Posts made by mietze

Yep. A communication facilitator is very different from "player advocate". I think if you need specifically a player /advocate/ that's a red flag for a few reasons.

Someone who can help people communicate better is useful for all, since not only is ham handed staff communication a huge issue, but a player who isn't capable of communication without these issues also would be served by having someone who could help them be able to advocate--for themselves.

When I have seen a 3rd party start to take on a psychic/empathic role (without the presence of the person, telling others what they "really meant" or going to bat for things that the 3rd party assumes but did not confirm) it can become a problem and also not solve the problem.

But again, I think if your whole current staff is so incapable of this that you need to bring in another person exclusively for that, I think that it is unlikely to succeed because one person is not going to be enough.

@runescryer that is as likely to happen with a person who is offered an ombudsman like role from a green staff or those uncomfortable with conflict. I've seen it happen.

Some of the people who seem the most personable and eager to "help everyone get along" are very manipulative or overinvested in being well liked. And a lot of people who would chomp at the bit to be Voice for the Voiceless are not great people to have in that role regardless of how well meaning they are.

@derp i didn't say that it set it up, just that it fed into it/confirmed it, unintentionally. It won't alleviate it. Nor keep the peace. Nor give players a "good experience". Respectful leadership has a better chance.

As well as just acknowledging that some folks will not be able to have a good experience for reasons that are largely not within your scope ability to control.

In my experience having that as a specific role causes more harm than good. Most conflicts require more than one set of eyes and also multiple viewpoints and considerations that one person will not be a good arbiter of. It sets up a subtle and unintentional confirmation thar staff is something players need to be protected from. It doesn't at all replace leadership but may be shuffled off as an excuse to not have to provide it as it's someone else's role.

I think it is good to run anything posted especially in reaction to something or in annoyance through several people to read for tone. Also a good idea to have people willing and able to pull in other staffers or the headwiz for arbitration help if needed.

I've seen that done well and seen it done terribly.

Ultimately I actually do not think it matters very much, though its something a minority of a playerbase will get fixated on.

If staff are actively managing a game, and they have adequate spread to cover the size/scope of their game, as well as the ability to handle ooc problems that come up, chances are whatever the power structure is for the game will work well too.

If not, then it won't.

While I will check in off and on probably if cell phone reception and family allows, now it's my turn to go on vacation! I will be back at the end of the week. Please be good to Gany (I know you will!).

First I try to read the room if I am joining a scene in progress Are people RPing actively? Perhaps it isn't the time then to run in and flip tables or be disruptive in the scene bc I think it seems a little boring.

Second, I try to play off what other folks there are doing in a way that doesn't mean they have to go out of their way to interact with me. Paying attention to other people's poses seems to be a shock to many people and I tend to get positive results from it.

Third, making sure I have realistic expectations ooc. If I'm having a down day or feeling strongly like no one will like my RP or I would be super disappointed if nothing clicked then for me personally that is a day usually when I will /not/ go out to trawl for random RP. If I am super grumpy and am going to be very annoyed at grammatical errors or people not always reading my poses thoroughly (and I'm not in the mood to find the humor in it) then that also probably isn't a great day to go rando just because I am not in a space to enjoy things and people in a less controlled/known environment and that's not really fair to anyone and is setting me up to feel aggravated.

If there's no scenes in progress and I am soliciting for new RP then I try to have a couple of scenarios and places to suggest specifically to folks on the seeking RP channel or when/if they respond to a page. That way I can pick stuff I enjoy! If it is a blue moon and the other person has ideas at the ready that is honestly so rare that it is a treat!

And importantly to either type of social rp, I always have an exit plan oocly. How long I will stay to give things a chance to spark. How I will jump out or hopefully end something in a graceful and positive way once things have run their course.

I find ending scenes gracefully to be the hardest and something I'm working on.

But honestly, the single best predictor of being able to have fun and enjoy scenes for me personally is being sure to manage my expectations, make sure that I'm in a good place to /be/ a good RP partner, and to try to have a list of ideas/things I can springboard off of that are interesting and fun for me to play as well as things that can be incorporated into existing scenes without being overly disruptive (though sometimes people will give the go ahead to shake things up, which can be fun too, I've learned to be careful about doing that as an introduction.)

The reality is on many games unless you come in with a group of people you know, the way you build connections is usually via social rp (most places i know of and all the ones I play require largely that player be able to sustain themselves as while staff does run things on a regular if not frequent basis, they do not have the coverage to take care of all individuals with meaty/"important" scenes.

So if you go in behaving in a way that makes everyone around you feel as if you believe you are too good for/too above them to dip your toes into "silly/meaningless" scenes where you might connect with them then chances are you will become increasingly isolated if you are pragmatically dependent on PrPs run by those waste of space players or hooks in to other things.

It sounds to me like you are not feeling creative enough to find an angle to get engaged in the rp that's available to you. I think most of us have been there at one point or another. But you lashing out and blaming your lack of RP on other people and their inferior sense of fun is misplaced.

On a low staff involvement/access game chances are a majority of people feel frustrated. And like they are lacking in the RP that would feel most meaningful to them. They are just making the best of things, and apparently are more equipped than you right now to do so.

If it wasn't for my oopsie I'd be an empty nestee in the fall.

It's not always about the mortgage and work being why people are less available. Some of us have been slowly learning that it is okay to be more choosy and to not be as tolerant of shitty stuff as we might have been 20 years ago.

I think I will still be mushing as an old lady but ill accept less bullshit than I do now. And I accept far less than I did in my mid 20s.

I fucking hate flare ups while simultaneously being grateful that mine are very mild and (so far) not progressive. Like everyone I know with this has it far worse than me. But low grade nausea/pain just really sucks when you do not know when its going to end. So I am super grumpy.

Hogpit style fussing at individual people on a game's advertisement thread? Also not appropriate. Please reread the stickied engagement post on the category if you are confused.

A reminder about the advertisement section: this is not a place for criticism or negative commentary. You can, as per the pinned engagement post, make a thread in the hog pit.
Or if it a discussion that can be handled constructively/perhaps is more wide ranging, there is always Mildly Constructive.

I was super attached to fireworks shows as a kid. 4th of July was the only holiday where my dad was reliably on alert, and on base it was in general a huge party.

I always wondered why I did not seem to find them as much fun (and neither did my civilian kids seem to have the same attachment as I did at their age) but with some distance I think the attachment was more for the atmosphere and less about the 5 minute show at the end. (I did not grow up shooting off fireworks on base except for sparklers or very low grade ones--they weren't allowed in base housing. Which always amuses me when people locally here scream about fireworks bans disrespecting military people.)

I don't mind going to fireworks displays. I would not care about neighbors needing to prove how big their gonads are with their personal displays if it was possible for all refuse and fire damage to be contained to their property. (It never is, i always have shit i need to pick up in my field afterwards, never had a fire yet but on dru years we stay up late ready with the buckets and hose.

But around here the loudest mouths invariably want to do their business in a neighborhood cul de sac or park/school parking lot, and leave their trash everywhere.

I am unfamiliar with battletech but I will say that cyberpunkred conversion in ares has gone more smoothly than anticipated. Perfect no but it has been far less frustrating than previous attempts at fading suns.

I would think battletech might be easier since there isn't magic or netrunning, which has been the most difficult part of figuring out for ares (the netrunning) as far as being able to have people in the same +combat being able to have some do meat world combat and others do ice/net combat (in RED you have overlays, so its not someone jacked in/helpless unconscious while they're in the net).

I have experienced far more actial rp during combat in full system plug and play (like fs3). The combat was also quicker and so people were not dropping like flies before aftermath or important stuff because it took 6 hours to get through a single round and people deciding what to do/having to look up special rules, ect.

@three-eyed-crow NOPE NOPE NOPE

It may also help to realize that just because the people logged in are not readily accessible or out in public, doesn't mean that they aren't contributing to the game's activity. Are some people just sitting around? Sure, probably most (though people may be doing that in public as well). Are some waiting to connect with someone OOC so they can arrange deets of events, meetups, prps, ect? Yes. Esp. if they do not have large chunks of time during the day, and so need to coordinate (or even extreme slow play) during that time so they are better set up for the more active/present time that they do have. In that respect, they may be contributing "more" to the game and activity for others than someone who just hangs around in public all the time and pounces on BaRP but never runs anything for anyone or a group of folks, depending on your perspective.

People are not going to go out in public to extreme slow RP (and that's going to look like idling too) that's disrespectful to people who might wander in and people get angry about when people don't pose fast enough for their tastes as well.

I think I personally have a reaction to compulsive WHO and +where checkers because those tools have been used to harass me/track my activity by people in the past, and so a need to constantly check those things and judge people by them tends to trigger a red flag in me. I can kind of understand wanting that as a metric to judge whether or not a game is worth your time, if it is supremely important to you to have a certain percentage of unidle people or public people. I'm just not sure that even that is useful though, given how people are often very unidle just chatting about the weather and their health issues on channel while never darkening the door of a public scene, and planners may be idle for long times as they're writing up stuff/researching/otherwise actively working towards a contribution to the game.

I think its just getting used to a change. Like I enjoyed the screen scroll beautifully written descs and elaborate wardrobe codes, but I think things have evolved. I was suspicious of wikis too at first but now I'm glad for the most part they're standard. IME a short description or even a link isn't a predictor of rp style either for better or worse.

So I'm less likely to be judgey over that and perhaps a little more over people like not acknowledging anyone else in the room, ooc behavior (like complaining how useless the event/scene is even though they're there), ect.

Be pleasant ooc, willing to engage, ect and im happy to deal with typos, slowness, and different approaches to descing if the rp is decent! And I will prefer those to an elaborate desc and perfect wiki but a rude, snobby, or totally unwilling to engage person!

I used to care a lot, but now honestly I don't. I am exceptionally unlikely to even look at your character object anyway (got it trained out of me by a place that broadcast who was looking at who to the entire room). So put what you want me to see on your wiki!

People descing their pc in their poses used to irritate me, but thanks to aforementioned PUBLIC BROADCAST LOOK place, I got used to and appreciated people doing that there, so that no longer annoys me.

I tend to have minds-eye pictures in my head of the PCs that i interact with anyway, and sometimes they do not match up with the PB. As that person won't ever know that, I think that people should do what make THEM happy in writing up the desc or wiki for their own PC, not so much trying to make other people happy.

One of my coworkers and I realized today that we actually first met at my first job when I first moved to the Seattle area and got a job as a toddler/preschool teacher. She was in one of the classes (though I don't think she was in my specific class, there was a lot of crossover)--as a student! Mind blown. Though now I regret the fact that I'm pretty sure I got rid of my first job scrapbook/mementos because it would be really awesome to be able see if my coworker is in any of the pics so I could text her them and freak us both out.