Posts made by juke

I'm not saying that this is the hurdle you're facing, just to be clear, but...I consistently see people doing things that are either ineffective or straight-up counterproductive to getting RP.

Vaguely saying in a lounge, and sometimes even saying on faction channels,

Player is trying to decide if they want to RP tonight!

or,

Player feels like RP!

--I almost never respond to this, for a whole boatload of reasons. I'm not an elitist, and I don't just like to RP in a corner with my friends, though that's often how things go, because my friends actually specifically ask me if I want to RP, and usually they have an idea as to what we might do. So many of the people I see complaining about cliques and being left out of plots never actually page a scene-runner and say, 'Hey, your plot looks awesome! Is there a hook that would allow me to get involved, or somebody I should talk to about doing that?' Most of the people I see in lounges who announce they are debating RP tonight never actually go so far as to ask anyone specifically for a scene, or put in the thirty seconds of time to check someone else's character info and suggest a scene that might appeal to them, or check the +events board and ask people running plots if their character could follow up on something that happened, or propose something they could get going on the grid, no matter how simple -- or any number of other proactive choices.

Which almost inevitably seems to lead to this kind of player disconnecting after making some kinda passive aggressive remark like, 'Player guesses they'll just give up for the night, then.' And while I totally understand that it can be frustrating not to get traction on a game, this behavior is not endearing. That person becomes someone I sorta plan to avoid.

Which kinda leads into the other thing I think people don't keep in mind: many people still doing this are grown adults, many with children and full-time jobs. Some of us enjoy ST/GMing, particularly large-scale, long arc plots. There have been times mid-plot when my free time for RP is booked up for literally two weeks with people who need scenes with me, in addition to whatever funsies I'm doing for myself. It gets difficult to do spontaneous RP for scheduling reasons, and certainly there's only so much creative energy anybody can put into this stuff without going insane and burning out. Sometimes, it's very much a kindness to very specifically ask someone for a scene, suggest something you think might be fun, and then plan a day to do that. I sort of miss games where the culture leaned into 'random grid RP,' too, so I get where you're coming from there...but, that's just the way things have trended, so all you can really do is try to be more direct.

People do not page, though. I sure can attest to that. I've run enormous plots on numerous games, and more often than not I wind up hearing about salty players who say they can't get involved, who have never once actually paged me to ask me how they can do that. I'm a very not-scary person to interact with.

Honestly, I think most people are flattered if they're approached for RP by a polite person who has an idea as to what the scene might be.

Kinda random and on impulse, but this guy once very kindly ran a werewolf arc for me, the logs of which I randomly discovered in dropbox recently during a cleaning-out. I'm pretty sure there was an effort to stay in touch all that time ago, but that was over ten years and several email accounts ago!

So long ago I feel like this is a long-shot. Plus, I seem to remember the player being MU*-lite, not heavily into it. Curiosity's got the better of me, though. Anybody know if they're still kicking around?

@kestrel said in What Is Missing For You?:

Cyberpunk.

Sci-fi.

Spy-fi. (Easily combined with Noir.)

If anyone can recommend a good Noir setting, by the by, you can have a kidney of your choice.

Stay tuned.

@lithium The story explains what/why they eat. They process 'biofuel' from the environment, basically converting organic matter. The reasons why are spoilers, though.

I know for a fact this kind of thing, with this person, goes back to before 2010. He got booted from a game then for indiscretions that carried over into Real Ass Life.

It ain't changing anytime soon.

'It depends.'

Sometimes (often) I know exactly what 'flavor' of thing I wanna play, and that just informs everything else through the filter of a game's theme and current census. Sometimes I'm lazy and recycle a basic concept, and it never turns out the same way as the thing it's based on, anyway.

There are only really a couple of things that are important to me to sort out, no matter how or when I figure them out; bold for tldr:

-Their name/appearance fits my mental image of their 'presence'

-I'm able to look at a bunch of music and go 'this is them; this is them also' etc. I find if I can't pick out even a single song for a character, they're usually not mentally sorted for me yet. If I can do this, I have enough to get started.

-They have an agenda -- probably the most important thing for me for not only getting started, but also long-term staying power? Having this, I know I can generate my own fun without relying on anyone else to entertain me. Most ideal: the goal is not simple to achieve, and the reason they can't achieve it is at least partially their own fault. Obvious preference is for agendas that involve interacting with other people.

-They will probably have a suite of flaws, but they have to be flaws that don't get in the way of RP.

I think a lot about what kind of storytelling I can do with any character I create -- what kinds of fun things they can push on a grid that people can get involved in. What they have to offer OTHER characters. It's always going to be true that people are more invested in your character if you invest in theirs. (Plus, it's just fun to give people cool moments.)

@pyrephox I think I have an unused grid built specifically to that theme around here somewhere. Maybe.

I don't remember Atonement, but I've had the desire to do this for ages. I lack resources (in code capability) and consistency (my RL eats me alive sometimes). I'm also not that into setting up any kind of dice-based system for it, and people who play in that genre seem to miss it when it isn't there. I think it's always a trade-off to be systemless/limited consent vs. having a system and letting it resolve consent issues, and I understand why people enjoy it, but I miss the unconstrained experiences I had on games where stats were not a thing.

I guess the tl;dr summary is that I just want to play and storytell on a game like that rather than being judge/jury/executioner. Selfishness, I guess. But there's definitely a spot in my mushclient's address book for a permissive, sprawling theme where staff gets to greenlight most player-run stuff instead of having to say 'no' constantly to defend an inflexible theme, and that spot is very, very empty right now.

@Coin Well, this is why I say it's less about style for me than about command of language. I know that probably seems like a thin distinction to make. I could elaborate about it, but I feel like I'd be retreading things and I don't wanna belabor the point.

It's okay if I'm the only one this request makes sense to. I appreciate that people took the time to answer, anyway.

@Three-Eyed-Crow I understand why you're asking, but I think I would have a lot of difficulty giving examples because as I mentioned before I'm happy in a lot of different writing environments. I will stomach much more purple prose than a lot of people are willing to, and I don't mind snappy, minimalist poses, either.

I think 'command of language' is maybe as close as I can get. Not just to turn a pretty phrase (though I like that) but also because it creates ambiance and mood, cuts closely to the essence of a story beat, captures something compelling about a character, etc.

You can do that in a lot of words or in just a few, so it's hard to describe a specific style, but for me it's like Justice Potter Stewart said of obscenity: I know it when I see it.

@Ghost I identify with all of this.

Players who know how to follow organic RP down the rabbit hole complete me. It's astounding the kind of story that can emerge.

My favorite RP buddy and I like to say 'no safe words' because we can't get enough of the intensity that comes from really committing to a character, never forcing anything, but always following the story wherever it goes. I do realize that this isn't everybody's cup of tea and it requires trust, but man, when things click..!

I don't wanna derail this conversation because I eat this kind of discussion up honestly, but I was sorta hoping some people might have a few game names to toss out based on their own personal, subjective thoughts about solid writing, cos' I have a mighty hankering to find one. It's cool that not everybody will agree about the definition of good writing, especially for my purposes...I tend to write to the environment and if the prose is at least compelling, I am pretty happy. So debate on, but if you could toss me a few promising suggestions also, I'd be much obliged!

Since we're on the subject, though!:

Most of what I'm reading here is failure to read the room properly. I've been on games where the culture will give you a trophy for breaking the buffer, and on games where people get really annoyed if your pose exceeds 3 lines/contains meta/whatever. There's almost always a range of preferences to either end of that spectrum on every game I've ever been on. I get along well with both, but I think that's because I try to know when I go into a scene what the other people in it enjoy so that we can all play to those preferences, and everybody goes home happy.

There are definitely people who derive most of their fun from the attention they get but if we delve into musher psychology this thread will collapse under its own weight in no time. Heh.

EDIT: You know, these days almost all mushing problems for me boil down to two things, which are probably just one thing. 'Whose story is it' and 'do people care about other people's fun as much as their own,' and there are a lot of ways to get both of those things wrong. Which is weird, because they are pretty easy to get right. I might be getting old and cynical/reductive/lazy though.

@Arkandel Yep, specific suggestions, based on people's differing opinions! I know people's suggestions will vary based on their own preferences, but it's good enough for me that they think of 'x' game when someone asks for this kind of environment, if that makes sense. Worst that can happen is it turns out it's not for me, but there's always a chance, right?

This post is going to produce a lot of contradictory opinions, because everybody's got different ideas as to what makes for 'good writing,' obviously. That's okay, though, since its more of a feeler post than anything.

I feel like it's usually clear when a game has players for whom writing/story/prose/character development are at the center of that game's culture, though. Are there games out there like this? I'm such a sucker for people who can wordsmith, tell a good story, hatch in the nuances of a character's personality and take risks IC. It's such a hard thing to find, though. Or maybe that's just me being out of the loop?

Anybody playing anywhere that feels like this to them? Bonus points if there's actual intrigue, too.

@skew It does not, as far as I know, though the dev has added things on request, so who knows what the future holds. The second field is actually your input history.

Spawn windows drive me nuts, and I don't really need the spell-check, though that is a pretty cool feature. Thanks for the answers; I guess I don't have to worry that I'm missing anything I would love to have!

Just out of curiosity: why do the people who prefer this to other clients prefer it over, say, beipmu, specifically?

I use and love beip, and it seems so much more intuitive to me, but maybe there's something I'm not seeing.

Ehhhh. Since I'm less lurky now, apparently, and this thread keeps coming back to life, I guess I'll throw my hat in. I was on SR: Detroit ages ago. It was my very first MU*, and I was every bit as awful at RP as you would expect. Somehow wound up on staff anyway? Must have been a different era. It set the hooks, though. (Clearly!)