Posts made by mietze

I could probably do that I guess? But that would probably require like everyone breaking IC. For one thing, my PC also has stuff that makes leaving a capital offense on most games I've played, and then I couldn't blame the new cov for wondering WTF is this person thinking, do they think we're going to trust them when they just up and leave their old one on a dime? Why wouldn't they do the same to us?

I'm willing to consider if the RP is there, but that seems like a lot of doing things that usually people end up bitched about on here about, yeah?

Because my PC's a Crone.

I would love to! Sadly, I don't believe the Lance will have me. If they did, I'd be all over it.

For MUSH purposes, I wonder if a RL political game might be better if it was a parliamentary system? More pieces of the pie there, sorta.

I guess having slaves means that there is an option for people who don't want to play a noble, if/when the non-noble alternative "spheres" don't get much play?

I still think that having one 'class' of people more focused on self-driven things and coded management and another that needs a lot of staff/ST management to actually be able to be effective/advance/get neat things (unless there's coded exploration/scavenging/whathaveyou? I don't know how difficult that would be) will mean that you'll eventually just have the easier group be the only one where there's significant RP because they're less at the mercy of staff inattention/busy-ness. This isn't a slam at staff, just a thought of what seems to be the reality of games these days now that we are, as a community, a little older with more lives than just the game? (Though that too may be an incorrect observation).

There will need to be things for the captains to do, though, rather than just fill out some other guy/gal's roster. This is where I've seen it fail.

I feel 10000% better eating "clean" for lack of a better word. (Not no carbs, but 'just enough' and mostly nothing processed, which is kind of a bitch.) I really need to do this for my long-term health because of Boring Health Issues. I don't have any cravings or anything, really, but today is a day where I swear to fucking god I would bite a dirty man's butt cheek if it meant that the carb fairy would grant me 5 minutes to eat a bag of Doritos.

In my observation it's pretty hard to keep nobles going AND guildie/privateer types going, especially once fief politics and resources are adding in. It's less staff intensive to provide challenges fief side, but if you have PCs that need exploration that seems to cause a lot of problems. Not because it wouldn't be fun so much as it's hard for any staff activity dependent thing to keep rolling along through what seems to be pretty inevitable highs and lows of activity levels on staff part.

Has anyone seen a game where there was both noble politics/or high noble activity AND high adventuring/ship based play? I've seen either/or, including on places that wanted to provide both. With a lot of people feeling frustrated/ignored/useless on the places that wanted to have it all.

Is there a way to tie things together? A mechanic that draws PCs together, like rewarding Space Duke for incorporating PC privateers/captains rather than their on-paper assets? I like Ganymede's idea on Reno to have willng players taking on staff outlined or fed plots, maybe that could be used to help with giving explorers/captains something to do other than ts on the deck or hang out at the port bar?

Now that I've had two years to settle into it, I have to admit that while it certainly has its challenges and sorrows, I'm having more fun and am more relaxed and enjoying myself with the baby I had a couple months shy of 40 than having all my other kids in my 20s. Sometimes the LOLcurveballs the universe throws are kind of enjoyable, at least this one is for me.

Agreed, very extremely strongly, with Ganymede here.

I complained about it on TJ's thread, does that count? I had kind of assumed it was something to do with my phone. My tech know how is such that I only know that the dancing computer parts magically making the computer run Intel commercial of many years ago ISN'T true because I married some poor computer dude.

Me too! I was just going to ask about that!

Y'all probably don't want to know what is on my staffing/oocly coordinating huge scenes like court "Keep me Happy/Upbeat OOCly" playlist then. I'm with ya, TJ!

It's really not that hard, there's just been such a very weird resistance to it on other games I've played, The Game That Shall Not Be Spoken Of being the sole exception.

@surreality

That's why I have in the past pitched and argued for some degree of house rules on vampire games when it comes to absentee regnants. You probably would/would not be surprised to find out that I've heard a lot of venemous opposition to it (I think because usually there's a low opinion of people who play ghouls, number one, and also that people really seem to not read the "in the event of a regnant idlefreeze" part and seem to think that it would apply at any time.)

So there are thing that can be done after a waiting period. Though honestly, this is where the choose wisely as you can clause comes in. If you choose to play a ghoul or template switch to one, there is an assumption of risk there, which means that you must be willing to accept a certain degree of handtying for a time until the idle policy kicks in. It does suck, but I consider that part of the things you have to weigh when you choose to tie in to someone in a very specific and complicated manner. Some people would say that should mean that anyone who plays a ghoul should be ready to yield their PC in case of a freeze, but we don't really ask that other other templates usually, and there are workarounds. I think if you have a game where there are strong IC tie ins (stranger-apped marriages/partnerships or something like the blood bonding relationship of vampire-ghoul) it's probably good for staff to have a clear idle policy that encourages players to work it out prior to the time limit, but has steps that can be taken if they cannot or will not.

And I say this as someone who prefers to play ghouls (it's my favorite template).

When I speak of being non-committal, I don't mean reversion once the person returns so much as only making decisions for myself, not another person. If someone dropped with no explanation or apology and then wanted things to move on as if nothing had happened ICly I'd probably say no, as by that time I'd already have an exit plan. If they did talk to me about it and it seemed like something I'd like to take a chance on again, we'd just talk about it.

But the reason why I don't get other people involved or limit my interactions about what's going on while I don't know what's going on is the weirdness of having one partner RP about their assumptions, affect other's RP and potentially even their IC relations with that absent PC, and then suddenly retcon when they work out things between the two of them. It's just easier to have the full spectrum of options if there has been minimal rp about it in the meantime.

I think because there's a huge variance in assumptions by players, that's why I lean towards vague/non-committal answers in play with an ooc explanation to other players why I don't know, and a time limit before I independently decide to ICly and oocly move on.

@Arkandel

I'd definitely be game to accept whatever staff ruled was the IC goings on too. I have found though that a lot of staff are kind of overburdened anyway, they have enough on their plate, and if I want things to not be kicked down the road of "god, I'll deal with this later, I really need to process this other priority stuff" by asking staff to pull the idea/answer out of their butts, it's better for me to spend less time stewing and fretting and more time thinking of some face-saving-to-all-sides proposal I can pitch.

People respond a lot faster to a pitch rather than a "you tell me what happens" much of the time, and if they do need to say no, they tend to be much more willing to come up with a compromise than something from scratch. Staff, someone who isn't equipped courage or social skills wise to be able to say no, you name it. As long as you are not punitive and overly self serving in your pitch. It's hard to do when you're pissed, I'll grant, but it's worth it if you can.

I really love playing ghouls. This has meant that I've had to deal with dropped regnants a few times. This is not usually a problem you can go to staff with per se since it's not important (though I'm glad to see that finally a lot of vamp places do have house rules to allow ghouls some degree of OOC agency to remove/switch up regnants in the case of someone going AWOL) in a mush sense. What I usually do is wait whatever the idle-freeze time period is if the person has suddenly stopped logging in, and when they roll over contact staff to tell them my proposed solution, get their buy in along with whatever adjustments they propose. If I have contact info for the AWOL player I'll try to contact them weekly until that point--not in a bitchy or whiny way. Once the idle timestamp has been applied, I always send them the pitch I made to staff. If I don't have off mush contact info I send it in a @mail shortly before they roll over so that when/if their RL is such they can return, they'll be able to see what the pitch was. And then I move on, and if they return, I'm friendly--maybe we work it out to continue, most of the time not, but hopefully no one has been disparaged except for actions that THEY wrote and took prior to their departure.

Poor BobGoblin's situation though is...I mean, at least with someone who drops off the game, you don't have the kind of meanness that is ignoring someone or putting them off without the courage to say "I'm not interested." That's a shitty thing to do to someone. Even if you don't have a close tie in. If you don't plan to RP with someone, just tell them and then offer to work things out OOCly. I don't alt-stalk, so it's possible that I might have been in this situation too but was just unaware. I think think I'd be a lot more pissed if I knew someone was being a cowardly dick and wasting my time and theirs.

So in that case, I still would not involve other PCs in things--that's awkwardness on a lot of levels, as I said previously. But I would definitely after a month (or whatever the games idle policy is, whatever's longer) send a @mail and then +Request if the mail was not responded to stating that I'd tried for X amount of time to get scenes with no response, while the other player was active otherwise, and that I wasn't sure why--at that point /I/ was uncomfortable needing action on their part to advance my story, that I did not hold any grudges or anything, but I'd like the proposed resolution of XYZ (something face saving for both PCs) so that we could move on and not have any further obligation to each other unless we both agreed to it organically sometime in the future.

The issue with RPing as if someone else is avoiding/abandoning you without having that permission is that it widens the circle of potential complications and kind of forces other PCs to get their own RP complicated OOCly, perhaps without their knowledge that it's an OOC problem.

It's why I would probably oocly let people know that the person hasn't been available and then RP noncommittal stuff in regards to that and steer RP away from discussions about it, but if it was seeming to impact me a great deal to do that, I'd probably get in touch with staff for guidance as to what I can and cannot work out for myself if the other player cannot or will not communicate with me.

Perhaps my point of view is influenced because I've been in a situation where someone's IC partner/tie in dropped off the face of the earth for a bit, and she really really played up the Poor Me aspect. She didn't really tell anyone that she wasn't in contact with him OOC, so we assumed that he was in agreement with some of the zanier things that she would say as to why he wasn't around. None of us asked, but this was like all she wanted to RP about, all of it revolving about how horrible she was taking this abandonment. Our reactions/actions went along as ICly appropriate. When he returned, unexpectedly, she was happy to act as if none of that had happened, and would get really angry about any references to previous RP surrounding her "IC" feelings of abandonment, ect. It was just an awkward situation all around.

I'm reluctant to spread the potential awkward/retcon beyond what it really needs to be, to be honest. So I think noncommittal if you have no contact, and then adherance to the game policy if there is one/checking in with staff if it's important, or being willing to fudge a little that YOUR pc decides to dump his/her sorry ass if you want to move on is preferable to getting a bunch of other people involved ICly.