So I had a thought on the original post (which I am posting without reading the entire 12 pages of this thread) and it goes something like:

I've seen many many cases in my many many years of RPing online (both in MUs and bboards and stuff), that there are always players who ignore all or most of the OOC information on the game and its related sites (beyond can I play character X type information), and that often includes details on how Staff approaches the game (availability, GMing style, preferred plot types, and so on), and then these players who ignore the available information will get upset when the game does not work the way they think it should, and throw fits, run PRPs specifically for the purposes of detracting from others play, and all manner of other bad behavior, all because they didn't bother to read the readily available OOC information on the game (again, beyond what they needed to read to make sure they could get their character approved).

And yes, there are definitely people who have staffed places who completely ignored everything their players told them OOCly in an effort to connect and tell a story everybody was invested in, so it's a two way street.

I'm not sure how to actually combat this phenomenon because it's specifically related to people just not going the extra mile to see how things fit together on a specific game. Maybe work on slapping that info on the front page of the game's website somewhere, or a big link to it. I dunno.

Can anyone think of a game that had or has a really good way of making sure players see that type of information fairly quickly (and even fairly often)?

Sorry if this is a rehash of previous stuff.

This very much codifies for me that you aren't here for a positive environment. That and some older posts you made claiming you were done with MSB and MUing in general forever.

Good to see you stick with your guns.

Oooh. My turn.

Here is the tale of "Why You Shouldn't Do A Shitload of Meth Before You Attempt To Shoplift".

As a younger internet miscreant, back in the days when some areas of the country were still having to make long distance phone calls to get dial-up internet, I worked at a store that was a sort of a weird combination of Blockbuster Video and a Tower Records, but without any sort of corporate oversight.

At the front of said store, in our meager music section, we had a music demo kiosk, where we had the new releases we were pushing as well as a few albums selected by the employees as a poor attempt to humanize the store. You could walk up, put on headphones, and waste time listening to a full album without paying for it. The empty cases for the CDs being displayed were there as well as copies to buy.

One evening, about an hour before closing, around the time we lock one of the two double doors to sort of indicate we're about to close (this fact is important later on), a guy and his girlfriend entered the store doing their best impressions of this famous Monty Python sketch:

The entire time they were doing this, their eyes were glazed and they would lose their balance every thirty seconds or so and have to catch themselves on whatever was nearby, be it the candy rack, a rack of rental movies, or the magazine rack. Each time, they'd knock stuff in the floor, making a mess for us to clean up, and immediately look at the nearest person and laugh when they righted themselves.

Eventually they worked their way all the way around the store and ended back at the CD preview kiosk thing at the front of the store, where they tried to look cute by listening to CDs together, by holding the headphones between them. As they were looking at the CDs, they kept looking back at the cash register area, and laughing. Eventually they silly walked over to the cash register, and set a bunch of the empty CD cases from the kiosk on the counter, as though they were going to buy them.

I look down at the cases, and as I'm about to say something, the girl laughs obnoxiously, grabs the empty cases, and both run for the door. The guy makes it through the unlocked door without issue, but the girl slips, and smashes her face into the pushbar on the door, crashing into the floor. As she picks herself up and pushes herself out the unlocked door, he's made it through the outer door of the store, and realizes that she's not keeping up with him. He turns around and because he doesn't have good control of his own equilibrium from whatever drugs he was likely on, he continues wobbling off the sidewalk and into the parking lot, just in time to get hit by a Volkswagen Beetle. The older kind, that was basically made of old APC metal and never dented. He gets knocked down and skids about 10 feet away as she gets out the door and screams bloody murder before picking him up and they both just laugh and continue running off into the night.

The entire time I'm just standing there watching this in bewilderment, because well, it was store policy to let the shoplifters run off to avoid possible violence, and also because the store manager was there and said to just let it go because it was empty demo cases.

TLDR: Two meth heads attempt to steal empty boxes and then perform a Buster Keaton routine attempting to flee the scene.

@lotherio said in Something Completely Different:

I trust Gany to do as they said, review when things simmer down. Can we get there without more gas going into the fire?

Things have been almost totally inactive since the "fire" started. I don't know how much more simmered down it could get without just turning the server off.

@jennkryst I honestly hope the super-ebil factions of the WOD are never opened for playable PCs in any future WOD MU*s that may exist. They are fine and dandy as ultra-monstrous antagonists, but fuck letting people play them as PCs.

@jennkryst

I rather enjoy Mummy myself. (Both Resurrection and Curse).

@ganymede said in Something Completely Different:

He is quite literally responsible (along with Testament and Faraday) for why we still have all of the old posts and transported successfully (because the rest of us at the time were not technically-literate).

This makes me think you feel like you owe him some level of community moderation authority just because he's good at the tech side. I sincerely hope that's not the case, and will simply say that while he seems fully competent at doing the IT side of things, he is not capable of being a rational and balanced moderator, and should really be removed as such.

@il-volpe

In my experience, if I have issue with another player on a game, I go straight to staff with that issue because I feel like keeping staff in the loop helps to minimize the potential harm of any blowups that may occur. If nothing else having a somewhat impartial third party helping me work out what the issue really is can be a great boon, at least for me.

Also, honesty can often feel like hostility to some people, so they may be avoiding what they feel like is a direct attack from them onto you just from what they've dealt with when people have been honest with them in the past.

@23quarius If I had the money, I'd commission some art. Maybe something involving a monster truck jumping a river.

@sixregrets

I am not aware of any MUs that have used any edition of UA. I would suggest researching 2e over 3e for a MU because character generation in 3e is done as a group and some of the mechanics in 3e would fall apart rapidly due to character turnover that MUs usually experience.

This very much codifies for me that you aren't here for a positive environment. That and some older posts you made claiming you were done with MSB and MUing in general forever.

Good to see you stick with your guns.

@Lotherio

How does the silent majority represent the will of the people here at MSB if they never express their will to begin with?

I would rather propose that the vocal minority has triumphed over the vocal majority here, becoming the will of the people, and due to the events that have transpired in the last month, also become the vocal majority.

The silent majority can never represent the will of the people on an online forum because if you are silent you are non-participatory in the forum and expressing the will of the people on an online forum does require some level of expression.

@lotherio said in Something Completely Different:

Gany is following this will of the people

Would you say that the will of the people is represented by a vocal majority?

@ganymede said in Something Completely Different:

He is quite literally responsible (along with Testament and Faraday) for why we still have all of the old posts and transported successfully (because the rest of us at the time were not technically-literate).

This makes me think you feel like you owe him some level of community moderation authority just because he's good at the tech side. I sincerely hope that's not the case, and will simply say that while he seems fully competent at doing the IT side of things, he is not capable of being a rational and balanced moderator, and should really be removed as such.

I will add to the "it's not your fault in any form" dogpile.

You did nothing wrong.

Take care of yourself where ever you may go.

@lotherio

That's not how that works.

Maybe.. my brain is juice right now from RL stress and stuff.

@lotherio said in Something Completely Different:

I trust Gany to do as they said, review when things simmer down. Can we get there without more gas going into the fire?

Things have been almost totally inactive since the "fire" started. I don't know how much more simmered down it could get without just turning the server off.

On another game, I set myself on fire as a magic user character because I as a player did not read the description of the spell I was using, resulting in my death.

Before you say, "Oh but the GM should have let you redo it because you as the player didn't know the effect of the spell!", I will add that we decided to run with the character's death because I was RPing him as incredibly absent minded to begin with, and it would only make sense that he would forget how his own spells work and take himself out of the picture that way. In fact, we joked up to that point that any other death would be unworthy of his legendary airheadedness.

What is, hands down, the most hilarious, funny, laughable IC moment you have experienced in your time in this hobby?

Mine is from a Vampire game years ago. A Gangrel (with a mortal background of being from a tribe of Germanic warriors) brought a huge trebuchet that was hundreds of years old, but kept in good repair, to the Prince as a gift on his birthday (yes this particular Prince still felt the need to celebrate his birthday, and bringing him a good gift would get you on his good list at least for a short while). A super rich pompous Toreador brought the Prince a brand new limited run supercar in his favorite color.

The Prince enjoyed his new supercar, but thought the trebuchet was boorish and made comments as such.

The Gangrel went and got some heavy cable, and while the birthday party continued, hooked the supercar to the trebuchet and used it to launch the car into the river.

I laughed so hard in person from witnessing this that the other people in the scene had thought I had gone afk.