Posts made by mietze

Maybe, dunno. Personally, as I've said, I don't give a crap about sex pcs. If that keeps people happy and occupied more power to them. At least this PC was not violating the age policy.

There were a lot of people who felt they should get to do 5 actions in every pose or who would totally flip their shit and ooc tantrum if they rolled poorly on SC, but I will say that while I am sure there were a lot of sexual shenanigans, I can't think of anyone where that impeded their other RP. But having to pose failure or not wanting to roll with it? There were quite a few. It was a little mindboggling, because failure with whatever dice system they were using was a regular thing even for skilled pcs. I damn near killed someone on a healing roll a few times, and I had one of the higher stats in the game for that eventually. So after the first few gut punches you'd think that people would get used to it.

I believe you @Sunny. It looks like he was conflating what someone else said in this thread with you. Common enough, to do that sort of thing and fire off a nastygram.

Yep it was a Ling one. I was bad and offered to let a new ling admin who wanted to learn how to do apps take it on with my supervision, and then took on the task of explaining the issues with that bg (it wasn't the orgasms) and +sheet since it was pretty complicated.

However, that BG remains my favorite one that I've ever processed as a staffer, and to be honest with you? It was more coherent, grammatically correct, imaginative, and well-written than most of the stuff I saw.

Also, Skaldia, you'll be better served to bother to read and pay attention to what is said. It wasn't Sunny that mentioned the situation at all.

Sometimes you're better served to wait. And think. And be sure you have your facts straight, and aren't responding in an upswell of pique.

You would think if a plot was years in the making that waiting one more day to be sure that people who'd worked on it and wanted to help concluded has a chance. Rather than knowingly scheduling it during a time when it would be difficult ICly or oocly to justify not being at the other event (and kind of being rude to that important event's organizer too). Or even if you intended to keep it away from most people, to at least be considerate in appearance.

It costs so little in the grand scheme of things, but it seems to be a super high bar for a lot of people.

I'm not opposed to it being art. (I don't think of it as art per se, but maybe I attach the wrong label to what 'art' is)

However, if someone were to tell me that their mush writing is 'art', I'd probably be leery that they were kind of a pompous selfish scenehog. Mostly because the only people I've heard describe their play as that tended to be the people who would get very offended at other players interrupting this scene that they already had a vision for, since it was all about them. Luckily those have been few and far between.

But I would worry that they were less a collaborative player, and more one of those tiresome people who really wants for you to shut up and observe them as they write.

Maybe I'm weird. (Well okay, yes, I am.) But regardless of whether I make up some 20 page detailed as fuck background (Don't worry @surreality I would never and have never included detailed descriptions of my PC's orgasms for some poor staff bastard to get stuck reading) or nothing...they actually aren't fully living or even settled until /I start playing them/. Sometimes I prefer the less intense than your every shit for the last 150 years backgrounds precisely because as I understand more about the PC it allows me to more easily adapt and slot other people in or build connections with people. As long as you have the guideposts in I do not think a huge florid background detailing everything enriches RP and may detract from it. (A lot of people are so wrapped up in themselves by that point they can't really go with the flow and then are stuck on a place that once they start playing isn't like what it seemed like on chan--not in a bad way--but now they've turned themselves unchangably into something that can't interact well with anyone else).

I think where rosters fail is when they attempt to be both pre-gen and overly detailed in background/contacts. I do think having a list of PCs 1-6 with a line or two about what they're statted for (Roster #1 is a PC who isn't great for physical combat but is statted for wheeling and dealing. Roster #2 is a PC who is a magic user who is heavily focused on the fartcrafting sphere of magic. Roster #3 is a PC who is suitably statted to be a tourney champion in the making but s/he still has some room to improve. Roster #3 is a seasoned decker, top of their game in skill related to decking but they've sustained some injuries in the meantime which greatly hinder their physical abilities in the meatworld.). Just the basics explaining to people what the build of the PC can do. (WHen people get scared of CG I've found it's because they dont know how to build what they want to build yet if it's new to them). Let them have the statted skeleton, and then let THEM decide gender, name, background (detailed or not), ect.

I feel this would probably more accomplish what people actually seem to want out of rosters. You could add in PC hooks too, I like that idea in principle but because of turnover I don't know how realistic that ever is.

The hilarity that is a padded large (12 x 12 ish) cage filled with huge ass balloons, a handful of toddlers, and a series of fans that make the balloons whirl around the air in a perpetual vortex. :). Sometimes happy screams of delight are good for the observer's soul.

WIC does not cover diapers (or at least didn't when I was a foster parent). That's why there's always a huge huge ask for diaper donations to private foodbanks. Food stamps doesn't either, IIRC (or didn't then, but I never used food stamps only WIC vouchers, but I seem to recall other longer term fosters saying it didn't).

@surreality

No. Absolutely the whisper campaign is meant for the target to know about. Shunning isn't fun unless it's very clear that that person knows that they are unwelcome; I've never seen it not occur without the PA taunts on channel or in scenes, ect. I have never seen a whisper campaign that ever was hidden. People aren't stupid, everyone knows damn well that anything said in page/semi-public channel/or skype always gets back. That is part of the point.

So really, I don't know that I believe there is less shaming or even that it's functionally different. The goal is to destroy reputation/get people to not play with that person as well as ego strokes for one's own play/elevating one's own status.

And yes, I guess it only matters truly personally if you care about the person doing the shaming--but on an online game where rep can deny you access to even basic interaction if someone has poisoned the well enough (Because most people won't bother to make their own assessment, unless said poisoner starts doing it to them and they realize that maybe the problem is that person)--it does matter, if you want to play in that location and not hide who you are. Which can be problematic because in building contacts with people, that subject often comes up. So it's...complicated, I guess.

Well, that too, IMO is another expression of "you're just not as hardcore as me, you just can't handle real stuff, go back to your tea parties." And then "don't RP/give plot hooks to/bother with Person X. They only like fluffy bunny play and/or don't like to take consequences for their actions" (both death knells to active play for a player especially one who isn't established/does not have much of a rep).

@surreality

I believe TS shaming to be just as prevalent as it was in the 90s. Perhaps even more so, because instead of "oh they write smut" at all, now it has morphed into "don't trust that player with that plot/bother to RP with them, they only care about TSing" and it makes access to plot and activity even more curtailed (since now there's mostly other-player STs rather than staff run things).

The OOC defamation stuff is just really toxic on games, always has been, but now that there's been a change to a need to rely on the goodwill of other players for any kind of non-social play. So reputation and goodwill is arguably even more important than it ever has been.

Back in the day, SR:Seattle had...shit. Like a HUGE staff roster when you consider that it was in essence a 'single sphere' game. It also could be PvP at any time (fights between groups did often break out and they often caused massive PK--gang wars, orks/trolls converging on humans/elves going down into the UG, the free for all of the Barrens) and since all equipment things were objects rather than +sheet stuff, that means if you killed people you'd get their stuff and their credsticks, ect. I don't recall ever being bored there. Though there was plenty of silliness/social/sexytimes shit too. I saw much more politics and negotiations there than I've seen on most WoD places, even my favorite political places. Probably because staff would not intervene in PKs. I remember regular purges and assasinations between yakuza/mafia/associated racial and org gangs/triads/ect

This is not to say there wasn't cheating/favoritism/gaming the system/ect because certainly there was, and sometimes the PK stuff got a little old (especially harsh for the people unused to it/not expecting that a simple mistake like going into the barrens desced as being dressed up or randomly wandering into territory could get them killed within hours of getting out of CG--and a full background and all that shit was required (of course, with a zillion staff I don't recall the turn around time being very long either). No age policy either for PCs, which probably led to some gross stuff. So I'm not saying it was halcyon days, but it was very very different from the offerings you see now. And I think while there was like super drama that spilled into RL, there wasn't quite the uber major ooc nastiness that's vomited all over the place that you see in some WoD environments either. It may just be perception though, and my aging brain.

@Seraphim73 Though with the exception of a separate grid (at least on Seattle), I don't recall there being a lot of staff support for riggers in particular. So yeah, you could build stuff out, but whether or not it gained you anything in play is...meh. (I had a rigger on Seattle, and one on Detroit too). Deckers at least could do paydata on the old games. And they always had staff that would run shit for them, at least.

Bear in mind that 'social interaction dice' are a very screamed about thing and usually the least used feature of WoD on games, because you're a rapist pariah if you want to ever use your dice to determine what another PC might be influenced towards. People start hyperventilating at the mere thought of using it. So honestly, most PrPs I've seen or even staff run things on WoD mushes are heavily combat oriented or spectating. Even heavily "political oriented" splats in mushdom tend to never get to use their social dice or merits at all (except for to get a few extra dug rooms on their mansions, ect) or very seldom, so combat skills dominate. That is starting to change now, thank god.

But as I said before--social capital is king, and not from your +sheet, and can be on rules focused games as well.

I'm not sure a SR game would die without staff. I noticed the various SR spinoffs seems to have a lot more focus on social RP and less staff running of things, and many of them lasted for quite some time. In addition, I wouldn't have termed most of the huge bloated staff register on some of those games (including SR seattle even in its heyday) as "good".

I dunno, @faraday . I guess the ability to min/max, and roll for combat and non-combat stuff? I don't understand why WoD is not perceived as crunchy as anything else, in that regard. Or what dinosaurs have anything to do with crunchiness. After continuing to read I'm thinking it's less about systems and more about "I want the chance to have high risk of dying/killing someone" which definitely was very much the case on SR Seattle when I played there, as well as early non-Changeling WoD games I played on. But in any game you're going to have numbers dinos unless there's no advancement allowed or new PCs automatically get large XP to match the average on the mush in CG. I'm fine with that, but I don't think it will solve the problem that most people who hate "dinos" really hate--which is more something of access/importance. Because for better or worse, that tends to be less invested in numbers and more in the players (social currency). It can be frustrating, but I don't know how you solve it, unless you only allow a player to play on a game for so long before they're banned. Even if two people have the same exact XP and access to +sheetstuff, the person who has more social currency is going to have greater access to stuff, more people willing to help them out, more people willing to group up with them, ect. I see a lot of times in discussions like these what's wanted is equal access/parity, and I don't know if that is possible. It's unfortunate, IMO. I as a player try to actively meet and welcome new folks, and not just stick to people I know, give people I don't know a chance in leadership positions and plot hooks, ect. I don't know the percentage of people willing to do that though, and unless it's high then that elusive feeling of "more than just the oldbies get to affect things" won't happen I don't think.

I mean GURPS has less CG restrictions and you can do some truly fantastupid things with it that every other system puts limits on (you can make a telekinetic who can in essence levitate themselves, if they take the midget flaw, ect. and no limits on things like WoD used to limit flaws/merits at CG, or SR limiting flaws too) but it's also a custom system, so most of the times I played it TT the GM would not let you do totally dumbass things with it, unless it was funny. (Like my buddy's low intelligence giant combat monster with a phobia of loud noises or the aformentioned flying little person who also had a delusion that he was a fairy and that's why he could fly. Sorry people, me and my friends were stupid as anyone else when we were 17-21).

I was introduced the same way TGT. I still find WoD to be rules intensive, or at least, no less so than SR, Twilight 2000, CP2020, Earthdawn (well okay, that one was a little nutty--one of my friends was a playtester/ran stuff for us, I loved it, but when I tried to figure it out on my own later, no dice, I hear in later editions it got a little better though), and GURPS.

What I really enjoyed about MUSHing was getting to have more RP immersion than usual in tabletop MUSHing, while still getting to the rules. I found I didn't last long on do whatever you want consent places because it was nice to have both. I started MUSHing in the early mid-90s on Shadowrun Seattle, which at that time was very hardcore. I wonder if it's not MMOs that have siphoned stuff off a bit; if all you care about is PvP you can do it in a faster no drama (for the most part) than you're ever going to experience on a MU**. Though I know many people that do both.

Oh okay. I don't watch TV other than series that my hubby wants to watch on netflix or Honey Boo Boo and Hoarders stuff on youtube/amazon. Am I allowed to say that because it means I'm low class? Or is it pretentious to claim ignorance of a fame 5 figure because I'm a vampire who doesn't keep up with pop culture?