Best posts made by Gingerlily

In small scenes, especially one on ones, I am in the school of @Arkandel. I enjoy writing long multiparagraph poses and making them all kind of purple and flowery, with similes and metaphors and allegory and whatever else. I don't consider it 'good rp' necessarily, in fact some of it probably bogs down some parts of rp. But it is fun/soothing/relaxing to just play around with pretty words. I do tend to keep the long fancy poses contained to rp partners I know also enjoy that style so I'm not driving someone (or several someones) crazy.

That said, I can do the quick back and forth dialogue with people who prefer that style, so long as the short poses I am getting give me something to respond to. I just need to know that is the plan, because it also requires me to focus more and multitask less. A scene where it is my turn to respond every 3-5 minutes is something I will set aside time to do with no distractions, whereas the ones where I get a 15 minute break between turns allows me to put a set of dishes in the washer or check over homework or whatever.

Poses that have a bit of 'narrator' voice I find fun, so long as its not narrator voice that seems like it is just taunting me because I can't react to it.

@Shlappy said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

I could take it or leave it. There are occasionally useful things, but I'm not really a member of the community at large. I'm one of those people that doesn't like the target painted on their head, so I steer clear of a good many of you if I'm honest. I dread the day I do something someone else doesn't like and they run a hate campaign on here for me with their buddies.

So it has its good points and bad points. I think it's more useful for game designers than anything else. That's something I've been gaining interest in learning more about, so it's still a useful tool. If I find a better forum for that, I probably wouldn't have much use for this. Game ads, maybe?

But that's like - just my opinion, man.

Treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself is a quote I have heard somewhere. Most people don't actually relish the pile on. That does not stop people from getting it going, and keeping it going with what appears to be a deep feeling of glee. We can only hope they reflect on that later if being known for personal attacks is not who they really want to be.

@Auspice said in Why do you play? (Or not.):

It's easy... and by easy, I mean it doesn't demand a lot of energy from me. It's a way I can engage with people, even if I'm physically 'shot' enough that just getting out of bed is hard. Just because I may be having a shit fibro day doesn't mean I may not want to be able to interact with people and chat and have fun. I can have fun and RP and 'hang' all while kicking back on the couch in my PJs.

Especially lately... I can't play video games because of the migraines. And I largely avoid going out because of the vertigo. Sometimes I can't RP. But I'm more likely to be able to RP than anything else (even if I've had to bow out a number of times or keep to slow/one-on-one scenes).

This is a post simply for migraine solidarity. It is part of why I like Mu too, its pretty flexible, even when I had committed to doing something people were usually pretty understanding when I had to cancel or bow out. I enjoy the writing, the characters, the challenges, but totally appreciate the flexibility.

@herja said in Meshing Groups:

I think the biggest thing that helps me is to give PCs space to get to know each other. If you make every moment non-stop action, you lose a lot of opportunity to allow PCs to bond and get to know each other. So, if I am doing, say, a dungeon quest, maybe we have a brief interlude where they camp for the night. Maybe they are just walking around the forest and talking, looking along the trail for signs of their quarry. If players are given space, they will typically 'fill in the gaps' with conversation and that is step one to developing PC relationships.

I like this because in the past I've had times where I feel like I lose a sense of who my character is. (Like a fancy actor asking "What's my motivation?") because I'd be involved in plots but not really get to know many people outside of plots, and allies are great but for me if my character doesn't have friends to talk to about random whatever, I kind of lose a sense of what is making them tick.

So since I have decided to be a poster and not a lurker, lured out of my shell by intense discussions on other threads about unfindable flags and RPI muds, I'll go ahead and introduce.

I'm Asherat on KD. One of the two-person staff team, though Skaldia is the big kahuna. I'm blown away by the interest @Sunny generated here and elsewhere and how the game has dramatically grown since the spring. Those of you who joined us, I hope you are having an awesome time. For those who didn't find it their cuppa, It's a bummer to hear but I get it. We like what we like. Please if you need something in game let us know, we try to be super responsive as staff, but we're a two man/woman operation and sometimes busy weeks slow down the cogs.

Thanks for checking us out if you have!

@surreality said in RL things I love:

@Gingerlily It is honestly amazing how dismissive people are of some things. I'm heavy, I smoke, I've been in car accidents. 95% of the health issues I have now, I had for years before any of the above. This has not stopped every doctor ever from ascribing the problem to one or all of those things.

I still thank gods for the surgeon I dealt with earlier this year, who initially was mentally going down those roads, but when the testing came back that proved no, she is really not having this problem because she's a fat person, all of her numbers are 100% ideal from cholesterol to blood sugar to high end of normal blood pressure at the worst even with this infection that is trying to kill her, so we need to intervene now and not put this off and tell her to eat less and move around more, again.

Yeah for real. I have had a friend who is overweight go from doctor to doctor to be diagnosed with "You are overweight, exercise more" until the right one found that she has leukemia Oopsies.

For me there is no line. It's a case by case, mood related decision.

"What is the most fun?" that is my guiding principle, while also obviously staying true to my character's personality in so much as I don't randomly do what is the most fun every time and have a character with no personality of her own.

Also with the caveat of "What is the most fun that does not cause misery (ooc) to others." But yeah. Fun is the lodestone here.

@WTFE said:

That "customer service" model thing is, I think, an artifact of the sales persona leaking through again.

Well there -are- some MUDs that are run for profit. They do some pretty cool things to keep players interested, both story-wise and other-stuff-wise. But they don't meet the OR terms so I don't believe they are included there. I mentioned them earlier before I did the thing where I said I'd 'said everything I had to say' and then started adding stuff again because oops, but I really have kind of covered it all.

I am with @Three-Eyed-Crow. I did go and glance around. I saw in my first cursory glance months ago just uncomfortable sexist ugh, and if there was worthwhile discussion behind/around it, it didn't stand out. The most active thread at the time was something about how it was impossible for female players to get along, ever, and started by the admin of one of the featured games. (I think). No thanks. I get that they are trying to make something happen, but it might take some work to get there. Also do we have stats on the male to female ratio on MUDs vs on MUSHs? I have a feeling they're not the same. Just a guess though. Anyway, carry on with your thing here.

@Sunny said in RL Anger:

@Cupcake

It doesn't make you a bitch to feel frustration / aggravation / etc in reaction to that. It's a reasonable internal reaction to that behavior. What would make you a bitch is if you then behaved with frustration/etc. Which I am positive you did not do. Thus, no, it does not make you a bitch. Your human reactions to social norms being violated are reasonable -- where the understanding/tolerance comes in is in how you moderate your external reaction, the choices you make.

My immediate reaction to someone slapping me (obviously this is not even remotely in the same ballpark or emotional scale or whatever) is always going to be anger. I may not punch somebody if I realize in time that they did it because some bug life saving blah blah.

Context does not matter to the lizard brain. Lizard brain controls initial emotional reaction. Context matters for thinking rational brain, which governs behavior.

Right totally. Like, of course that behavior is irritating and annoying. It doesn't jive with our basic social communication norms which have been created in part to avoid irritation and annoyance. It just in this particular situation possibly couldn't be helped on his part, so acknowledging it to vent here but not reacting negatively to the guy in question directly was a super solid call.

Edited because I left out a word, causing one sentence to make no sense.

@Arkandel

On the MUD I played on for 12 years give or take, religion was a big thing. There were temples to all the Gods. My first major char was a priestess who became a big deal High Priestess. At every temple everything, people would rp sitting in 'pews'. There were no pews in the room desc and why would these pagany temples have pews? But people do what they do.

@Auspice said in RL things I love:

I love my cat.

Like she is the best cat.

The coolest most awesome cat to ever fucking cat.

I mean sometimes she's a butthead, but I love her. So does everyone else that knows her. I mean seriously, how many cats receive gifts from other people? (My friend gave her one of those cat water fountains a few months ago. ...I'd say she refuses to drink from anything else, but she learned how to turn on the kitchen sink last week.)

Do we have the same cat because MY cat is the best cat. She is obsessed with socks and hides stashes of them around the house and then later brings them to us as gifts.

@Arkandel said in Eliminating social stats:

Elitism is part of the hobby though. It is a hobby, and it does require some skill to play; there is an unfairness in that some are just better gifted than others, I agree, but that comes with the territory. You can have a room full of aspiring writers, all of whom are working just as hard, but some are just more talented than the rest; or a team of basketball players who are busting their asses, but some are just more athletic, can jump higher or are just taller (and it's an old coaching adage - you can't teach height).

Sure, elitism is part of the hobby, but whether or not to be elitist is still a choice that every gamer makes. No one has to do something just because it exists, and I know you know that. I'm snooty too sometimes, I like to seek out players who write in a similar style to my own and engage my interests. I also step out of my box sometimes. Playing with @Coin is a great example. I'm super verbose, and he is as succinct as possible (likely to do with his intense Hemingway fetish but I don't judge). So he's probably not among the people that I'd seek out often if I did not know him and know how creative he is. Since I do know both of those things, I play with @Coin whenever I can. I get to practice a little brevity, he gets to practice paragraph form, and we both get better at writing and playing because of it.

That is a question of preferences though rather than talent/skill at writing that engages people. I can be elitist and eye roll when someone who I think is a bad writer or is a boring gamer is around, and I even blow these people off sometimes because I want to do something more fun. I also remain aware of how when I first switched from MUDs to MUSH that I was pretty clueless and likely shitty at meeting the cultural shift and thus being dubbed a 'good' writer or player. People kept giving me opportunities though and I figured out what to change, and now I can hang out and rp without being horrible at either. Usually.

I can't tell you what makes a great roleplayer great. It's not just writing skill and it's definitely not language alone. There's no rote to follow - I've seen people who throw a thesaurus' worth of synonyms in every pose and the poses are still not that great. But I do know one when I see them.

Such a player will be more popular than another who isn't as skilled and that's just just how it is; it doesn't make a difference if their character has low social stats or that they are played properly, because even if they roleplay a Nosferatu whose nose has fallen off and can't open their mouths without making a blunder they are still more fun to hang around than someone else with Socialize 5 and Striking Looks. At least I know who I'd want my character to be buddies or hook up with or whatever.

Sure, of course they will. It doesn't change the fact that I think overall, when considering the philosophy of all this and the opening question about eliminating social stats, it changes dynamics to reward that popularity contest without giving other players tools to participate. On a political game, that popularity isn't always IC talent either. With no stats to regulate social conflict, people win through uncoded social support. So any group of people applying in together, or any player who charms people into joining his or her group gets a pretty significant edge on anyone else. I think social stats help in eliminating OOC politics and demanding that they be IC. Which in my opinion is a good thing, and also a crucial one.

On a language based medium we can decide that we only want to be affected by great writing, and that those without the same command of the language can't play with us. Whether or not that sits well with a game designer or a game's players is up to them, but own it.

I think I just did, but of course others' mileage may vary. I'd be interested in hearing from them. Notice however I never said I wouldn't play with people who can't roleplay as well - generally I'd play with anyone. But I don't shy away from admitting roleplaying skill matters socially way more than stats do, and that (for me) expecting it to be otherwise because of the system is a failure on behalf of the system.

Hey, that's cool by me. I don't think 'Elitism is part of the hobby' is a justifiable reason to look at game design through that lens. There are lots of shitty things about this hobby that are part of the hobby but that doesn't mean that they should be encouraged to remain. How we engage new players or players who haven't yet figured out how to be 'cool' is part of the hobby too, and in my opinion it is a more important one to focus on. I'm not by any means implying I'm great at this, I'm really not. I still want to be better at it overall, even if on a given night I roll my eyes at someone who is boring me and try to get out of it and into something cooler.

I think giving players tools like social stats help them engage in things on more levels than determining that the social aspect of power will be determined only by what is written and which characters have the most fans. Just like we get to pretend that we are having an amazing laser gun fight or using our bulging muscles to wrestle our foes to the ground, players of varying writing skill levels should be able to pretend that their character is popular, savvy, and cool. Even with social stats, some players will always be the ones everyone wants to play with because they are fun and interesting, and that's fine. I just think it's better overall to at least let all players have the opportunity to play at social influence and politics.

So my mileage varied! And you heard from me!

PS

If she comes near me and I don't pet her because I am busy she has been known to walk over the keyboard in order to get between me and the screen so I properly focus my attention. Or to bat my Nook away with her paws so I stop reading and acknowledge her.

Do we need a 'cat lady' thread?

@Tempest said in Eliminating social stats:

MUs have a /social/ aspect to them. At no point in MUing am I actually karate chopping people or performing heart surgery. I am talking to people all the fucking time, though. The social aspect of MUing also tends to determine if anybody enjoys spending their time RPing with me. That's kind of important. Your RL kung fu or medical knowledge isn't particularly relevant to me enjoying the 5 hours I spend RPing with you unless I'm some kind of pedant. Whereas people being bad at lying, persuasion, etc, while they're SUPPOSED to be some suave casanova is actually a noticeable drag on writing. If somebody wants to roll brawl dice at me and punch me, okay, I got punched. It doesn't really matter how they pose punching. And punching has no real "effect" beyond the physical damage. If you pose a god awful bit of persuasion and succeed on a roll, I now have to write a handful of poses of my character falling for garbage.

It's just the way things are, and the way things always will be. Because we are not just playing a game. MUing is not a video game. It's a collaborative writing experiment. Understanding social dynamics and how to make a pretty turn of phrase or write a convincing argument is a hell of a lot more important than how well you can describe punching somebody with the exact realistic amount of force needed to break their nose and shove bone shards up into their brain.

Playing with incredibly socially inept people just /is not fun/. Even if your game lets them roll dice to make up for it, they will quickly wind up ostracized on account of not being a fun RP partner.

I follow your points and they are undeniably correct. It is not fun to play with people who are not fun, that is a locked in argument.

The place I don't completely agree I think is where we discuss skill at social rp as a fixed state. People tend to improve their gaming skills over time, just like any other. On a MU* that means their writing skill and style as well as their savvy with the social layout of the setting, their skills at reading not just other characters but other players to see what techniques might work to intimidate or persuade or whatever and which would not. I like social stats because they give players an in so they have the opportunity to develop those skills. I was undoubtedly a shitty player when I fist started MU* games because I didn't know how to play! I'm glad that I was not closed out of social opportunities but instead given multiple chances to engage in socializing and politics and whatever, and that there were systems in games to help me do those things so that I didn't just get blown off because I did not yet know what to do.

I feel like even if Bob is a shitty writer, its cool to let your character be convinced by his shitty writing to buy the Avon he's selling at double the price you should, because it does not hurt you and it is fun for Bob.

Other people's opinions vary widely, but I hope for Bob's sake some other people are down with the give and take too, so we can keep him around instead of losing him to a lame hobby, like knitting.

@Arkandel said in The Baking Thread:

Screw you people, now I'm hungry at 8:30 am.

A thread about carbs is cruel, make them delete it

@thenomain said in Make MSB great again!:

@gingerlily

Except that you can’t rely on a community to change just because. It can happen, and it’s beautiful when it does, but without someone with a whistle sitting in the high chair by the pool, it’s just Lord of the Flies.

c.f. Right Here, Right Now.

PIGGY HAS THE CONCH

But no, you're right. I don't actually expect anything to change.

My RL peeve/anger is that they've been selling school supplies for like two weeks already. I've only been on summer break for two weeks. I don't want to see the pencils and the crayons yet. I know, sales, get the good bargain first, but NO.

I know some teachers say "The summers off is a myth, we work all year round, conferences, blah, etc" and that is very valid for some, and I did attend a state conference and am working (leisurely) at two online classes for credit, but no. It's a summer off. It is noon and I am in yoga wear but have not decided if I want to do yoga yet. Love me, hate me, think I am the savior of the future or a mooch off of your precious tax dollars, I get it, I've heard it all. But I am on vacation, so Target, put the pencils BACK until August. Nobody wants to see that. Nobody wants a backpack or a schoolbox. LEAVE US BE.

@kanye-qwest said in Reasons why you quit a game...:

@gingerlily Even I struggle with just saying "No" and not explaining. And I am among the most confrontational and blunt women I know of.

Last week I was emailing back and forth about a lengthy meeting that was scheduled outside my work hours and trying to establish boundaries because cutting my caseload this year was a deliberate choice made for my health and my family. It doesn't work if we cut my caseload and work hours and then have me doing more paperwork, placement meets, and prep. I had all of these long paragraphs that I edited, trimmed, changed, tried again, and finally just said. "That does not work for me" (At first it had, 'I'm sorry' at the end but I deleted that.) Just hitting 'send' had me physically cringing...but it did the job. SO hard though, it boggles me.

I mean, I greatly enjoy a few weeks to spend lazing about with MY OWN child, whom I often neglect during the year because the dozens of other needy munchkins whom I also love but did not birth suck at my brain capacity, and sometimes my soul, so that by the time I get home I need to just flop for a while and cannot be the "Can we go to the park? Do you want to paint something?" because I have done park duty twice and painted many things already, and that is bad and I am bad and typing it makes me -feel bad- but at least there is the glorious, glorious summer, where she is the only tiny person who wants my <3.

@sunny said in Code systems that make it easier to get on with the business of roleplaying:

@auspice Yeah, can do the same on both Arx and M1963, too. Choose the colors and so on. It is one of my favorite new options people make available.

OH OH OH OH OH OH OH.

EMIT LABEL IS THE BEST THING EVER.

It puts [name] at the beginning of an emit for who did it.

The colors thing on Arx for your chars name and for quotes basically changed my entire life for the better.