Best posts made by Lisse24

For me, I would look at four areas in order to make this decision:

1. Is it widely adopted and/or generally expected on a game? (jobs/scheduling events)
2. Is it non-specific and/or general? (dream RP)
3. Do I intend to modify the concept/system to fit my own intentions? (combat systems, etc.)
4. Has the original creator put it up for public use? (lots of code)

If you can answer yes to at least one of those questions, I'd say go for it. Notice that #3 is talking about concepts and not code. In general, I think that even if you're gonna modify the code, if it's not freely or widely available, you should probably talk to the original creator and give them a heads up.

@Auspice
For some reason, years ago, I got into the habit of hitting +where when I'm bored. It makes cleaning logs a pain.

@Gingerlily said in Politics etc.:

The trick of it seems to be finding a system that isn't too cumbersome/doesn't feel like a grind, and yet also fosters all of those things people seemed to love so much. Balance etc, but it's not yet clear to me where that balance lies.

Yeah, this is where I think most games fall on their head. They make their systems far too fiddly and opaque, and because of that, those systems will always favor the people who are online more often and like their minigames, rather than the RPer. (I'm looking at you, Arx's +tasks).

All you really need is a way to restrict actions (which is responsive to staff availability). The variations on hours/times has been brought up. I've advocated before for a much simpler system, one where each character gets 1 action per time period, which can be used offensively or defensively, or can be split up into two smaller 'support' actions.
This should be paired with a way to collect and call-in favors, and with limited resources providing a reason why characters/factions need to interact.

@Tinuviel @Misadventure

What you could do, is allow PCs to designate another PC as a 'rival' and then give them bonus XP when they are in conflict with each other. This can be paired with small in-game nudges to rp with their rivals, and given public kudos to a pair of players who are really taking advantage of the system.

@Ghost said in PC antagonism done right:

IMO, many antagonist MU players play it like a trope. They put on a goatee and an eyepatch, say ya cunts! a lot, and antagonize other characters, but still assume this weird stance that they shouldn't suffer any ICC for their behavior unless it's a consequence they approve of. Players of antagonist characters tend to get upset when socially or politically they become uninvited, avoided, etc.

I disagree with your basic premise that people need to 'play an antagonist.' I think in many games factions are in natural conflict with each other. Players from opposing factions can easily play the antagonist for each other while both being the 'good guy' in their own mind. The role of staff should be to reinforce this.

@Thenomain said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@Seraphim73

If physical situations can end a character, why not social situations? Is it different if the cut comes from a knife or a tongue?

Because in physical situations, losing a character can be chalked up to bad roles. A few more successes on a defense and you could have gotten out of it! In a social situation, because we're unwilling to let the dice stand alone and because of the myriad of ways to approach the social situation, if you lose it's because of your choices. And if the opposing character has more sway then you and you don't really have a choice? It stings all the more.

In fact, I have lost a character in a social/political situation, and when it was over, a staffer sat me down and told me that it was because I RPed wrong, and seemed to hint that if I had just worded one part of one pose differently everything would have gone differently. I still count that as the worst player-staff interaction that I have ever had.

All that being said, can we spin this discussion off into another thread, because I definitely have thoughts on how to make social combat meaningful. Mainly, I think CoD is on the right track with conditions. You get through a chars defense, and you get to slap a condition on them. That condition gives them a certain penalty/bonus/effect for a significant amount of time, but can also be resolved by playing into the initiating characters hand.

In that situation, no one is robbed of their choice or their autonomy, because social defenses have to be broken before the condition is set, it's unlikely that your character can be overwhelmed/co-opted in a single scene. However, at the same time, ignoring my character's dice and my character's roll is not something that is acceptable.

@Ominous said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Recently I have been wondering if making the social sphere work like the physical sphere is ineffective. Instead of having social combat, social stats should give access to more resources that can be used to convince others to work with them. In Arx's case, economic, social, and military resources and more support points to be used for tasks would be these resources.

This might work. In general, I think Arx needs to do a bit more work to involve social characters more. I know some of that is due to the player base choosing to ignore possible diplomatic solutions to problems in Plot, however it does feel that unless you mix your social skills with investigative/intellectual skills or occult/supernatural skills, you don't really have a meaningful way to contribute.

@Pyrephox said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

That said, the XP situation is crazy. I mean, that's been known (and mentioned, even in this thread, I think) for months. Some people regularly get 30/40+ XP a week, and maximize it with use of the very generous teaching system, and I know several characters with 5+ skills at 5 (the highest you can go without being actively supernatural in ability) and 3+ stats at 5.

I'd be lying if I said that this perception and my own perception that I just didn't have the time/desire to keep up, wasn't a major factor in my leaving. It's really disheartening to log in and, week after week, see people getting massive XP gains, while knowing that I'll never be able to do that.

I'm getting caught up on Orange is the New Black and it's killing me. Every episode is top notch. The best season ever.

@roz said in Earning stuff:

The problem is that bad social RP can end up without any purpose, without any point. You never manage to find something interesting in it anywhere. And when people have limited time to RP, they may not want to risk ending up in a total dud of a scene, even if there's also the possibility that they'll get something brilliant.

This. This is the problem that needs to be solved. I agree with everyone that agrees that social RP is important - nay it's essential. It's a key element of all good writing, book, movie, tv show, or otherwise, but too often, when we try to add it into games, we spend multiple scenes trying to figure out what we should be talking about or how our characters should relate.
I think we need to do a better job of finding ways to make random/social RP focused and meaningful from the outset.

Thanks all - that will probably be my next step.

@Arkandel said in What locations do you want to RP in?:

The only time grid is important is when a game is already very well populated as then the chances of running into people randomly are vastly increased; in those cases yes, you want to encourage your players to be out and about instead of stuck into inaccessible RP rooms.

In fact I would even claim in smaller games it's often an undesired trait to be findable. When there are 8 people online stalking +where looking for RP and you start a small meeting at a bar then very often you end up with a gargantuan scene as everyone flocks there; in a larger game things scale up more smoothly (unless they don't, such as for public PrPs, but that's a different story).

I feel like this is important. I find the games that I get most invested in are the ones where I can hop on grid and find RP quickly and easily. However, in the vast majority of games, people don't use the grid/being IC as a tool for finding RP, instead electing to sit in the OOC Room. In fact, I am doing this right now.

I have mixed feelings about OOC rooms, but I think they key here is to make sure the grid is someplace that is usable and is where people are encouraged to be, either through carrots or sticks or whatever other forms of player manipulation you wanna use.

@Tyche
Personally, I loved the episode, but as I said elsewhere ... Jon Snow is that annoying MU character who has a leadership position, but still hogs the spotlight in all the PRPs.

Updated again.

The last two WoD games I played both had plots, and both fell into the same pattern described above. Plot is a good beginning, more important is making sure players can connect to that plot, and that there's enough plot to keep wheels spinning, without falling into the "Supernatural" trap of constantly needing bigger and badder as you cycle through various ways to stave off the end of the world.

@Thenomain said in What locations do you want to RP in?:

@surreality said in What locations do you want to RP in?:

@Thenomain Wouldn't this be supremely easy? Like, have a 'is hangout' attribute on the room parent and thus all other rooms? Default to 0 for no, 1 for general hangout, <name of group> for 'yes, but for <name of group> only'.

Sure it's very easy to do, but making it something that people would use is not.

People don't use +hangouts because it doesn't tell them anything that +where doesn't also tell them. In fact, in many cases, +where is more informative.

When I use a command like +hangouts or +where, I'm looking for the following things:

• Who's on right now?
• Of the people who are on, are any of them available for RP?
• Of the people who are on and available for RP, do I want to RP with them?
• Are there any ongoing scenes I can join?
• Are there any ongoing scenes I want to join?

+hangouts really only answers question #4, and provides some information helpful to question #5 when it lists the names of people in that hangout. +Where typically helps people answer all 5, even if it does so poorly, and so I don't see people ever using +hangouts more than they already do, with the exception being on very large games where +where sometimes becomes unwieldy.

@Arkandel Right. I'm entertained and that's all that matters. I burst into applause, as I was sitting by myself, alone in my house, several times this past week, and that's good.

Is there some BS? Sure. But it's nowhere near, say, Walking Dead's level of BS, so I'm fine with it.

Added Natalie, my mortal over at SFMux. She's rich, paranoid, and probably knows too much. It'll be a great combination, really!

@Arkandel said in City of Shadows:

@Lisse24 However staff in this game have expressed the desire to not change systems and introduce HRs as much as possible.

As for XP starvation that, too, has its side-effects which most of its supporting arguments don't consider. It is an important factor for players driving their activity without waiting for months for the next raise, and a carrot incentivizing character participation in plot.

In other words it's not an improvement to go from "Renown is artificially slowed to a near halt" to "everything is slowed down to a near halt". People, well, like buying toys.

I think there's a vast difference between XP starvation and slow XP. Also, if the ONLY thing characters are striving for in your game is XP, then you probably don't have enough for them to do. This is where the territory system Gany's working on comes in. Give people something to create and build and use that isn't XP.

I mean, sure, that's a new system, but I'm not sure you need to house-rule anything existing thing to make it work.

I'll admit, I've only skimmed this thread.

I like the idea of players being able to indicate their comfortableness with certain possibilities in a non-confrontational manner.

Like others, I'm unsure about how the light system would be implemented on and used in a MU setting. I can very easily see that being one of those things things that gets coded, people use for a while, and then forget about and it sits quiet and forlorn in a corner. I do think that it'd probably get more use in games with a lot of PRPs/STed events though, so maybe worth consideration there?

I also have seen RP-prefs used other places and generally think it's a good thing to have. Although, I wonder if it's too black and white. As an example, I once told another player, "I don't generally TS and would prefer to FTB," which they interpreted as nothing even remotely sexual ever. I wonder if it might be better to handle this like movie ratings? Everyone knows generally what to expect in a movie. If I say my character prefers a PG-13 level of abuse, and an R level of sexuality, that might give people a better idea of when it's time to FTB, or if they're better off avoiding violence altogether with that G-rated char.

@WTFE said in RL Anger:

You don't have to apologize for the actions of others. I'm just explaining to you why it is that Christians have such a bad name among non-Christians these days. Weirdly enough, I don't actually hate Christians (and I tend to tear capital-A Atheists a new asshole when they're being obnoxious about their anti-Christian rants). But boy HOWDY am I gun-shy around a newly introduced one until I figure out where they stand on things.

And, inevitably, that is going to hurt some who don't deserve it.

The rift between the Christian community--especially its more vocal and "conservative" element (although it baffles me to this day what they think they're "conserving" with their foolishness!)--and the non-Christian community will take time and effort to close. And, while this may seem unfair (and could very well be), it will be the Christians taking the bulk of the effort for this wound to heal.

I think we're completely on the same page with this. Christians have definitely dug a hole for themselves, not because I think the conservative, fundamentalist elements are the majority of Christians, but we certainly were silent and let them spread their lies because they were our 'brothers.'

I think a lot of Christians, like me, realize that we need to take the first steps, and I know you don't see it, but there is a lot of good work being done. Yes, Rob Bell was shunned by the Evangelical community for a bit when he first made a stand, but they are slowly opening up and listening to him, as they are with the Gungors and people like Mike McHargue. It's encouraging that when I go to Goodreads and look at Popular Christian nonfiction, among the Lewis, Tozer, and Piper, there's also Don Miller. It helps that more theologically orthodox voices like Phil Vischer (the VeggieTales guy) and the people from Relevant and many Christian intellectuals are pointing to these voices and saying, "We need to do something."

So yes, we do hear you and we are listening, it may just not be reflected in the media that you're seeing yet.

Eh, I like 1E, just sayin. I mean, CoD has some cool stuff going with conditions and all, but I like 1E.