Posts made by il-volpe

Great scot @Arkandel -- if only people treated it that way!

@Pyrephox said:

This is, honestly, why I feel like more MUs should focus on higher quantities of smaller, more personal plots, rather than the sprawling metaplot end-of-the-city stuff that draws in, in my experience, /far more/ PCs than are ever going to have a chance to contribute meaningfully. Which inevitably ends up with people feeling pushed out because they couldn't attend X Plot Important Event, or (sometimes accurately and sometimes not) that some people are 'hoarding' plot or favored by the GMs.

Yeah. The 'metaplot' is, in my experience, boring, annoying, unfair, and ends up focused on the headstaff's friends and staff-alts. It interrupts other, player-driven RP, fucks up the world, generally makes things unstable, creates jealousy, and is railroady as all hell.

So, when I got GoB, a number of people were going, "So where's the metaplot?" and saying how any game that didn't have one was just not worth playing, and so forth. I, embarrassed at having never considered this (because, see above, I kinda hate metaplots), said, "Oh, there is one," and immediately wrote one up. The player who was most vocal about the 'need' for one had a baby shortly after, and stopped connecting. Another PC who was firmly entrenched in it stopped connecting too (though by then I was feeling disappointed with eir, for she'd seemed a good mark for a person who'd share plot, but wasn't) and another one's personal, player-driven RP drove the character to abandon the connections to the plot, so instead of it involvement growing wider and more diffuse as I'd hoped, it ended up largely abandoned, with my own staff-alt PC being the only person remaining who had much of a clue. Having observed it turn, with such grace and ease (when getting it going was much work) into exactly what I hate about metaplots, I rewrote. I've essentially rewritten the thing three times with similar results, and okay, I'll just keep doin' that. It's adaptable enough, but damn if I don't understand why they are usually just the thing I hate.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

... avoiding, whenever possible, having Plot Progress depend on one PC being around and doing stuff, and becoming so vital that them dropping off kills the whole enterprise. By the same token, you also want to avoid being so diffuse about the impact any PC has that you nerf the feeling that PCs are impacting the plot at all. Division of labor and responsibility is something I try to keep an eye on, but I've yet to find an ideal way to manage it.

And there is the terrible, terrible rub. Because this is often utterly incompatible with "the focus should always be on the PCs and what they are DOING about the plot," which is also true, and in my opinion, more important.

@HelloRaptor said:

Those who haven't (to my knowledge) been caught tend to accomplish it through a few rules:

See, if they follow those rules, I cannot give a single ghost of a fuck if they have 'illegal' alts, because they're hugely unlikely to be annoying anybody.

Normally I'm against having rules that follow, "Don't do X, which is harmless in itself, because it makes it easier/more likely that you'll do Y," reasoning. Alas, in the case of the alt-abuse thing, I ended up doing that. But my "You must register your alts so other players can avoid you if you're a dick," rule is so not interesting to me if nobody notices 'cause you're not being a dick. This is, of course, terribly unfair and lazy of me not to even try to enforce this rule universally, or whatever, (not that I've thought about it much 'til now.) but you know. Smokin' pot and whackin' off at home in the bedroom vs. in the candy aisle at the grocery store.

@Sponge said:

I haven't figured out a reliable way to detect fraud and I'm pretty confident it's not feasible to do casually.

To do it casually -- well, eventually, the alt-fraudulent player is going to fuck it up. Just watch.

There's a critter out there who likes to create many alts. When she gets bored of RP with one, she'll disconnect without warning and connect as another one. Other players noticed this. The proof of the pudding was in the fact that most of these alts connected from the same IP, and others had their wiki pages made from the same wikidot account as some in the first set. Said wikidot account was associated with some character pages for another MUSH, and when I contacted the headwiz there, she discovered that the two IPs I associated with that player were associated with over twenty characters on her game.

Later, she reappeared, and registered alts as two sets. When the same random-disconnect behavior and writing style induced suspicion, I happened to observe one evening that one of those PCs connected from Germany, and ten minutes later, from the United States. The player claimed to be sisters, connecting from the same household, but that the 'German' sister was ever so paranoid. Since the 'German' alts couldn't be connected at the same time as the US ones, I said to register them all anyway, and they all stopped connecting.

Another time I had a pair of them in chargen. The second appeared very shortly after I had rejected the first one's app and explained to her that she needed to understand the theme better before being able to play. These two also claimed to be sisters. I asked both their ages, both said 18, and then were confused when I remarked that they were twins.

I don't have XP transfer. There is a rule that alts can't benefit one another, and thus ought not play together in the same scene, but I'm not really invested in the latter -- honestly, if you want to RP with yourself, I don't care, and you can't really fuck over another player doing that on a game with the semi-consent rules we use. Really, I only became stern about the requirement to register your alts because of that player rudely disconnecting on people. I think the players have a right to be able to avoid assholes.

It's also some odd MUSHserver, with unfamiliar commands. This is a hassle to me.

@Arkandel said:

...we are oddly enough running games with more rigid rules than multi-million dollar productions.

Is that weird?

Weird? Just silly. It's probably part about jealousy ("Waaahh, /her/ vampire got to get knocked up! I wanted to do that!") and the idea of "fairness" making GMs think that then they might have to repeat the thing. There's also, mm, that same reason folks don't approve the 'twinky' 19 year old double-PhDs even when they could be played well and that particular app looks like it would be. There will be a knee-jerk reaction about how awful and corny and shark-jumpy it is. Heh. On GoB, somebody bitched about how this 'wizard' character is just sooooo wrong and out of theme, with bitching player failing to interact with wizard enough to realize that he's not a wizard, he's a charlatan. And GoB tends to have less of that sort of bitchery than most games. I expect staff find that sort of bitching unpleasant and try to avoid it happening, even when they think they're not gonna let it control them. Saying, "This storyline is not as dumb as you think it is, investigate it or STFU," probably doesn't help much.

Also, there were magic toe-rings.

@Olsson People do take a long time with GoB's chargen sometimes, but you don't have to. I tried to keep it as low-investment as possible while still assuring characters that belong in the world.

Regardless, if you've been playing WoD MUSHes for a long time, I highly recommend breaking out of it. Even if you're not at all bored of WoD and still just love it intensely, a not-WoD game can be like MUSHing again for the first time.

@icanbeyourmuse

We are have only one Lannister.

Also that bit where they do have flaws, but the flaws are the player's, and the player gets totally pissed when other characters respond as if these flaws are, in fact, flaws.

Yep. The thing that gets old with these super talented sorts is that they tend to lack flaws, or they have flaws like "does not suffer fools gladly." Coooool flaws. That's just Mary Sueism, really. Characters don't have to be 19 year olds with PhDs to be annoying in just this way, and often are not.

The tendency to ring the twink alarm whenever somebody with a certain (rather corny, sure) type of special shows up doesn't prevent the problem that we're associating with said critters, and limits the possibilities for good players to get into RP with PCs that have snowflakish aspects. Which can be done very well, really, and have been.

A group who wants to do a House, a company of sellswords, a godssworn order, or anything of that ilk would be most welcome on GoB.

Is this a case where 'fantasy escapist' is used to mean 'Mary Sue'?

@Cobaltasaurus

I was Tichy there. And remember Grey but not the others.

Yeah, I miss ATM and G1.

http://moviemagpie.tumblr.com/

Often neither good nor new.

Utrum fiat tibi gaudium aut dolor, iterum talos iace.
Whether you get joy or pain, roll the bones again.

Game of Bones is based on George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels and the Game of Thrones television program. Game of Bones is running on PennMUSH and uses the FS3 stat and dice system.

The game is set over a hundred and seventy years before the books and series begin. This is about nine years before the civil war known as 'The Dance of the Dragons', during the time of the reign of King Viserys Targaryen I. Dragons and the magic they bring to the world are still very much alive.

We attempt to follow the themes and settings of the books more than those of the HBO series. However, you don't need to have read them. A passing familiarity with the show should be enough to allow you to play. Great allowance is given to a wide range of character concepts from urchin to prince (With the exception of Dragonlords). Players are very much a part of activity in plot conception, development, and execution. We encourage and support player-run plots large and small. If you love to GM but don't want to deal with the details of MUSH administration and staffly duties, we may be just the place for you. If you're just looking to play somewhere where there's a variety of stuff going on, plenty of ways to get involved, and a player-base who are willing and eager to include newcomers, we're a good bet.

Join us and our story to make a character and stake out your own position in the history of Westeros.

This is an R-rated game. To play, you must be an adult according to the laws of the country from which you are connecting.

granitefallsmush.com port 4222

http://gobmush.wikidot.com/

Heh. Some people have 4.0. It's hardly unheard of. You can probably do it if that's what you want. If you don't manage it, well, it won't kill you, but wtf, it's not impossible and it won't kill you to try for it either.

I am not sure what these are. I set an event and these are tags to say what's likely to happen?

@surreality said:

I keep pondering if there's some means of assembling a grid that combines that with hub area rooms for the ease factor,

What about the ol' classic subway? Not the coded one with the moving trains and auto-emits deal, but the one where the 'enter subway' exit just takes you to a hub of all the rooms with subway exits. Replace with bus-stop, rickshaw, canal, whatever to suit theme.