Best posts made by Pyrephox

Online friends are real friends! I care about them, want to know how they're doing, enjoy talking with them about random things. Like all friends, they're not all EQUAL friends - there are casual friends, close friends, and intimate friends, but yeah, they're real friends.

I admit to having unease when a staff member regularly TSes players, especially on an NPC/obvious staff bit. I don't care about relationships as much, but historically, MU*s have struggled a lot with people using coercion, threats, and manipulation to get their horny text RP on, and while the stakes in an online game SHOULD be low enough that no one feels coerced -- they aren't, and people do. And it's something that really does need to be kept in mind.

Like it or not, there's a power differential there within the context of the setting, and I think it needs to be kept in mind. With NPCs, really just...fade to black would be my preference. Do what you want on your PCs, although be aware that if people know you're staff, some of them will try to get into your pants for the perceived extra bennies of being involved with you, and other players may end up feeling that they can't be honest about their desire (or not) to engage in a romantic relationship IC because they're worried about retaliation, whether that is warranted by your behavior or not.

As noted previously, this conversation has come up several different times, and the objection always tossed out is, "Well, what if someone uses it to avoid reasonable consequences, or to have any bad things happen to their character?"

It used to be something I found pretty compelling, because I enjoy having outcomes being up in the air, and I, personally, only have a few 'hard lines', and I'm not the sort of person who's ever had trouble just walking away if I wasn't having fun. And the times when someone has pitched a public fit or tried to have all the rewards with none of the risks have stood out to me.

So I get the gut deep objection.

But, the more I think about it, the more I think that it's not really a good objection at all anywhere but a hard PvP game - and that a hard PvP game //should make it clear what avenues of the game are appropriate for pvp//. Boundaries and expectations, publicly stated, are your friends, and if you state the expectations for conflict, and someone tries to throw a flag on a reasonable consequence within that expectation, then they're abusing what they agreed to, and that can be dealt with the same way any other abuse of the system can be dealt with. And by stating the expectations for PvP conflict up front, you give people a chance to actually self-select for games that give them the experience they want. Which isn't a bad thing. I have no objection to no-holds-barred, any-IC-action goes games existing, as long as that is //clearly and boldly stated// to the players, and people know what they're getting.

Outside of a PvP context - if someone doesn't want bad things to happen to their character, then that's a problem that tends to fix itself by players self-sorting into playgroups...and that's okay. Sure, when someone is like, "But this rules change ruined my plans, how could you, I'm hugely upset," to what I consider to be excess, then...I just avoid them. Likewise with someone who always wants to be the center of a scene, or someone who is so passive it's like playing with a rock. Those things are annoying. They are not game breaking.

Allowing people to be pressured into playing out events that are not just actively unfun to them but which could be actively traumatizing? That's not just damaging to the game, that's damaging to actual people, and I believe it takes precedence. I would rather keep ten "but I didn't want to go to jail" players than one "I'm going to threaten you with cutting off your RP with everyone or damage your OOC reputation unless you play this out" player. Hell, I'd rather keep twenty of the former than ONE of the latter.

Which isn't to say that some games may end up just not being appropriate for some players. If you're severely arachnophobic, then Spider Holocaust 2000 is not your game. And it's possible that some 'mystery' games might have aspects of the setting/theme that turn out to be impossible for a player to deal with. (Disclosure: On RfK, I played a human ghoul. My regnant was great IC and OOC, and never creepy. I still ended up leaving the game because the more I played and thought about theme, the more I realized I was never, ever going to enjoy a Vampire game outside of a specific sort of tabletop setting. I hadn't ever played Vamp before, so I wanted to give it a chance. Nobody did anything wrong, but it still was Not A Game For Me. And that's okay.)

tldr: Ultimately, the people who want to abuse other people are more damaging to the game than the people who want to play with no stakes, and I think games can mitigate what danger there exists of "consequence dodging" with this system by communicating specific expectations, then treating violations of those expectations the same way they deal with any other player complaint.

@bored I don't particularly care about fair, to be honest - I was simply responding to the idea that a Great House that has a duchy break away doesn't lose anything. It does, even if it's 'only' tens of thousands of silver in taxes. Which, while it may not be an OOC concern, should definitely be an IC concern. Playing a game with an ostensibly feudal theme should come, I'd hope, with an understanding that nothing about it is ICly 'fair', and it really shouldn't be.

If you're playing a political game, that is. If you're playing a game where every house is entitled to eternal expansion and inflation and the idea is just how you gather the resources to do that, then no, it's not a particular concern. That's not a theme that particularly interests me, and never did.

The reason I originally logged into the game was this, from the front page: "The common people of Arvum wouldn't really call the last thousand years a 'golden age'. Since the founding of the Compact of Arvum, the five great noble houses of the realm have schemed and warred against one another, locked in a millennium-old struggle for dominance kept only in check by the occasional powerful monarch. But even as the fragile peace frays with the latest dynastic crisis, creating courtly intrigues in the capital city of Arx, ancient foes that took mankind to the brink of extinction a thousand years ago stir once more."

It's not something which, to me, really jives well with "and you get an elevation, and you get an elevation, and YOU get an elevation". But that's fine - I rarely even log into the game anymore, and it increasingly doesn't do things that I'm interested in, but which many many people manifestly are.

@A-B Accepting responsibility for your actions and accepting that you were wrong does not mean that YOU are a horrible person, or that you shouldn't attempt to speak to anyone. That's catastrophizing, and it won't help you.

You really need to seek out pro-bono online counseling or consultation with a professional. There are peer support groups online that are specifically oriented towards helping you through those feelings. This is not one of them.

But: Accepting that you were wrong, does not mean accepting that you will always be wrong. It also doesn't require someone to spell out to you exactly how you were wrong, any more than getting a puzzle wrong means that you can never solve the puzzle unless someone specifically shows you every step. It just means you have to take a deep breath, realize that whatever you did then /wasn't/ working the way you wanted it to, and then, next time? Do something different.

I'm not on the game in question, but I'd imagine that your stated action of "I just got despondent at incredible length." made players and staff deeply uncomfortable, and they decided that they did not want to play with you. So don't do that again. You've been told that trying to pursue a conversation with someone about your banning or your behavior is wrong, so don't do that again. Keep a list if you need to, and consult it when you wonder 'what should I do differently'. Observe other people in social situations online, and see the reactions that various methods of presenting yourself gains. Even if you don't, in the beginning, understand /why/ these reactions vary, you can develop an idea of which outputs lead to which reactions.

@lotherio said in Sensitivity in gaming:

@greenflashlight said in Sensitivity in gaming:

or are you just crafting ridiculous examples for the sake of being dismissive?

I ain't saying is hyperbole, but if I have to explain it ...

No, it sounds like hyperbole or being dismissive.

A better example is, breath as a trigger/squick. If I have part of the scene involving trying to hold breath while swimming, I haven't considered all angles. I don't know if someone nearly drowned or lost a family member to drowning recently. Its not a major part of the scene, but maybe I get into describing how long one has to hold breath and the dangers involved and without knowing, I hit someone's trigger without warning.

Does breath holding need to be added somewhere or where does responsibility lie for acknowledging its a trigger? Up front, so a player can leave, in the middle? Does the player leave or the GM alter after like 2 players have made their roles and entered the secret cave?

In my experience, something like more often goes:

GM: talks about the held breath burning in your lungs, the distance to safety, the pressure of trying to hang on for just one more moment as the gas is pressing in
Player: Oh wow, I'm having a reaction to this; drowning is kinda phobic for me, and this is hitting that drowning thing even though it's not water. Can we maybe gloss?
GM: Oh, sorry, man, sure! Take a stamina roll - succeed and you get through the other side with no problems, fail and you take X damage. Narrate that how it's most comfortable for you.
Player: Thanks!

And then play goes on. A lot of rare or specific triggers aren't necessarily things that anyone expects a warning for. They're just things to be respectful about if they come up! The vast majority of players /are not dicks/. They want to have fun as much as you do. They are not setting out to try and make GMs or other players jump through hoops just to see if they will. People with unusual triggers are, IME, very aware that most people don't see anything traumatic or disturbing about X, and will take it on themselves to say, "Oh, I have a thing about Y. Is Y in this plot/session/campaign?" if you give them the space to do that, and they trust you.

I've seen far more people insist that they're Totally Okay with something that they're not actually okay with, and then have a miserable time, because they're scared of being the person who 'brings the game down' than I've ever seen someone playing 'trigger gotcha'.

@carma said in Battling FOMO (any game):

Explicit directions on how to follow hooks is super useful as well. Some places I've been able to find the info, but then I have no idea how to turn it into a scene.

This is really important, I think. A lot of people are interested in following on hooks, but a lot of times, they don't necessarily know how, and they don't want to look stupid or foolish by doing The Wrong Thing, so they just fade back. The more explicit you can be about how to engage the more people you'll have who are willing to try and engage.

Even a 'bar RP' scene can be meaningful, if you consider the setting, the NPCs, and your characters' purposes for being in that place at that time. The only real problem with bar/coffee shop RP is that people have a tendency to 'white room' it - where a couple/group of PCs pose to each other as if they were standing in a white room for no particular reason.

I don't always succeed, but I always try to have a reason to be in a public place - my character is there to do something, and there are things in the environment that complicate that or change that, and hopefully engage other people in the scene by bringing those elements to the forefront on occasion, whether it's an NPC or an element of the setting, or even the weather. It's one of the reasons descs really ARE important.

@sunny Man, all of that. People are SO HAPPY to be able to do 'their character's thing'. If you give a character a chance to do the thing the player built them to do, or show interest in the character's Thing, you will see a character COME TO LIFE so many times.

Not always - I've definitely had those moments where I do everything to try and draw a character in based on the hooks they've written for that character and get nada. But those are a minority. Usually, you get the best RP from other people when you show even the slightest interest in them as characters.

I think part of it going to depend on how much you want to maintain a consistent theme that isn't in line with modern 21st century first world normative assumptions. The more you want to keep things that aren't 'now time standard', the more of your upper structure needs to be NPCs who are very committed to the status quo. If your theme is more modern-day friendly, or you are okay with it going in that direction, more PC leadership can happen.

But, honestly? I think the biggest thing is that IC leadership positions need to be divorced from OOC leadership responsibilities if you're going to have PCs in those spots. There's a tremendous pressure on PC leaders to be 'good leaders' by whatever crazed and entitled way that other PCs define that, and it's both hugely stressful and harmful to having a game with a consistent 'back and forth' of IC conflict and drama. A 'bad' IC leader can drive more and often more interesting story than a 'good' one, IMO, where 'good' is 'tries to please everyone and not Make Trouble with unreasonable demands'.

NPC leaders have more freedom to drive RP and action by being...not great people IC. They can be drunkards who order PCs to try and do something frankly stupid, or they can have a blood feud with another faction that means people can't just 'sit down and talk out' a thousand year old grudge the way PCs are inclined to. And they can do it without taking the IMMENSE amount of OOC flack that PC leaders get whenever they make...almost any decision at all.

I have complicated thoughts about -isms in play. I absolutely see the appeal for a game to have certain sort of -isms excised, where those aren't required for the authenticity of the setting or provide interesting and important sources of conflict. Or if it's set in a secondary world inspired by a particular time period, but not actually on Earth.

But I do have problems with completely whitewashing past eras of history, because those prejudices were incredibly important in shaping that era. I think you generally position PCs as being on the side of the people fighting against injustice, and you definitely do not tolerate OOC bigotry of any sort, or the use of IC realities to harass or ruin the fun of players whose PCs might be targets for prejudice, but I think you absolutely lose some important things if you try to have your Victorian era without acknowledging the effects of imperialism, the impacts of anti-immigrant rhetoric used to discredit labor movements, the battle for suffrage and how that both supported and clashed with movements for racial equality, not to mention the disruption of rapid industrialization to constructs of class and changing centers of culture.

And not all of that has to be front and center, at all. You don't have to have, say, Victorian Misery Simulator, but these things should exist in your game (or be replaced with constructs that can reasonably stand in for those conflicts) in order to provide a robustness to the world, I feel.

That said? I also think this is a great part about having MANY games. There's absolutely a place for a game that's like, "Yeah, we just want the fancy clothes and hats and pea soup London nights, and we don't want to worry about any PCs having barriers to achievement because of race, gender, or orientation." And it's also okay to have a game where those elements are explored, even knowing that it's not going to be the right game for every person, because some people don't want to deal with that even in a fictional context.

And that's okay. Your fun time should be FUN. So, generally, I support games that have a variety of stances on the issue of inclusion of realistic prejudice.

@Arkandel I'll throw another thing out there, specifically regarding WoD/CoD:

Sexual harassment and assault are written both explicitly and implicitly into the setting and system, which makes it more attractive for harassers. Explicitly, in powers and mechanics (no, not seduction rolls, but straight up 'you can change the desires of this target to what you want' or 'this person is devoted to and obsessed with you regardless of their true emotions about the matter'. And implicitly, in the whole "you are the monster" schtick which an unfortunate number of players take as license to let their ids run wild with the excuse of, "It's not the World of Happy Kittens!" And, from a strictly IC point of view, it's hard to argue that pretty much any CoD vampires, for example, would view hitting a human with a mind-altering power, then taking them home and drinking their blood while having sex with them as "bad" rather than as "Tuesday". So when a PC vampire attempts to do the same thing to a PC human, it CAN be a perfectly IC thematic action, while also being unwanted OOC harassment.

And people are generally bad on games about dealing with that.

I will also say that I think that the new @action system helps, or can help, in regards to that feeling of flailing around in the dark. The ooc_intent switch is, or at least I have found it to be, /very/ helpful. Hopefully it is as helpful for staff as it is for me, but making me state 'out loud' what I hope this action is capable of accomplishing has helped clarify what I want out of what I'm doing. Before it went in, I know sometimes I would hear people mention that the response to a storyrequest was completely unexpected, and it could sometimes feel like a dialogue in Mass Effect, where the prompt says 'express skepticism' and the dialogue is like, "YOU LYING FUCK."

One thing we all need to remember, too, is - despite having 300+ active characters (christalmighty) - Arx is in beta. Half the mechanical systems haven't even been designed, yet. The ones that exist may get significantly changed in the future. The way of doing things has changed pretty significantly over the time I've played, and I expect it to change further in the future. So, even when I express criticism, it's with the understanding that none of this is really the 'final product', and I think that staff is generally very open to considering players' actual experiences in the changes that they make - within the constraints of the game they want to run.

Which is good. I'd really rather be told 'no, that's not the game we're doing' sometimes, than have the game collapse under trying to be all the things to all the people, which is a real risk with a game this large.

Smart people fall for stupid, obvious stories all the time. Case in point.

Many RPG players have the Dunning-Kruger effect to the max when it comes to social manipulation - they continuously and markedly exaggerate their character's ability to make good decisions under social pressure or manipulation, and by and large, make their decisions about whether their character finds something IC persuasive based on the OOC factors of absolutely knowing that something is a game, and being able to step back and consider a hundred different factors that their PCs couldn't or wouldn't. And they're not generally willing to buy social resistance skills to actually reflect a character who would be able to do that, because they don't even recognize that what they're doing is not IC.

I feel like one thing we, as designers of persistent environments, could do a better job at, and that would help to make people more amenable to setbacks and challenges, is to stop thinking so much in binaries of 'success/failure' and more in a series of meaningful choices that each open up different avenues of play. We set up games to have one "success state" - it's not an immutable condition of the universe, it's a design choice.

For example, if we're going to use literary/story conventions (which, if I'm honest, I don't think are a very good match for RPGs, because the story isn't entirely in the hands of any one author, and may be in the hands of a random statistical element, so expecting things to turn out as smoothly as they do in media is setting oneself up for frustration, I feel) then failures in a story are rarely ever just FAILURES. A good author doesn't slam a barrier down in front of the protagonist without creating a path to get around, under, or over the wall - usually a more interesting and dramatic path than just going straight through the obstacle would have been.

I've been playing around with the idea of, essentially, there being continuums of play which are interesting but mutually exclusive - you can dabble in each, but to commit to one, you have to damage your reputation with the other - although that reputation can later be repaired if you decide it's more fun to play the other side. Like, instead of "Here's the dominant power structure - if you screw up with them, you're SOL when it comes to play," instead thinking of it more like, "Here's the overt group of power-brokers, here's their shadowy counter-points. Pissing off the overt group is going to shut you out of some of their opportunities, but it's also going to make you attractive to the shadowy counterparts, who will open up opportunities for you that you can only get by "failing" to impress the overt group."

Basically, the designer needs to think: If I'm putting out this challenge which can be failed, what are the consequences of that? If the consequences aren't inherently fatal, then how do those consequences allow players to continue to advance their character's desires by other, but still fun, means?

That said - some people can't accept consequences of any sort, so some people are always going to cry "my story" or "my agency" whenever things don't work out exactly as they have planned. You can't design around these people, you can only gently shoo them to other games that work better for their needs, before they cause too much trouble.

@lisse24 said in Character 'types':

@three-eyed-crow I once had someone do this to me and their tragic back story included all sorts of sexual torture, which they described, in detail. I was like nope. Nopenopenope. Done with that character.

This is a note to everyone, ever: Please don't do this. Do not spring surprise sexual trauma on people. Not in the moment, and not in the backstory, especially surprise sexual torture. Just...don't. There is no way to make me backpedal faster from wanting to play with your character. And I'm not even particularly squicked by sexual trauma or sexual torture - I just don't really want to deal with it from (often) pretty much strangers IC.

The persistent environment, and the opportunity (however rarely realized) to see character actions and choices create lasting and thoughtful changes in the environment over time. The potential for that is really what keeps me coming back.

Although it hasn't been about sexual/romantic discomfort, I have had other players occasionally reach out and ask if I'm okay about a specific thing that is happening or has happened to my character. I've never, myself, considered it creepy or unwelcome, even when I've been entirely bewildered by what they were concerned about. So, a simple 'hey, are you okay with what X is doing' sort of thing never seems out of line to me. Just if they say 'yeah', let it go, move on, etc.

I admit, as an individual, I lean towards desiring a strong IC/OOC divide between characters and players, because I do tend to see a lot of...unhealthy bleed. This can be the relationship pressurey stuff of 'our characters are in an IC relationship, so you have an obligation/relationship with me OOC', but it's also just more bedrock things like character values bleeding from players to characters in settings/systems where those values aren't aligned with the setting. Or, worse, the bleedover that assumes that 'oh, you play a sexist/racist/classist/whatever character, so you must looooove these things as a player'.

Part of my IC/OOC boundary routine is to try and make sure every character I play disagrees with me on at least one and often more than one fundamental value/motivation. A lot of the characters I play are, to some degree, assholes - not really because I enjoy getting people's goat, but because I find playing ambitious, energetic, and opinionated characters who aren't always (or even half the time) right to be a good way to make sure that I feel free to be ICly wrong, and that I always have a way to push a scene/plot forward when I need to.

I build characters with an eye to be good delivery pieces for the RP I want to have, not really to convey my personality or values into the game world. I admit that it absolutely bothers me when I realize that someone else isn't doing that, and instead has IC morals/values that are very tightly wed to their OOC values.

While I am ALL IN on the web-based evolution of play, and haven't been able to manage to stick to a game that requires a client in years, the things I hear from people suggest that there is still a lot that clients provide.

Ability to split off streams of information, for one. I know you can sort of do it in Ares with different tabs, but I know some people have custom setups that kick, like, /these/ specific channels over to this window, and pages and secret org channels to THAT window, and then poses to a third window, and web-based things that I've seen aren't that flexible, yet.

Macros and custom code, and softcode that works from client-side, for another.