Posts made by Nein

I let my characters idle into oblivion. The game was fine, I was just never able to RP. There's a set window of time where most activity takes place, and if your RP window falls out of it, forget it.

When I was available to RP in that time, and people agreed to RP with me, I had to wait 2+ hours for the friend circles to stop talking to each other before they went, 'oh yeah, someone asked to RP'. There was at least one instance where I waited 10 hours to find RP. I was proactive. I had ideas. I got 'sure, let's rp'. And then it never happened.

Unrelated to this game (again, I find no fault in it), perhaps the 'no one does anything' common complaint on MU*s is related to MUSHes being treated as extended Facebook/Twitter/Discord chat servers for friends instead of games.

Wiki should be optional. I guess I'm an old fart in that I prefer to have everything you need on the MU*. You're there to play a game, not fill out a TPS report for the privilege of pretend adventures.

Would you consider auditions for multiple people who want the same character?

This is pretty much the idea some friends and I were kicking around as a MUSH to build. Minus the entire tabletop aspect. I am intrigued and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

@Meg The 'if you build it' open play game was run in 2004. I did have a TF game, the reason it was disorganized when you got there was because one of the people on the game I was brainstorming with decided to invite a bunch of people on the game before I could even so much as build a room or turn off login screen create. Said person then had their sister open a wiki "on my behalf" without telling me, and before I knew it I had a bunch of people who were looking at me expectantly for RP while I simultaneously had to build, code, write news files, chargen and try to run plots all by myself, which is kind of like trying to finish putting the chassis on a car while while it's going 55mph down a highway.

Yeah, that's going to mean things aren't as transparent or open. They weren't even there to BE transparent.

@Meg And what game was that? I weren't aware you were on a MUCK in 2004.

@Rook I built one of those some time ago. Unfortunately, 'If you build it, they will come' proved to be false.

@WTFE said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:

Unethical players will use dice to their power pose advantage too. It just shifts the point of their being assholes around.
Dice are not the great equalizer their advocates seem to hold them. Here's a trivial hack off the top of my head: in chargen make your character invincible, for all practical purposes, in one specific area: say ranged combat. Give them loads of numbers on a ranged attack and loads of numbers on damage avoidance/elimination. Then just carefully avoid any scene in which your advantage can't be used. Suddenly you have a character who cannot lose when played, even though the all-holy dice are there to adjudicate things.
There's a million ways for assholes to be assholes. There's only one sure-fire way to stymie an asshole: don't be there. Avoid the fucker and walk away. This could be as blatant as:
<asshole> has arrived.
home

"Don't feed the cancer cell and it dies" is what I've heard this referred to. Always what I was told to do. 80% of the time it works.

The other 20% are staff and then you just have to turn around and exit the game.

I'd pitch for an 80's-90's X-Men, Agents of SHIELD, Gotham or Justice League.

@Meg Thank you, I will. I was hoping to learn something and I did. I appreciate your response.

@skew I'm going to stand back just a bit and see if someone else steps up, but if the situation gets dire, your copypasta line sounds like a good one.

To be fair, I had never heard of the character prior to joining the game. I had to do a lot of googling to find out why people were complaining. Guess I have half a brain.

I had to give some details on the situation just to verify that A) I was not witnessing someone being treated poorly by a lot of people for no reason and B) that my perspective was not off. I was willing to be corrected if that was the case. I can see that I didn't handle even the post as tactfully as I'd intended, but there you go.

Edit: The answer to "Is it Killgrave/Daken" is "None of the above."

You both make excellent points.

Advice usually given by friends is easier to take.

As for the situation, it's a combination of remembering what it was like to be 'that guy' that would make people get up and leave a room and be left wondering "why won't anyone talk to me or play with me", and remembering how that felt, and not wanting to wish it on anyone.

I have no horse in this race; I am not required to interact with them nor is anyone else I've played with, nor am I a long-term established player with time, emotion and energy invested into play there. I've just heard what's said when they're gone or offline. I felt bad for them, because I've been there, and I was very grateful to the person that had the balls to talk to me.

That's why I left a post soliciting for advice rather than just open my mouth on-game and stick my foot in it.

I begin this post with the caveat that I do understand unsolicited advice is generally considered to be a no-no. Hence I am asking for general advice on ... advice.

This is in regards to a particular situation I am observing on a MU*-That-Shall-Remain-Nameless involving someone's portrayal of a character that is already an existing intellectual property. I am not going to name the character in question, because I have no desire for a name-and-shame scenario (I'd go to the Hog Pit for that).

This person has a character that is, as presented in media, a sociopathic (or at least highly violent and murderous) manipulator who has the ability to manipulate the emotions of others in any direction using pheromones. The character's history includes a lot of luring, trapping, murdering, torture, etc. - generally villainous behavior. The character has also shown some bisexual tendencies in the use of their pheromones and has had both same and opposite sex lovers mentioned in the source material.

This person is, however, portraying this character, in both in and out of character areas, as essentially a walking glitter-dusted erection with Louis Vuitton handbags who sissy-slaps with rich girls over FABULOUS FASHION (fingersnap) and sniffs the buttcheeks of every other male character that walks by, determining their worth as a person according to their looks.

This behavior has been off-putting to the point where I am seeing and hearing other people beginning to leave areas they are in or not scene with them, or say they refuse to scene with them. I think this person has a lot of potential as a roleplayer if they'd just rope it in a little. I don't think they are aware of how their behavior is affecting their RP opportunities.

Hence my dilemma: Is it worth it to take them quietly aside and as gently and tactfully as possible ask them to tone it down a little so they can have more roleplay options, or is it better that I let the trainwreck continue on full speed into the wall they're headed towards?

(I ask because in my younger RP years, I had someone kind enough to take me aside and rip me a new sphincter over some stupid things I'd done, and I took that to heart, learned from it, and had better and more RP because of it. In this case I'd refrain from sphincter ripping.)

@Ghost

YES.

The problem with the 'play whatever' multiverse superhero games is that it's a pain to figure out how everyone fits in with everyone else. Limited focus (even to just one comic book company) allows for coherency, which creates continuity, which means players can have characters jump straight off of existing canonical relationships, events and conflicts. It makes finding and generating scenes a lot easier that way, and gives new people a chance to find their RP niche more rapidly.

I've found it helpful to treat staffing and headwizzing as if you are in an office environment. I know there are those that decry this, but establishing a hierarchical level of respect and authority, and a well defined set of jobs for everyone down the chain of command really helps. If your staff know what is expected of them, both in behavior and game function, there will be less stress all around, and you will know where things are getting fouled up. This also eliminates issues I've seen among staff where 2 people do 90% of the work and burn out very quickly while the other ten staffers are faffing about on social media all day and then doing staff work really fast for one of their friends.

All rules and policies should be written towards moderation. Too lax and people will take advantage of you, too tight and people will find loopholes.

Keep some professional distance between you and your staffers. NEVER hire on someone you are in a relationship with. Only bring friends into staff if they are friends you are 200% sure can handle being disciplined, corrected, demoted or even fired without destroying your friendship.

Make to-do lists. They are super helpful.

Have staff meetings, if only so you can touch base with each other, address new game needs, brainstorm ideas, or go over problems together.

Don't be afraid to shutter the game if there are more bad players than good.

It's actually better to approach candidates for staff and ask them rather than make people staff who are seeking the position. While you will sometimes get the genuine person who wants to help you, almost every other time it's someone who is seeking power for power's sake.

Make sure your theme isn't so niche no one will actually play it but you.

@Gilette

Which games? Belatedly: I've been on all the active ones. They generally share the same media character campers, same issues, and same degeneration into The Dating Game.

Trying superhero games and after 2 months I'm ready to abandon them as a lost cause. Between try-hard poses crammed with more NPCs than Skyrim and 90's Matrix Bullet Time 'Look at how badass I am' along with a 30-45 minute wait time between poses, not being able to do more than four 'turns' in an entire session, people who don't read what you wrote, horny lesbian superheroines slug-trailing up my leg, ridiculous TPS Report applications/corrections, the "I Have A Main Character And Will Not Touch The Peasants Beneath Me" friend circles, and now random rule 63 genderswaps of major characters (not canon) for no discernible reason, I'm ready to either retire or look at some other genre/theme.

But not WoD. I've heard too much.

I would almost like to try this almost as an experiment, to see what happens when you remove the media/feature characters and rely on only original content. No preconceptions, just hypothesis-test-result.

The supers games I've been on where FCs are present have caused the same sort of repeat problems that were brought up in the link fatefan posted. I've not been on these games long and I've already witnessed most of the problems detailed firsthand.

Thanks, fatefan, I'll take a look.

@Wizz Just as a framework of reference so people know the world in which they exist, really. It's not a necessary thing. It just provides a spawning ground that's familiar.

I would probably try to curtail that as best as I could. I would be fine with someone having an adamantium skeleton or being a billionaire detective but if it's obviously Not!Wolverine or Not!Batman, no. Powerset copies are unavoidable.