I don't know if this is the funniest all-time, but recently someone on Arx wrote their character out of a scene so that they could GM combat for the others. At the end of the scene they said "welp, I should damage myself too, because of the way I wrote myself out," and then misjudged how strong @harm was and accidentally killed their own character.
I had to get up from the computer because I was laughing so hard it hurt.
Started playing in it instead of learning to play the guitar or something.
More seriously, a few months of bad decisions cheered on by being much too online and abusing prescription drugs, that I still feel looming over me, years later.
@silverfox don't worry it wasn't any of those characters
When your character's head gets cut off.
But it's actually cool.
@sunny said in The Desired Experience:
News flash: if you think playing a leader PC is more benefit than it is a headache for any halfway reasonable, responsible player who is capable of doing a good job? You're dead wrong. The mythical "but you get so much RP! people beat down your door!" seems to completely forget that what you get is twelve peoples' worth of TRANSACTIONAL RP (where they are getting something from you), and it uses up every shred of the time you had, leaving NOTHING for non-transactional RP, let alone PERSONAL RP (do that too much, and people start bitching about your sandwiches).
This was the situation I found myself in on one leader PC recently -- 90% of my RP was "people coming to my PC to ask if they can do something without me, or tell me they plan to do something without me, or ask me to talk to someone else about something that happened without me, or tell me about some stuff that happened without me," 10% was personal RP, 100% was RP in and around my character's house, 0% was RP that made me feel plugged in to the metaplot/game story/whatever as an active participant instead of "someone who gets told about the stuff other people do."
So I got burned out and put up a bbpost saying "I'm not doing 1-on-1 meeting scenes anymore, I just don't have time. @mail me if you want to bring something to my attention, I'll @mail you back."
So now no one asks me for RP and no one @mails me. I sure showed them!
Well this thread convinced me that I hate either RP or sandwiches, not sure which
@ganymede said in The Desired Experience:
@derp said in The Desired Experience:
So, no. This is not on staff, even if they point you toward that role. They cannot make RP for you, they cannot predict whether you will play the role in a compelling way, and they cannot force people to play together who don't want to play together.
I concur.
I recently applied for a character role that was needed. I love the character. I have a point to exist, and I know that staff has been encouraging interaction with my PC and other players' PCs. But it simply has not worked out, schedule-wise, and I have not met everyone I probably need to in order to kick-off the plot that staff has planned.
But that's not staff's fault.
@faraday said in The Desired Experience:
Personally I don't mind the cook-turned-navy-seal types as long as they're willing to put in the work to get involved in the action
As far as "agency" goes in a game, I find that I'm generally satisfied if I'm playing a tree, and I fall in a forest, I make a sound.
Which can mean a lot of different things based on the game, the game OOC culture, whatever. But I think most people can make do with being a grunt in the trenches -- what will turn most people off is being a grunt in the trenches who is invisible, inaudible, and no matter what they try, leaves no trace in the minds of anyone that they were ever there.
Replace "Twitter" with "whatever MU* I happen to be playing at the moment" but otherwise as written:
My most recent XP spend justification thing was for a dot in a background that lets PCs access an NPC information exchange.
My justification was one part an actual reason, which is that the IC world is getting more chaotic and my character would seek out ways of finding relaliable intel. The other part was a bit about how the character gains access, which was "renewing their account and apologizing to a moderator whom they viciously trolled" along with examples of the trolling.
The response from staff: "?"
So the moral is, have fun with it.
@arkandel said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:
@reversed said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:
If someone's playing their character in a way that's antagonistic to the point of disrupting how a faction operates IC
The gray area here is in defining just what 'disruptive' means and just what is unwelcome.
It's the very essence of IC antagonism to be disruptive. By definition you are in the way of what someone wants. However not being able to get what they want is not necessarily a bad thing at all since in many ways that's exactly what makes it valuable in the first place. If your Elder is blocking me with her vote from achieving a rank I want that adds value to the rank which would otherwise be a nearly empty string set in my +sheet.
The other aspect here is players are quite notorious for not being able to tell the difference between not being immediately able to get what their characters want and being harassed or singled out in an unconstructive manner.
Right. I agree that it's a gray area, which is why every game that wants to include the possibility needs to nail down just what their game's shade of gray is, and proactively communicate that, not wait for people to cross invisible lines.
I dunno what else I can say here that hasn't been said in ten thousand other posts. For whatever my own two cents are worth, "how to play an antagonist(ic) PC" is something that varies from game to game and is a thing that the people running the game should manage from the outset, if they want antagonist(ic) PCs at all.
If someone's playing their character in a way that's antagonistic to the point of disrupting how a faction operates IC, or that leaders of the faction are more willing to change how they operate than risk another evening spent butting heads in a scene with Antagonistic PC, then IMO it becomes something staff should address and decide whether or not that's what they're okay with in their game culture (it might be a game culture where the expected answer for someone being too frequently and too frustratingly insubordinate is just to blast them with a shotgun, who knows).
For antagonists, which @faraday rightly pointed out are different than just antagonistic PCs, staff should be even more actively involved in putting forward what they expect from all sides of the conflict.
I'm going to make up a WoD example. It's not going to be a very good one because whatever I'm on my lunch break.
In the one Vampire splat, you've got Camarilla and Sabbat and they're against one another as one would expect. Staff's job there is to be clear with everyone about the rules of engagement and what can be done where and when. Otherwise PVP happens and someone yells "no fair" -- which will happen anyway but at least if staff is proactive in describing the kind of PVP culture they expect or the kind of PVP rules they mandate, hopefully people will know what they're in for if they play.
In the other Vampire splat, you've got Camarilla and Sabbat and the staff there is hoping to do a metaplot story about werewolves circling the wagons around the both of them. Staff's job there is to make it clear that the antagonists are the NPC werewolves, even if the Cam and Sabbat can be antagonistic toward one another in how they work together (or fail to work together) to keep their city from being gobbled up by The Howling II. Staff will also need to be proactive in keeping that wolfy metaplot active and engaging, because otherwise, people will get bored and default to "well, I'm a Sabbat, and that Camarilla just insulted me, so it's on."
Anyway, my point is, whatever the way to play either a jerk or a bad guy is on any given game, it has to be something that the people at the top of the pyramid have given thought, and made those thoughts clear toward the player. Cuz otherwise people will just do whatever they think fits and it's never one size fits all.
@coin said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
@reversed said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
Lately for me it's a matter of time, energy, and all the other things that are in frustratingly short supply between work, health, and other RL factors.
If Other Player X invites me to come along on the Island of Mysteriously Uncomfortable Chairs PRP, I'm likely to go. If Other Player X is holding an open-to-all Arbor Day Party, I might go if I feel up to it, but that's far less likely. In the former, there's an objective I can focus toward, and in the latter, if I don't have the energy or the focus coming from my own self, it's easy to just watch paragraph after paragraph whiz by on the screen and go 'okay.'
But that's just me and the situation I'm in lately. I can't speak for anyone else or their thoughts on why they're not going to Arbor Day parties.
"Bar RP" or "Social RP" doesn't have to be "big scene RP" either. It can be one-on-one, or just a small group.
But it can't just all be big plot events. I mean, it can, but its lacking a large chunk of the meat, IMO.
This is true. I still try to make time for social/not-punching-the-NPC-mob RP, but these days it's generally not of the public, open-to-all variety.
Which means I miss out on meeting new people and making unexpected connections, sometimes, but I accept that when it comes down to "playing the cards that RL is dealing me."
Lately for me it's a matter of time, energy, and all the other things that are in frustratingly short supply between work, health, and other RL factors.
If Other Player X invites me to come along on the Island of Mysteriously Uncomfortable Chairs PRP, I'm likely to go. If Other Player X is holding an open-to-all Arbor Day Party, I might go if I feel up to it, but that's far less likely. In the former, there's an objective I can focus toward, and in the latter, if I don't have the energy or the focus coming from my own self, it's easy to just watch paragraph after paragraph whiz by on the screen and go 'okay.'
But that's just me and the situation I'm in lately. I can't speak for anyone else or their thoughts on why they're not going to Arbor Day parties.
