The US servers seems to have more of that, or so I experianced with just blalantly using different worlds. As for the toxic enviroment it has only gotten worse with the years.
One thing is the witch hunts for people who TS/ERP which has gone on for years. The community will harrass them to no end for it. But yes, even when I was just playing to play I did keep to RP servers because I did find it had more social people in my experiance.
@Arkandel said:
It's also a cliche but there might be a point in it that girl-gamers like the story more than men do -- on WoW I and many of my guy friends barely read most of the quest texts other than the "what to kill" and "what that gets you" parts but several ladies I know do.
I know it is probably different since I played at a RP server, but man my experiance there is utterly different. Knowing the story and reading the quests texts is important!
@Lithium Not too surprising, but plenty enough of people only do one aspect of that hobby. I have wondered a little what might be the cause of it, if it is a big part the supposed gender preferences that for example has (atleast here) way more women in say LARPing than TT RP or other things like wargaming too. While I've met no women into wargaming, a few into TT RP I can easily say it can sometimes even be a 1:1 gender ratio at LARP events sometimes. But I mean it is usually a number of things rather than just one.
A fair deal of it I suspect is lack of representation and the horrible way so many miniatures of women look. In 40k for example I guess you'd need to go Sisters of Battle or Eldar (maybe Tau?) to find much in the way of female miniatures.
Admiteddly I myself easily get tired of the long ass games, been moving more towards skirmish games recently But anyway.
The articles about women in gaming made me realise I have never actually met a woman who was into TT wargaming, ala Warhammer 40k, Kings of War, Fantasy, Bolt Action etc.
That made me kinda sad.
Edit: In RL that is, I have at MU*s because they are filled with nerds.
Could check out Tenebrae, classical fantasy thing. Pathfiner. Last I knew they were active and helpful enough.
Just keep doing it, honestly. There seems to be a big real fear from people at giving it a go. People want things(tm) to do, and games will stagnate and die without it, or atleast to me they will be unintresting. You don't need to be the gift from god, if people are having fun you are probably doing something right.
Obligatory, have atleast a not utterly terrible grasp of the rules regarding atleast the themes you wish to make use of.
I honestly (and sometimes to my woe) just think up stuff I'd think be cool to happend to my PC and then I run that for whoever is around and wants in on it. This is also because atleast I know it is stuff I enjoy, in the way of themes and you do need to be able to enjoy yourself.
Keep things going, try and avoid getting bogged down in big OOC discussions or the like. Keeping shit streamlined helps immensly, for myself atleast. Also for me that means that pose order goes right out the window if we're not in combat, 3 pose rule at most. If someone is taking way too long, skip em.
Have an idea, hell write down planned scenes, but be prepared to change shit. Improvising is a talent you get better at with time.
Some scenes will suck, be frustrating and utterly not enjoyable. And it might not be on you (wholly atleast) sometimes things just go poorly or you get people who can't interact with you/the world/whatever much.
There is something between one-shots and utterly complicated metaplot level crap, people appreciate a sense of continunity and as is the common trope but, if something/someone sticks around for several encounters they will get a relation with it and it will be sweeter once they resolve whatever it was.
Me being a reasonably young person (21 now) and I started on HM when I was 15-16 I can say I had been RPing in MMOs for a fair few years before that, and they do usually have communities which are well, much bigger then most MU*s atleast. As Apos says though, many of them have not had any experiance with other formats. I myself started tabletopping when I was around 11, so I am a bit different there and hence why I sought out HM by just googling nWoD Online Roleplay basically.
One thing I think which they often have problem with who have never played in a system before is that they well, are only acustomed to freeform. I know that on my server on WoW for example there's grown an increasing dislike towards chance based system (as some did use the /roll command to simulate simple ones) as they feel they want utter control of their character.
To me that speaks especially to how different they view it from well, traditional RPGs where the dice roll is kinda a main thing. MMO RP is also quite a bit more fast paced. If you spend more than a minute or two writing you're slow, which is simpler as you have more visual means to use so you don't need to describe you walking somewhere, but still.
Mind this dislike for other mediums you find everywhere, I for example have gotten mocked often enough by people who MU* for RPing in MMOs the same way people on MMOs seem to find the notion of RPing in tabletop or in purely text based mediums, to not talk about LARP.
With MU*s I think a big thing is still there is a fairly high barrier to entry, I remember it took me ages to get used to the various commands, and even now when I try something not WoD or using well, what has become the common code and commands there I often eventually get tired of having to look everything up.
Shouldn't be it as it is still cold here. I honestly know what it is, last time I cleaned my computer we found the .. cooling paste? Whatever you call the stuff you put on the CPU had basically become burnt, so scraped it off with a knife. Havn't replaced it for no good reason, would probably work better if I did.,
Then again, it did basically burn the last time so I don't know.
Witcher III keeps overheating my computer recently, which is a shame as I like it. Also weird since it played just fine for like a week straight when I first got it. Woe.
So as a Storyteller I've recently been trying to try out new and different things, one of these are trying to make combat a bit more fun (for me as much as the players). And one thing here I've ran into a bit of trouble with is visualising the enviroments.
As in, put all actors in a scene in relation to eachother. Where am I? Where is my friends? Where is the bad guys? Where is there cover? Where is there items of interest? In a lot of TT things this is done with the mapgrid and so forth.
I mainly ST for World of Darkness, which classically does that less. Especially in a MU* enviroments. How do people usually try and handle this? Just try and describe it as best as possible? Using map programs outside of the MU*?
I'll be planning on running stuff here, so if you're on in the EST afternoon. You'll hopefully have events to attend atleast.
@Ganymede said:
You mean "ZooTopia," right?
Nah, Zootropolis, apparantly it is known as ZooTopia in the States and Zootropolis in Europe.
Saw Zootropolis, was a fun movie. Continues the recent themes of handling social issues (thinking of Inside Out handling mental health). It is very clearly about discrimination, but it doesn't overide the fun of it I find. The fox being a snarky jackass was my favourite, of course.
I shall be playing Joan there, or atleast pretend to do so. Already approved and all.
@skew
Nordic LARP methodology.
What's that exactly?
Is generally unwise to make a PC who is so dependant on another PC, atleast in my experiance. You can expect to play with them, sure, want to even. But do not make it so your fun stagnates if they are absent.
What's the starting XP? So I can lazily do it beforehand.
And if you got Background questions toss them up.
Or if you've change the basic CG stuff in anyway, also toss it up.
So did we have a date/website something on this?