Best posts made by Lithium

@ortallus Welcome to MSB, where no topic stays on topic forever. It will derail and either get back on track, or stay derailed, either way gotten good discussion out of the topic.

@Thenomain I promise you Theno, we do get pissed off at being lumped into generalizations as well, but that is why /I/ do not allow myself to be lumped into them emotionally.

Nobody tells me who I am anymore, I do that, because if I do not then I am /allowing/ others to have power over me. So if someone tries to use a generalization against me I just roll my eyes and move on.

Honestly that's how I feel, even if it's not something I can actually /do/ since the legal system will always have power over me, etc.

Also: @Arkandel it is interesting you think I am just 'reciting' talking points, rather than explaining how something feels. Just like considering the level of abuse thrown around to get pissy about "Reading Comprehension 101" after all of the /crap/ leveled around in this thread just shows that you seem to be unwilling to actually /listen/ to what is being written.

To respond to a small little snarky comment rather than the issue at hand is a pure deflection. To attempt to make it as if I am uncivilized and am therefor a barrier to discussion is both insulting and a deflection.

I wasn't implying people can't understand anything at all, quite the opposite as a matter of fact, that's what made it seem disingenuous to me.

The only thing standing in the way of civilized conversation on the topic, which you have now apparently abandoned as unworthy of your time, is the fact that you (and others) are not really conversing at this point. You're being defensive, deflective, and insulting.

If I am alienating anyone, it's because those who feel alienated might not be comfortable discussing hard issues that maybe they don't know how to fix, or are unwilling to fix.

It's /really/ easy to not care about something that, as you have said, you have never seen after all.

It's how politicians get away with War so easily. Public sentiment might change when it happened in /their/ living room.

@ghost Level based systems can work in MU format, they just require either A) Very active staff, or B) An easy path for people to run 'Adventures' so there can be character advancement outside of staff run plots.

@Thenomain That kid was perfect. I also loved what they did with 'Aunt' May, because I never understood why a teenagers aunt was a geriatric...

People who die on the 'Player Agency' hill will not be happy with any sort of social combat system.

That's not to say anyone here is doing that, but there comes a point when: You are playing a game, the game is going to take you out of your comfort zone eventually (Sooner in some game systems), and if it's so far out of your comfort zone, that you have to try and make rules not apply then... maybe it's you, not the system.

(Note: The you is a general nebulous you, not directed at anyone specific)

@Arkandel You own a cat. You have given yourself over to the lordship of the furry kind. You shall garner no sympathy since you have /chosen/ to be /enslaved/ by a feline.

The fault is all yours.

@faraday @The-Sands

Sorry. I snapped. I'd been up a long time and needed sleep and was just frustrated.

Why because I don't see eye to eye on this. I probably never will. There is no happy middle ground for me.

The whole idea of player agency is something I don't understand.

The whole point of an RPG for me, is to not be in control of everything, it is to play out a life different from my own. I don't want to rail road a character, I want to give the character a starting point and then let them go and be free to experience /their/ lives.

We're not writing a book here. We really aren't. We're playing a game in a medium that involves writing, not writing a book and using dice to determine the outcome.

/NOBODY/ on this planet is one hundred percent consistent, one hundred percent of the time. Hell not even software.

That is my problem with this whole 'Player Agency' bit.

Also, no, I am not asking for social rolls to be like bullets, and I am /tired/ of that bullshit that the 'player agency' people are putting forth.

I just want social characters to be able to influence people socially, because, that's the point.

I just want everyone to play by the same fucking rules and quit trying to cheat.

(ETA) Now if a game wanted to give social stats a price break, both in chargen and in xp, and say they only functioned as guidelines against PC's but functioned fully against NPC's I'd be fine with that. Because that's playing by the rules of that game. I'm a coder, I like rules being followed. Without rules we have Anarchy.

So this just happened as I am at work as I type this. It's not really retail but my night job is as a cashier at an airport parking lot. So a lady comes in and she pulls so far away from the booth that I sit in that I /cannot/ reach her parking ticket while leaning out the window because she is using her /right fucking hand/ while driving, and she won't switch the ticket to the left hand so she isn't reaching across her whole body to try and hand me this thing.

So I ask her to use her left hand and she refuses. I get out of the booth, walk around, go to take the ticket and she refuses to let go. I almost had to rip it out of her hand. I walk back into the booth and run the ticket. She does the SAME FUCKING THING with her credit card. So when she refuses to let go of her credit card I return to my booth and just sit there.

I've got all night really.

Finally she asks why I won't take her credit card and I am like: Because you didn't let go of it.

So she pulls out some cash, finally uses her left hand, and then refuses to let go until after my fingers have slipped off the money and it hits the ground, wind blowing it all over the place.

So I have to collect the fucking money and by this time there's 7 cars behind her now watching me do this. Finally things get taken care of and the next car comes through with this cute girl driving and she asks:

Want me to run her off the road for you?

I so desperately wanted to say yes.

Hell I remember back in the day on some WoD games where all the sudden a person would be ambushed, and miraculously people who were all the way across town at the time it happened showed up!

Travel times are important, not only to prevent OOC BS in some cases, but also for a level of immersion depending on the setting.

As for MMO's, they /used/ to have travel time, but there is so many ways around it now it's not even a thing anymore on most games.

Which is bad.

Been watching Season 2 of Dark Matter, god I love that show.

@prototart I guess it comes down to what you are. I am a coder. Code is relatively easy. I may struggle with something unusual, but, I can usually figure it out and I enjoy coding. It is a fun thought exercise to me because I am not a psychocoder yet who would get bored with it.

Writing is also fun, but, detail is /super/ important, so that everyone has the best information for the setting/theme/rules. In my opinion it's more important than code. So it takes longer for me.

@rizbunz Given that it is based on a video game, and the easiest PrP's that are ran are combat PrP's, I would say you might want to put a focus on making sure that is done.

Story is great and all, but RP without purpose other than just RP can often times be taken as worthless like bar RP often is.

@goldfish said in What is your turning point?:

TS pressure. I don't mind TS at all. I'm DTF. It's not something I seek out at all but under the right IC circumstances and with OOC communication, I'll go all night bay-bee. But when I was playing women, I always had this problem. You can almost feel the ickiness through the screen as they are pushing me in a way I am not comfortable. And given my usual laid back nature, I make it pretty clear when I don't wanna. If you push me? Consider yourself cut off. I don't have this problem playing men. Hrm.

Welcome to every day of our lives.

I don't want to know kinks. I do however want to know /limits/ and /squicks/ because I don't want to ruin what could be a fun RP for someone.

This hobby is mutually creative, mutually constructive, and should be mutually enjoyable.

In that respect I /want/ to know what the other player doesn't like. What terminology. What acts. What anything so that everyone can have the most fun as possible.

Of course the characters are /still/ the characters and will like what /they/ like, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it and lay down some boundaries.

@Derp That's because the sheep can't believe that a staffer could be impartial towards themselves.

I treat my PC's as NPC's if I am running a pack scene they are in. Even if I am pack leader I will say the Beta has command this time, so I can ICly test the Beta's worthyness of being beta for example, and to let someone else have a go at leader RP even if I am online. It creates stories for people but...

The Moaning Masses(tm) have zero trust for staffers these days, we can supposedly be impartial only when we ourselves are not involved at all. Even if all dice rolls are visible to all, so they can see everything, they will still claim that the staffer cheated and if they can't even trust STAFF how the hell are they going to trust their fellow players?

They can't, and this is a major reason why inertia brings games down imho.

@Sunny Every buffy game I've seen has devolved to horribleness just the way Anita Blake games do.

Rock paper scissors is inherently flawed as a metric of random outcome because it can be manipulated both by subterfuge and by pattern knowledge.

The basics is that LARP was designed around the fact that dice are a bitch to roll in the park in the middle of the night.

We don't have that problem in a MU*, dice are right there, so why not use them?

The biggest problem honestly comes from typing speed. That's not going to change based on what system you use, people will still have to type out their actions, and reactions, and on table-top we simply roll the dice, do a quick description of how we hit/got hit, and then move on. In LARP we don't take 5 to 10 minutes describing the results of our actions either.

What it comes down to is the medium we're using, so we come up with work arounds that work or don't work based largely on personal opinion.

Unless you're dealing with coded combat, like MUD level coded combat (Some MOO's also reach this level, and possibly other games I do not know about) then combat resolution is going to take a lot longer than it does in table top, or larp.

So in the end: Ruleset doesn't really matter in the long run so long as everyone understands the rules because it's waiting for people to pose that's slowing things down more than anything else.

I've experimented with a few different methods over the decades, and the one I found I liked the most (Just my opinion) was when running a scene I had everyone do their dice actions /without posing/ and then at the end of the round everyone did a pose of their action/reaction. That way people could prep their pose after their turn while waiting for the dice resolutions and it went much quicker.

Not a perfect solution, but by far the best I've discovered for our hobby.

Just my opinion.

All I care about, is that someone gives me something to roleplay with.

Pose length doesn't matter, so long as the person is engaged in the scene and furthering RP.

Give me something to play off of and I am good. In the right situation someone shaking their head, or making a noncommital(sic) sound can still further RP.

But...

People can write huge poses that add nothing. They can write small poses that add nothing.

Both of these are equally frustrating.

I'm more inclined to play a space game than a WoD game honestly. I know there are others. Sure WoD gets a lot of traction conversation wise but there were other games that got a lot of traction. The 100 got a lot of traction until it imploded, there's the BSG game, ARX, etc.

There's lots of desire for not WoD... please god not another WoD game lol.

Make what you like, make it good, get good involved staff, run things, it'll grow.

Make /your/ game. You won't be happy if you have to change it from what you want and this will increase your burnout.

People who like your game will stay and play. People who don't will leave. Losing a player is not always a 'Bad Thing(tm)'. Sometimes it is a good thing.

Make sure you have enough code in place to support the bare minimums of what you will need. There's a lot of things that can be added after the fact, or tweaked.

Make sure all your policies are simple and laid out, /enforce them evenly/.

Delegate.

I can't say this enough. You cannot be awake 24/7. You cannot be guiding everyone on the game 24/7. You have to be able to step back and just let the game roll on it's own sometimes. Unlike a tabletop game once you open the doors there's a lot of control you lose, so don't try to run it like a Table Top game.

Learn when to say No. Do not be afraid to say No. A MU is a dictatorship, and you have to be a benevolent one for your game to flourish.

Benevolent doesn't mean everybody will love you, but the game you built will if you're true to it.