Posts made by mietze

Well it looks like my cousin's husband will either not pull through or if he does is going to have pretty significant damage to his body. They booted her out of the hospital on home oxygen but she is still not in great shape and was told to expect a long recovery. The kids are all out of the hospital though the oldest kid is also on home oxygen. Cousin is now endorsing some MLM essential oil blend as what's helping her recover from covid with no hint of irony or shame. So now she and her kids (surely hubby will not be mentioned) will be cited by people as "hey i know someone who got covid and says these essential oils helped them get better!!"

To some degree i understand, who wants to lose their enmeshed high demand community they've been a part of for so long. And it feels real good to be the success story about how you refused the mark of the beast, went through your tribulation, and survived.

And now it will be a relief to just not monitor it in any way going forward, now that I know the kiddos are not in danger of dying.

The idea of all of my bigs being off to school has been very abstract this summer but it gets rolling in 2 weeks and having 3 tuition bills makes it real in mind of a momentary panic attack way. But still I'm starting to freak out a bit emotionally too (similar to what I experienced when they were all in grade school full time that first year!) ngl. I'm irritated that I'm feeling empty nest and my nest is not empty yet, and excited for them and also trying to not get overly involved while also hugging them a lot more at random (they are tolerant of this).

But yeah. Freaking out a bit. Transitions are sometimes hard.

@solstice it is something that is rarely understood unless it's specifically cultivated, yeah. And even on games where it is there will be people that are very vocal in their ooc opinions to the contrary (of course those also tend to be the ones sitting on their asses doing nothing in the ooc room too, but not always.)

Though depending on the structure and dynamics in an individual sphere and game at large it might very well be that there isn't much to do but sit around if you are hoping for engagement with your sphere and you don't want to go outside of it. In that case I usual set a finite time for me to rp hunt hard/see if it improves and then just leave.

In my experience the problems start to happen when the only make your own fun on a game ends up pretty much being horrible/blocking to other players, or being kind of mean oocly (ooc criticism of player run things instead of just not participating and letting others enjoy it, ect.)

I have noticed am explosion of this even on mostly PvE games when there is a perception or a reality that in general access to story advancement (either metaplot or player run things that require approval/assistance) is extremely limited or closed for a really long time--almost inevitably at some point people will start to pick at each other out of frustration/boredom and frankly create antagonists where there aren't or where they haven't been active.

I think if you are wanting antagonist factions on a game (by that I mean oppositional to each other NOT good guys/bad guys) that really needs an involved and active staff because you will have even less of a grace period than you do with a PvE game.

Antagonist factions will scapegoat each other over ooc frustration/FOMO/perception of the other side getting "more" attention when everyone is on a starvation diet.

I cannot aid anyone in this situation, tbh. Even if I was closer geographically I'm not part of their religion, even worse a walkaway. I keep in cordial social media communication primarily for the kids esp the teens and near teens in case they want to leave or come out and need a safe place.

The kids are culturally very used to childcare and housework (my cousin pushes the line in having her sons help out with that too). So stepping in to help when people are sick/mom is having her latest baby, ect isn't unusual. Not ideal and not what I would choose for my kids, but the reality is that it's not unusual for them.

However having to call 911 to possibly save your dad's life in a family that woukld rather guzzle essential oils and go see a chiropractor for anything other than like an amputation or whatever rather than see a real doctor must be an extra level of trauma to what is already experienced in having to do that anyway.

I have seen some antagonists done well, but most of the time they're just not great for the environment through no fault of their own.

I especially think it sets up real toxicity when there is absentee/hands off staff who aren't there to intervene when people cross boundaries (especially protagonist pcs).

So honestly I'm at the mush management point in my life where any game I set up/run will be pve. Will it lose me players yes but if they need pvp to engage or feel meaningful we aren't going to be right for each other anyway.

I dont mind playing on pvp games, but I don't initiate that stuff anymore. I like themes of loss/betrayal/ect but find it more interesting when its with a pc that isn't purposefully made to be an antagonist.

The noob is out of PICU. Unfortunately my cousins husband is on a ventilator and not looking good (he probably should have been in hospital earlier but they tried to treat at home with pepsid instead). My cousin is also bedridden and my guess she will be going to the hospital soon. (Their little boy called 911 for his dad, he was transported by ambulence). My aunt caught it as well though since she has chronic leukemia and other issues she qualified for the infusion treatment and is now doing better. Right now the 10 year old is mostly caring for siblings and mom with drop ins by my uncle (my aunt is still too sick to go be with them). Other family members are turning up ill but they're just in a lot of pain and miserable, not hospital bound, yet.

I dont know what to feel. Other than all the Jesus saves just pray, stay strong against the vax bullshit that is spewed in the comments is too much for me to deal with, so I am muting them and asked one of my other cousins to ping me if they actually needed something or if there was a significant update.

I feel like a bitch for just not having more emotion to give but, I guess that's just where I am at.

@ganymede yep that's where I am now, now that I am no longer drop dead exhausted after work and get home in time to reasonably cook dinner. It's been nice to have that little breather right before my oldest 3 are off to college--they've even remarked on it, that it's been nice to have a mama-cooked dinner almost every night, something that they've not really experienced more than 1 or 2 times a week for the last 5 ish years. It feels good to clean up/put stuff away/be able to do some upkeep too, I forgot how calming that can be for me personally, I've just been not able to do that regularly for a long time due to stress/illness/ect.

I'm sure this is just a window of time for this to happen but I'm enjoying it while I can.

Yeah I don't think this is about "better" at all. Just different. It might be better for some people because it suits their personal taste?

@tinuviel I guess if you or I were to put this together we'd be doing it for the sake of novelty, since neither of us are into that kind of style, format, or structure. But I would think if someone who was really into the idea because it reflects a certain style that they wanted that really isn't available to them at present, they're experimenting in the hopes of improving the experience for people like them.

I think there are a lot of little and big tweaks that can/should/probably will eventually be done to expand the expected format and structure of games over the long haul. Some we will hear about here, others not so much. I know there's a lot of private or only semi-public games out there, some in traditional formats but others trying to mix it up to suit the vision of the runner (or the people playing).

I don't blame people for keeping the not-the-usual stuff under wraps, especially here, but I personally just really like seeing the new ideas when people run with them even if I don't have the same inclinations.

@tinuviel Ah yes, I misread. Well in that case, still difficult for me personally. But I do kind of hope that someone puts something like that together, because I like seeing new stuff. I kind of wonder though how one would track creepers/abusive people (because although most of the ones we know about probably wouldn't be attracted to that environment I don't think, there's always people who will show up to do that), but i'm sure there would be some way to do it.

I would be interested in seeing how a game like ominous describes works over the long term tbh. I don't think I could get into it myself since a log in every 24 hours or yoink policy would be too hard for me personally to manage. And I can't flip flop into characters super easily, which is why it's hard for me to juggle alts.

But. I do know people who are major altaholics who almost never stayed longer than a week or two engaged with a character, or who could only do so if they could step out of that PC frequently (via rp rooms or using player-npc/retainers/ect) to engage in many stories. If they gave something like that a try, maybe they'd get a really good dynamic for them, and if it attracted similar players, I bet they'd have a lot of fun without worrying about annoying other people or getting into trouble as occurs on more traditional places.

I would think that would require a very dynamic staff who were also jumping in to provide scenes/plot/ect on a more frequent basis...but that is just my brain thinking, perhaps the type of person who would be attracted to jump and play and jump and play again actually would be just fine even without that.

@derp There are plenty of people who would totally freak out and refuse to darken the door of a WoD game with rosters. Or any number of things. I think that making a roster WoD game would probably have different problems than the usual, because it would be a very different group of people than is per the usual Shittington By Night game in the old school/usual vein

I don't think WoD players are unique in this at all. After all, most of the "I want to make a X game, here's my idea, would anyone be interested" tend to have lots of people jump in to criticize that idea and how they would never play there or why can't you do something the polar opposite instead.

It is almost endearing.

However, honestly I think that there's no harm in trying something new, if the person who's going to run it wants to. Hopefully the people who Would Never Play This would stay away (but as we all know there are also many exhausting people who also will log in on guest or pre-CG bits to loudly complain that a game doesn't have their desired features/sphere/mechanics/theme/allowances/ect and need to flail about it for awhile too.

I see a conversation where people have pretty different takes on what the purpose and structure of a 'roster character' is. Anything from if they are fully fleshed out or not, whether or not they are a one player or serial player type of thing, whether or not they should be given powerful or special unique only this PC can have this roles, ect. I've seen more and more games have a hybrid of roster and non-roster PCs (usually rosters in the minority) and even those handful of games seem to be using rosters/interpreting them pretty differently from each other.

I think old school players and old fogey WoDites are going to reject rosters out of hand, for the most part. People always scream bloody murder about anything new, whether that is mechanics or shifting of theme as game lines are updated, to staff structure, to how big a game is, whether or not players or staff control the ultimate power positions, ect.

However, if someone wanted to experiment with rosters, then maybe new or more open minded folks would be willing to give it a chance. I don't see the harm in that. It would possibly attract a different community, which to me is neutral. Yeah, a lot of people who are die hard WoD by Night MUSH fans would not show up (hopefully, rather than bitching about it endlessly on pub as they flail about the ooc room, but you know, let's be realistic about the community, maybe). I don't see that as a bad thing necessarily.

I think we need to get away from the idea that a game in a beloved genre must cater to all people, past and present.

I've never seen a completely roster game in action--well, actually that's not true I don't think, since I did log in to Firan a few times (but couldn't get into it because of the code) which was IIRC a complete roster game/no OCs?

I tend to not pick up rosters. Savage Skies was an exception, as one of the rosters there grabbed me and I had a ton of fun with him, only resigned the pc when I knew I wasn't going to be able to play due to RL stuff.

I don't think anyone picked him up after that though, which is too bad. But I've met too many people who seemed to find being able to jump in without having to go through the CG process (other than an application). I will say being able to see "examples" of PC writeups (the available rosters) has helped me A LOT during cging of normal PCs on the games that had them available.

Are there ever hooks in a game that can ONLY be pursued/done by an individual character? So like if any PC who is active enough to get involved at a high level for a time suddenly goes idle, the game will come to a screeching halt? Or is there always a willingness to move on to another active PC/group that has the potential/is already pursuing something similar? If you have one pc of a certain type, do you ignore all other PCs of that type, even if you don't have a quota? Or is your story flexible enough that there can be more than one pc of a certain archetype or skillset active at a time without making things fall apart?

Hooks can be recycled, if there's a need. The interesting thing about rosters is that you might get more information about what hooks are actually interesting/understandable to real players, and what seem to actually provide enough play to keep someone going for a while.

I don't know I would term it a better way. Just a different approach to use in combination with others. Some people are inspired if someone's done a task that they find demotivating (like number crunching in chargen OR writing up a character idea), and given the opportunity to have their least favorite part done, they'll jump in. It would be nice for some people to not have to worry about numbers dickering around with staff in the approval process too.

But like Sunny says, I don't know that it's a panacea. It will help some people, and be pretty neutral/not helpful to others.

@jennkryst yeah, that's how I was thinking it would work best on a wod game, rather than 'traditional' rosters that would be re-rostered between players.

A plug and play thing. Just change the @name or somesuch. I do think it would be helpful for people who like the theme, and understand the basic mechanics, but get intimidated by sheet building. Which can be a thing for WoD in particular.

My anti vax (she's a hipster antivaxxer well before it was cool, so that isn't a covid thing per se) and Anti-Mask for FreeDumb!!! cousin and her family are now all very ill with covid (parents plus 4 kids including a 1 week old baby who is now in PICU being ravaged by it). Most of their kids were preemies and so 2 out if the 4 also have immune system issues.

I cried for the newborn and the kids. I feel nothing right now for cousin (who is seriously ill, apparently postpartum women are also extremely vulnerable?) and her husband. They did a homebirth not out of being homebirthy people but because they did not want to mask up and did not want to deal with the hospital covid protocols (so they've had a shitload of their crazy church people and other covid denying family members in and out of their house.)

But honestly its on the other side of the country, I can do nothing, and I guess they're getting what they wanted. I hope none of the kids die or get long term effects. And even if they did, they still wouldn't change their minds. Pretty sure my aunt and uncle are being Grade A Assholes to the medical staff as they are conspiracy people too.

I dont feel anything but I do just want to go to sleep and not get up for a long time.

I also have to admit I'm exceptionally unlikely to want to play on a game that is so administrative/bureaucracy heavy that would be necessary (needed because of the volume/large staff dynamics, rather than disinterest) or an admin team on a small game where nobody was capable of communicating well or being able to assist with mediation to the point that a person had to be brought in specifically because it was such a problem.

Especially the latter. I can see the value in the former though.

@ganymede while I think that could work if it was part of a co-headwiz type of arrangement, I think i would be a little leery if resolving complaints and issues was spun off to a single person because the headstaff did not want to be involved.