Posts made by kitteh

@auspice Ahhhhhh, yep. I got a little of this. Mild by comparison, but it set off alarm bells even then. Funny how those instincts bear out.

What characters are we talking about? It's been a bit since I stopped on BSGU but some of this sounds kinda familiar-ish.

I accept the fact that this stuff is usually just a mad scramble, although some of it being done semi-privately prior to the game clearly being open obviously made it a little easier/harder. I missed out on being able to nab a character by maybe minutes (for a stupid AT&T update, of all things) and... that time window was basically the difference between my being interested in the game and not.

It's no real fault of the staff, this is how it always goes, but it basically means I just sit it out until the next go-round for a chance at one of the chars I actually want to play.

@TimmyZ How is that not right? The beginning levels of Pendragon are absolutely about characters whose holdings basically support their horse and arms and little more. Only the primary knights were even noble, everyone else was basically a commoner. If you roll badly in winter your horse dies. It's absolutely the survival level of game being discussed.

I feel like you're being bizarrely revisionist, this was a theme you pushed as much as anyone.

@TimmyZ said in How low can "low stakes" be and still be compelling for RP?:

The fae princess didn't damage the game. We were still getting new players when we decided to close down because of player bickering. There were other bigger angst issues between some groups than that specific character.

I feel like this is a matter of opinion, not fact. For some people her and by extension, her family (who largely supported her in her shenanigans and were pretty anti-thematic on the whole) had an adverse effect on our experiences there. Initially I tried RPing with them, reacting to their behavior because they were shit-stirrers, but they took the IC OOCly almost instantly and it quickly became unfun. In general they proved grating to be around.

(and use your deductive powers on why TimmyZ is saying it*)

I really have no idea. You seem vaguely like the same person, but it's weird to pretend you're not when there's so little to gain by it, so I'm just confused....

Yes, I am Sir Kay/Lotherio. I absolutely did not want any baggage of Realms to follow to the new game, and it hasn't. Again, great player base, great stories, and oddly enough, no squabbling over what theme should be. Well, some bickering, and we know who that was too.

.... and, ah. I don't know why you'd do this. It's confusing and suspicious more than it helps or separates anything. I don't think anyone ever had bad feelings toward you, it would have been more productive to be honest about the new project and look for help/feedback/etc than pretend it was just some mysterious coincidentally near-identical game with near-identical people.

Realms was never dirt squabbling nor high medieval literary fantasy. A big issue in this argument to understand is that fae were a part of the actual game, as was fae characters, fae nobles, fae knights and even half fae characters. However, we as staff did not want magic player characters because their only balance (time to rest) was countered by the nature of the quickened IC time scale. Fae and Fae chars are part of Pendragon, it was our House Rule to not have fae character. Much as we were not allowing saxons, or vikings or other cultures (for this argument, see all the old Cirno threads flaming the game).

I understand perfectly well what the game was. I'm capable of reading a Pendragon book. It's not hard. But there was thematic stuff presented to us in a certain way (on the wiki, with examples), and some people definitely played to it, while other people played around it. Re: fae shit, I'm well aware. I had a pagan alt and went on a Fae-oriented TP. I can bitch about a specific person using an element wrong while understanding that element has a place elsewhere. This feels very condescending.

The rest of the post mostly feels condescending or overly literal/intentionally obtuse. My commenting on people enjoying the lower-level historic fantasy of Realms in this thread doesn't mean 'I think these ideas are 100% identical', it's merely a comment that there are players who are willing to play in a setting where they're not glittering high nobles. And there is probably a segment that will try and turn it into that. I'm not sure why you feel you have to keep arguing about exactly how much mud there was or wasn't. It's broad ideas (lower level landholders, animal raids, survival) that I was getting at.

@TimmyZ said in How low can "low stakes" be and still be compelling for RP?:

Clearly some issues remain from a game that closed 18 months ago. The fae girl did redact and change logs, descs and bg as asked by staff. Nothing warranted 'banning'. If it's really this upsetting after all this time PM me or go to the pit.

No u? (Also I'm confused, why am I PM'ing you? I thought @Lotherio ran Realms)

I think it's pretty relevant when the question is 'how can low stakes be compelling'. Part of the answer is 'actually keep people on the same page about what they're playing.' The fairy might have been dealt with, but it took long enough that it did damage to the game environment and the general tenor of RP.

@Lotherio Ah, my bad.

Anyway re both Realms and newer game ideas, I still don't think a 'dirty' historical setup is actually MU-unplayable, a lot of people enjoyed it. You just have to be willing to actually tell the fairy chicks who walk in with their fantasy ball gowns that it's not actually in theme. If they flounce off in a huff, no loss.

@Lotherio Way to be weirdly nitpicky? Nothing I said was wrong: livestock raiding was part of the theme (maybe not much between PCs, but as something we were afraid of from enemies), and your own wiki supported the earlier period in terms of living conditions and fashion. If you wanted to to be 'just be anything in those 6 centuries', you could have said that, but it wasn't how the game was actually presented, so you have to take some of the blame there.

If I went dirt squabbling goat herder, I'd go 866 York, politics amongst the hirths for who controls what as Ivar moves on with Amlaib to harass Ireland and Scotland. Seeing if players could work together to reach Danelaw with Alfred (886 rl).

Yeah, it was definitely the players who were hyper anal historians and ruined everything!

@fatefan The Realms Adventurous (Pendragon game) tried to do the more 'your goats survive' level of play when it started out (characters were knights, but the... lowest, shittiest, 'your farm pays for your armor and horse and that's it' level of knight), but a LOT of people bucked theme and went for frilly L&L. I think it maybe could have worked, but staff wasn't very big on enforcing anything so you had people basically playing in completely different themes.

@Arkandel said in Indicating Discomfort in a Scene (online):

@kitteh said in Indicating Discomfort in a Scene (online):

Obviously there's room for villainy. Let's say you're playing the racist/sexist/whatever char. What are you getting out of this? If it's mostly enjoyment out of being a foil for other people, cool. But isn't that mostly an NPC at that point? As a player, by default, you're some sort of protagonist, at least of your own story. Most players play to succeed, and while the better ones might accept failures along the way, generally they still want an overall arc of progress and achievement.

For starters I don't enjoy this; I enjoy lots of things. My characters are flawed in many ways - some of them are losers, others are manipulative jerks. I don't want to just play one kind of character.

This feels defensive, so it bears repeating:

I'm not meaning to call you out here

This is all general, not about you as a particular player. Pronouns were meant to be general, sorry!

But to answer your question what I get out of this is the ability to step out of my shoes a little bit. If I play a homicidal violent Werewolf it's not because I am inclined toward violence in real life - I am not, and I don't condone murder either.. Likewise my last Sanctified character had very little tolerance for other religious beliefs than his own which would quite likely make him a bigot, and I enjoyed the way he felt he had to put on an act around those who drew his ire because it challenged me to stretch my portrayal to fit that - he was seething inside but the facade of civility was too important for him to sacrifice.

I think its not hard to understand how stepping out of your shoes into something absurd as Werewolf's level of violence is far detached from reality (for most of us as players, at least) in the way that racism or sexism are not. So I don't think this equivalency holds. Also, it's worth pointing out that even the violence in those games is something the characters are generally depicted as struggling against, and the ones that don't often see themselves banned as PC concepts (Red Talons from back in the day being an example). The same can probably said for zealots of supernatural religions. There's a clear element of fantasy, and that matters (in part because the faith of a supernatural zealot tends to be confirmed by them actually having powers)

Do you set that aside when you play one of these characters? If not, well, OK, now you're rooting for the racist/sexist. Now you're invested in their success, now you're pushing their goals and agendas over those of other players. We all know how much IC/OOC bleedover there is.

My character's success in no way shape or form reflects how much fun I have playing him. I don't root for my characters and if I do then it doesn't matter if they are nice people or not... at that point I've already lost the game by any metric that matters. The only way I can see justifying being sad or upset is if I lost the character before his story was told - that is, if the concept was just ruined, either due to death or something major such as exile, disinheritance, etc - which made him unplayable... but that's not what we are discussing here.

I think this is a rarity, honestly. I'm not meaning success necessarily in grand political terms, as that's not even relevant on certain gametypes, but you get at it in the whole 'story was told' bit. What story exists to be told with these sorts of characters (in their more extreme versions; we should probably be clear that minor racism is basically universal in humans, so acknowledging that in RP is different than playing a character where 'racist' is a marquee part of the concept)? If its not their downfall, it's probably a pretty unpleasant story, and not in the escapist absurd violence way, but in the very similar to daily life way.

So these players often do make me wonder. I don't assume all of them are really what they play, but at a point you do have to consider what they're getting out of it.

It's just such a risky thing trying to classify and judge people ('these players') based on a a character type that they happen to be playing.

Waitwaitwaitwaitwait.... Risky? (also, yes, 'these players', it's a plural determiner, you twit)

But let me get this straight. You're concerned in the risk posed by being cautious (because, I'll point out, 'wondering' and 'don't assume' != instant pitchforks) in regard to people who focus on these themes? Do you think this 'risk' outweighs the concern they ought to have about reminding the people they're playing with of the real-life hardships they may well face on a daily basis? That's a hell of a weird way to balance the scale of concern.

In my experience, I do find there's a non-insignificant correlation between people playing these characters and instances where you realize things might not be 100% IC. I'm sorry that in my caution, I might not instantly recognize your writing talents and nuanced character depictions (and instead only come to that conclusion after playing with you for a bit, because you're not actually one of these people, right?). But it's a risk I'll take, I guess!

@Arkandel said in Indicating Discomfort in a Scene (online):

@Roz Neither did I.

But I think the counter-question I asked still holds merit; how do we best differentiate between a player playing an asshole from a player who is an asshole?

If we can answer that convincingly then we can also do away with the ol' "oh, it's just IC/ICA=ICC/this is a non-consent game" excuses actual assholes use to justify themselves.

Sadly, I think there's often less differentiation than we care to admit. I'm not meaning to call you out here of course for asserting that you like exploring some of these things, but my experience often bends toward the less positive than more when it comes to dealing with people playing these.

Obviously there's room for villainy. Let's say you're playing the racist/sexist/whatever char. What are you getting out of this? If it's mostly enjoyment out of being a foil for other people, cool. But isn't that mostly an NPC at that point? As a player, by default, you're some sort of protagonist, at least of your own story. Most players play to succeed, and while the better ones might accept failures along the way, generally they still want an overall arc of progress and achievement. Do you set that aside when you play one of these characters?

If not, well, OK, now you're rooting for the racist/sexist. Now you're invested in their success, now you're pushing their goals and agendas over those of other players. We all know how much IC/OOC bleedover there is.

So these players often do make me wonder. I don't assume all of them are really what they play, but at a point you do have to consider what they're getting out of it. It's the same things with the games where the settings are overflowing with these -isms. What do they serve? If the players are able to interact with it, subvert it, etc, then it might legitimately be part of the game. If its mere 'realsim' set-dressing that doesn't get much more play, well, you start to wonder what it adds. When staff fights to preserve the theme against change and punish people who work against it, then you start to wonder if the game runner doesn't have a bit of an agenda.

@faraday Even if I'm one of the people who ultimately drifted off into idle land, it wasn't because the game did anything wrong. Often long-term RP success is really a lot of luck, just finding a group and a niche which I never did (a couple people I latched onto early died/idled/etc, which didn't help). But overall the game does a great job and is a pretty good model for its genre, you should definitely be proud of it and count it as a success!

@Thenomain

I don't think anyone has really said that coming up with these systems is going to be objectively harmful, and that's a pretty obvious option. I even indicated as much in my post. But pointing out the whole 'you can't code away social problems' is also a valid point to make here, and you seem resistant to acknowledging it. People (on both sides, the overly willing to violate boundaries, and the overly expectant of others to cater to their own) need to be held to certain standards of reasonable adult behavior.

Tangentially, I think the 'that escalated quickly' scenarios (as @surreality mentions) can/should be dealt with via a whole different kind of policy. While its perfectly fine to say people should be comfortable with bad stuff in WoD, I don't think that can be extrapolated to 'if you agree to meet someone new for coffee RP they should definitely be able to rape you!' This is no different than the people who want to were-hulkout over minor insults, or otherwise justify violent PvP over the tiniest provocation. Conflict should always be to at least some degree proportionate (edit: and rooted in the story), and the people who argue for concepts that get around that (serial killers, etc) are almost always problem players anyway.

@Thenomain Having some kind of red flag command is fine, although once you're moving beyond something as obviously delineated as 'PvP is about to happen' as your use case, I'm not sure what gains it has over page. If its just a generic red flag, it might fail to explain why in some cases. If it allows text, then it's basically just a dressed up page. I'm in no way against it, just kind of pointing out how it comes back to being able to communicate OOC at some stage.

Ultimately, tools are fine, but the failure is usually in the users so we need to train proper communication no matter what.

While the spotlight thing is interesting, the idea you'll ever get MU scene-runners to treat everything they do like a BDSM session in terms of constant consent-checking seems... this will never happen in a million years. So the stoplight thing, interesting as it is someone threw it in an RPG book somewhere, seems very impractical. Never mind the code limitations.

So that kind of leaves us with prefs/kinks/lines/whatever and somewhere to display them. I don't care what you call them really and it's probably a fine idea to include them on a game, but that's never going (and shouldn't) to abdicate people from adult communication and you have to make that clear. Ideally people will check them. But they won't always.

Of course, people may also not be comfortable detailing out everything in these listings for various reasons. I'm not about to put a lot of sex stuff in a profile on a non-sex game even where quite a bit of it happens, even if I'm ok with it in theory, not because I'm embarrassed, but because in my experience this means I'll get hounded for it, in exclusion of other things, even more than the norm.

@Coin Pretty much 100% what you said.

I feel like a lot of people oversell the 'doing what is IC' point as if it is really as simple as that. Few people in this hobby are devoted method actors. Most of the time character actions are a combination of IC context and OOC agenda. Just think about it for a second and it's pretty obvious. When a character is making a tough/meaningful decision, it could probably go either way. That's the definition of the decision being difficult. And so the deciding factor is usually OOC preference. As a corollary 'I'm just doing what's IC' isn't any kind of special protection or something praiseworthy, nor is it particularly bad. It's bad when people act in ways that clearly are clearly non-IC, but that doesn't make the inverse good.

So I RP what I enjoy (and usually what I think people around me will enjoy, to whatever degree I know and can supply that without bending over so far my spine snaps) and I'm generally not going to go to any effort following through on things I don't. That's not the same as avoiding IC consequences or ignoring the world; I will deal with all that stuff to whatever degree is required, but I'm not going to put substantial personal energy into stuff I don't care about or enjoy (or know that at least others I care about are enjoying, sometimes its worth playing out X because it's meaningful to another person and neutral in value to you).

I also try and be clear about telling people what I like, especially stuff that might be iffy otherwise (say, arranged marriages on L&L games). People usually follow the path of least resistance, so you can often guide RP in ways everyone will enjoy more with a smidgen of communication.

@Ghost It really sounds great to me.

Old BP was a very gamey resource meter, with a D&D 'the party rests' between encounter upkeep kind of feel. It was also very inconsistently important depending on how blood-hungry your disciplines were.

The new mechanic sounds like it will always be important. And if the hunger dice can give you successes you even get stronger as you get more ravenous, which is cool. My only slight doubt is on the whole check off dot vs. roll on table for a trait thing. I can see with multiple rolls at higher hunger how you could accumulate a bunch of these, and it could get a little comedic if you keep piling on traits. Are there any limits there?

@Meg I was gonna be mad I somehow didn't get an SJW invite...

But you put me with the cats

@surreality said in RL Anger:

@kitteh Here's the problem: I wasn't complaining that I am not getting attention at all times. I don't want attention at all, most of the time, let alone for the shit I consider 'high value victimization'. As stated elsewhere: this is not the place for that, full stop.

The best way for you to not get attention would have been to... not jump into our discussion and tell us it annoyed you. The best way not garner attention for your other incidents would be to not tell us they are more important than what we're talking about.

The only 'high value victimization' I have discussed on the forum here was in a fight with @Ghost a few months back, and, ironically enough, in discussion with @shangexile here a page or so back. You will, ideally, notice I'm not asking people to feel sad or offer me headpats or sympathy or support for any of it, and that it's relevant only in context of: "Dude, you knew about this stuff... " which is relevant to that interaction -- which, itself, resolved with mutual empathy, compassion, and lots of uncomfortable honesty all around. I am not going to dig around for the exchange with @Ghost to find the reference, but I'm not asking anybody for cuddles or sad-eyed kittens there, either.

I didn't know anything about your or your interaction with him. I only knew you from a few previously pretty sympathetic interactions. Which is why your whole 'I am part of the enemy tribe that is showing up here to get me, just wait, more are coming totally for realz!!!!!' is bizarre. The reason I somewhat side eye your professed desire for empathy/solidarity is your habit of attacking those who offer it to you.

Calling me a harasser is extremely offensive to me.

Saying my mindset is ugly and implying that I'm supportive of harassers or at least callous toward their victims is offensive to me, and also lolzy as fuck. Shockingly, you get what you give.

I am asking you to leave me the fuck alone at this point. You will notice there are no insults to you in this post, despite plenty in yours to me, and it's that way for a reason.

Leave. Me. Alone.

I. Was. Leaving. You. Alone.

And then, you know, you decided to ping me to call my mentality ugly. So instead of continuing your babe in the woods "oh woe why is this happening to me!!!" routine that you have accused others of, you will own up to starting shit. Beyond that I still really have no beef.

@Ghost I realize. At this point I'm going out for a walk in the park. I am sure @surreality will have her parting words, but maybe I'll be a bit more zen by the time I get back.

@Ghost said in RL Anger:

@kitteh what resolution are you actively seeking in this situation?

I'm not being snide when I ask this.

I'm not seeking a resolution, because I think, knowing what this forum is, that would be pretty naive. I actually think it's admirable (and I didn't say this earlier, and I should have) that to some small degree you've apologized/stepped back some of what you said. It demonstrates a level of maturity on your part despite people characterizing you as constantly tone-deaf. But I'm pretty sure that's a rare outcome.

This is going to drag on forever and I think the best thing that both yourself and @surreality can do at this point is to either take it to private messages, or respectfully, without rude language, state what your preference for resolution is.

If @saosmash and I, or @shangexile and @surreality can find a decent resolution that puts the knives away, so can you.

I had dropped it. She pinged me twice in the intervening time, and it doesn't take a genius to see she was looking to restart the fight. And sure, I am taking the bait.

But I'm not obligated to stand around and have mug slung at me and then take the higher stance of saying nothing just because I wasn't on at the literal exact hour she was posting that shit. This is another weird thing about her arguments/attacks: she has an odd conception of how time works on this not in-real-time communication medium. In the other thread she complained it was going on 'for pages' (when that was just one evening of people talking) and here she's acting like I'm dragging up things from the past when she insulted me five hours ago after I'd left her alone for five days.

Anyway, no one gets the authority of the final word, especially when the final word is nasty. I will stop at the point where there are no factual arguments left to make or, like most people, I get bored or RL calls me back. If she's capable of a peaceful resolution, that's fine, and despite all of this I still maintain that if she has issues with ongoing harassment on other games I am very happy to focus on those problems but mostly it seems like she wants to fight. You don't randomly @ people to say nasty shit about them for peaceful purposes.