Posts made by Lisse24

@RnMissionRun said in RL Anger:

Here where I live (rural Southern MD), the cops will give you a ticket for standing in the divider. You're only supposed to cross at a crosswalk, but you can get away with crossing anywhere as long as you can get across the street in one go. This means no standing in the center turning lane, the median, etc. waiting for the other lanes to clear.

Yeah. This is a different situation than that which is usually the right thing. The divided area has a cross walk going to it and a cross walk leading from it. The crosswalks in either direction actually both have their own signal light on the divider, but this particular spot doesn't have a signal light at all. Basically, the entire purpose of the divider is to give people a place to stop and pause while crossing the street because someone decided that putting a six-line road in one of the most pedestrian-heavy places in the country was a good idea.

Still, even if that wasn't the case? Even if I would have been ticketed for standing there? I'd rather pay a ticket than be dead or in the hospital.

@Ganymede said in RL Anger:

@Insomnia said in RL Anger:

Dear student who just moved to town for university. It appears you have come from a town that doesn't have crosswalks, so you don't know how to use them, so let me clue you in; You have the right of way in them, not 10 feet away from them when you are wearing black in the rain and walk right past it anyway.

I had a case where a man on a motorized wheelchair attempted to cross five lanes of traffic in the rain at night outside of a crosswalk. He crossed four of the five lanes, where vehicles had stopped for him, but in the last lane the motorist could not see him and killed him when she drove at the speed limit through her right-of-way.

There was a crosswalk forty feet away.

His estate sued the motorist, but the motorist won because it is illegal to cross such a road outside of a crosswalk. Furthermore, comparative negligence so substantially outweighed his argument that the motorist was granted summary judgment.

His estate was awarded zero damages.

Go to fucking crosswalks, people, for fuck's sake.

Where I used to live, to walk home from Metro I'd have to cross a 6 lane road, with a protected divide in the middle. Although there was a crosswalk, cars didn't have a light or a stop sign because it wasn't a full intersection. So, you wait until the lanes going west cleared, crossed to the center divide, and then wait until the lanes going east cleared before crossing.

SO MANY TIMES, someone trying to be "nice" would attempt to yield to me when I was standing in that protected center divide and would not understand when I refused to cross. But this is the reason why. In broad daylight, I couldn't see all three lanes and I knew for certain that the car that would come barreling down that third lane wouldn't be able to see me, and I like living, OK? Plus, it was a 30 second wait before traffic would either clear, or be at a standstill because of the light a block up and I could cross safely.

I'm fond of chai tea, black instead of with cream, and even though it's not a popular choice, lemon tea is also yummy to me, esp. if I add a dollop of sweetener.

@Auspice
Sounds like you ran into some of these guys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Mission_Society_Church_of_God

They didn't even begin to scratch the surface of crazy that they have going on.

@Kireek If they thought you were into every little status boost and not into plot it's because that's the vibe you are giving out. In this thread, I've heard the following things mentioned:

• Admitted to throwing a fit about another character's stats,
• Being enthusiastic enough about recruiting people to your house that it might be offputting (perhaps because it was viewed as being coercive?)
• Complaining about a change made to code because it disadvantaged you, even though the game was in alpha.
• Speaking with others about the support system, with the intent of getting more support requests in for your character - an obvious attempt to maximize a system-in-work for your chars benefit.
• Admitting to "trying to further our faction to the best of our abilities."
• You referring to sides

None of this in isolation is worrying or bad, but when you put it all together, you do get the image of a competitive player going for every last point. Given that the game is still in alpha, and that systems are still in the testing phase and that many systems are designed to be voluntary, surely you can see how you would give the impression that you did?

@Lotherio said in Historical MU*s:

I'd venture to say most staff who offer things to do suffer from the same blow out of no fun when half the players always argue with them on when certain armor and tech came about and complaining about when they should be able to get it.

This is sort of turning 'there is nothing to do' on me, I can think of a million things to do and have fun doing them. I'm sort of moving to defense of me saying I'd like to play in a Danelaw game.

I think any game that is depending on staff to create all the Things to Do is ultimately going to fail. I just haven't seen a sustainable model for that - unless you count Fallcoast/TR, which is its own beast.

This might be my own personal bias coming out, but the games that I have enjoyed the most and found the most RP on were games that provided systems and means whose sole purpose was to provide players with reasons to interact with each other and give them something to do.

@Cupcake

I have the theme to a Roaring 20's style vamp game sketched out, but I couldn't get the 0-to-MU instructions to work, and since there are other vamp games in the works, I tabled it.

@il-volpe said in Fanbase entitlement:

In the context of games and fandom the discussion should probably just be about reasonable expectations. Obviously we're not entitled to artists' works. Yet, while George R. R. Martin is not your bitch, it's also a reasonable expectation to figure a big-name professional writer will produce a novel every year or two; the publishing industry expects it too. (Though considering Martin's history, maybe it's not reasonable to expect that of him.) If I invite you to dinner and give you nothing but a saltine smeared with a small amount of rancid butter, I have not denied you an entitlement, but I have violated your reasonable expectation of a decent meal, and I am being a dick. When artists grossly jump the shark on a series, it's probably dickish. When MU-runners shut new players out of the game or treat them with brazen hostility or deny their characters agency, it's dickish, even though nobody's entitled to a satisfying MU.

Right, and I think that the next question that follows is how players who feel entitled to something (a novel published in a reasonable time frame, a game with a staff that treats all players warmly, etc.) should react when these expectations, both reasonable are met. I think the reason that entitlement gets a bad rap is that instead of reacting to the fact that their expectations were not met in a reasonable manner, many people, fans especially, throw temper tantrums.

In some cases, this may be the reasonable response (see the game not treating players fairly), in some cases this may not be (waiting several years for the next book in a series to be published).

I am exceedingly sorry that I tiny little comment that I made and intended as a throwaway derailed this thread so much

@tragedyjones has the right of it. It also was a big feature on RfK.

@ILuvGrumpyCat said in Interest Check: Single Sphere VtR Game:

As for RtK.....there is a lot of ooc paperwork required there, and that can be fun for some people, not always fun for others. But what I find doesn't work there more than anything else is the lack of accountability there seems to be for anyone's actions unless they make a public post. Then it just gets pulled down. So maybe just....remember to not pull down all the posts, all the time,

Personally, I'm dying to get out of Northern New England. Also, if we could play down the Cthulu stuff that I have no interest and seems to be TheThing everywhere? 'K thnx.

@surreality said in How Many Alts Would An Alt User Alt If An Alt User Could Use Alts:

On a game like TR or FC? Not so much.

I'm not so sure. I've tried playing on TR and FC several times and like a puppy after a bone, I've just recently created a new alt there. Maybe this time, the game will stick, but in the past, I've always found it difficult to get established and invested there. One of the main reasons why is that the character base is shifting sand.

There's so much turnover in PCs that I can't find my character's 'core group'. Since, IMHO, the #1 advantage that a MU has over other forms of RP is that it allows the player to focus on interpersonal relationships, when a policy on a game makes that more difficult, the power behind the game is somewhat lessened.

I just want to make sure that I've said explicitly, and what I've heard most other people on this thread who are arguing for restrictive alt policies say, is that on a personal level, I find games with restrictive alt policies to be more engaging and more likely to lead to long-term play on my part, but I also realize that not everyone feels the same way that I do. They are not wrong and certainly there should be games that appeal to people who like playing a variety of different concepts in a single setting.

However, at the moment, the types of games being offered lean to that latter type of person, so when I see a game being developed that appeals to me, I think it's fine and right that someone should point out that such a policy is desired and wanted by a portion of the community, especially because you know the people who dislike the policy will be vocal about wanting it removed.

@Caryatid I'm much in the same spot. I have an outline for a single sphere vamp game that I'd love to run. I have a wonderfully deep theme and setting, and I have some good settings. But, like you, I don't have the code to pull it off.

That being said, if you get some code for this, I will be there in a sec to help.

@Arkandel said in How Many Alts Would An Alt User Alt If An Alt User Could Use Alts:

The truth is this is a pick-your-own-poison proposition. Either you hire more staff so they can run plot, but then you get an inflated staff roster with all which that entails, or you try to keep it trimmed to work with a tightly-knit team and end up burning out to a crisp or relying on player STs to do these things.

I struggled with how to put everything I wanted to say, and kept falling short. So I'll leave it at the fact that I believe you can generate more RP with less ST effort if you move away from +events and big scenes as your primary mode of driving plot, and so I'm not sure that this really is an accurate choice.

*edited to correct a spelling mistake.

@surreality said in What themes and subjects do you look for in a game?:

• Lack of time to ICly process events in personal RP or lack of necessary staff-supported followup on the consequences of plots or other major game action. I'm not looking for a roller coaster; if there are breath-taking highs and stomach-dropping lows, I want the characters to have time to fully experience them, think about them, and figure out how these events actually are somehow relevant (or not) to them in their lives -- not immediately skip ahead to the next high or low as though these things have zero impact whatsoever. If they have no impact, what's the damn point, anyway?

I'm really glad that you brought this up, because I think it's something that's often overlooked. I think a lot of people think that more plot is better, but when I step back and think about it, I really only have time for one big plot and maybe a side plot or two. This is mainly because I want to RP about what's going on.

For this reason, I'm really not a big fan of +events, because I feel as if people show up to do something in that moment, but the events are unconnected to anything that comes before and seldom come with any incentive to tie them into what your character is doing on a broader level. I'm not saying that they can't be, but that I seldom see them done in that way.

Like other players have said, I don't look at subjects so much as I look at other areas of the game. Specifically, I look for a game where I think it will be easy for me to find spur-of-the-moment RP while I'm ramping my character up and I look for signs that this will lead to character building RP in the future.

I know this is oversimplified, but for the sake of argument, lets divide Plot into ST driven plot and environment driven plot, where ST driven plot encompasses things like +events and investigation jobs and such, and environment driven plots are situations and conflicts that arise naturally from the game setting and mechanics. While I really enjoy being involved in ST driven plots, in my experience it's the environment driven plots that keep people occupied on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis, which is what keeps them logging in and active.

To sum all of this up: I look for a game where there is something to do even when there may be a lull in the plot or admins may be busy.

As to what I avoid? Generally, I avoid superhero and scifi places, just because their themes don't really call to me.

@Arkandel

I've also never been able to mentally support more than one active PC on a game, and though I have PCs on many games, I'm usually only focused on one at a time, and letting my others idle. So here is why I like a restrictive alt-policy: It means that the players I see on the grid are as invested in their characters as I am in mine. I think it cuts down on having alts idle away in bedrooms and apartments because people who want RP only have one char to do it in. It cuts down on conflicts where a PC with one char is ducking me because they want to play with me on another alt. It stops PC-churn, because people are less likely to create a neat concept just because when they know they'll have to give up on their other concept.

Like Theno, I've seen games start with a restrictive alt policy and then have players start to ask for more alts. In my experience and perception, this happens when there are other, underlying reasons causing a games player base to flag and increasing alt limits is often seen as a panacea, under the reasoning if there are more charbits on grid then surely, RP must follow. It's also an easy fix to make, and typically much easier than finding underlying causes of disengagement and directing a fix at them.

I think that RfK's solution that @Ganymede brought up is a good one for people who need more than one scene going on to focus, but I think that it's also important to remember that part of the reason redshirts are needed there is because some people have too much RP going on, which is often opposite of what you see happening when people start clamoring to up the alt limit.

For the record, when I speak of a restrictive alt limit, I don't necessarily mean a 1-alt limit. I would count this as any game with a limit of three or under. I generally do not play games that allow higher limits than that, not because I haven't tried, but because when I do play those games, I find it hard to find and form relationships and difficult to find random RP. Since I rarely join a game with a group, if I can't have my char wander the grid and find RP, it's difficult for me to integrate into the game as a whole.

@Thenomain said in Fallen World MUX!:

And yet, on every WoD game I've seen open for more than six months, there is a push for more alts. Yes, even the single-sphere games, what few of them have existed.

Kingsmouth - Despite what you may think about some of their other issues, they've maintained a one-alt policy and that's something that works well for them and breeds activity.

I've been playing with the idea of having players either identify themselves as experienced, ready to go, or as new players wanting help, the first time they connect.

The idea being if they identify themselves as wanting help, a message would emit to connected staff and players who are interested in helping newbies so that they know to reach out to the player and make sure that they get help.

I was wondering if anyone had access to a tutorial on what to do once you get the code installed in your game?

I believe that I have Volund's PennMush code installed correctly, but I can't seem to do much of anything or use any of the systems. I'm sure the issue is small and silly, but I lack the knowledge to go about troubleshooting. I'd also appreciate any personal help if anyone is willing to give it.