Best posts made by Pyrephox

When I have access to people's sheets, I usually try to take a look before I run a scene for them and see if there's anything that they seem to enjoy. Especially if they haven't had a chance to use it in a while that I can remember. If I can't access sheets, then I usually at least go to wiki pages and try to pick out from their wiki pages something that might play to a character's strengths and engage their player for each character. Then I try to build that in, and if possible, try to tie the opportunity directly into a character's background rather than just skills. So when it comes up, it's less, "Roll X" and more, "You're the only cop in the scene, so you know this guy - he's so-and-so and here's how he's been involved in law enforcement in the past."

General advice: recognize when a game isn't what you want, and find another game, rather than trying to change the game to what you really want it to be. Or focus on the things about this game that you DO like. Trying to make a specific game into the right game for you just because it has a theme/system that you like is only going to make you AND staff miserable.

I guess I'm just going to stand over here and blush, then.

More seriously, thank you for the game! It was a fun premise that leaned into the horror in ways that I really enjoyed, and I found you both to be active and enthusiastic right up until 2020 just 2020ed the hell out of all of us. I'd love to play a game you run again, if time ever permits!

@Grim is a good person to entrust the game to going forward, and I definitely recommend that people check it out if you've got small-town fantasy/horror itches to scratch.

My assumption is that unless someone says, "I'm going to be slow, is that cool?" that posing will happen in real time, with poses taking place every 5-20 minutes. If someone doesn't tell me that they'll be slow, but just goes silent for an hour or two at a time, I will be quietly irritated, because if I don't know that's going to happen, then I'm sitting at the computer, watching for a pose, and thus not really concentrating on anything else. If I know things are going to be slow, then I can tab away and do other stuff.

It's not as much about the pace itself (although it's hard to sustain any sort of real emotion with one pose a day), as it is that I only have so many hours in the day, like most MU*ers at this point, and it's courteous to tell me whether I need to be attending to the scene with my full attention, or if I can faff off for a while.

@auspice Actually, I love the concept, or else I'd do what I do with ninety percent of the games that get talked about, which is nod, go, "Sure, I'm sure someone would like that," and then move on.

My questions are mostly meant to try and clarify what sort of game it actually is. For example, I do think that 'commoner' alts whose only real purpose is to 'fill out the world' are a bad idea if your focus, the thing that /excites/ you about it is the upper class balls shenanigans. Judging by the effects of 'mortal alts' on WoD games, that ends up with a lot of throwaway characters who get locked out of most of the things the game is about, and you'd be better off filling out the part of the world you actually want to play with PCs who fit that world.

If you want to have entertainers, I would suggest let people app in at entertainers who have already reached the level of ton-engagement, /or/ provide very clear systems for how a commoner character is supposed to 'ascend' to that height. Which Ares doesn't really do well. The social divide between those with entrance into the lords and ladies side, and those who don't have it, is sufficiently wide enough that it's basically running two separate games.

But I'm sorry for harshing your buzz, and this'll be the last comment I make regarding the game. Good luck with it, and I hope you have fun!

Incentivize the behavior you want to see. I've always been delighted when games set up ways to make a player's enjoyment with another player clear in a mechanical direction. Not publicly - that has a tendency to become competitive. And not through XP/votes, because there shouldn't be a reward that people then feel entitled to or like they're losing out on getting. But, like, original Darkwater had a non-XP vote that just sent the person a silly message like "X gives you a PONY" and it was fun and a nice, small way to connect to people.

Why not just take the initiative and say, "Why, X, I found this scene charming and I really enjoy playing with you?" Because when you put a specific mechanic in, you're sharing part of the game's priorities. We care about this. Also, I may be alone in this, but it's often easier for me to essentially 'tell the camera' what I enjoyed about a scene or a character, when I have some chance to think about it, rather than immediately after/during a scene.

Also: have failure mechanics that prioritize making failure fun and rewarding for a player (even if not for a character). Remember as game runners that a character failure is not a player failure, and try to help players internalize this, too. A lot of toxic culture ultimately comes from players' anxiety and insecurity, and a feeling like their characters have to be 'good enough' or they'll get shut out of RP. There's fun in character optimization, but it can become hugely toxic if it isn't managed.

@zombiegenesis said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

@arkandel I agree with you on all points except one; the 'let's all' part. I can't speak for everyone but that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to find ways to encourage those who can and those who may want to try. Part of that is finding the right incentive system that doesn't ostracize those who can't or don't want to.

I really like the idea of automated prompts. Even something as simple as using an online writing prompt generator could be interesting.

This.

No one - except Derp, apparently - expects every player to be willing to make and run plots. That's an unreasonable expectation if for no other reason than these are games and not everyone finds GMing fun. Playing a game should not feel like work, and for a lot of people, GMing feels like work more than it does play.

That said, more people would probably be willing to try to run scenes (if not plots) if they got more support and guidance from games on doing so, and people could tackle the level of 'stakes' that were comfortable for them. The automated prompts and bingo cards are a good step forward - but it's a matter of encouraging and supporting players who do it, knowing that taking 'charge' of something is scary AND that their first experience might not go great because of a lot of different factors.

I.e. do not treat it like a job that is being delegated to someone, but rather treat it like the opportunity to get to introduce someone to something that is fun but stressful, and know that you're going to have to give some support along the way.

You still won't ever get to 100% comfort/interest in GMing. Probably not even 50%. Hell, I love GMing and sometimes I just...can't. Or an experience is so unpleasant that I just remember that I am not being paid for this shit, and walk away. But every single person who takes a chance with it, and has a good time is a win. Both because they did the most important thing in a game, have a good time, but also because they might be willing to do it again, one day. And again. And hell, maybe one day they feel up to doing something more complex. Maybe one day they even feel up to trying their own game.

And that would be cool. So, yeah, I'm all for trying new and/or interesting ways to get people to branch out into running things.

Honestly, I feel like there are more reactive players than proactive ones in general, and "dominant" personalities often are expected to be the proactive one, so that makes sense.

@Lithium You assume I haven't!

Okay, actually, I haven't. Fair cop. NPCing that many people at once can get kind of exhausting, especially making each one unique and arousing, despite the fact that they're largely doing the same mechanical thing. Although I suppose people who are into those sorts of gangbangs would expand various erogenous zones. Hmm. No, wait, I think I could do it. It'd require some ceiling ties, and I tend to lose track of limbs even when there are only two people involved, but it's a challenge I could rise to. Or maybe it'd be more fun not to involve bondage, and instead 'catch and release', with the victim periodically let loose to try and run, while the rest of the guys hunt him down, pounce on him, and have another go. That would at least give the victim player something fun to do other than moan and writhe and narrate the tightness of various orifices. Ideally, the victim would be a fine, strapping man, a swimmer-type, not a football player, and the perpetrators a range of body types and endowments, just to keep things a bit varied and interesting. The only problem with that many men is that some of them would probably have to be pretty hairy to keep the variety going, and I'm not big into bears. Oh well.

So, see, it wouldn't bother me. It's not my thing, but I've been reading fanfiction since I was in high school, and that was a long, long time ago. Gangs of guys raping guys for the sexual titillation of the ladies reading? That's /Tuesday/, man.

The issues I have with this kind of moral panic have nothing to do with thinking the abuse of women is awesome. Actually, quite the opposite. The issues I have are:

1. It reduces women to passive recipients of information, who then have no choice but to act out whatever unhealthy influences they're exposed to - which, as a woman, I find insulting and infantilizing.

2. It's just another way to take the responsibility for abuse from where it belongs (the abuser) and put it back on the abused (whether they're a man or a woman). The ONLY person responsible for abuse is the person committing the abuse. When we say, "Oh, this kind of crap encourages women to enter into/stay in abusive relationships," it's just another way of saying, "Oh, she could leave if she wanted to/knew enough to/was strong enough." Anything that takes the responsibility away from the abuser, and puts it on the abused, is bad. The reasons abused people stay in abusive relationships have nothing to do with the fiction they consume, and it's actively harmful to efforts at helping them escape those relationships and reduce the acceptability of abusing one's partner to imply that it does.

3. It's another way to control women's sexuality, by shaming them for having "unacceptable" sexual fantasies. Oh, no, you're not just indulging in something you find hot, you're /reinforcing the patriarchy/. It's the toxic underside of "the personal is political", and I view it the same way I view people shaming women for wanting to be stay-at-home mothers.

4. Generally, it's more about looking at an acceptable target to sneer at "girly" things (see also, the disdain for romances), while giving /just as stupid/ "guy" things a free pass. Because everyone loves to sneer at women, especially other women, and if they can sneer at them "for their own good", even better.

I desperately want someone to play the other half of a mortal/supernatural They Fight Crime paring. Yes, yes, it is cliched as all hell. I don't give a fuck. I want to have terrifying occult adventures with a supernatural and a mortal who are both regularly in over their heads in various ways, and having that delicious tension of the supernatural still feeling the urge to hide some things, or trying to protect the mortal from all the crap that will kill them out of hand, while the mortal is both competent and dedicated and not up for being protected or being shut out of things they need to know to survive in the crawling darkness of the CoD streets. I am happy to play either side (which is why I only designate "the other half"), so long as there is equal measures supernatural-failing-at-normal amusement and pants-on-head terror.

I fudge sometimes, but usually to correct my own errors in designing an encounter or adventure, or when the random number generator has become actively unfun for players. So, if I've accidentally created an NPC that is murdering the PCs, I will quietly tone it down, or have them not use some power or ability that I know would finish off one or more PCs (as always - this is based on the type of game it is...if this is an old school dungeon crawl, then I'm much less inclined to 'pull blows'). Likewise, if the PCs are just /killing the hell/ out of a villain that I'd planned to be the Big Bad, I usually won't give it a get-out-of-death-free card (because that's annoying), but it WILL turn out that the villain was a henchman all along or will leave a clue hinting at a bigger, badder conspiracy. I try very hard, though, not to cut short PCs victories, or invalidate them, or give people powers/abilities that it's flat out unrealistic that they should have. Random nameless gangbangers are not going to have 10-dice pools for combat, or Willpower to spend against the PCs - if the PCs are going to plow through them, /that's okay/, because the PCs are usually better trained/more powerful than your average teenager with a street-bought pistol.

Another thing I will do that might qualify as fudging is completely change the outcome of the adventure when the PCs come up with a more interesting idea than I had, or when the PCs clearly /like/ their idea better than they would like mine. I might write up the adventure involving a human trafficking ring that's simply selling human victims to a mad scientist who is trying to perfect immortality by creating people-shoggoths, but if the PCs start putting together the clues and come up with, "The smugglers are worshipping a Thing in the sewers that is giving them monstrous flesh minions in return for regular human sacrifices, and that's so cool!' then...yeah, sure. That is exactly what is happening, and the lone mad scientist gets quickly rewritten as the high priest of the Thing-worshipping cult. Why not?

But extemporaneous GMing is one of my strong points, so rewriting an adventure on the fly (or writing one in the first place - it's not uncommon for me to start a plot with the idea of a single scene, and then just build everything from there based on what the PCs want to do) isn't a burden for me.

How exactly do we define "posing quality"? Eloquently written? If so, then we have a requirement for "using my XP-purchased skills and abilities effectively as a social character" that we have for NO OTHER CHARACTER TYPE, including the ones who can kill characters from afar without any interaction at all. Earlier in the thread, it was suggested that we somehow police for the social equivalent of not posing that you've decapitated someone by blowing glitter on them...which I assume means that poses should, then, be somewhat accurate to the realities of psychological influencing and manipulation. Who gets to judge that? Should I? I mean, I have a Ph.D. in a mental health field, and I teach theories of personality and development, as well as psychological influencing skills /specifically developed/ to bring about changes in thoughts, feelings, and actions in other people. And most of what people tend to say on MSB about how people's minds and affiliations are changed is just flat nonsense, and tends to completely ignore what would be realistic effects based in appearance, demeanor, apparent social status, in-group markers, and non-verbal communication, as well as the psychological pressure a person can bring in a single moment.

And an accurate system would not be weighted in the target's favor - people are actually pretty easy to manipulate, especially if it's something that they can do in the moment. And if you can get someone to do something in the moment, you can generally get them to do it long-term. You CAN build up obedience in the long term, through small favors that snowball, but you can just as easily do it the other way around if you have the right conditions and skills, and get them to buy in BIG, and then they'll cooperate afterwards even if they hate it, because they feel like if they've done X, they can't back out, or they've invested too much not to do Y as well.

One of the big problems when we start talking about "accurate" depictions of social skill use is that we dump it all on the actor, when one of the major problems is the target. PCs do not act like real people. PCs act like puppets moved around by real people who know that none of the shit in their lives is real. There is no way for an IC actor to authentically recreate the pressure and influence that a good social manipulator can bring to bear, because the target, fundamentally, /does not care/ about the things that a real person in that situation would care about, and don't make decisions as if they do. Instead, the player behind the person is always evaluating on a primary level, "Does this make for fun for me," rather than "would this be compelling for a person who really lived this life". Which is why threats and intimidation hardly ever work in RP - it doesn't matter that someone in that position might actually be terrified of losing their job/life/family, because the PLAYER is more interested in "plucky hero resists" than "cowed victim retreats".

And there's nothing wrong with that. But part of the reasoning of social skill systems is because game designers understand that all that shit has to be abstracted, because it is /impossible to portray accurately/, even assuming that Dunning-Kruger doesn't kick in and suddenly everyone thinks they're an expert in psychology and sociology because hey, they're people, so how hard can it be? What requirements for realism and authenticity are we making on social skill TARGETS, and what is their responsibility for making the play experience of social skill actors fun and realistic? We can't ask everything from one side, and nothing from the other.

@demiurge So, your proposed solution to if someone is using your system to harass another player is for the harassed player to simply remove themselves from a part of the game? The part, it sounds like that is the closest to a general social hub the game has, which will likely also have knock-on effects to their access to other parts of the game, and which by its anonymous nature means that they'll have no idea which of the character who want to join their dreamscape are being played by their harasser?

That may be a policy you want to rethink.

For me, it's a lot more about setting building than mechanics. The more a world or setting 'holds together' and operates by consistent rules (even if they're complex or hidden from the players), the more that I get excited about it, and the more 'immersed' I feel in it. Mechanics rarely enhance or detract from that, for me, unless they're really egregious or contradict the 'fluff'.

My current, and first, cat was a stray who worked himself up into the wheel well of my car as a six/seven week year old kitten. The shelters were closed for a holiday weekend, and by the time they got around to opening again, I couldn't imagine giving him up.

Now he destroys my blinds and gives me snuggles.

@Misadventure I dunno. I think there is a viable happy medium (albeit not for EVERYONE) between sunny happy vampire romance land and crapsack shitstain world of neverhappy.

I would definitely like to see a WoD game that played up how fundamentally corrupt the world was, without making it 'and everyone is always miserable forever'. There should be regular disappearances - largely framed as 'another disobedient run away' or 'deadbeat dad abandons family' in the press. Police solve rates for crimes should be, like two thirds of their real world counterpart in the better areas, and less than one third in the worst areas; there should even, in urban areas, be areas that the police have simply written off. There will be no police response here, although someone might eventually drive through and pick up any bodies lying around, make an cursory effort to ID them, and let their families know, probably by certified mail.

On the other side, in the affluent areas, police response should be /fantastic/, and if you're a resident of the area (and you LOOK like what the cops and other residents think a resident should look like), you have a great time with that. Hello, Mr. Friendly Policeman. If you aren't a resident, or you don't look like someone other residents want in their neighborhood, though, you're police patrolled out, pretty quickly, and if you mouth off or get frisky, you'll be left bleeding. Doesn't mean there aren't good cops, and that a PC can't BE a good cop, but there should always be an implicit pressure to let things go, to not make waves or turn traitor on that fellow boy or girl in blue who's taking the bribes from the drug dealer on the corner.

Suburbs should be more like mini-cities (see the outskirts of Louisville, KY, where a lot of what are essentially housing developments have incorporated and have their own police forces) - pleasant and even welcoming for people who belong, but cold and even hostile to 'outsiders'. Some of them should just be people with means clumping together for shared safety, sure. But some of them should have secrets - rites and cults and deals with dark masters to keep THIS place bright, and THIS place safe.

Entertainment districts should be bright, beautiful, and over the top - but sometimes, it should feel like everyone is just trying a little too hard, partying less to have fun and more to not think about things. The best, most glamorous, and most wild good times should happen right after tragedies, even just small ones. Another wacko killed her family for no good reason. Seven schoolgirls made a suicide pact to drown themselves in the park.

I'd love it if room descs and locations in a WoD game really brought in that kind of stuff. Pointed out the places where the police just will not arrive. Made mention of suicide rock in the park, where every year on the longest night, someone kills themselves, and somehow, the police are never in time to stop it or able to keep it from happening. The other 364 days of the year, of course, it's a LOVELY place. Here's Compton's Vegan Delites, and it's got great selections; let's just not talk about the fact that the last restaurant in this spot closed down because the proprietor was found adulterating the hamburgers with bits of his missing wife. But the fried tofu is fantastic.

@arkandel Which is why one of the things that is really, absolutely needed, is for staff to have a clear, strong, well-communicated vision of what a specific game is about. WoD games have an unfortunate tendency to regress to the mean because everyone just kinda dumps their own assumptions in and you get a muddled mess where people kinda just do their own thing until they get bored and drift away.

A strongly themed game will not be for every player, or every character, but the players that it IS for will be more engaged, excited, and active with one another.

I like both, but I think they suit very different games.

If a game relies on intrigue, mystery, or discovery, where it's assumed that characters will have hidden qualities or factional alliances, then I personally prefer some level of OOC Masq. I like that 'ah ha' moment, or 'wow' moment when something unknown is discovered. That feeling when your PC's best bud turns out to be working for your dire enemies the whole time? Beautiful, and I love that shock to be OOC as much as IC.

On the other hand, you can have a LOT of fun on games where everything is on the table and it's less about reacting to the unexpected than it is about seeking out exciting possibilities. You can still absolutely play out the plot of your PC's best friend being a mole for the bad guys, and it's just as affecting, to me, but it's a different sort of feeling.

I don't really think there's a "right" answer - just a "right for this game and/or this player" answer.

At first, I was coping well. Thriving, even; I'm an introvert, and staying alone in my apartment was - at first - absolutely great for my mood. But as time wears on, and on, and on, it's stopped being energizing and is draining, instead.

Aside from being worried about family and friends (particularly my elderly father), I've just felt very tired. It's hard to motivate myself for work, or even for play. I've been downloading/reinstalling various games - most of which I will play for a day, maybe two, before wandering away from. I tried to get out and get exercise when it was warmer, but lately it's been cold, rainy, and gets dark about the time I get off work.

At this point, I'm just a lump of sad, scattered anxiety and boredom.

@surreality said in What locations do you want to RP in?:

People are weird about descs and just not reading them.

I am more or less insane when it comes to grid things. A grid build could easily take me a year putting in full time hours if I'm doing it 'right' to my way of thinking. I end up using season switches for elements of the descs, time of day, weather effects, hell, even a diner menu will actually have different 'specials' on the menu set to switch by the day of the week. Even if any given desc is short to read, it's going to be different on the regular, because it being different to account for the world differences is going to be built in.

It also means... this takes forever. Forever.

It makes me less inclined to add useless grid rooms. If all of the above is going into it, it is damned well going to have a story and hooks built into all of it, too, and it's going to be a place that's potentially useful and is a good resource for players as a location with story ideas built in, but not ones that are so overwhelming that the place is useless for anything else.

Edit: Oh, yeah, the point. I have been told multiple times that this is wasted effort because nobody reads room descs. Further, that it's unfair to put story seeds and hooks in the room descs because the people who can't be bothered to read the room desc might miss them.

Those people are terrible, and they should feel bad. (They are also one of my major pet peeves, along with people who read the descs, and then just flat out ignore them so that they can play the exact same way they play in every room or situation. For the love of happiness, do not take your businessman in the five thousand dollar suit to the fucking slums and act like he fits in. Even if he is a crime lord who isn't in personal danger, he does not /fit in/. I'm not saying 'oh god, never step out of your territory' by any means, but just that if you do, at least play the acknowledgement that you ARE. Your ragged commoner is not going to be welcome at the most hoity-toity establishment in the rich part of the city, and drinking there is NOT like drinking in a slum dive. Your fancy-pants, old money socialite is not going to get the same reception at the wrong-side-of-the-tracks honkey tonk that she gets at the elegant downtown club. )