Posts made by Ghost

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.

I will reiterate my prediction from a few weeks ago that this short 6 episode final season was going to feel very:

AAAAAAAAAAAndABunchaStuffHappenedThankYouGoodbyeTHE-END!

This story is wrapping up at lightspeed pace.

@Lisse24 said in The OOC Masquerade ?:

@Ghost Maybe someone should try a game that has a wiki, but not player pages. I dunno if it would be successful, but I'd like to see what effect it has

I'd be curious, too. I'd like to see a game that stands more on writing than sticking pictures on a web page. In fact, I think it might actually clear out some of the crappy players because the level of effort required would lift a bit.

@Seamus said in The OOC Masquerade ?:

Back in the days of yore, it was something that we took very seriously. Staff was to code everything to keep the masquerade as secret as possible. But the trend toward openness has started -- we'll call it transparency. Is this something to even consider when starting a new project, or is it just something that is ok to break now-a-days. To some degree, I am in the camp of why bother with it anymore, but something, and I really don't know what, keeps me from just nuking it all together.

So what are the hive mind thoughts on this?

I may not be a part of the hive mind, but I can opine on this.

IMO, wikis and PBs have done more damage to mushing than good; doubly so wikis when it comes to WoD, as I think they've normalized some bad habits.

WIKIS: I think they're decent for coordination, listing of rules and policies, and character information for games without secretive masquerade-type elements. I think they're amazing for game logs. Having said that, I think they've also normalized some aspects metagaming and wiki-stalking. In terms of the masquerade, I think wikis have made it so that people can choose to avoid players based on what their wiki says ("His wiki says he's a cop, and my character is a crime boss, so even though his character is just hanging out during the scene, I'm going to leave it") or the opposite (The infamous quasi-OOC bang list).

PB: I won't proselytize on PBs all that much, other than to gripe that thanks to PBs, some people won't role play with frickin Milla Jovovich because of some bad experience from 2009, and apparently the same 100 faces exist in every game thanks to PBs. It's a writing hobby. Create faces and personalities. Dont just play ChrisPrattStarLordWerewolf, and for the love of god please stop dangling "hot/interesting PB" as bait to encourage role play. Far too many people draw to PCs by who their PB is, and I think it's garbage.

If I had my way, wikis would be for game logs and game information, but would nix character pages and PBs altogether. It's a writing hobby. Wanna see what a character is like? Write it. Wanna describe what a character looks like? Write it. Wanna know what clan Lucretia or Donovan are in? Get the fuck on the grid and find out.