Best posts made by lordbelh

@Kestrel

Something to keep in mind is if you're new to Mushes and you tell people you're new to Mushes, people will read into that. And many will try to be helpful (or busybody or plain manipulative) and tell you what is right and wrong, but that will most likely be based on their personal preferences and then inflated into ubiquity. As anyone who has traveled to different countries might tell you, you'll get as much failadvise as real advise.

I'm now on my 5th year of Mushing, and damn time has flown. I've never been on a Mud, but I have roleplayed on different mediums that have put different weight on what I think are the two main axes: Are you playing the Game or are you writing a satisfying Story (a very unfocused, bad, and even when its not horrible still in badly need of massive editing, story)?

Different Mushes put different emphasis of what should matter most, thus growing different cultures in their playerbases over time, then die and those players go out in the world and spread those culture spores to new places. Clashes of culture and expectation happen, leaving a hodge-podge in its wake. I can tell you that in 5 years I've still not come across a whole lot of hard rules as to what's okay or not, only a lot of often-conflicting personal opinions. Some exceptions are:

Malicious or ridiculing metaposing will get people bitching like crazy, because its taken (and often meant to be) a passive-aggressive critique of characters and players they feel helpless to respond to. Conversely because a lot of Mushe(r)(s) weigh heavily towards story/character development they're happy to metapose quite a lot to fill in that story as the play happens. A personal favorite of mine is self ironic meta posing that pokes fun at one's own character.

Entering private grid spaces uninvited. While some people will frown at you for crashing any public space too, I say fuck them and do it without blinking an eye. Also there's +hangouts on most games to add the facilitating of spontaneous rp.

Personally I really dislike too much OOC communication, especially when it (and it often does) lends itself towards OOC manipulation of events and layering pressures and expectations of what should happen, for fishing for ways to avoid even slightly unfavorable consequences. But a lot of players have a vastly different opinion of me on it, believing OOC communication to be the key to happy funtimes. My solution has just been to do it my way, deal with the occasional (and there's never been much of it) fallout with a shrug and a smile. (ETA: Or a cyber screaming match. WHATEVER WORKS.)

@Lotherio said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

Wouldn't it save this person 20 minutes of time of going to a scene, waiting for a couple poses to see what's going on, pose to see if anyone bites and not getting any reaction if they would of just paged the group in public to see if there was room for another.

Sure. And if you can't tolerate being ignored IC by the people whose scene you entered without asking if the scene lent itself to easy inclusion, you really shouldn't have joined it without asking in the first place.

And waiting for a round of posts/the scene set isn't so much about politeness (though it is that as well) as it is a question of good roleplay. You cannot expect to be able to maintain scene integrity if you don't know what the fuck is going on before you enter it.

Is storytelling an artform? I'd say it is. And roleplay is cooperative storytelling.

But I'll still write off as self deluded, pompous and preposterous, anyone who actually refers to their roleplay as art. The amount of eyerolling I'll be doing behind my computer screen will be impossible to accurately describe. It'll be eyerolling as an artform.

@surreality Justification scenes for stats generally makes me want to shoot myself. I hate my RP turning into a joyless chore just for some numbers on a sheet. And I know from experience that Staff barely glance at the stuff anyway, and feel the same way. Might as well just handwave it for everybody's benefit. Ultimately I generally tend to just.. not get those stats, and avoid playing concepts where they're essential.

@Kestrel Actual lines of code and actual writing, that's about all I'd think you should be worried about. Especially mu related. Being inspired by others' ideas and successes (and mistakes) is how progress is made.

I like the risk of death. I want it to be an option, because if it isn't an option, then that greatly influences decisions. But PC death shouldn't be capricious and come out of nowhere. In my mind they should either come from:

A) Other PCs, in which case its a case of two player agencies clashing together. These kinds of deaths rarely happen on games I play, because most people don't actually want to kill off your character.

B) Those special big moment scenes in which everything is on the line, and you're choosing (and there should always be an option not to choose, but with a cost to that as well) to risk everything. And more, if you fail in your endeavor and you lose your character's life, Staff still ensures it had impact and meaning. I'll give an example:

I played on a Vampire: the Masquerade game on irc a while ago. The Sabbat were invading. The Sheriff wanted to use mortals to hit them during the day, then surgical strikes to hit them right after dusk, while the Seneschal wanted to pull out of half the city and hunker down for help. We went with the Sheriff's plan while the Seneschal and her allies burrowed down and sent out the bat signal to the Camarilla leaders.

It went well for a while, then it didn't go so well, and in one scene half the strike team got wiped, the rest fleeing a burning inferno.

Now it was technically a failure, and our PCs stayed dead, but the way the STs wrote that story going forward was that the Sabbat, finding the resistance so damn tough, decided to move on to the next target instead of continuing to expend resources on our city. Those who had died thus didn't feel their character deaths had no ultimate meaning, weren't just there to impress upon us the danger of actually getting into the thick of it yourself, or for the ST to feel ultra hardcore. Those who survived got consummate rewards.

As for the Seneschal and her allies, they weren't dismissed either. The Camarilla leaders did answer with extra resources and a couple of nasty agents while everybody licked their wounds, and those safe places they'd created to bunker down in became useful down the line.

PCs shouldn't be the ones who get sucked out the air vent by a bad dice roll. The NPC next to them should. Random sparring sessions shouldn't cause character death from exploding dice. They shouldn't randomly die in childbirth (again, the NPC next door can do that if you really want that realism in your game.) If you're making characters roll to see if they'll live or die as an Storyteller, it should always be in those big moments when they're doing things that matter. Really matter, and if they die its on the Storyteller to make sure that amounts to a Main Character death has impact and meaning for the story.

Part of PC Antagonism done right is acknowledging to yourself that you're playing an antagonist, and when you're doing it. In the scheme of a MU, these are not necessarily the evil and bad characters (though it can be), they're as often the white knight hero. The thing is that every PC is also the protagonist of their own story, so which hat you're wearing at any one time often changes. Even the most antagonistic character is often in a situation in which they're not the antagonist in the exchange.

If you're playing a concept in which other PCs are the obstacle that you're set upon overcoming, you're the agitator in that scenario. Say the Carthian crusading for equal ghoul rights in Vampire society. Similarly if you're playing a concept in which you set yourself up to be an obstacle to be overcome.

While some games might have a very easy delineation of protagonist/antagonist, say if you're in a Harry Potter game and you're playing on Voldemort's side, or if you're in a superhero game and by default one side are righteous and the other side isn't, on most games out there its probably a mistake to get into thinking that this character is the antagonist that you are now entitled to overcome.

From which is born @mietze 's white knight syndrome mention, which is as (if not more) pervasive than the behavior blind cliche antagonist who can't accept losing. From an OOC perspective it may be easy to discern an objective good guy/bad guy dynamic, but unless everybody agrees that the story and game is about the good guys winning, from the game's perspective, exactly who's in the right or wrong is usually more complex.

Ultimately a lot of it comes down to respect, and whether it works out or not generally in my experience comes down to whether the players involved are willing to put themselves into the other side's shoes.

@Ghost said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

...And then by 2000 A.D. people started drawing penises on everything.

Please! The ancients were doing it, too. I've seen 2000 year old grafitti!

Eta: Drawing dicks is timeless.

@Aria I put it off because I didn't want it to be over. Then I watched it and damn, I got a bit emotional. It's a friggin' comedy, it shouldn't give me all them feels.

Then I watched the whole after show thing with the cast, and I got more feels.

It was brilliant, and it was funny and it was smart and I'm sorry to see it go. But I'm glad it did go while I still loved it.

Mind, being SuperFriends doesn't mean you have to actually spill Sphere secrets. In fact you really shouldn't unless you can't help it. And if you do spill secrets, them being your SuperFriend is not an excuse, and you shouldn't expect other PCs or NPCs to give you a break because feelings. Especially you shouldn't get OOC angry. This is part of what gives it such a bad reputation, I think. However but bad players will do bad things, because that's what bad players do. No reason to disparage a whole concept just because some assholes can't help themselves but be assholes. Just stomp on them when it happens.

I'm perfectly TS open. That doesn't mean that I do it on every character I have, but if my character is down for it, then I am generally down for it too. Unless I'm not, in which case I'll just suggest we fade-to-black instead. Usually this is if the other person wants more of it than I do, and I'm more interested in getting that stuff over with so I can focus on the plotty or character growing stuff (which TS can certainly be part of, too, but not the 3rd time in a week.) One of the people I most enjoy to RP with hardly ever TS, but if the story takes us down into a romantic (not necessarily romantic romantic), we'll just fade to black on it.

Once or twice someone got overly attached, and projected the IC romance onto my OOC self, in which case I'll say I don't feel it's okay (it depends on the level of it). One time someone wanted to do shit I had no interest writing, and when I said it was cool that the characters did it, but I saw no reason to write it out, and s/he blew up on me, and I just extracted myself from the situation.

If people have boundaries, respect 'em.

I don't think I've ever discussed ts style with anyone, nor do I think I'd see much point in it. My TS writing is just an extension of what I write all the time. While there have been times that I've absolutely not been into the style of whatever partner I'm writing with, I never really felt it was my place to suggest they do it differently. I don't think I'd feel all that psyched about someone unsolicited directing me to write differently so they'd be more into it, though I suppose it depends on how they put it.

All that said, I'm pretty much on the second person bandwagon. Don't do it.

Edit to add:

1. I mostly play it by ear.
2. I write pretty explicitly in my regular writing, so my TS is the same.
3. Never stopped playing with someone over TS. Its never been too little, and if its become too much then I'll just Fade-to-black. I assume my opposite side'll let me know if they think its too much.
4. Discuss limits if you have them, when you think things might veer into sexual territory. Generally there's an escalation, at least in my experience.

There are worse things than people sicking the CPS on you for stupid reasons. Like people not sicking the CPS on you if they think there's an actual problem. Apathy and some confused idea of it not being their business, is complicit in so much fucking misery.

I think 4XP a week is a bit much in GMC, but I also think that a flat but diminishing rate combined with activity based XP is pretty spot. I like it. Most Dinos will fade in activity over time, even if the exceptional monster wont (and I'm OK with that), and this allows newer but more active players can catch up.

@Ganymede: You need people who are out and interact with the world and the other characters. Who does things, who has things happen to them (which is how most XP is gained on GMC). The more of this, the better, because talking about it and reacting to these things builds RP for everybody. Catering to people with limited time on their hands is good, but you can't just cater to them.

Edit: Text cleanup. Apparently I was rushing.

@Scissors said in The Savage Skies:

Once in a long while a game comes along with a unique theme that makes me sit up and pay attention, and looks awesome enough to pull me out of retirement. Something that genuinely excites me to play, rather than merely "I'll make something and try it out".

This is what this game feels to me.

Yeah, I was thinking the same. Might just make a character.

@Kanye-Qwest I liked the new Spiderman in the Civil War movie.

Made a character, and looking forward to getting into the thick of it!

You can get away with a lot of things on this forum, and personally I'm happy to see a diverse cast of idea and opinions, including ones I wholeheartedly disagree with. But c'mon, why you gotta go there?

@Seraphim73 said in The 100: The Mush:

although there are some cliques forming

Cliques by themselves isn't necessarily bad as long as they have reasons to still interact with the rest of the game. People will play with people they like to play with, and not everybody has the time to do a million scenes a week. If time's a limitation, its often a question of priorities rather than exclusion.

@mietze said:

I don't believe that to mean that these people who don't RP out best practices of parenting, consent, behavior in response to stress or frustration, ect are by the fact of doing so adding to the atmosphere that causes such things to happen RL.

Moreover, once you start limiting yourself to best behavior, you must have a definitive canon of what that is. Those most eager to set those standards tend to be the ones you absolutely least want to.

What is a healthy enough D/s relationship? (Though I have no part in that RL subculture, I bet you like in every other subculture there are plenty of different Absolute Truths and finger pointing at Doing It Wrong.) Is that gay character unrealistically TOO gay? Your character is black, why does she speak white? Are you trying to white-wash black culture? Or the flip side, are you doing unacceptable cultural appropriation and inauthentic stereotyping by trying to mimic a cultural lingo not your own? (I've seen seen high horse derision of 'stupid and wrong stereotype' delivered against someone portraying his own fucking culture.)

Yeah, there are obvious Wrongs, but I'd rather have a few idiot concepts and wrong-play than elevating anyone to moral arbitrators of rightness of play.