Posts made by Gingerlily

@Sunny

ETA: For the record, I play a lying character who lies, and I roll. I roll for it a LOT. Unprompted. Because I need to know how successful the character is at concealing her shit, NOT how successful I am at oocly fucking obfuscating things.

See, and I love that! I find myself more engaged to see that dice were rolled even if the result means that your character conceals the lie, or succeeds on a composure type check. A thing is happening here! What is it? Was there a lie, what was the lie, is it awesome? Why is this person rolling Composure, are they mad, are they sad? A THING IS HAPPENING and I am excited about THE THING and the possibilities that it brings, especially knowing that none of the players in the scene are controlling it entirely because dice are happening, and dice take away an element of control from everyone and that shiz is fun.

@silentsophia said in Eliminating social stats:

Are you shitting on my knitting? WOMAN. THESE ARE FIGHTING WORDS. throws down spare pair of knitting needles

But yeah, I try to be kind to those who play social PCs but may not be able to back it up. I don't play socially focused PCs because I'm an awkward git with a communication/linguistic disorder. It's best I just stick to awkward types.

Also the very crux of my point is that you should not have to! If you want to play a beautiful princess who merely needs to bat her lashes to make all those nearby obey her every whim, you should be able to! If you don't want to, that works. But the whole point is to pretend to be awesome in all the ways we wish to! Also stories, collaboration, etc whatever.

@silentsophia I have a tumultuous relationship with knitting, because I love wearing things that have been knitted, but lack the fine motor skills to knit. I'm trying to work through it.

@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.

@SG said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):

@ixokai said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):

Re: GURPS

My understanding is you're not allowed to use it on a MUSH. Or at least that was the case years ago.

The language in the books is really weird. It specifically mentions finding games online in chat rooms, but on the website, poops on muds.

I'm not sure what they mean by property, I'm guessing setting stuff. Maybe running a game using GURPs is fine because of the second question? We'd probably have to hire Gany to parse this up.

I think the IP they are referring to is the text from their books, including whatever setting stuff there is. I have good friends who have worked with SJG on intellectual property stuff (they produced a movie and the scenes shot in a game store had shelves full of GURPS books because that was what they could get liscencing for, even though the movie itself is clearly about D&D). They are down to share In Nominae for MU* because they (whoever 'they' is I dunno, whether its just Steve Jackson himself or some other 'theys' also) have the complete rights still. They don't for other stuff. There were multiple steps and approvals required to show the GURPS books in a for profit movie. That is all I know, and in rereading it is really not anything but I'm hitting submit anyway.

@Ganymede said in Eliminating social stats:

@Gingerlily said in Eliminating social stats:

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.

I don't think social stats does anything to eliminate OOC politics. In some cases, it can make it worse.

I see what everyone's getting at: if you have social stats and force people to use them, you can keep people honest. Much like calling a bully's bluff, this is indeed something that can be done.

What I'm getting at isn't keeping people honest but keeping people fun. I find it fun to rp in situations where my character might get duped into believing something ridiculous, or frightened by another character when yelled at. It's also fun to have my character succeed at those things.

That can be done without social stats, sure. One of my very favorite games is Houses of the Blooded.. It's all about intense political and social conflict and vengeance and groups merssing with each other. The rules for social combat read similarly to improv acting exercises, with the 'yes and' mindset and technique. -That- is the real ideal, creating a world with tons of characters lying and betraying and sabotaging each other, and the players are making it happen cooperatively. It works super well when played by a group of people who know and like each other, because there is trust there that lets them dig in and enjoy. But 'an online rpg where the community trusts each other' is not a thing I have seen, unless it is run by a group of friends.

@deadculture said in Eliminating social stats:

@Gingerlily said in Eliminating social stats:

@deadculture said in Eliminating social stats:

@Gingerlily Having stats does not automatically make you good at using them. The way I see it, stats are a potential. You can either waste your potential or use it well.

Of course, people playing socially able characters with sheets that don't represent it at all kind of annoy folks.

I feel like it kind of does. Having combat stats that are high makes you good at combat, you don't need a particular ooc skill to engage in that, unless a game has super strategic combat. So having social stats may not mean people are amazing at writing out super compelling things to go with their dice roles, but it should still matter. I think people are super hung up on it because their pride gets involved. If Bob is not a great poser and his manipulation/persuasion is described kind of meh, it's cool to roll with it anyway. Let Bob have his moment of triumph, it doesn't hurt you, it doesn't hurt your PC because there are plenty of times social 'combat' will go another way.

Bob can have his moment of triumph the moment he can use his character as described by his sheet for maximum effect. Otherwise, always replacing social acuity for the roll of a die means that not only are you unable to play the social character you've envisioned, you need to reconsider how you work your interactions with other people as a whole.

Last second edit to add: It also defeats the purpose of playing a social game to begin with. If you can't put in a pretty turn of phrase, what the fuck are you doing?

You've stated your case pretty firmly. You don't want to play with Bob. I think given your mindset that is the best choice for both you and for Bob.

@deadculture said in Eliminating social stats:

@Gingerlily Having stats does not automatically make you good at using them. The way I see it, stats are a potential. You can either waste your potential or use it well.

Of course, people playing socially able characters with sheets that don't represent it at all kind of annoy folks.

I feel like it kind of does. Having combat stats that are high makes you good at combat, you don't need a particular ooc skill to engage in that, unless a game has super strategic combat. So having social stats may not mean people are amazing at writing out super compelling things to go with their dice roles, but it should still matter. I think people are super hung up on it because their pride gets involved. If Bob is not a great poser and his manipulation/persuasion is described kind of meh, it's cool to roll with it anyway. Let Bob have his moment of triumph, it doesn't hurt you, it doesn't hurt your PC because there are plenty of times social 'combat' will go another way.

@Apos said in The Metaplot:

I think just rephrasing the question makes it self answering. When someone asks what a metaplot is, and it's defined as, 'overarching storyline that binds together events in the official continuity', then I think it just becomes, 'do you need an official continuity?' And the answer to that is, 'I want to run a sandbox where people make their own fun' and one is unimportant or, 'I want all the stories bound together' and one can be very important. I think the metaplot question almost can't be separated from, 'do you want a sandbox or an interconnected world?'

Sandbox is used as a perjorative and I think that's stupid and mostly just done by people that would never really be able to run a non-sandbox themselves for any length of time. It's really just the kind of game you want to have and the energy you're willing to invest into having it.

These are solid points. I do think there's something sort of in between Metaplot and Sandbox though it might just be how I interpret the world. Metaplot to me means what you said, an overarching storyline that binds everything together, it's the staff's vision for what major events will be unfolding and what they have to do with one another and thus what the world is built around. Sandbox is people using the setting and the game tools to do their own thing, whether they do big stories and PrPs or just their own interpersonal conflicts or whatever. Somewhere in between them is a place of 'There are plots and the staff run them but they don't necessarily all go together, rather they are one thing for a bit and then another thing for a bit and then yet another." Several games I've played on are in that in-between place, there's definitely staff run plots that are fun, but one ends and another begins and they don't all relate to the overarching "Will our team be able to stop global warming as the story progresses from 1900 to now". They take a little less staff investment than the cohesive Metaplot, but staff still run stories and make things happen, its not just the players coming up with their own stuff and having nothing else to do.

@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!

@Arkandel said in Eliminating social stats:

@bored said in Eliminating social stats:

Shockingly a new poster is arguing about this as if we haven't read literally everything they just typed dozens of times before!

It's irrelevant whether they are a new poster or not. He (or she) who's never beaten a dead horse before can cast the first stone.

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

This is comparable to what you're suggesting by demanding that players make "believable" lies before the die roll is made. Expecting players using a specific social skill to know how to use that social skill in real life is like expecting every player with a high-Science character to personally have high-Science in real life.

That is kind of a main point against social skills though. See, unlike making meth (or hacking into the FBI database, repairing a car, etc) we actually play out the socialization parts. No one walks into a scene and goes "OOC: Hey, my character says hi and hangs out with y'all. +roll presence+socialize". No one, ever, and that's a good thing since that's basically ... well, the roleplay. People pose what they say, articulate what they want, tell others how it is said in as much detail and conviction as they care to go into.

So this is a real issue with these skills - politics, lying, manipulating, etc - when the roleplay points in one direction and the skills in a different one. If a guy comes to my PC, makes a fucking dumb proposal while insulting my woman in the process and he's caught at a lie but has high social stats then apparently I'm supposed to ignore the roleplay and just go with the results of a roll? Yes. That's... basically what MU* systems say. If I don't then I'm not playing right.

Well, I think that's a bad way of doing things. It just doesn't make sense. This social stuff is not the same as everything else, it cannot be safely and easily abstracted like everything else. Poses cannot be abstracted, they are explicit so we can't just separate their content from the mechanics.

I understand where you are coming from here, but I think it is the sort of viewpoint that requires reflection. Yes, there are players who write far better than others, who can make convincing arguments and recruit allies regardless of what is on their sheet. There are also players who are newer to the hobby, who are translating in their heads from a language other than English, etc. If we decide that they don't get to rp a beautiful, charming woman who can flirt her way out of a problem, that's kind of elitist. And it doesn't fit when we consider that any one of us can rp stabbing or shooting someone without having that skill in real life. 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.

@Lisse24 said in Eliminating social stats:

@WTFE said in Eliminating social stats:

I really don't give a shit. All the "Federalist Papers of RPGs" in the world doesn't change what literally thousands of years of literature has deemed to be a narrative. There is merit as a game to the "let the dice lie where they may" stance. But that merit is not a merit for narrative. Good narratives can emerge from that only by accident in the same way that getting a coherent and decent character out of a character generation system that will kill characters off part-way through can: blind luck.

And note, again, I'm not saying you're wrong for liking the "gamist" approach (as much as I fucking hate that clunky neologism). I'm saying you're wrong for thinking that the "gamist" approach made for a good narrative here. You're not doing wrongfun. You're just factually incorrect about the narrative structure.

Several times in this thread, I've heard people equate using dice as the enemy of creating narrative. I want to push back on that. I'm quoting WTFE just because this is one place where I've read that argument, but certainly, he's not the only person whose made that argument.

Here's the core of my argument: MUers are terrible writers. I don't mean that they're incapable of stringing together 3-5 sentences with vivid language in engaging poses. They can absolutely do that, by and large. No, what I mean is that, for the most part, they don't think long term about themes and beats, and what constructs a good narrative. Ex: "I'm going to have my character lose this conflict so that he can wallow for a bit and then have an awesome comeback," or "The story I'm telling with this character is one of alienation and loss and so, I want to sabotage his own attempt to become Priscus though his inability to connect."

Muers don't think that way. In general, I believe that there are two major stumbling blocks to MUers telling compelling narratives. 1) They don't like losing, and any good story has peaks and valleys. MUers avoid valleys at all costs. 2) They don't control everything. Sure, you can be telling a story of alienation, but that doesn't mean all the other chars are going to play along (I've run into this with my char over at F&L, where I had to rejigger my approach to her several times).

In these circumstances, adding random events, and letting a neutral arbiter, such as dice, determine the outcome periodically, even for social interactions, can enhance narrative. They help a player adhere to their character's nature, strengths, and weaknesses, while simultaneously adding challenges and random difficulty for that player to overcome. The knee-jerk, 'well let's just throw away social dice because players don't like losing that way,' will not enhance the narratives told on that game, it will diminish them.

Yes! This is basically what I had in my head as I was reading through the thread and considering my own opinion. I love political/social rp that has teeth, I almost never play combat based characters, it's not my thing. The game I'd love to play is one with people who share that love...which means they love getting their way in intense, high stakes social interactions, and also love not getting their way because of the curveball it throws them. Characters have to have flaws to be interesting, weaknesses they are overcoming, and having humiliated themselves by fleeing in terror when JoeBob intimidated them becomes part of their story, their character development, their motivations for later.

Lets do Game of Thrones examples! Cersei got to go on her walk of shame with bells ringing. It wasn't what she wanted to do, and if she was being played by a person on a MU* it would not be what they wanted to do either most likely. That experience changed her, made her bitchier and more ruthless than she was before, and thus a temple exploded. Her failure in one part of the story fueled the rest of her story, AND the story for other characters around her. Theon Greyjoy. Nobody would want to play a Theon Greyjoy. It sucked to be him. But his horrible experiences and terrible decisions are leading him (probably) on an arc of redemption that I expect to be at least somewhat cool. Ned. Poor Ned. Nobody would want to play out a social failure on the level he did, with the consequences he got. Yet that part of the story sets up the rest of the entire series. You can basically do this with every character on the show, they've all made at least one poor decision based on social interactions, yet they remain super cool and interesting characters that resemble what many of us would like to play in a fantasy game.

I understand the impetus to get rid of social stats because often they go unused especially in player to player scenes. I just think that the flaw here is not that they exist, but that they go unused. My ideal game would definitely have social stats, and also people willing to play them, winning or losing. Sure, some exception might arise, Jorah rolls seduction on you but he's twice your age and you are Not Into It. Bran gets an intimidation success but he's Bran, nobody is impressed. I just think exceptions would be exceptions, not the standard. The games I have had the most fun on were games where my character rose and fell socially and politically and I remained engaged and motivated to either keep my social clout or to get it back.

My Jorah example I added merely because it came to me first. I do think that if one were to create a game like this (please do, and then tell me!) it would probably be wisest to leave sex out of the equation. Even with fade to black, it can be creepy to roleplay the aftermath of that situation, and many of us for varying reasons are averse to playing rape victims, even if coercion is the means.

Aside from that however, I love games where people embrace the social 'combat' system and characters grow and change from losing as much as from winning. I know it's not what many people enjoy, but it is what I enjoy the most.

*Edited for a typo that bothered me.

@Thenomain said in Good TV:

@Gingerlily said in Good TV:

@Thenomain

He blogged about football!

... How long before we remove his nerd cred?

He lives a well balanced life, creating immersive fantasy that geeks crave, and also watching the Giants obsessively. I'm still pretty sure the jocks beat him up in highschool.

@Thenomain

He blogged about football! How dare he spend time writing anything that was not his novel! I hate him with the fire of a thousand suns!

@Thenomain said in Good TV:

@Gingerlily said in Good TV:

I loved reading the series too but those next books are totally never coming. Or only coming 5 years after no one is left to care.

The people who loved the books before the TV series will be there to care. I don't stop loving something just because it's no longer hyper-popular.

I need to hunt down the Pushing Daisies comics. It wouldn't be the same as the dulcet narration or surreal filming style, but it was a good show that was killed by the writer's strike and uncreative executives.

I was kind of being silly. I loved the books and will eagerly read the next one when it comes out. Even if TV has revealed parts of the story to come, there is a lot that is unaccounted for and I want to see where it goes.

I was just mocking Martin for fun.

@Lisse24 said in Good TV:

@Arkandel said in Good TV:

GoT - no spoilers, just a bit of trivia I read last night!

Apparently Bronn and Cersei's actors contractually can't share a scene, since their actors went through a bad breakup iRL years earlier and they wrote that into their contracts that they can't share the screen.

Seeing your hated ex every day you go to work for years must be awkward!

That just makes me want details. How bad can a breakup be that you can't work with the guy for any amount of time even years later?

Man me too, that is amazing, where is the tell-all book? Is he the baby daddy or is Pedro Pascal? SO MANY QUESTIONS...that are none of my business but still.

@Kanye-Qwest said in Good TV:

Good luck with that!

Agreed. Poor dear. I loved reading the series too but those next books are totally never coming. Or only coming 5 years after no one is left to care.

@Admiral said in Good TV:

I've always been of the 'LolCerseiWins!' mindset. Because lolCerseiwins! is something the author of the books really seems to want. Because... that's just the kind of guy he is.

I want Cersei to win too, kind of. In the books she was totally my favorite character. On the show not so much, but she's still pretty badass. Also more bad.

PLUS both Martin and David and David have such huge blind spots when it comes to writing or presenting women, its nice to see they can at least make one be a slick politician as well as a victim of sexual assault.

@mietze said in RL Anger:

And my own personal gripe. My kids go back to (high!!!) school next week. I love summer, I love having everyone on relaxed home schedules, I love getting to hang out with my bigs, etc. I am always sad when it's back to school time. :(. And my god in 4 years I will have 3 kids in college/trade school and one elementary!!!!

You and me both. I have been lazy and relaxed all summer long and now it comes to an end.

@surreality

I empathize. I am allergic to pennicilin and also 3 other antibiotics. Basically I take a Z-pack for any infection, its kind of the only choice.