Best posts made by L. B. Heuschkel

We have people online most of the day and evening UK and CET time, so there should be ample opportunity to find a few people for a play date even when the US is asleep. We'll certainly be glad to have you!

I think that depends very much on the atmosphere of the group of people you play with. I've been in games where everything was deeply serious and dramatic, and in games where everything was pretty light hearted and silly. Both extremes have their flaws. It gets tiresome to always, always have to be on the verge of a breakdown in character because of the trauma conga, just as it gets tiresome to never be able to do anything more serious than kindergarten level pranks.

For me, that atmosphere is a game breaker level of deal. If there is no balance between the two extremes, I'm out. I'm happy to say that I seem to have found my tribe at the moment, where dark and serious drama alternates with quite light-hearted antics, just the way I like it.

It also depends on whom you're playing with. Insecure players are often scared of showing any kind of weakness, -- and more so if they came to your game from a very toxic game environment. I quit a WoW RP server some years back and had to literally wean myself of the habit of triple examining my every in character action to make sure it wouldn't draw edgelords, flame warriors, and alt-right trolls. In the end I quit because a game where you cannot sit down for a talk with somebody without somebody else throwing a hissy fit about your character shouldn't talk to that race bad roleplay you suck you ruin everything -- is not a game I want to play. It can take a little time to get back in the habit of not being afraid of the circling sharks.

Personally I like to torture my characters. They are flawed people, making mistakes, drawing the wrong conclusions, and going the wrong places. I use die rolls a lot to determine the outcome of even moral choices -- is my character going to be smart enough to keep his mouth shut, or does he say that thing he really shouldn't have because screw this, you're not the boss of me?

Characters who exist just to boast about past achievements and complain about other characters aren't characters at all; they're player inserts.

@JinShei Gee. I know what I'm doing, I really do. Except when I don't.

@Ghost If you put that forum up I'll definitely join it. I don't consider myself particularly guilty of the sins you list, but you're dangling a forum for people who write and mush, I mean, you had me right there.

On the PB thing, I have to admit that I am enough of a writing snob that I write my description first, then sketch-doodle something that matches what's in my head. I'm no great artist but I did work in the graphical design industry for a decade and I can sketch out a recognisable face. I just can't... do actors. They'll always come with associations that aren't mine, stories that aren't mine, words that aren't mine.

Edited to remove a game from the active list.

@Grayson, @SilentHills, @Cobaltasaurus -- with a bit of luck, maybe some day we'll bump into each other somewhere else. Here's to hoping (although admittedly I am not really one to shop around for games a whole lot, I tend to stay in one place for a long time if it works out for me).

@Kestrel Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett took turns writing a scene and emailed it back and forth, I believe I've read Pratchett saying. So not really all that different from writing long poses on a code that allows time delays, such as Ares' web interface.

@Derp Have spotted her a few times poking things with sticks at our place. She's awesome.

@greenflashlight said in A healthy game culture:

Vampire is kind of intended as a deconstruction of vampires as a concept, and god knows deconstructions tend to attract fans who totally miss the point and just think yeah man killing people for food is awesome!

To be fair, Vampire was marketed from day one to the people who loved to dramatically wallow and try to be more edgy than one another. Ah, the Vampire LARPers of the early 90s. XD

One of the big game culture hurdles is plot hogging -- how to get into ongoing plot, how to get included, how to make people not feel left out in spite of the fact that no one person doing this for a hobby can cater to players 24/7. That's one thing to look closer at and examining because frankly? Bored players are where drama breeds.

I find that a healthy game culture lets people do their own thing. Step A is allowing it -- acknowledging that you as staff won't know everything that happens on your game, nor will it get run past you. It's ok. Other people's ideas can be good too.

Step B is opening your setting to step A. Create a game world where people can tell their own stories and those stories can have just as much impact as the 'official'. Otherwise, those other stories are always going to be perceived as 'second rate'.

And step C is to make no one story the official, sanctioned one. Weave your web so that Bob's story of those supermarket ghosts is just as much part of the official canon as Judy the staffer's tale of the strawberry pickers on the farm.

The only way to include everyone is to continuously work at removing the barrier between 'the officially recognised stuff' and the rest.

@nessa I feel the thing for me to take away from your post there is that you know what you want, and communicate clearly about it, and that you don't hinge your RP on specific other people.

Those are big deals. The last in particular is important -- to me -- to keep in mind when I run stories and plots. My story must not hinge on Joe and Bob being available. It needs to be possible for Sally and Sue to pick up, even if they weren't there for the earlier bits. If Joe and Bob don't turn up, hand Sally and Sue their own bits of plot so they have a reason to go talk to Joe and Bob, but also that they may attack the story quandary from their own angle.

There's never too many clues to hand out. Each character will have its own interpretation of what's going on. Customise a bit to their skill set and background, and you get overlapping threads that people can pursue and argue about. Communicating plot threads down the line, away from yourself, including more people.

Most plots do end up with a small handful of people making the final decisive choices in the end -- if for no other reason then because they were the ones signing on for the final Event. But before you get there, there's a long stretch of road where a lot of RP can be had, and a lot of people can be connected. I can only speak for myself (obviously) but I enjoy getting to participate in discussions or preparations for someone else's final stand as much as I get to make the final stand; we all take turns being the hero or hogging the spotlight.

@faraday said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

Ares just makes it a little more explicit than logging in and seeing everybody in private apartments, RP/TP rooms, OOC areas waiting for so-and-so to arrive, or scenes on grid where a page of "Mind if I join?" is met with "Well actually we're kinda in the middle of something..."

Not wrong. The last game I was on that was client-based only (Penn, I think), you almost never saw anyone outside of their private rooms. People sat there until they agreed in pages to go to the private room of someone else and do something. You could walk around the grid for days and never meet a soul.

@ninjakitten said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

@sunny Huh! I think that'd feel really odd to me. Even though I don't do a lot of grid-walking (I tend to teleport, on any kind of game that lets me) I like having a grid, and walking it at least a few times. It gives me a better feeling for how things are linked up -- that and maps, though ideally both -- which I inevitably need at some point when I have to figure out whether X is a block from Y or all the way across town, or similar. I guess I could probably work with a good, detailed map if there wasn't a grid, as long as things still had descs, but it'd still feel... just weird to me not to have a grid.

Same. I want a grid and an ascii map of the major locations. Not because I need it to navigate, but because it helps me keep an idea in my head of what this place's geography is like, and make sure that that idea is not too different from everyone else's. I suppose a hand drawn map could achieve the same, but there needs to be something, at least.

@faraday I see what you mean. And at the same time -- it would be a return to something far more basic and old-school in a sense, because I can do far better descriptions with words, or with a link to Google maps in case of a contemporary game.

I think this is an argument that is going to go on forever and pretty much come down to what mood a game is trying to set, and what the theme of it is. For your example there? I am seeing something almost Oregon Trail-like in my mind, possibly without the dysentery deaths.

The graphic expression will be of significant importance for something like that, at least. Because what you see will very much set the mood of the setting.

My characters are pretty because I use male models for PBs. It's not because I want to RP pretty (I'm not male attracted anyhow) but because there's metric buttloads of costume pics available of them on the internet -- funny, interesting, sexy, exotic, you name it, it's there.

If someone feels put off by that, well, odds are they're too edgy for me anyways.

@Arkandel If your PC is going to cheat IC on another character do you feel obligated to let your partner's player know?

Yes. Any large plot choices that inevitably will affect a character whose roleplay is tied to mine, needs to be discussed with the player of that other character. Otherwise, the risk of drama migrating from the narrative into the OOC far too high. Also, I do not let them know -- I discuss it with them. Letting them know indicates that I have already decided, and am only informing them as a courtesy.

Do you think you are responsible for a character whose roleplay is related to yours if your paths are to separate? In other words do you feel guilty someone else's PC might become quote/unquote unplayable because of your IC choices?

Yes. Again, communication. Before you enter a relationship between characters, discuss what you want from it. Domestic bliss is a nice goal to have IC, but in actually, it's bloody dull roleplay once you get there. I am far more willing to enter an IC relationship where we have decided in advance that this is a slow burn, long term build-up. Happily ever after is not the plot's purpose -- the journey is.

Very closely related to the above, what if the choice that takes a PC mostly off the table is OOC? For instance if you stop being active on my PC's spouse to play an alt with Theno's PC. Do I have the moral high ground to get pissed off?

Depends. You can't ask someone to keep playing a character that no longer interests them, for whatever reason. You can ask them to provide closure, however, so that the story of your character can move on. Their character may file for divorce, die, move out of the country, anything that works for the both of you, and lets your own character get on with their life.

I've been burned on this one a few times so nowadays I create transient characters. They may enter relationships but their basic attitude to life is that people come and go, and while you may be here today, you might as well be gone tomorrow. Enjoy the other person while they're there, and don't plan too long term.

When it comes to TS what's the correct way to suggest it? Do you let the RP become more explicit until the big words come out or you get told no? Do you page the other player first and explicitly ask if they want to do it? Something else?

TS is not my goal when roleplaying but I will act it out if I feel it has narrative qualities; I'm not interested in text porn for its own sake. At the point where a YA novel would do a fade to black I page the other player and ask their preference, possibly a little earlier. Since none of my characters engage in sexual encounters out of the blue, I imagine that I already am quite aware at this time whether the other player is just in it to get off, in which case I am not likely to engage.

Assuming OOC consent between adult players is there anything in an IC relationship, including TS, that you consider unethical?

No. There are things I personally wouldn't want to be part of roleplaying, but what happens between other, consenting players is none of my business as long as it's done in private.

@Pandora said in The ethics of IC romance, TS, etc:

Firan staff spied on people IC/OOC and used/abused the info they gleaned on their characters, as well as sharing 'funny' snippets of IC/OOC conversations with others. That's gross imo, crossing the line from watching-to-make-things-better to watching-to-make-things-worse.

That's... not acceptable. I've staffed on various online games, and that's never been acceptable anywhere I've been. It may have happened but I certainly didn't hear about it -- but of course I'm also the kind of person who believe that rules exist for a reason, not to be discarded if I feel like it.

Players have the right to privacy in actions and conversations as long as they are not using that privacy to harass or disrupt a third party. Admins shouldn't be monitoring or reading logs unless there has been a formal complaint and investigation is ongoing.

That said, I've heard this complaint often, and always, the solution offered is the same. If you can't trust your game's admins, take private stuff to Skype, Discord, wherever. Away from the game. Let the admins worry why, in a few years, player activity starts to doze off because people don't feel SAFE in the game.

@Ghost I'd feel pretty safe with that set of rules, and a set of instructions on where to complain if they got broken, indeed.

@gryphter I am new to Ares and was actually wondering about that. Asking myself why the first thought I had when I saw 'private' was, oh, so people can have sex out of sight. Says more about me than about Ares, though. I can definitely imagine uses for private scenes that are not sexual in nature, just that you don't want everyone to barge in at random.

So, no, the intended use is not the point. Staff and players alike need to respect that sometimes, people want to do something -- sexual, emotionally intense, or for that matter, just slow posing through the web interface from work -- that's not open to the public. And that's okay.

@Ghost said in Well, this sums up why I RP:

And why do YOU guys RP?

Because roleplaying helps me practise my writing -- but also because when I roleplay I get to be somebody who isn't stuck to a bed or sofa 24/7, someone who isn't in constant pain. I had to retire in my mid-30s and now I'm approaching 50 and all but invalid. I can't walk, I can't leave the house unassisted, I can't even shower without help.

But my characters can.

@Auspice said in A bit of trouble on Firefly It's really easy to get along and he just literally cannot.

He's actually very nice and reasonable and likeable -- until he isn't. He's perfectly capable of settling into a game, being someone you'll want to play with, joining the club. If he wanted, he could absolutely be a good addition to any roleplaying group -- well spoken, fast typer, imaginative.

It's just not what he wants. It's a little sad-funny, watching someone who has all the toys throw them out of the pram like that.