@Kanye-Qwest said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:
@egg blue eyes are coveted because they are rare. Just like being 'the tallest' is coveted because it is rare (and generally accepted to be attractive, most people don't covet rare things that are NOT.)
While you're checking demographically funky stats. Check out the number of men taller then 6 feet and women who are close to 5 feet tall as well as the number of people with green eyes.
12:33 AM <PaCo> So before we start, I've been in here for like 2 years now I think.
12:33 AM <PaCo> So I may have told this story before
12:33 AM <PaCo> If so, I apologize
12:34 AM <PaCo> So briefly, while scamming the american high school system (a whole other story entirely), I was enrolled at a community college in southern california
12:34 AM <PaCo> Antelope Valley Community College
12:34 AM <PaCo> I believe someone in here even goes/went there
12:34 AM <PaCo> Now, I found out from some of my gaming friends that AVCC took their WoD gaming very seriously.
12:34 AM <PaCo> This was 1998.
12:34 AM <Gayo> Antelope Valley Community College is a beautiful name
12:35 AM <PaCo> It's a shithole Gayo haha
12:35 AM <Gayo> well, that's kind of what I mean
12:35 AM <Gayo> it's very evocative of a community college sort of in the middle of nowhere!
12:35 AM <Gayo> anyhow go on
12:35 AM <PaCo> So I get introduced to the regulars by my fairly normal friend Mike
12:35 AM → MockCell joined (Mockery@sorcery-fcnapu.fios.verizon.net)
12:35 AM <Lumi> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twPyY8chalQ
12:35 AM <PaCo> It's by far the most gender diverse group of gamers I'd ever seen
12:35 AM <PaCo> an almost clean split of male to female
12:36 AM <PaCo> black, white, hispanic. It was like a goddamn poster.
12:36 AM <PaCo> Like an ad for diversity.
12:36 AM <PaCo> I was feelin' it at the time, being a stupid teenage idealogue
12:37 AM <PaCo> So I immediately am attracted to one of the girls in the group, Katie. She wasn't overly mallgothy, but it was just enough. It was probably the fishnets.
12:37 AM <PaCo> And also the extra 10lbs which made her look like a woman and not a teenage girl (how's that for an awful romance novel line)
12:37 AM <PaCo> So at any rate, I get into gaming with these people. Their main game was Vampire, but they allowed Werewolves if they were blood bound to another PC.
12:38 AM <Gayo> adequately mallgothy
12:38 AM <MorkaisChosen> ohgod
12:38 AM <PaCo> So just let that sink in for a sec
12:38 AM <MorkaisChosen> please tell me you didn't play a woofwoof bloodbound to Katie's PC
12:38 AM <PaCo> MC: I did not
12:38 AM <PaCo> she already had a bitch
12:38 AM <MorkaisChosen> I am equal parts relieved and disappointed 
12:39 AM ⇐ MockeryCellPhone quit (Mockery@sorcery-6a7cnu.faf0.o13m.100c.2600.IP) Ping timeout: 121 seconds
12:39 AM <PaCo> So they are... very bad players. I mean like, some of the worst players I've ever seen.
12:39 AM <Gayo> it would have been funny if the game gradually shifted to be one vampire with four blood-bound werewolf pokemon
12:39 AM <PaCo> Like, it's all social one upsmanship and lore shittalking
12:39 AM <PaCo> However, I, being the youngest and newest person in the group, decided not to make any waves
12:40 AM <PaCo> I would ask Mike how he puts up with this, and he just said "girls who play games dude"
12:40 AM <PaCo> I think he expected me to high five him, but, I missed that cue at the time
12:40 AM — pringles facepalm
12:40 AM <PaCo> So anyways, I try to get my way in with Katie
12:41 AM <PaCo> In the process of doing so, I learn that they take their RP so seriously, that they sometimes interact in character in the cafeteria... and in class... and in the quad...
12:41 AM <pringles> ... oh god
12:41 AM <Endings> oh no
12:41 AM <Gayo> I think I saw this movie
12:41 AM <Will12343> ...huh.
12:42 AM <PaCo> I had an embarassing moment where I was playing Street Fighter in the cafeteria with my other group of friends (i tended to segregate), when one of them called me by my characters name
12:42 AM <PaCo> and I had to run a hurry-up social offensive to distract and end that situation
12:42 AM <MorkaisChosen> ... oh jesus
12:42 AM <PaCo> 50 dice to change the subject
12:42 AM <MorkaisChosen> this shit is why all the LARP movies contain no concept of the IC/OOC divide
12:42 AM <pringles> loooool
12:42 AM <MorkaisChosen> and are therefore cringe-inducingly unwatchable
12:43 AM <PaCo> anyways, I thought, ok, these guys are touched but they are mostly OK people
12:43 AM <PaCo> sometimes I'd have to stoneface them to get them to cut the shit, but I mean, friends are friends right?
12:43 AM <PaCo> So after a month or so I think I've got a bit of clout and I want to make a move on Katie
12:43 AM ⇐ Inqy quit (Inqy@sorcery-ftuc8f.range81-146.btcentralplus.com) Ping timeout: 121 seconds
12:44 AM <PaCo> I feign that I lost my cash and didn't have enough for buss fare home and ask her for a ride and tell her I will pay her gas money when we get back to my place.
12:44 AM <PaCo> My parents were not home, they were off on vacation
12:44 AM <PaCo> She agrees, we talk, things are looking good
12:45 AM <PaCo> I invite her in, we hang out awhile, I flirt, she is receptive, we start fooling around.
12:45 AM <PaCo> We are about to get down to business, and she says "I can't" so I say "Ok, no problem, but do you mind if I ask why?"
12:45 AM <PaCo> anyone want to field as guess as to what her answer was?
12:45 AM — MorkaisChosen is feeling the fear one feels as a horror story reaches its climax
12:45 AM <Endings> The blood bond?
12:45 AM <Zironic> She's undead?
12:45 AM <Will12343> I'm with Morkai
12:45 AM <MorkaisChosen> vampire blood sex doom?
12:45 AM <•Mobius> It isn't what our characters would do
12:46 AM <PaCo> "I can't fuck a Caitiff"
@ganymede said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:
@groth said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:
I think as a rule of thumb, it's not worth the headache to have militaristically opposed groups (like Camarilla and Sabbat) in the same game.
I'm pretty sure that any NWoD game I can remember with vampires involved militaristically-opposed groups thrown together. Sanctified-Crone-Dragon conflict is inevitable, as is Invictus-Carthian. One may argue that it isn't quite as diametrically-opposed as Camarilla-Sabbat relations, but I disagree.
That aside, yes, policy and staff oversight are important, but they always are so we are talking about truisms.
None of the nWoD groups are at war with each other, even the Carthians and Invictus can live together in the same city just fine in large part because even though the Carthians are directly opposed to the Invictus they're quite capable of working within the rules and in fact their specialization as a covenant is making sure everyone follows the rules.
The Dragons are not as a group opposed to anyone, their conflicts with other groups tend to relate to sites of interest or poorly conceived experiments.
@arkandel said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:
@rightmeow said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:
The PC itself needs to have connections, friends, etc. They need to be more well-rounded than just to sow discontent. They also have to have a reason for their thoughts.
Beware of trying to codify what makes for a 'good' antagonist.
Think of the worst, most abusive examples of predatorial assholes in gaming. They all had connections, friends, and they could offer long treatises on exactly what their reasons were.
They were, also, predatorial assholes.
Defining what makes a good antagonist can be complicated however I've found an easy rule that identifies all the worst PvP encounters I've come across. It's when one player attempts to use the other character as a prop instead trying to create a mutual story.
You can always justify whatever but if the other player isn't feeling like you're respecting them they're not going to have a good time.
If you want to have a game where people behave like adults, you need to be very proactive about making sure everyone knows the OOC standard of behaviour and vigilantly kick out those who are unwilling to behave.
@Lithium said:
@mietze I love how you're trying to defend against this the same way @Sovereign defended himself. It's really telling.
@mietze is defending peoples rights to engage in abusive IC relationships. @Sovereign is defending peoples rights to engage in abusive OOC relationships.
I'd like to think most of us are capable of separate the two, at least most of the time.
On a meta level, I don't think anyone should be too surprised about the lack of healthy D/s IC relationships in RP. After all it's my understanding is that healthy D/s relationships are signified by the fact all parties are aware they're playing roles in a kind of game with rules that everyone has agreed to play by.
However when you're part of MU* style RP, all those things are shunted back one level. While your character might not get a safeword or frankly a say in anything and might be enslaved 24/7, the players meanwhile might be communicating with eachother what their likes and dislikes are and most people are really great about respecting the right of anyone to cut a scene whenever they're uncomfortable.
That's the most important part to me, to keep any relationship functional, IC or otherwise, you need to have good communication and as long as you have that, I can't see anything wrong with roleplaying abusive relationships. What worries me a lot more is when I see people engage in abusive OOC relationship stuff as discussed in the Jealousy thread.
I think my only rule/advice for Good RP is
Avoid 'lurking' to watch a scene that you are not a part of unless you know the people pretty well. It sometimes creeps folks out.
Unless the MUSH in question has some form of recall command, I always lurk for a few poses to get an understanding of what the scene is about before posing in myself, anything else seems rather tricky and presumptuous.
Ask before joining a scene in progress.
If you really want a private scene, use a TP room.
On most games it should be safe to assume (and in some games explicitly written in the rules) that anything that happens in a public room is a public scene that anyone can join however if people are in the middle of something I do usually ask before posing in. I also think most MUSH are better off without TP rooms.
The lack of spontaneity in stumbling across RP on the grid, partly explained here
It's my experience that as long as you are visible in +where (while possibly saying that you're looking for RP in whatever passes for the RP/General channel of the game) you can attract people to whatever room on the grid you're idling in. It's how I've gotten most of my RP over the years. The key thing is that most players tend to idle in the OOC room so you need to provoke them into coming on grid.
@faraday said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
@ixokai said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
because its a metapose. That's a powerpose. Metapose inserts "meta" commentary, stuff that can not be inferred from words, body language, etc; its meta. Powerpose takes the power away from the character's player to decide what their character is doing.
Yeah, I think some folks have conflicting definitions. There is no universal dictionary for this sort of thing.
My definitions are in line with yours:
Faraday rushes across the room, engulfing ixokai in a giant hug and spinning them around. "ixokai! Old buddy, old pal!"
Here I'm power-posing because I'm assuming that you let me hug you and spinning you. I wouldn't count that as a metapose. Here's a (silly) metapose:
I usually try to put 'attempts' into my powerposes so that the other person is free to pose dodging or whatever when it's their turn.
Another common and usually considered acceptable form of meta-posing is the author narrative voices, for instance.
Groth-Golka was sitting on the university lawn splayed out on his picnic blanket with his choice array of liquors stacked neatly into his backpack just like most of his fellow students this time of year, it was after all the 30th of april, the national holiday of getting drunk.
In my experience it's not problematic that creepy, rapey stuff happens on WoD games, because as mentioned it is in theme and most players actually like those things as long as they happen in the right context. Quite a few people even enjoy playing with Rex until he starts taking it OOC.
The problem typically is when a player stops caring about if the other players in the scene are having a good time or not. When characters start getting stalked and their players OOCly harassed, when a player constantly makes the scenes about sex, when antagonism is clearly caused by the rejection of their advances.
As a community we need to ensure that we treat eachother with respect, regardless if the game is consent or non-consent you should try telling stories that others can enjoy. It's usually not hard to find players who are into whatever dark things you'd like to inflict so you should never try to force it upon people who don't seem into it. What can make it a difficult judgement on a non-consent game is that there's no shortage of players who simply want to dodge the consequences of their actions but that is also what the fade to black rule is for.
@Derp said in General Video Game Thread:
I liked the first Final Fantasy 13. The second one was alright. The third one got -- messianic salvation of the world's souls before the end of the world and I just can't even.
I never got past FF13's 20 hour tutorial.
I made scones for brunch today. Scones are amazing. That is all.
@sparks said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:
However, a lot of this thread has not been actionable suggestions, which... well, after all, it's more a theorycrafting and analysis thread, rather than something focused solely on how to improve things to make stuff more fun for players, which is the focus I needed in my redesign work.
In terms of actionable suggestions and focused discussion on those suggestions, the Github ticket is always going to be the winner by far since it breaks the discussion into specific topics that can be sorted/labeled/assigned etc.
A catch all forum topic like this one is always going to be derailed by whatever someone feels like ranting about for the moment and while good suggestions may appear in it, they're not going to be at the forefront or given good individual discussion.
While the systems discussion board does have the advantage of being available to anyone with an Arx character, in terms of discussion it's even worse then MSB because it's a kind of half-assed version of a BB that was never designed to be used for discussion in the first place.
If anyone has any actionable ideas or concerns I really recommend going through the effort to make a github account so you can make a ticket here:
https://github.com/Arx-Game/arxcode/issues
@Darinelle said in Arx Alts:
@Darinelle @mail clears out when PCs hit the roster. (Messenger doesn't.)
THEN WHY DID I GET ORAZIO WITH 300 FUCKING @MAILS?! <SOBS>
Because when a character is reserved rather then rostered, the character never goes through the cleanup command.
@Aria said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
forged my signature,
Isn't that part a major spend actual time in prison level crime? Fuck him
@faraday said in How To Treat Your Players Right:
The Penn/Tiny/Rhost codebases might be a bit trickier to implement. You might be able to do it with a hook on the page command though; I haven't messed around with that in years.
Yes. You just implement @hook/override and write your own version of tell.
@Misadventure said:
Penny dreadful's character dynamics had involved backstories that mattered, and little contact with others who knew any of what was going on. The viewers learned as the characters did, or slower. This dynamic does not work on a MU*.
I don't think any of us here are talking about the specific setting of Penny Dreadful but rather a setting in the style of Penny Dreadful.
@ZombieGenesis said in Good or New Movies Review:
@Jaded I agree. Like it or not TLJ happened. By ignoring it you're not going to appease the people who did not like TLJ because of how you're going to have to drag out your new story with exposition and you're also going to ostracize the people who did like TLJ. It's a lose/lose. I think it would have been best to just springboard off of TLJ and tell the best story you can from there.
What is there even in TLJ to springboard off? TLJ basically neutered/killed all the villains and all the plot threads from The Force Awakens.