Posts made by L. B. Heuschkel

@HelloProject said in The ethics of IC romance, TS, etc:
These were the AOL days. I still know her and am not allowed to ever bring it up to her lol.

At least she's acknowledging that she was a prat and some things better stay buried?

I found out later that the same player went on to have a relationship IC with another player and when that ended, shamed him as a pedophile. Then again, she also claimed to be terminally ill and that her boyfriend in real life broke into hospital to beat her up twice, and that she regularly missed school because of near-death experiences. There's a certain breed of teenager on the internet you just need to stay the hell away from.

@HelloProject

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

I mean don't fuck kids I guess. Kind of lowkey weird. I know this will make some of you mad but I said what I said.

I wanted to laugh but then I remembered once on WoW my character was developing a relationship with another and had been over several real life weeks. They were now at the end of the second date kind of point and things were headed... Well, towards a private dungeon instance, and maybe a bit of snuggling and fumbling with pieces of each other's armour.

Then the player tells me she's 14 in real life.

Not fun. Nope. Not even in the slightest. Couldn't see my ass for the soles of my feet, that's how fast I left.

@Thenomain 3000 characters is a lot, too. I mean, yes, I'm a professional copywriter by training, I can definitely do it, but if I only have content for 1200 words, I am going to absolute -hate- bloating it into drivel just to meet some imaginary standard of verbosity. Long != better.

I can see the point of making sure that people have some setting familiarity. It saves explanations, and helps prevent players deviate from the theme. But I have to be honest -- unless that wiki or theme page is VERY well written, my mind is going to wander. At least after 3000 or more words. Novel, movie or game website, if it hasn't hooked me after five minutes, it ain't happening.

If I ever become involved, again, with setting up a game theme from the bottom and up, this is going to be one of the big issues for me. A theme, particularly one that's either original or from a not very widely known fandom, needs to have a door marked 'clueless newbies'. An in, so to speak, for those who are unfamiliar. One that doesn't make them feel like their presence is at best tolerated. A way into the theme that doesn't feel like a novel -- even if it's just a one-page bullet list of dos, don'ts and suggested pop culture references.

Yes, it will mean that occasionally, you get some moron who thinks he's playing superheroes while everyone else is playing Lord of the Rings. But the other way around means you miss out on a lot of people -- something which I imagine is a dangerous choice, since most MUs seem to be struggling to get a playerbase going (nevermind keeping it).

@Thenomain I do see your point. To me, writing a background is when I decide who my character is, and what I want to be doing with him or her. Creating the layers in the onion, to paraphrase a certain ogre.

However, I will readily cede that sometimes, it's just not possible. Particularly when looking at games where the setting is large and complex and unfamiliar -- what am I supposed to write here? I don't know the world I'm entering, I have no feel for it. I want to enter it as someone inconspicuous and unimportant, let the game itself mature the character as I become familiar with it.

Situation like that, being told to write a background is the same as telling me to find another game because I can't.

@Thenomain Interesting take. I don't mean that ironically -- I am fascinated by how differently we view the chargen process. To me, chargen is a writing excercise. An exciting one. I get to think my character through and define him or her, write down all the little quirks and hints... And people use them. All the time. Sometimes to a point where I have to go, dude or dudette, just because it says I'm from Thrillsville doesn't mean I have the zip code tattood on my forehead, at least ASK.

@faraday said in Staff’s Job?:
Unrelated -- one way to look at the permissions/role/title angle is Ares' roles system. Instead of simple flags like WIZ/ROY/JUD, Ares lets you define custom roles, each of which is granted permissions to certain commands.

You might have a builder role that can build/desc/teleport around. You might have a wiki staff role who has permissions to manage wiki pages, or app staff who can view apps and jobs.

It works great, though. I can build rooms on request (I am a professional copywriter, short prose is what I DO) without taking on other responsibility. Go, Ares.

@Ganymede I recognise your point; it's not invalid. Still, I maintain, change small things all you like, but be wary of making large changes to canon -- it will drive future players away. Of course, if you have a stable player base and that is not a concern, knock yourself out.

@Arkandel Everything is okay if you can pull it off well enough to convince everyone else...

And therein lies the problem with canon. You can't. Even if you somehow convince the entire current playerbase that Batman is a girl named Sue, new players won't know or recognise this canon.

At least for MUs that are fanworks, I think that tampering with official canon is dangerous, because it means not everyone is on the same page any longer.

@JinShei said in Discworld: The MUSH:

Feh, lightweight... don't make me bring the plot to you.

Oh please do. I have a kneecap that's not injured yet. Might as well get the full set.

Jokes aside -- now is a really good time to turn up if you're sitting on the fence, debating whether to pay us a visit. We're at the point in development where stories have taken off and there's lots to dig into, but there's also lots of room for new people and their own stories.

Want to set the tone for a guild, so to speak? Several are as of yet defined only by the book canon, and you can definitely get away with leaving your mark. Want into a guild or group that already has people and a mood? The Watch is popular these days, and a lot of plots seem to be heavily investigation-themed. Want to join me in my gentleman's academia-club, also known as the Guild of Assassins? Draw up a Chesterfield chair.

We're very happy to help brainstorm character concepts and answer questions. Visit our Discord at https://discord.gg/h6nCbV or pop in on the game proper, there's usually a few heads around all day EU time and lots of US time as well.

@Seraphim73 I think you're on to something very important here. Story telling, from the GM's perspective, where the point is not just writing the story, but making every bit player feel that their input mattered, that it affected the outcome.

Ironically, it's one of the hardest things to accomplish.

Many players compete for the attention of staff or other (more or less correctly perceived) 'community leaders'. I've been staff, guild master, and game master enough, virtually and offline, to realise that the more known your name is, the more people you have wanting to lick your feet -- or stab you in the back, depending.

The challenge here, which I think at least formal staff (but honestly, anyone with a big name) is responsible for rising to, is inclusion. The loud and confident players will make themselves noticed. It's the other ones you need to look out for. The quiet ones. The ones who often end up feeling that they weren't really welcome, that their input didn't matter, and that they wouldn't be missed if they left.

They're wrong, incidentally. A game that retains only the loud ones ends up in tumbleweeds or drama fests, or both. Even the most extrovert players need more than 1-2 other players to feel that the world they exist in is alive. They need an audience. And to retain that audience, they need to make room for it, to allow an exchange where sometimes, you're the lead actor and sometimes, you're the guy on third row eating popcorn and clapping.

The quiet ones need catering to too, they need equal opportunities, and they need attention. It can be an ungrateful task because many of them are withdrawn, face social challenges, are drama queens, suffer from various disorders, or are just introverts who may not even -want- to get dragged out and seen (but they still appreciate getting the -offer-).

Players are not obligated to care about this group, the group that I think of as 'the silent ones'. Staff that run official plotlines is. At least to me, that's a very defining difference between player and staff. A good and decent player will try to do what staff have to do too, and make room for everyone that wants to step up. But they don't -have- to.

@Roz said in MU Things I Love:

Sometimes I see people going through SUPER old posts -- like not month old, but months or even year+ old -- and I'm just so curious like, WHAT ARE YOU DOING OVER THERE

I'm new to the forum and I have time to kill, reading older threads because some of the discussions here are very interesting.

@Arkandel said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
I like running PrPs without the label

I've always had a habit of, well, starting stuff. Personal stories, bouncing off my own characters or those around me. I am fonder of those than of big, organised plots because the latter often end up a competition to get seen and noticed, one in which particularly the quieter players end up trounced.

The good thing is, you do indeed not need a staff bit to do so, and I've never let my lack of one stop me. Nor have I any intention of asking for one again anywhere, because I really, really don't miss staff politics.

@JinShei said in Discworld: The MUSH:
what are you waiting for?

My three cracked ribs to heal so I can get out on the street, obviously.

While I'm currently player only, I've always viewed myself as player first, staffer second. As in, I came there to play. Playing is the fun part. Joining the staff is something you do so you can spread that fun to even more people, and give them reason to come around, hang out, and play in your sandbox. In a manner of speaking, what goes around comes around.

Staff unfortunately also comes with dull work and occasionally, extremely frustrating situations. I've always been an enthusiastic player, busy builder, and very reluctant admin because I fucking hate having to deal with admin stuff.

@Derp said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?: I think it also depends on the type of game, too. What if the PC wants to, say, seduce one of the King's advisors to get information? Should we disallow that because it's an NPC? Would it not depend on the game, and the themes therein?

It's certainly tricky. I think that if I was staff, faced with this dilemma, I'd sit the player down and have a serious talk with them about what it is they want to achieve for their character. And then... well, to be frank, make it clear to them that I am not interested in playing that out in character, but I recognise the plot value of what they're doing. If they're okay with essentially a summary of what went down, maybe with a couple of rolls, go for it.

Should tell me pretty quick whether the player is interested in the story being driven forwards (even if it's not quite as exciting a way as actually acting it out), or they just want me to write porn for them.

@Derp said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

@L-B-Heuschkel

In this case, I used Mac for a specific reason:

Mac has a relationship with Harry Dresden, and will sometimes help him out if he has some information, but has to be careful about how he does so because he has Accorded Neutral Territory...

BUT he also has his own agenda, and often politics in the background, showing up with new information and actions that he's taken, which on a MU often translates to 'has to interact with PCs to get that done'. He's a mover in the world.

I'd place this one in staff PC territory -- YMMV. It's the kind of character who can be a recurring guest on the show, so to speak, and who definitely has his own agenda and motives. But as he is still, technically, an NPC, moving the plot on will always take precedence -- even if it means that you, as his staff player, sometimes need to come up with reasons why he's still there, instead of having gone out and done the thing, whatever the thing is. He's still a literary device -- just a very well fleshed out one.

@JinShei Yes. My point is, Downey acts as an NPC. Go minigolfing, drinking, sexing, whatever, just for the fun and RP pleasure of it, and he's crossed way out of that territory.

Someone wrote, about 50 pages previous, that you need to decide whether you're wearing your GM cap or your player cap. That's a good way of putting it. Crossing that line is a good way to get me to run away screaming, at least, because an admin who doesn't recognise that boundary probably fails at other boundaries too.

@Derp I'm a little pressed there, because I have in fact never read the Dresden Files and don't know the character.

I am leaning towards Mac the generic Barkeep of, uh, the Hamburg Files instead, can be both. He may be an NPC who only really interacts for plot reasons. He could also be a staff PC who regularly strikes up chats with players for no particular reason, has an encouraging word for everyone, and cheap beer on Wednesdays.

What he's not, though, is a PC who suddenly decides to sell his bar, become a travelling salesman, and marry Agnes the player character.

I am still reading through this rather interesting discussion, but I think my take on the original question goes something like...

Yes, there is a difference. An NPC is a plot driver. No one owns him but the story. He is a literary device that staff uses as a sock puppet to propel the story onwards. He is not the antagonist, we don't get inside his head, we don't get to know him intimately (in either meaning of the word).

When we do -- he stops being an NPC. He may become a staff PC, someone who interacts part as a character, part as a plot driver -- a favoured barkeep, gossip, or other person whose function is to info dump on the real characters, through his interactions. This is fine.

The instant he starts having an agenda of his own, roleplay-wise, he is a full PC and should be treated like one.

As an example,

The Guild Master of the Assassins' Guild having tea with my Assassin character translates to a politely worded, stiff upper lip shitstorm coming my way. This is the action of an NPC, responding to my character's actions the day before.

Said Guild Master deciding that since we're collegues, we should sit down for a game of whist afterwards, during which he'll more or less accidentally divulge various information I may need. Now we're crossing into staff PC territory, and the person playing the staff PC needs to keep their mind very straight about what they're going for here, or we end up in --

Said Guild Master deciding we're best friends and by the way, let's go have sex. Definitely, decidedly in PC territory. So far in, there is no return.

... And now I'm going to go wash my eyes in bleach because really, Lord Downey is 55 years old and keeps two very large dogs in his bedroom and I took this example to somewhere my mind is now screaming to get away from.

@Ganymede Staff should limit their characters so that they avoid running the risk of appearing like the game is all about them. If you want to be a lead character, don't apply for staff. But conversely, there's lots of fun to be had in being on the sidelines of plots, throwing in red herrings, mucking things up, and just generally being part of the world. I'd gladly give up being a lead character, but not the rest.

Of course, I'm no longer staff anywhere, so now I get the best of all the worlds.