Best posts made by Miss Demeanor

@bored Likely because people haven't been discussing the action nearly as much as they've been discussing the person behind the action? Look back at this thread. A lot of those arguments and 'dog-piles'? They weren't about the action, they were very clearly about the person who supposedly isn't fit to be a moderator after two possible mistakes. A more constructive way to approach it might be to bring up the post that so offends, and state only that they don't believe the post was necessary/pertinent/needed/whatever. Instead, there was a pages long argument over Auspice's personal behavior, both with and without the moderator hat, including critical and non-helpful speculations regarding her intent behind multiple posts. People have taken personal offense to a general announcement made that, while perhaps premature, was in no way so heinous as to be deserving of multiple personal attacks or calls for her removal as a moderator.

Edit: Looking back, some of this post comes off high-handed. My apologies to anyone that felt I was being condescending, that was not my intent.

I still don't get WHY people want the position so much. Its mostly a lot of call center bullshit and endless goddamn meetings and scheduling of shit.

I envy men that ability. Summer in Florida with bras is HORRIBLE.

@Three-Eyed-Crow Its like skinny jeans. Someone made them. Someone else said they looked good. And now they're EVERYFUCKINGWHERE. I hate skinny jeans with burning, fiery passion. Unless you're a stick with great legs, they do not look good. WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY BOOTCUT JEANS?!

I was gonna say.. I was signed up for like, three plots last week that I wasn't able to get to for various reasons. But that was my fault rather than the game's. There are things happening, maybe not EVERY day, but certainly at least once a week.

@royal It was an honor and a pleasure to play Ramona under Jackson's leadership. You made the unasked for dream of a Bruja-run Elysium come true, and it was hilarious good fun while it lasted!

@Ganymede said:

@Miss-Demeanor said:

Everything went to player-run (or Staff-run through player bits), which some people used to game the system for bunches of extra XP. I believe she's trying to halt that before it starts.

Why is this a problem?

Are you going to start giving your Admins and TL's xp for doing jobs? Staff ST is still a staff position. Why should they be special and get xp for doing the job they volunteered to do? No other staff can do their staff job and gain xp for it. When they did away with the Staff ST position entirely? Not as big a deal. Don't get me wrong, in general I don't have an issue with PRP's. I have an issue when a single subset of staffer starts get bonuses to their PC for doing their JOB. No other staff get xp for doing their job, why should Staff ST's be special?

I looked at picking up that HUmble Bundle of comics, but honestly... the only draw for me was The Maxx. That got turned into one of the most awesome, late night, short-lived cartoons. It, along with Aeon Flux, The Head, and a few others, comprised MTV's late night The Oddities. Just a great lineup of oddball cartoons (most based on comics).

The hardest part, for me, is finding RP outside of plots. A lot of people are still kind of... hiding away in private rooms or the OOC room and being generally unresponsive to prompts for RP. This may still be leftover from the shellshock of TR, but its not easy finding pickup RP between plot scenes.

@Derp I will note that I did not and do not question Status as a way to represent influence in social situations. So the 'thing' that was originally asked for DOES exist... but some people ignore it anyways. Much like they do with nearly all social and/or mental types of manipulation or domination. You can't get away from it. The people that are going to scream and cry and swear on a stack of holy books that their character "SO wouldn't do that" are still going to scream and cry and swear regardless of any system that's put into place. You can't change the players. The question is moot because until people stop being so anal about having their characters manipulated or dominated, the problem will persist.

So no, GMC's social rules isn't an 'answer' to the problem. Because the problem isn't a rules problem, its a people problem. I hate the GMC social rules, so yes, I will gladly take the Go With the Flow option right off the bat, take my Beat, and be on my merry. But it has nothing to do with me wanting to ignore the social rules in place. That's my way of not having to draw out something that I find to be tedious, boring, and entirely unnecessary.

The long and short of it is that there is no fix to this problem. You can't make people not be people, and the people that ignored it then will ignore it now. Doesn't mean the system in place doesn't suck.

@Ganymede said:

@Miss-Demeanor said:

Are you going to start giving your Admins and TL's xp for doing jobs?

Of course not. But if you are going to award players with XP for running plots, then why should staff not be able to gain XP for running plots?

I concur with Sunny's sentiment that staff should not enjoy rewards that players can't or don't.

Because your player run plots aren't advancing sphere plots or (hopefully) metaplots. STAFF should be running those things, not players. Staff should have that inside information, not players. That should be a Staff ST's entire job, handling the plots that cannot or should not be handled by players. You want to run a Monster-of-the-Week on your player bit? Fine, go ahead, that's what PRP's are for. You want to run the sphere plot on the player bit that you absolutely should not be adjudicating from as a staffer just so you can get an extra couple xp for your character? No, fuck that, run it on your staff bit and use the MotW and other low level stuff to pad your character sheet with.

@Tinuviel said in Dead Celebrities: 2017 Edition:

The king of snark is dead.

Don "Mr. Warmth" Rickles

Well.. shit. If the snarky ones are starting to go then we really SHOULD circle the wagons around Betty White!

One of the big flags, for me, is the singular lack of defensive bonuses for Social Combat over the extensive aggressor bonuses for it. You can find a TON of social merits that will let you add modifiers, open Doors by taking a Condition, etc. Iron Will is pretty much it in terms of 'defense'. So its still very much weighted in favor of the aggressor. Sure. You can defend/resist... but since you need only a single success to move to the next stage, its not likely to do you much good.

@Coin said:

I just don't see having inside information or more things to mine for plots as a reason why they shouldn't get XP. It just don't work that way in my head. But hey, if it works, good!

It isn't even completely about the XP. I wouldn't want staff running the -major plots- for the sphere/game from the character bit that they absolutely should -never- attempt to make staff-level decisions from. Separation of church and state, man. Use your character bit for YOU, use your staff bit for the GAME.

Edit: Though I still feel giving a staff storyteller xp for running a plot, the thing that is what they signed on to DO, is jank. If you aren't going to hand out xp to all staff for doing their job, then don't make staff storytellers an exception. They signed on to do something specific, just like every other staffer. Why should they be special in getting xp for doing their job when no other staffer gets the same bonus? Every staffer accepts the responsibility of taking time away from their character(s) to help the game as a whole. Whether by running a sphere, doing jobs, mediating between players, storytelling, whatever. If every other staffer that is taking time away from their character to help the game as a whole isn't getting xp for their character bits, Staff ST's should be no different. Players CHOOSE to run plot. They aren't required to. They never accepted storytelling as one of their responsibilities by joining the game as a player. THAT is why they originally got xp for it. As a way of saying 'thank you for taking time to fill up the space between huge sphere/game plots to keep everyone interested while we cook up the next round of insanity'. Staff ST's accept that as a responsibility, a requirement of their position. Not a choice, not a perk, a -requirement-. That is their sole responsibility as Staff. They can still CHOOSE to run other things from their player bit to get xp. But they are by no means -required to do it-. And if they choose to take that time away from their character? They get xp for it, same as every other player.

I have had cats that have taken on Rottweilers and lived to tell the tale (but that cat was just a beast anyways, I miss that furry scrap of awesome)... my current two cats?

......BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Yeahno. These cats don't even GO outside, let alone have interactions with dogs. If someone tells me 'hey, my dog has a prey drive', my response is 'please do not bring them to my house that is my cats' only safe space'.

You don't TRY to pit your 8 pound cat against a 40+ pound hunting machine. That's called animal cruelty and I will report a motherfucker.

@surreality said:

@The-Tree-of-Woe said:

What you have to do is convince a bunch of well-meaning female players that you have a deep emotional connection with them, possibly by faking being autistic or some such, farm up your XP, and then be a complete asshole to anyone who dares to show up in your genre sporting a penis, so they know who the Alpha Male is, rrrr.

"I... I have testosterone poisoning. It's terrible. It's like... so jarring, you know? I can't stop my dick from getting hard all the time, and that's such a horrible burden of frustration. You really have no idea. People laugh, but that's so cruel. It hurts me deeply when they laugh at my massive and majestic cock, standing at permanent attention, sometimes glistening... Can you imagine how many women just can't keep their hands off a guy who can go all night and just keep going? But I've been seeking the worthy ones, because nobody likes an indiscriminate slu--oh, hey, who's that over there? She's got great tits... s'cuse me a second here, gotta test her worthiness...

...over and over and over again."

Priapism, ladies and gentlemen. Its a serious condition. XD

Ditto. Except replace HEB with Publix. No HEB here.

@Coin I you even when we argue heatedly. Maybe moreso because we CAN and still be cool with each other. And yes, you're right.

@Jaunt The thick skin isn't about 'giving as good as you get'. Its about being able to take what's being flung at you without letting it bother you to the point you feel the need to retaliate in kind. That's just a slap-fight, and while most of us will grab the popcorn and snicker as shots are fired... its not all that productive. And we are trying to be more productive with MSB overall.

Frankly, to me, the majority of yours, Jeshin's, and crayon's posts have read like radio instructions to me. ie. they're very dry and technical and my interest wanes pretty quickly after that. If they aren't parched dissertations about something, they tend to read like the script for an ad on tv. And since I watch all my shows on Hulu, Netflix or the like to avoid commercials, I think you can see why I would tend to skip over those as well.

There's numerous threads that theorize why our little corner of the hobby seems to be dying out and what factors are affecting our community, but most of them tend to approach it from a more conversational angle than this thread does. This thread is more like... being at a lecture. Our 'genre' as you put it, is about people. The staffers, the players, the coders, and game creators... all people. So yes, you're more interesting of a topic right now.

As to MU*ing and 'customer service skills'... I am a CSR. Its what I do. Do I want to log out of my work and go... deal with more work? Not particularly. Not to mention, most customer service is about as personable as a wet mop. It tends to be scripted, with a few specific responses geared towards a particular end (getting to the next customer, keeping people sticking with your company for the least amount of actual effort, etc.).

You talk about customer service skills like there's something good about them. Here's your average set of customer service skills: Automatic deflection of fault onto the customer. Meaningless apologies to cover ineptitude. An inability to actually achieve the result sought because you lack the proper authority. Being shunted around to 3-5 different people for the same problem. Being forced into horrific wait times on any and everything because only one person knows how to actually fix half the problems.

Customer service skills already exist in nearly every MUSH I've been on. Its terrible. Its what has lead me to NOT get into any of the plots or storylines, because I don't want to have to deal with that in what little free time I have. Hell, at this point, I go out of my way to avoid contact with the vast majority of staff altogether. I'm tired of being put on hold while someone goes to look something up, then forgets that I'm on hold. I'm tired of waiting 7-10 business days for a response to a fairly simple question. I'm tired of everything being automatically my fault until I can produce some sort of proof otherwise. And I'm very tired of dealing with people who think its okay to be snarky and condescending to me because THEY have the authority and I'm just one of the poor schlubs who is the reason they have that position in the first place (ie. no players = no need for staff, or in CSR terms, no customers = no customer service representatives). Customer service exists in MU*s. And it needs to STOP.

(And no, I am not saying EVERY SINGLE staffer is like this... there are staffers that I love to pieces for how awesome they are. But the latter is definitely outweighed by the former.)

Man, I remember snow. I haven't seen it in awhile, but I remember it! Also... agreeing with @2mspris. Fuck you, pollen. I don't even HAVE allergies and it bothers me just for sheer volume.