Posts made by Pyrephox

@grayson Yeah. I thought about it. But again, lump of unmotivation and tiredness.

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.

@botulism Cool! Thank you for elaborating. It sounds really interesting, although Promethean is one of those lines that I don't know a damn thing about. Might be worth learning, though!

Hi!

Could you talk a little more about what kinds of things you see PCs doing on the game, and how the rotating setting will be an asset?

I'm intrigued by the idea, but I admit that I worry that without strong human presence or constant things in the 'mundane' world for PCs to get attached to, it'll be hard to capture that passionate longing and envy of Created towards humans.

And that is super cool. I might check this out!

This isn't a tabletop system, as such, but I was watching an LP of Amazing Cultivator Simulator, and I honestly think something in the cultivation genre would work really well for a MU*. You can have weird, powerful characters with their own quirks, a lot of drama with various immortals, adventure and danger with spirit beasts and exploration, crafting, and depending on how you set up the system up, could really be designed for the long term/persistent environment.

Unknown Armies - for a different sort of urban fantasy game. The system is quite simple, but allows (almost demands) creating your own skills, so I don't know how easy it would be /to code/. Weird, lethal, great trauma mechanics, fun setting with some optional NPC factions that should be light in the world, if at all - PCs should be street-level players in the Occult Underground, and graduate up and out of the game when they reach global or cosmic levels.

7th Sea - Preferably set in Montaigne, with the political and swashbuckling shenanigans in the city above ground, and the ancient dungeon full of horrors and fun artifacts to find in dungeon crawl heisty fun below ground.

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

@Ominous I like all of these, but especially the fae.

I would actually adore a changeling-only WoD game, getting more into the Courts and politicking. Entitlements, venturing into the Hedge, etc. Obviously with True Fae threats here and there.

I would love this, but without a focus on politicking and more a focus on the urban part of urban fantasy - Huntsmen, relationships with mortals and how Changelings navigate finding allies or enemies among the various horrors of the darkness, with oneriomancy and Bastions and hobgoblins enticing both humans and Lost into dangerous bargains.

A Gathering of Gargoyles, by Meredith Ann Pierce. The second in a very strange trilogy, it's my favorite of them all, although the whole trilogy is worth reading. It's a very melancholy and dreamy sort of book, with fun science fantasy sort of things.

This Time of Darkness, by H.M. Hoover. YA dystopia before dystopia was cool. The protagonist lives in a decaying, underground city and hooks up with the weirdo in her class to seek the world outside.

Little Fuzzy, by H. Beam Piper. But not the novel; I didn't read that until later. But they made a ridiculously beautiful kids' book version of it called The Adventures of Little Fuzzy that was one of my favorite books as a kid. Although I'm still not sure how it got made, considering one of the adorable fuzzy aliens gets straight up murdered by the bad guys.

The Hero and the Crown, by Robin McKinley. The companion/prequel to The Blue Sword mentioned up above. I read this one first, and so I loved it more.

I have much of the background, first plots, setting, and theme for two Ares games, but don't have the brain to do anything mechanical with Ares:

• A fantasy exploration/archeology game about people coming to explore in the wake of a centuries-long magical apocalypse that transformed one half of the continent. Ruin delving, discovering weird new magical species, and making magical food from them. Sort of a cross between Annihilation and Battle Chef Brigade.

• An original urban fantasy game set in a fictional city, meant to evoke a lot of the urban drama/police procedural cinematic drama, with extra magic.

@Ghost Background in counseling here, and no, it's not something a good therapist would ever suggest. There is a lot of research out there on therapeutic roleplaying, and even online therapy using avatars/platforms like Second Life.

But it's definitely not even close to wandering through a game and putting your issues out there. That said; it's not that a game can't occasionally give you some perspective, or help you develop as a person! Just like reading a book or watching a movie/show can help people grapple with or understand something about themselves, this is an organic process that happens.

But that process is very different from deliberately drawing other people into your self-therapy.

@GangOfDolls said in Emotional bleed:

@tek To add to that, I've tended to notice it be more of a thing when players are trying to work out/unpack/give themselves a short course in self-administered therapy about something they're struggling with via PC as a proxy. This is almost always a total recipe for intense and ugly disaster.

Yes. PLEASE don't do that.

(And before anyone hops in to say that roleplay is a valid therepeutic technique? Yes, I know. But /not like this/. Roleplay in a supportive environment with a therapist guiding you through situations and helping you process your own and other reactions to them can be very helpful. But other players in an online game are not equipped or present for your emotional needs, and there is no one on the game who is tailoring the situations to allow you to encounter conflict and distress points in a controlled, supportive way.)

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.

@L-B-Heuschkel To some extent, there are several different issues:

1. People who use "have some ooc/ic separation" to be dicks in a way that would STILL BE A DICK even if we were sitting around playing cards or a board game. Like, rubbing someone's face in a loss, targeting another player to ruin their experience, mocking how someone plays - being upset about these things says nothing about one's ic/ooc separation, and trying to hide behind "oh, you just don't have good boundaries" is dumb. Bad sportsmanship is the center of it.

2. People who use "everyone gets attached to characters" to be dicks in a way that is manipulative and creepy, and yeah, would still be a dick if you were playing, idk, Warhammer tabletop or something, and decided that your faction was objectively the best and threw temper tantrums whenever you lost. They use their "attachment" to demand, overtly or covertly, that the game and other players conform to that attachment - I think my character is awesome, so I demand that you treat him/her like they're awesome, or my heart will break and it's all your fault.

These top two categories are 'bad actors', and the only thing that's really to be done about them is to refuse to indulge it either way, or argue with them, and ideally, uninvite them from games.

3. People who have legitimate problems separating IC and OOC events, whether on a chronic basis, or because there's some real life stress and they're hoping to use the IC world as an escapist fantasy. This, I think, is almost all players at some point in time, but some players more than others.

4. People who aggressively desire to separate IC and OOC, because they enjoy the freedom of the game not being 'real', and thus have a tendency to treat it sometimes very much as a 'game' even when their characters would/should take things more seriously, and thus have a tendency to be disruptive, provocative, dismissive, etc. Like 3, some people are like that all the time, to some degree, but almost everyone gets like this /sometimes/ in some circumstances.

These two categories, generally, are actors in good faith - they're pursuing their fun, and they don't intend to mess up anyone else's game, and they're not trying to make the game "their way"...but they can get on each other's nerves to a breathtaking degree, nonetheless.

For 3) I think it's important that each of us try and evaluate our attachment to IC events/characters, and recognize when stress or attachment levels are getting to a point where - intending to or not - you're in danger or ruining other people's fun, or your own! Like, it may be normal to 'feel sad' when something tragic happens to a character. But if an IC setback sends you into the pit of despair, if you cry when your character cries (and aren't the sort of person who is reduced to tears by Hallmark commercials like I am), or if your mood becomes /significantly/ linked to the success you're facing in RP? Those really are warning signs. It's probably time to take a break, either just walking away from the computer right now, or re-evaluating how much time/emotional energy you're putting into RP, and looking for other options to invest some of that. No one activity should be your primary emotional anchor, but especially not an activity that is, at its heart, about unexpected setbacks and conflicts.

For 4), I think it's also important to develop senses of emotional awareness and empathy for others' experiences. Like, sure, it's objectively no big deal if your fake character drops trou at a fancy event and moons fake people, and if you don't care that they got exiled/punished/killed for it, why should anyone? But even though that's not an event that really matters, it's still disruptive to the game, and in most games, makes a significant amount of 'unfun' labor for other players. So, even if it would be a hilarious way to go out, maybe don't. Instead, maybe think of ways, if you want to have that disruptive play experience, to bring other people into it as collaborators, instead of audience/antagonist.

This is my catnip. Looking forward to it!

@L-B-Heuschkel Man, I'm really surprised those things are still around. I remember news articles about them several years ago that noted that - being clones - they're super vulnerable to disease/parasites, and would likely to be wiped out as soon as something hit the population.

On the other hand, I suppose it's nice that SOMETHING is thriving in 2020, even if it is an invasive army of crawfish clones.

@bear_necessities said in What do player-STs need?:

@Pyrephox I think "changing the world" is something I really get stuck on. Like what could I do as a game admin to make you feel like you are changing the world?

It doesn't have to be a huge thing. Like, I get thrilled when a PrP in a modern setting makes the IC news and I didn't have to write it, or if something that happened in the plot gets mentioned as a aggravator/mediator for something else in other plots: A challenger runs for mayor because just LOOK at the robbery on Main Street last month - clearly Mayor Big is not doing his job, and we need Change!

For me, and this is just speaking as a player and should not be taken as universal experience, the thing I want most from a persistent setting is for it to reflect the things I do. Not in the sense of 'and now I'm going to completely change this world' but when I poke at the setting, I want it to poke back in SOME way. As a player, that means I want consequences (good or bad) for what I do, in a way that makes sense for the setting and reflects my character's rolls/skills/abilities. As a GM, it means that I want my plots to take place in an integrated setting, and have meaning beyond the moment that they're run.

That doesn't mean I want them to run forever, or that I want to be able to burn down City Hall or kill off the King in a PrP. But the one thing that is guaranteed to keep me /engaged/ as a GM is when someone takes something from a plot I ran and ties it into the world.

For me, it's always deeply encouraging when staff using PrPs to change the world in some way. Not huge ways! But I remember on Darkwater, something a few of us in the Autumn Court did unexpectedly gave a bonus to Harvesting fear in part of a grid for a while. That was /cool/. It made me want to run more things.

Anything that helps me, as a GM, feel that I'm running something that matters in the over all story of the game.

From players, what really helps inspire me to reach out to people and run things for them are good RP hooks. Meaty ones that aren't just a list of hobbies. 'Once ran with the South Side Manglers, was jumped out after being accepted to college' is something that would inspire me to go 'what if a Mangler showed up needing help? What would this character do?' and then I want to find out.

I know, for me, a lot of it HAS been just being so very tired and not having a lot of energy to start things, or reach out to new people to try and expand my character's social circle. Which leaves me, like, one other PC who my character interacts with. And they're a great PC, and I enjoy every scene, but it's just hard to have the energy to make new friends right now, and no one else has really 'clicked' right off hand with my PC.

@Kanye-Qwest said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

@Ifrit said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

Sooo does anyone else have the anti-routine problem? I was always told if you did things for more than 2 weeks they become a routine. For me I can maintain a new routine perfectly for 2 weeks and then I completely lose track of it and can't pick it up again.

my psychiatrist told me very quickly in my time with her that the 2 week/30 day things are myths. Habits actually take between 60-90 days to solidly form, for most people

This is truth. Also, it gets HARDER at the 2-3 week mark; that's where a lot of people drop out of maintenance.

It's important to remember that the human brain is a lazy asshole. It doesn't like to learn new routines, and it will fight back against them until the 'new' routine becomes the 'old' routine. So compliance will be very easy at first, because you're getting that dopamine hit from 'yay, I did a thing! I am Changing My Life!' but when that wears off, your brain wants you to go back to what it sees as normal, so it'll actively fight you on it, with lower rewards and negative thoughts. Then, eventually (after two or three months), it'll accept the new status quo.

I live this cycle far, far too often.