, I still have to pick it up because it might be that coworker A gave my number to a coworker who hasnt called me before.

Meh.

@surreality said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Ghost I couldn't tell you my mobile phone number if there was a gun to my head.

How weird is that?

Memorizing phone numbers was one of my core social life support skills between 1986 and 2004.

It just kind of clicked in me that without my phone I'm not entirely sure I could call my mom or dad in a crisis.

ETA: Say my apartment burned down and my phone was inside. Someone might ask: "Do you have anyone you could call"?

Answer: "Sure, can you give me a ride to the verizon store so I can pickup a replacement cell and download my contacts from cloud storage...?"

When I asked my tattoo artist if his number was still xxx.xxxx...

"Fuck, I don't know. Nobody remembers actual phone numbers, anymore. Let me double check..."

And I thought: "Hah, guy doesn't remember his number..."

Then I thought about it. I have maybe 3 numbers memorized these days. The rest are listed in my phone/cloud storage under names.

He's right. Nobody memorizes phone numbers anymore.

@surreality said in Game of Thrones:

@Ghost I noticed that, with a side order of, "I wonder how the concept designers feel about that choice now... "

Oh pssssh. That scene was probably on storyboards and prepped in 2018.

Oh man...

***=Warning...you dont wanna...***

click to show

#endspoiler

One time, I randomly chose a person on +who and sent them +text code like this...

+text <Player>=Yo, we got people coming over in like 1 hour. Bring the herb. Peace.

Player paged me with:
"I think you texted the wrong person".

I replied "lol no I didn't. Wrong number."

"Uh. My character is a cop"
"Oh well."
"Oh shit, he's your character's neighbor, too."
"Werd. I'm down."
"Sweet"

I think some of these points have hit the nail on the head.

Each game should ask and answer the following in this manner:

• Is this game a collaborative storytelling/writing game where it is acceptable to utilize wiki/log information as writers to work on scene ideas together? ALL information is to be considered IC, but designed to be shared OOCly for coordination (key word, there) of scenes/plot/plot twists.

• Is this game based on an architecture of rules acceptable PvP that involves elements of politics, secrets, and sphere competition? If so, only information gathered through verifiable IC means should be acted upon, and strong separation between what the player knows and the character knows needs to be practiced and enforced. Collaborative writing is encouraged, but the useable information in character must be obtained through IC means (rolls, role play, logs). This can result in unexpected failure, loss, character death, and places less control of the stpry outcome in each player's creative control.

Both approaches can be fun, but when you have some players doing A and others doing B, you have problems.

@faraday said in The OOC Masquerade ?:

Or you accept that metagaming is not a problem but a natural part of the gaming experience, and as long as it's not being used unfairly (which is in the eye of the beholder of course) does no harm at all. Again, it comes down to what kind of game you're trying to run

Aaaaaaabsolutely. Everyone from the GMs to the players needs to be in sync not only with the theme, but with what kind of show it is.

I use this analogy a lot when it comes to WoD: Some people play The Strain. Some play True Blood. Some play Buffy.

For as long as I've played games with other players that involve choices and ambitions (so, excluding most D&D/Warhammer Quest dungeon crawls) I have always had moments where players act on OOC information. There may be an invisible guy in the corner of the room and said metagamer's PC will suddenly feel the need to climb over garbage to wave a stick around that corner of the room. I may ask "why is your character doing this, because YOU know Oocly there's an invisible guy there, but your character doesn't," and they'll say something like "Oh, my PC does this to other people so they're always paranoid about shoppers."

"But just that corner?"
"Yes...just that corner."
"Ooooooookay."

Sometimes it's a fight that isn't worth it, but it's a fight I think is important to keep things fair for everyone. For someone to win, someone else may have to fail.

This is very much so a WoD problem, as WoD highly involves secrets between PCs and powers that leverage social rolls and espionage that require players to relent agency over their PCs due to results, which is not popular in mushing.

@faraday said in The OOC Masquerade ?:

I would never play on a secretive game. I also love PBs, but Ghost and I have argued about that before so there's no need to rehash it for the umpteenth time

For sure. I like you more than I like my stance on PBs. Do your thing, Fara. I can scowl like a grumpy old man in my corner.

I will also note that despite my GOD DAMN KIDS AND THEIR METAGAMING WIKI PBS OMG EVERYTHING IS METAGAMING (Furiously raps cane against wall) WE NEED A MASONIC TEMPLE WHERE ONLY NOT METAGAMING KIDS GET TO PLAY is not some stance I go onto games and harass people with. I have an opinion. I let people do their thing. I will offer my opinions on discussions here and privately if asked, but despite these opinions I don't complain in <ooc> about it and fuck with people's fun.

@TiredEwok said in The OOC Masquerade ?:

As soon as anyone were to say something like 'oh sure, but I have to RP here (which happens to be a night zone)' or whatever their cover was blown.

Which is metagaming. One could assume they work a day shift.

If these games were being played correctly and in the spirit of the game itself, then if Mr. Billy Badass Biker were inclined to pick a barfight, it wouldn't matter if the player Oocly knew the person he was picking a fight with was a vampire. Billy doesn't know. Billy does what Billy does and if Billy lives? Great. If not? That's how information works. Sometimes you don't know the person has potency 4.

Likewise, if people Oocly spread IC information Oocly, that's also supporting metagaming. Each player should simply keep a notepad doc of what their character knows and what their character's mentality is. Those two things alone should drive character decisions.

The moment you start choosing to avoid scenes and players because it presents too much risk based on your OOC information, or because your game experience is more important than the story, you're metagaming.

This has been a problem in mushing since the first WoD mush/online RPG ever. It's never going to be solved. The only fix is to target fair players who don't metagame as your core players.