Posts made by mietze

So sorry to hear this. If his family needs any kind of assistance or has a GFM (I'm not sure if this was a surprise or not), can you post it here?

Or sometimes, it can be very much a poor judgement of when to post a vent on a message board instead of just keeping it to yourself and letting it cool awhile.

I cannot tell you how many people I've seen hurt by statements on the MUSH venting thread and others because the person could not even wait for 24 hours to post their vent. Sometimes like right after someone said the thing/did the minor thing that really wasn't super bad but just a peeve, and then it turns into a much bigger hurt than it needed to be.

Maybe the comments would have been received if there could have been more detail, privately, abut any specific concerns AND ALSO if it wasn't done less than 36 hours after a marathon of many many many days of single/back/simultaneous scenes. And maybe if people waited to post their peeve about something that was just triggered by something that happened for a little while so it wasn't super obvious to the person involved, it would save that too.

Timing is important. Not that anyone is perfect in the regard.

I like kale chips! And I like some kinds of kale in soups (I know a recipe for a yummy lactino/dinosaur kale, lemon, and orzo soup that I love!). I also like it from someone's garden after the first frost too. Otherwise there are other greens (mustard, turnip, collared) that I prefer as veggies).

I've never had it a smoothie but that sounds gross to me. Hopefully it's better than what I imagine.

Once I did a respec for someone (this involved wiping of the old +sheet. Then handstatting EVERYTHING back on to them based on the new attributes/merits/skills/powers they selected. It was a spend of about 900 xp (I remember it was less than 1000).

It was the wrong PC. Their names were off by one or two letters.

Luckily I has done an xp spend for this poor guy an hour or so previously so I had a copy of his old sheet.

@coin I have done that many times at various points, though mine was of the "I need to get the baby/toddler back asleep, brb" variety.

@juke if there are enforced boundaries of good behavior, people may not ever see the tendencies, unless they have previous experience with that person. That's a good thing, if someone decides that being an asshole is not worth the consequences of getting removed from play.

I would much rather play on a place that very stringently enforced positive behavior standards than on a place that had no such boundaries but banned a shitload or people who were problematic elsewhere.

With boundaries people who have tendencies towards behaving badly can actually be enjoyable to RP with. I have seen remarkable differences in behavior from some folks depending on the administration of a game. The problem is that few people want to set up or enforce those boundaries because it's a lot of unpleasant work with an uncertain payoff. So I understand why it doesnt happen. But most people if they know that things will be enforced can do quite well in a situation where certain behaviors are vigorously enforced aa being off limits, if they are having enough fun on the game that they dont want to lose it.

@paris said in Unlikeable, incompetent, and inactive: Can these characters work in an MU?:

@wretched said in Unlikeable, incompetent, and inactive: Can these characters work in an MU?:

There's a lot of pathos that can be mined from nonverbal reactions that offset, undercut, or inform people's villainy; Rufus Sewell is a master of that, but we RPers can do so as well, yep.

Can, yes. Unfortunately fewer can than think they are, and fewer still will find people who can/are willing to respond to it in kind. Which is why I think without other anchors in ones play, or to interact with the game in a meaningful and interesting way beyond it, it is setting yourself up for frustration/burnout.

I think people can truly adore unlikable characters based on how they're written (or like in the case of a TV show, how they are portrayed), in a love to hate way. For me an example would be John Smith in the latest TV series of Man in the High Castle. Do I like him as someone who I'd love to hang out with? NO. But he IS one of my favorite characters on that show because the way he is written and more importantly the actor's portrayal of him really make him enjoyable to watch on the screen. Do I feel the same way about dumbass Joe, who was probably meant to be more likeable/compelling? Nope. The chemistry or writing and portrayal just isn't there for me personally.

On a mush...I think that is trickier.

For one thing, some people who think of their PCs as protagonists actually come across as antagonists because of the way that they portray their PCs in actual interactions with others instead of just what's in their head. So if they decide to take on an antagonist it may be even more unpleasant/over the top. Or people may have to do that just to stand out from the crowd. It can be isolating. Sometimes you can do subtlety, but not very often in general on mushes. Which means someone who took on an antagonist thinking that they'd get a wide variety and depth to their play may be very disappointed. That can be super frustrating. Sometimes there is not enough going on outside of player-initiated play that white knights and do gooders are understandably starved for any kind of action they can finally get to exercise their own protagonism that they swarm. Even if you have someone who is happy to play up difference in goals/motivations/class/social status that is meant to play well in building RP tension that is thematic, it is often a lot of OOC labor to make sure that everyone else is having fun/not feeling pressure to be for or against/feels empowered to exercise what they'd feel IC even though it's not happy happy joy joy towards your PC, ect. I have found when I have played fringe PCs (never antagonistic, just...half-caste or other groups that the NPC society looks down on or fears) that kind of consideration/checking in to make sure I'm having a good time rarely if ever occurs. SO people gloss it over for fear of offending, or they go full tilt all the time in a way that can sometimes cross over into OOC.

I think if you're building a PC you actually want to play long term in a game, you /cannot/ have "antagonist" as your main core of what your character is. Like so many niche characters, that is super fun at first, but unless you have a lot of support sustaining it is probably going to be a problem. Definitely don't have antagonism be your "specialness". That's just a recipe for frustration or boredom for a variety of reasons.

I do not believe /anyone/ has said that they are easy to sort out. In my case though, I could have if I asked for it at least 3 msb people who can corroborate everything I say happened to me as /eyewitnesses to it/. But it's just about someone being an admin on a message board--is that worth making people think about all that bad experience, and for what end? It's just being an admin on a message board. The last day and a half has been fucking hard enough dealing with crap dredged up again. Ultimately I expect the usual thing to happen. Nothing. But I'm getting pretty fucking tired of the implications that people don't know how complicated this is, or that people just want to air dirty laundry to sandbag someone, or that it's all just because people just didn't like each other. And that is all I am going to say about it. Except for yet again, NO it was NOT worth talking about what happened to me because it doesn't fucking matter.

There is rarely evidence except for first person accounts from people you believe to be credible. It is not an easy thing to give it, privately or publicly, and to be told that it really does not matter because one needs to be "fair."

That is why people don't come forward. Or they regret doing so immediately. Like me.

@misadventure elections are in the hands of of the states. For good or ill. RIght now that's probably marginally a good thing, at least for my state.

I was skeptical of all mail in voting, but now (especially after 2 years of being a certified elections observer and literally having an open door to all parts of the process including the commissioners meetings) I am a believer in it. But its not cheap. King County WA has well over a million registered voters and a budget to match that scale. I think most elections municipalities dont.

Weird. In our area at this point we're using votebuilder to target our calls/texts specifically to people who have not returned ballots. (we are a 100 percent mail-in state) It really helps with preventing volunteer burnout.

Thank you, surr. I will admit to being hurt and confused by the strength of negative reaction to me at times awhile ago. I didn't know that you guys moved in the same circles because I'd stepped away from mushing in no small part due to my last experience with them. It makes more sense now. I'm sorry you got caught up with them because I know personally how mean and vindictive they can be with absolutely no remorse or ability to perceive the impact of how they treat people on a regular basis that apparently had continued past when I had closer contact. For my part, public and personal forgiveness, though we have always been able to resolve our conflicts privately. I worry that this post leaves you open for further hurt when things are very raw though.

@tinuviel why are you doing it wrong? It seems kind of silly to say that unless you as headstaff/game owner can create something to run in perpetuity in your absence/after you have long lost interest you're "doing it wrong."

Frankly the places that can survive for years without meaningful staff guidance have been some of the shittier ones I've played on.

This seems like a really strange player expectation to me, though I have seen people get very pissed about a game ending before they personally were ready for it to end because the owner didn't have time or interest anymore. Like behaving as if they were owed the game to go on because they were having fun and the owner was a horrible person for denying them this game going on past the owner's vision or ability to keep it running in a way they felt comfortable with.

I think that is a failure of those players to be that unappreciative/unable to handle disappointment, not a failure on the part of owner/headstaff.

No one is owed a game they didn't create and do not run existing in perpetuity.

If they were destroyed by being out of commission for a /week/, I'm sorry man but that seems like it's just as much a player problem as a staff problem. I really can't think of anything on a game that can't wait a week once. I can think of several players who I know make life hell for everyone around them if they have to wait like longer than 24 hours.

I agree that probably no one but the actual game owner/headstaff should be indispensible, but I also think players should learn to chill the f out about an absence of 7 days.

I have played and enjoyed 1 or 2 person operated games before, or games with minimal staffing. Sometimes that meant I had to wait even TWO weeks before I got a response. But they were communicative and respectful, and luckily many people will chill enough to not like totally crash and burn and freak out about it.

It might depend on what kind of game you're running. Honestly, I would hope that a staffer run of the flu for one week would not crash a game; that sounds like it's populated by some seriously needy and demanding players. Now if that happens on a regular basis, that's different.

I do think that players have to think about longevity also. In the sense of "I like this place, I like these staff people, they seem to be doing a good job. Maybe I won't suck this place dry immediately by having the expectation that I never ever should have to wait a week on anything, and that there won't ever be slow periods or RL happenings."

It all depends on what you want, and how much you can tolerate.

Sometimes if your primary interest is in more personal stories (that are unlikely to be affected by staffers anyway) and you've got a good group going who also don't care too much about absent (or incompetent) staff, then it's worth staying until the environment bugs you too much.

If you or people that you're enjoying RPing with find that you need more support/feedback than staff can give, it's probably time to move on.

But you can't MAKE anyone be more present. You cannot MAKE anyone get more engaged. So it's just a matter of how much you're fine kind of creating/being in your own bubble, and different people have different levels of tolerance for that.

For me, if I have the right group around me, who ST for each other, and where there's rich RP and PC development, I really don't care about active or absent staff.. And I have been known to leave games who had super active staff but I found their STing annoying or they seemed to be way too invasive. You will start to eventually lose people to staff check-out though, because I think most folks like to think there's at least a potential of staff responding to things you're doing!

That feeling when you are hitting your stride and enjoying yourself with absolutely no having to deal with OOC drama on a MU for the first time in like 5 years.

I really love my tailor/lady's maid and my knight on Arx. Even the BaRP is fun. I can tolerate huge spammy scenes better than I have in a long while, I think, because I have some solid RP partners that really give me the character developing depth (Even though it's not always nice or pleasant IC, or it goes in a direction I way did not expect!) that I crave, so the big events are just enjoyable ways to meet new folks and see if there's other people who seem like a good match for smaller scenes.

I haven't been as excited about/enjoyed thinking about and planning for even in off hours about a character in years. So much thanks to those who took a chance and really gave me something to sink my teeth into, and who have been wonderful collaborators in building things up! And if there's any people who'd like to play with me and haven't and want to see if our PCs click, feel free to hit me up!

It's just nice to be...happy about a place. And not stressed or feeling down because people are dumping shitbuckets all over you OOCly!