I'm enjoying Gray Harbor. It's active, modern horror/fantasy that isn't WoD and has a laid back, semi-sandbox style. There's metaplot and plot to get involved in, but you can also just do your own thing, including supernatural things, without trouble. People are nice, staff seem sane, and I've had fun.
It IS in beta, so don't get too attached to stuff as the system undergoes some tweaks and expansions as things get shaken out in play.
Oh this sounds fun!
I want to engage fully with whatever setting I play in, and most settings have some form of elitism, ethnocentrism, or prejudice. So I do consider and often include some of those biases and prejudgments into whatever character I make. I usually try to key them so that they do not involve harassing or encouraging the harassment of other PCs, but I find a certain level of tension to be an enjoyable challenge in PC to PC interactions which can otherwise be bland.
For example, I currently play on Arx. Theme files suggest that there is prejudice not based on sexuality or ethnicity, but on culture. So, my character is notably biased against 'shavs' and Prodigals on a cultural level, viewing them as barbarians in need of civilization. That said, he can interact quite pleasantly with individual Prodigals, so long as they don't say anything crazy like suggesting shavs are cultural equals or superiors of the Compact, and he doesn't approve of wholesale slaughter (although he's fine with driving them off land that 'rightfully' belongs to members of the Compact, if they won't bend the knee, and killing the ones who refuse to go). He likewise looks down on practitioners of shamanism, atheist characters, and nobles who like to act like commoners and don't abide by the standards of personal honor and behavior set by the main culture.
He has a lot of people who he looks vaguely down on, is what I'm saying. And sometimes it's hard, and he can get cut out of stuff because of his IC snippiness about 'those sorts' (whichever group of 'those' he's complaining about today), which I consider a reasonable consequence for his views. Even if, OOC, I find it a little frustrating that so many PCs hold very modern opinions in defiance of the setting, since the setting is really what I'm trying to play, warts and all.
In general, I'm more comfortable with playing fantasy prejudices than real world ones. I don't really want to play a racist character, even if I don't think there's anything necessarily /wrong/ with it, as long as OOCly it wasn't making the group uncomfortable. It just wouldn't be fun for me, and I probably wouldn't want to play at a table where someone was hitting that note hard, even if it was totally IC-only. But if you want to play someone who hates elves? Or wizards? Go for it.
To me, any political game - truly political game - needs to be built from the resources up. The essence of politics is "how do we divide a limited number of resources among people who a) all want more than we have and b) don't want to just murder people". Everything that you do in politics is really negotiating that resource division question, whether the resources in question are land and tons of grain, or sparkly magic powder, or the favor of the Crown (or other equivalent social intangible resources).
So, you have to have a) limited commodities that every faction needs, b) limited commodities that each (but not every) faction has a source for, c) mutually agreed upon procedures for negotiating for these resources that you don't have using the resources that you need, and d) a schedule of escalation that is reasonably well known, reasonably predictable, and which requires risk and cost to employ.
A are your resources in play. These can be solid, immutable things like land, they can be transferable things like money or trade goods or people, or they can be intangible but desirable like whatever proxies you want to use for respect or favor, or something like a 'vote' if you want a republic or corporate board setting.
B means that every faction (whether you're going for small-politics where every PC is a faction in and of themselves or something more traditionally L&L like houses or families or guilds) has SOMETHING to bring to the table that they can use to negotiate for the things that they need but don't have. Every faction needs to have power, but they shouldn't have the SAME power, and no faction should have all the things they need as a stable entity. Stability kills political pressure.
C is both your IC setting culture AND your procedural help files - ideally, there is a procedure up for 'how do I overthrow a leader I don't like' and 'how do I grab someone's land' and 'how do I create NPC pressure' BEFORE ANYONE ASKS, and that procedure is widely disseminated, universally available, and referred to regularly. Culture plays into it by setting boundaries for IC behavior which, again, should be aggressively referred to - if yours is an honor society, then define what 'honor' means for people of that setting, define where it comes into play, define how to get around it, define how to recover when you fail to get around it, and make it clear what you can (and can't) get as a reward for successfully navigating it.
And, finally, D is where you lay out the powers that each faction can bring to bear when things aren't going their way, ideally with levels of escalation and specific costs to use. What's worthy of a border raid (and how much does a border raid cost in soldiers/supplies/time), what's worthy of a trade embargo (and how is that likely to impact my own lands), what's worthy of a declaration of war (and how do we run a war anyway).
I think that without all four domains of this, any political game runs into a lot of problems, because people want to fall back on their own assumptions and, quite frankly, very few MU*ers know a thing about politics, state-level economics, or historical/historically inspired versions of either. The great thing about breaking it down like this, though, is that no one has to. You don't have to be realistic, you just have to be consistent and predictable.
Yeah, no.
I disagree with Faraday about many, many things, and our philosophies of gaming are almost diametrically opposed. And I've argued quite strongly with her about those things on here, where shit tends to fly.
And she's never once been rude or aggressive in those arguments. If you managed to actually piss her off to the point of her snapping at you, I can only assume that you started calling her names or ranting about lawyers or something else completely absurd.
And - honestly? It's her project. If she has a strong vision for what she wants to see in it, then that's her goddamned right, and she doesn't owe anyone anything. I know there are things that she prefers not to actively support, codewise, but it's not like you're banned from doing it. She's just not going to do it for you. It does not, in any way, justify, excuse, or 'make understandable' any sort of harassment of her. It wouldn't even if she turned down every suggestion with a gif of someone shitting on the suggestion and an audio file of extreme flatulence for extra emphasis.
Regarding 'ranked' positions, I think it depends on the IC nature of the organization and what the PCs' places are within it. Something like the leader of a pack, or other small personal organization almost requires someone who is OOC at least /okay/ with doing some significant personality management. On the other hand, a large IC organization with many, many NPCs is different - the PCs should presumably have enough autonomy and NPC oversight to not need an IC leader who sits down with each one of them and walks them through everything. While I might expect a head of a family to explain their plans over dinner, I would not expect a megacorp CEO to drop by each of their employees' houses to get their personal feedback on where they plan to take the business. Note, this only works if the PC leader isn't trying to micromanage - if you're going to expect PCs to fend for themselves within the org, then give them the freedom to do so, and only step in when they're going against the purpose/goals of the org in a measurable way.
Taking on a dependent is a similar case, but on a smaller scale, I think it's the OOC responsibility of both players to discuss what this relationship entails in terms of IC commitment. And be honest! Also, my general feeling is that any relationship like this should have an 'escape hatch' right from the start, mutually agreed on, if it doesn't work out, or if one player goes suddenly idle or something, in a way that doesn't ruin either of the characters. The above also applies, ideally, for IC relationships of a lot of different types.
I don't think any RP position should reach the point of needing to be a second job, full or part time, in order to be seen as 'doing a good job'. I feel like some times people demand too much of others in those positions and forget that the other person is a player, trying to have fun, and not just a dispenser of things your PC needs/wants. If you're wanting/needing something from another PC, take a moment and think about what you are doing to make your needs actively fun for the PC's player.
@HelloProject said in RL Anger:
So, my ex-therapist tracked down my Twitter (as I have a google info box due to releasing my music through a distributor, so google is like "Wait are you famous?"), after exactly two years when it would no longer be illegal for him to contact me. And then, after I had to figure out who he was, he confessed that he always was attracted to me. I always had weird vibes and like some things he'd say and the way he'd make physical contract with me kept feeling very inappropriate, which is a part of why I left. But then when he tracked me down today (literally this was like an hour ago), he said all kinds of wildly and blatantly inappropriate stuff.
So yeah I'm incredibly emotionally shook.
As a professional counselor and a trainer of counselors, I'm terribly sorry. This person is acting unethically in every possible way, and I encourage you - if you can - to report them to their local professional licensing board for an inappropriate dual relationship. For just about every type of therapist, attempting to initiate a relationship with a client is strongly discouraged no matter how long it's been since the therapeutic contact, so even if it's not illegal, it probably will be against the ethical practices of the local licensing board, particularly since the person sought you out against your will.
If you don't feel comfortable, that's understandable, but unfortunately inappropriate dual relationships are one of the most common ethical complaints against therapists. Your experience, I hate to say, is not as uncommon as it should be.
I think, maybe, that some of that stuff isn't as 'out of date' and resolved as people think it is, also. Sometimes PCs think they know/understand more than they actually do. If there's something that really intrigues you as a character, I'd definitely try and pursue it on your own, too - through an action or something. You might find something that surprises you (and other people, too).
@tiredewok said in The Challenge of 2020s:
Ah, glad to hear she isn't going to do that. Maybe she has more common sense than putting glue in her hair led me to believe.
Good on the plastic surgeon who was willing to help her out.
I think that if any of us were judged by our worst stupid mistake, none of us would fare very well. I know I wouldn't; it's sheer luck that I survived some of the stupid ass decisions I've made when distracted, tired, or stressed.
It's a balance, like all things. Part of my fun is that other people are having fun, so I want that to happen - but at the same time, especially in an RPG, I am there to play the game that was written about in the setting files, or books, etc. If someone else's fun continuously means violating that setting or game system without consequence, then my fun becomes harder.
And in any setting/system, there are places where there's wiggle room. But wiggle is not 'stomp on and dance all over'. So if someone is violating setting or theme in a small way, then I don't really care as long as they aren't rubbing it in my character's face over and over again. They can have their fun, and it doesn't bug me. But the more people violate it in big ways, or gang up to start pullllling the theme over to something else, or gang together to cross it in ways that invalidate the parts of the setting or system that actually attract me to it, usually the less fun I have, until I start looking for somewhere else.
Generally, in situations where I have a character who is 'in charge', I try not to be too anal about things, try to overlook what I can, and if I have to lay down consequences, try to find consequences that involve creating more RP for the person, not less. I don't usually do the 'let's negotiate OOC the consequence of this', and maybe I should, but I do try to keep things within theme and not excessive.
@sunny Sometimes these conversations about limits /do/ happen outside the bounds of sexytimes, though. Like, if I run a horror scenario, I might ask players if they have any hard limits on content - whether it's 'no dead babies or children' or 'no spiders' or 'no eye stuff'. It's not meant to pry about their personal feelings about these things, but just to make sure an enjoyable scene doesn't hit something that instantly makes it not fun for the players involved.
@ganymede See, I don't think of the purpose of social maneuvering in games to be one player trying to out-think the other, and I hate that it defaults to that, instead of one character out-thinking the other. The relative abilities of the players themselves, or other metafactors such as who can guess GM thoughts best, should be irrelevant to a social contest between characters. I feel like the idea that it isn't contributes to a toxic OOC environment, and the phenomenon of 'if I lose, it makes me look bad as a player because I wasn't smart/clever/charismatic enough to pull off a win'.
EDIT: And what I mean in the above is that when you make an IC contest into a referendum on the relative abilities and skills of the PLAYERS involved, then it then becomes difficult to say someone should just 'roll with a loss', because the reason their character lost is BECAUSE they were less competent/less well-liked/less charismatic on an OOC level. It's hard to argue for a healthy separation between IC and OOC, when a contest /literally is/ about who is the more competent (or, often, more popular) player.
@faraday I disagree that the example you offer is a good example of that. It's absolutely OK in my book to say, "This is what my character is, and I'm not changing them - if you're not okay with that, then this RP relationship should end." As long as you don't throw a temper tantrum OOC when someone takes option B. It's okay to not change the core of your character for someone else...but it's also totally okay for them to decide that means that they aren't interested in playing with you, or playing out a specific thing with you, any further.
Which means that both routes are nearly equal, and each character should just make a choice based on what's more in line with their own goals and experiences. Which is actually an excellent indicator of a part of system flexibility that works.
I love a good love story. I really do. But I absolutely admit that what I like /most/ is that period of tension, especially with rivals/opponents/potential enemies where wrestling with attraction is difficult and people are trying to manipulate each other. I want the UST to be through the roof, and flirtation, and will-they-won't-they, or an on again/off again relationship punctuated by periods of maybe even being on opposite sides (whether they're off or on), or things happen that strain the relationship. I don't really want unending angst, but I want TENSION. Conflict, whether it's internal to a character struggling between desires, or between the romantic characters, or whether it's imposed from without.
My ideal IC romantic relationship would be between two people who absolutely have no business being attracted to each other gradually coming to tolerate, then crave, one another, punctuated by occasionally trying to kill or ruin the other, but being /absolutely/ certain that 'nobody hurts them but ME'. All of it done somewhere between slow burn and buddy cop movie. And snark and flirtation liberally scattered in between.
When I am the GM, from players:
Overplanning/Sabotaging Themselves With Reality. I, overwhelmingly, run in a cinematic mode, and probably one of the worst things that players can do in something I run is to overthink it. I cannot count the times I've had a scene come to a painful halt because the PCs, or a small subset of PCs, cannot make themselves take a forward step without trying to obsessively plan out the Best Possible Option. Often by bringing in RL knowledge that isn't really applicable - dude, I don't care that Hacking Doesn't Work Like That if we're playing CoD - you tell me what you want to do, and if I can at all justify it being a networkable thing, I'll probably let you roll for it, and if I don't, I'll tell you exactly why and what your character might need to do to make it work. (I.e. it will be a challenge not a shutdown - 'oh, this is a protected internal network, so you'll have to log in from X specific terminal to get access'.)
How I address this: Trying to make sure that the consequences of actions that players take, whether they are successes or failures for the PCs, are fun for the players. Which sometimes leads to a PC intimidating the hell out of a group of gang members and short-circuiting what had been PLANNED to be a combat, but which later led to a pretty awesome car scene with other gang members t-boning the PCs' getaway car at speed. I try to be up front about wanting to reward action with fun, and I've tried to embrace 'failing forward' in order to keep things moving so that people don't have to fear that if they miss a single step or fail a single roll, they're going to get the dreaded 'you find nothing and the two hours we've spent on this scene is wasted'.
When I am the Player, from GMs:
No-selling character skills and abilities. I don't want or expect a single PC ability to be an instant win button on any scenario, but the times when GMs have shut down or bent over backwards to decide a character's extremely relevant skills/abilities Just Don't Work because they didn't think about them when building the challenge is kinda silly. And makes me grumpy. This definitely ties into the school of thought of "Social skills aren't 'mind control', so you will never persuade an NPC to ever give up anything that they don't want to or to back down when I want a combat or to do anything against their best interests, no matter how the rules for the skills are written or how well you roll," but it's not exclusive to that.
Just...let PCs be good at their stuff. A single case of 'oh my, the telepath meets someone immune to mind-reading' can be fun, dramatic, and honestly pretty amazing if it's played well. But the fifth time in as many sessions? At that point, it's just frustration and boredom.
@Rinel said in Gray Harbor Discussion:
Having derailed this thread, I'm going to do my best to re-rail it.
I like the Dark Men but I'm struggling with how to thematically have them pose a threat. In my last scene I wrote it so that their attention was displayed by a small area of woodland going totally still in the middle of an oncoming storm making everything windy, and a fog rising out of the forest edge. But I'm not sure if that's too physical for them?
Of course I can just retroactively have it be done by a shadowy human working for them, so it's not a huge deal, but it does have me wondering.
My understanding is that the Dark Men don't typically manifest physically very much at all - they mostly drag people into Dreams (some of which CAN be fairly subtle) and torment them there. But never in 'beat you up directly' sort of way; they don't have a physical body and aren't, that any PC knows, directly targetable or killable. They're mostly the dark whispers and subtle influences that gradually drive you mad - feelings of being watched, whispers at the edges of your consciousness, psychic torments, eventually Dreams.
But! That sounds pretty cool as a Thing, whether it is a Dark Men Thing or just a Thing, and no one on grid knows a lot about them. There's a lot from the Veil that can pose threats - it doesn't have to be the Dark Men.
@RDC said in Gray Harbor Discussion:
ITT @Kanye-Qwest snidely complains about how snide and weird it is to assume people will, at least via osmosis, get a pretty inoffensively shallow Star Wars joke.
ON TOPIC: Tell me about Dark Men. I have been wondering what the actual conflict is on Gray Harbor and what there is to be scared of, IC, to drive RP.
Just in my own experiences:
The Veil itself is pretty scary. It's an alien realm that PCs are only just being able to explore, and while it's not evil, it's absolutely dangerous and in ways PCs don't really understand, yet. A fair amount of conflict is probably going to come from people poking at the Veil and the Veil poking back.
Then you have the Dark Men, of course, who are actively malevolent, and who feed on the negative emotions of humans, especially humans who 'Glimmer' (have psychic powers). It means that the town, in general, has a fucked-up Derry sort of vibe, because even people who don't understand what's going on are on edge more, and you've got an outsized crime and suicide rate.
Which also leads to a lot of people tending to app in characters with some traumatic backgrounds - some supernatural (like a screwed up asylum for people who Glimmer) and some very mundane (abuse, neglect, loss). So a fair amount of conflict is PCs dealing with that - in a setting where a supernatural force that knows all your worse fears and insecurities actively does not want you to get over it, but does want you to hurt. Which adds a fun additional element to the character-development/soap opera stuff.
Also, it's not a PVP game, but you do have characters with opposed agendas/desires - there are criminals and cops, for example. I think people are still feeling out how to navigate that in ways that are fun for everyone, but the playerbase thus far has seemed pretty willing to have conflict IC while remaining chill OOC, and to respect the difference between 'fun conflict' over 'and I must murder this PC and everyone they know because it is what my character would do'. Which is something that I very much hope continues.
Nobody here is on the fence about pedophilia, dude
I mean... I'm in the camp of "paedophilia is a mental health condition, child molestation is the crime." But that's just semantics in a conversation like this.
It's actually a pretty important distinction, considering that most child sexual abusers aren't pedophiles. They're opportunistic predators who have access to children, limited oversight, and an organizational culture that views them as more valuable than their victims. There's just a certain number of human beings who, when given power over people and an organization they know will support them, tend to exploit and abuse those people physically, emotionally, economically, and sexually.
What you do to identify and treat pedophiles and what you do to identify (and more importantly, stop) the typical child sexual abuser are actually very different, and when we focus on pedophiles over who's actually abusing kids, it's actively detrimental to being able to teach people what to look out for and how to address abuse within their organizations (whether those are families, churches, schools, sports teams, etc.)
It's sort of the same reason that the 'Stranger Danger' nonsense from the 80s wasn't very effective - because most people who abduct and abuse children //aren't// strangers.
What KIND of staff? There are several different roles that staff might fill, and while some can do them all, or some combination of them, it's not neccessary, I think. For me, staff has:
A lot of times, we see the last two roles held by the same people, but they don't necessarily have to be. Back when a lot of MU*s had a 'player relations' staff, that person usually took on the last role and may or may not have any input into the other two roles.
Different people excel in each of those roles. You can have a single person with the traits that make them good at two or three at the same time, but that's a lot more rare.