Posts made by peasoupling

@lithium said in Creative Outlets:

@peasoupling said in Creative Outlets:

@lithium said in Creative Outlets:

See I love posing /actions/ people can respond to, not stuff that is a barrier to entry to RP. They can easily look at my character and read what I look like, or if they know me, they have already done so and posing it over and over again can be... intrusive.

I feel like people respond to what people look like all the time, though. Moreso if it's something that's likely to stand out for some reason, whether because it just does, or because of context. Maybe you're in leopard print, hot pink, and wearing gold mirrored aviators indoors. Or maybe you're wearing a vintage Dior dress with pockets, which is always relevant.

Either way, I don't tend to have a description for every single outfit my characters might wear. The closest is on Arx, but even then people kinda skim and assume all kinds of things.

Yes people respond to what people look like, but there are /so many/ multi-descers out there that are /easy/ to use and manipulate on the fly. There's absolutely no reason to need to pose it every single time rather than set a multidescer up.

Well, generally my descriptions include the character's general sense of style and fashion, the kinds of clothes you'll likely see them in, not specifics. They don't wear the same clothes every day, but I'm probably not going to multidesc the entirety of their wardrobe in advance. I did once, but the character was a street rat, literally.

@lithium said in Creative Outlets:

See I love posing /actions/ people can respond to, not stuff that is a barrier to entry to RP. They can easily look at my character and read what I look like, or if they know me, they have already done so and posing it over and over again can be... intrusive.

I feel like people respond to what people look like all the time, though. Moreso if it's something that's likely to stand out for some reason, whether because it just does, or because of context. Maybe you're in leopard print, hot pink, and wearing gold mirrored aviators indoors. Or maybe you're wearing a vintage Dior dress with pockets, which is always relevant.

Either way, I don't tend to have a description for every single outfit my characters might wear. The closest is on Arx, but even then people kinda skim and assume all kinds of things.

I had the same person, someone I already knew, pop up something like 3 times (I think) over a few weeks, but that can be amusing too. Just come up with increasingly unlikely ways of running into each other, have fun with it.

Trading it between alts might be helpful, as sometimes have a hard time coming up with a good reason to interact with someone, but that's on me.

@pyrephox said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@sunny I think that accuracy can vary across experiences. PCs like yours or mine are some of the most socially powerful ones in the game in a way that other characters can't easily match, in many cases. One of the most powerful Duchies in the game can have a very different experience as a social character, I think, than a random Iron Guardsman or a Baron in the hinterlands. At least in part because staff IS very good at letting us use the organizations that we're heads of, and use the non-combat resources we have to affect change.

In at least two of my PrPs, there was no combat whatsoever because the agitated mobs with pitchforks were defused thanks to social characters. The combat PCs ended up having relatively little to do other than accidentally almost rekindling the whole situation. Which would also be fun! But these were PrPs, designed as background local color for the world-spanning battles between good and evil. The scale was deliberately smaller. Maybe there should be more of that sort of thing?

I fully intend to, some day, roll charm+seduction at some wildly inappropriate life and death juncture, but I don't really expect my combat character to ever play a major role, even after I invest more into social stats. If she ended up trying to conduct diplomacy with a lost elven kingdom, it would be a sign something has gone seriously wrong somewhere IC. Which would also be fun.

In part, I think it's an issue of scale, and the very structure of +events. If you're expecting a thing of enormous importance to happen next Tuesday, you'll grab your heavyweights, whether that's combat or social or whatever.

@arkandel said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

For example let's say you have a Far West game. The setting is supposed to showcase certain discriminating themes (racism, sexism, etc) but every player you run into plays a liberal character yet NPCs stay on the age-appropriate side of the political fence.

There comes a point where, unless staff takes exceptional efforts to inject theme with regular doses of the aforementioned -isms, the NPCs' views won't make an impact; PC-to-PC interactions vastly outnumber every other, and if most characters' superiors and employers are typically tolerant and progressive then the game can easily end up in this bipolar state where something is supposed to be happening, people IC refer to it happening but aside from the occasional PrP no one actually experiences it.

Which can also be frustrating for someone who is playing a supposed target for the -ism.

See also: you chargen a poor struggling character who finds herself having to resort to shady work to make ends meet, and within five minutes of hitting the grid some slumming billionaire is throwing wads of cash at you and buying you a gold-plated scooter.

If I make a character type that has some IC disadvantage by design, in the setting, I do so deliberately. That's not a random roll of the dice for misery. I am choosing to engage with that disadvantage.

Now, the fact that the world, and history in particular, is a terrible place does mean that, in many settings, this will disproportionately affect women, PoC, queer people, religious minorities, etc, particularly if they want to play a character, in some way, like themselves. White men will probably be playing on easy mode by default, though they can, of course, choose to play a white male peasant if that's their jam.

And yes, if someone is not at all interested in dealing with that, however remotely, in their fun times, maybe that game is not for them. It may be a game for someone else who is interested in dealing with that. Both are fine, but they may not enjoy the same game. Then again, depending on how much of a sandbox the game is and where exactly they draw their lines, there may be room for both!

As someone who'd probably play on a cowboys MU* to RP tragically dying of tuberculosis as much as to disarm bandits with amazing trick shots, it feels like there are two separate issues here, and there's an enormous excluded middle somewhere out there.

One issue is the setting, and how much do you remove discrimination and awfulness from the setting at large. Do you allow women to openly serve in the local cavalry soldiers fort? Will a black character be elected sheriff without anyone batting an eye?

Another thing are the PCs, how bigoted they are allowed to be, and whether you let them express that bigotry or not. Can you play a fire and brimstone preacher who refuses to marry Joe and Tex? Or characters of different races? Can the barmaid insult other people's masculinity by way of homophobia, even if you don't care that Joe and Tex are confirmed bachelors happily living together?

You can have a Lovecraftian game set in the 20s and 30s without allowing PCs with 'enormous racist' as a main personality trait. Once you've decided that (I am all for it), do you allow the white heiress who'll happily adventure alongside POC while enthusiastically believing they are a credit to their race? Do you have evil racist NPCs?

Why would I want to play a sexist/racist/etc character? I am not making a character who will be throwing slurs around. But I probably wouldn't like to play an enlightened 21st century progressive gunslinger in a 19th century that's amazingly better than our own time, either. These things aren't an on-off switch, people can be kinda racist, and kinda sexist, and kinda homophobic, etc. Most people are.

After all, I would probably like people to react to my character having fought for the Union in disguise as a man (I am very much ready for this hypothetical cowboy MU*), and not by saying, "I can't believe they still won't let women serve openly in combat roles."

@bored said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

I'm also not sold that 'fantasy racism' safely, 100% avoids the nasty implications.

All I know is my favorite Dragon Age origins are Dwarf Commoner and City Elf.

To take T8S, I know I want my character to be inadequately erudite, and sometimes quote Aristotle or an assortment of wholly outdated authors in reaction to the weirdness of the setting. Sure, the 17th century is the century of the scientific revolution, but we'll have none of that godless heretical nonsense, thank you.

I don't know why that just popped into my head, but it did, and now I am having a hard time doing anything other than struggle to work backwards from that into an actually playable character concept.

Other times I start with actual concepts, though.

Sometimes, a setting includes some form of prejudice or another. And you make a character, knowing that, because you want to engage with it somehow. Maybe you want to have tragic struggles in your background, maybe you want to be a badass subversive rebel, maybe you want to climb to power behind the scenes since open power is denied to you, etc. Those can be fun character types. And then you hit IC and everyone is really, really nice and egalitarian.

The challenges you thought your character might face are gone, and even their backstory and characterisation seem to ring hollow. Why, those other Taurans still living in the slums according to the setting files are apparently just lazy and insular, since everyone hangs out with Taurans, marries Taurans, and hires Taurans to be Vice President of Marketing like it's no big deal.

In my experience, you don't even need antagonistic PCs to avoid the above, if the decent people PCs acknowledge the setting has its problems and RP accordingly, which is vague, I know, but can make all the difference.

My chargenned and barely played characters I never could get into litter the DBs of a thousand worlds. So I just know I'd make one of these characters and then it would just click and be the best character ever and I'd grow very attached to it and it would end in tragedy.

Fallout, but run by someone who doesn't make me back away slowly when I see her interact with players on the Public channel?

@three-eyed-crow

Dragon Age MUSH is closed. The wiki is up, but when you try to connect it says it's gone.

There was also Smoke and Shadows, I'm not sure if it's closed, but the last couple of times I checked it had 0 players logged in.

@lithium Oh, I don't remember if I did or not, but she didn't have the dice for a frenzy under normal circumstances. She was a Theurge with low rage, and I think she had some sort of bonus from rank, too.

Oooh. Very serious, very formal, perfectly poised, old money Shadow Lord werewolf (W:20 WoD). There's some sort of werewolf function, she decides to have her kinfolk henchfolk bring in a piano because she's going to do a recital for the uncultured masses.

I botch (critical fail) my roll.

She fumbles a few times, grows increasingly frustrated, werewolf temper, snarls and says fuck it. Instead of Chopin, she plays Chopsticks in a fury, bows to the crowd and storms off stage. It was so much better than any number of extraordinary successes could ever have been.

Added my characters on Arx. Debating what to do next once I'm not absurdly busy.

Will there be no mortals or mortal-adjacent characters? It seems that three separate cities would pretty much make mortals unplayable, even if you have the playerbase to more or less support 3 separate games (which it sounds like it would be, more than an actual Multi-Sphere game) on the same server.

@Shiggy said in RL Anger:

@peasoupling said in RL Anger:

@Shiggy said in RL Anger:

@peasoupling said in RL Anger:

What's public dignity?

Not having to put up with people like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfqAkUXKT5Y

Who is that?

AIDS Skrillex

K.

@Shiggy said in RL Anger:

@peasoupling said in RL Anger:

What's public dignity?

Not having to put up with people like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfqAkUXKT5Y

Who is that?

What's public dignity?