@faraday
A more apt example would be the warning message on your clothes washing machine that tells you not to attempt to wash your children in the machine.
Or the sign on the Walmart door that reminds you to turn around and look at your vehicle, you dumbass, because you left your spawn-beasts in the car.
Welcome to society today.
Maybe this is the point where a 'Postmortem' thread about what was good and bad in how the game was designed, run and handled would be a constructive conversation.
@Arkandel
I don't mind IC behaviors when done IC. That, to me, is not an issue on games. Sure, some people may not play with a racist character, but most understand that it is a character flaw being played out, providing RP tension, RP hooks, whatever. ICA = ICC is all fine and dandy. But OCA = OCC should be enforced, too, and we never really talk about that.
Sure, some players are timid, not as self-confident about standing up for themselves, and that is all very valid. But when someone knows that something happened, it should be dealt with. What is wrong with staff saying "Look, you fuck with a player's zen on this game, and we will fuck with yours. In fact, we will take yours away, period."? If you take Mary Jane into a private scene, and suddenly Mary Jane is OOCly not the same person, that should be red warning flags everywhere for any staff, any player-friends paying attention.
I just personally do not think that another tool/method of throwing a red flag in a scene is going to solve the issue, when the issue is that players are timid, shy, don't wish to be disruptive or seen in a negative light, no matter what is about to happen that they don't like. Whether throwing the red flag constitutes paging a ST/DM/Staffer, the other person in the scene, triggering a +warn, saying something OOCly, or whatever tools that they already have at hand but are too intimidated to use. I don't think that Policies and Rules and Code solve this issue. Nothing will until the victim can stand up and simply throw that red flag. Tap out. SAY SOMETHING.
I am not against this new tool/approach, I just don't foresee it as a solution. The solution, to me, is to make it very clear to antagonists that they are held responsible. If you feel that this would restrict your RP or realism of your IC presentation of your character, that should make you wonder about the efficacy of your character. If you feel that this would open YOU up to action by staff, then that is exactly the thing that I'm going for here, to give YOU pause on what you're planning and how you're planning it.
I liken this to RL in so many ways. Dominant personality types, when paired with very submissive personality types, begin a very delicate dance of power exchange that includes surrender of willpower, the ability (sometimes the want) to stop things, and so on. It is a dangerous dance for those new or unfamiliar to it, surely. It's a razor's edge of what many would call instinctual behavior and reaction that cuts extremely close to social crimes, yet many cross this line willingly. Long story short, in these dynamics, those that practice that lifestyle will explain very adamantly that the dominant personality has RESPONSIBILITY for the submissive personality in all ways, at all times.
This dynamic of responsibility is not enforced on games. It seems that we are trying to enforce the submissive or timid personality to suddenly speak up, defend themselves, when it may be the most foreign concept to them at the moment that they most need it. So, my approach would be different, @Thenomain, I would put the onus on the antagonist of the scene. Have them +warn the victim and spell out what they believe will happen in the scene. Scene doesn't continue without explicit grant of consent of the victim. If the antagonist steps out of bounds of what was consented to explicitly, they are liable for disciplinary action. Full stop. End of policy.
I just think that we need different approaches in these borderline situations.
Huh.
Here, I'm thinking to myself: "Maybe when being honest, I should add on 'RELAX, THO'." But then that sounds dickish and self-important/-arrogant.
Jesus, sometimes you just want to pay someone a compliment without it causing stress and drama and hurt feelings. Those are the exact opposites of the wanted outcome.
Seriously. Sometimes you just look pretty and nice people want to pay that compliment because, you know, sharing smiles and happy.
@ZombieGenesis - I, too, love your 'coining' the term Open House. I am going to use it, myself. Great idea and contribution.
This has actually been a subject of a fair amount of thought, back when building a D&D-based game. The code involved in random encounter triggers, timestops, automated combat choicing and so on... it is a FAIR amount of work. I think it is doable, more simply, via player-DMable scenes.
Template the monsters, give the DM a transparent randomizer for actions for monsters to take, and let them trigger decision rolls, combat rolls/choices, etc... and it absolves them of being the DM from a decision-making standpoint. Thus, they can participate and have fun, without a huge ton of the paperwork.
There is a few steps a game can go TOWARD MUD-like operation without becoming what is commonly considered a MUD (despite the recent emergence of RP MUDs) which is mob-driven solo play without much other-player interaction. The game I envision would be group-oriented.
I tend to make brownies that you cannot eat one of without a whole glass of milk. So gooey-rich that they slow-motion crumble in your hand. Hmm. Back later.
^ This.
Proof is called for, with your strong, adamant statements.
Interesting thought. It came up in a conversation once about balancing RP-vs-RollPlay by doing some sort of MMO cool-down mechanic on social skill rolls. It was intriguing, and if I recall, we couldn't think of a good way to balance things properly code-wise, but the idea was this:
Goal: Player with tendency to rollplay a lot needs to be curbed. Solution: Each use of a "social skill" kicked a timer, and outside of any sort of timestop/combatstop scene, is tracked. Every subsequent usage of that "social skill" incurred a penalty until the "cooldown timer" reached zero once more.
Goal: Players that only use rolls sparingly (with the assumption of 'correctly', whatever that meant) would instead build a buffer between long RP droughts of that usage. This is where we ran into logic issues on how to figure that out, mind you. But on first usage, that bonus would indeed be manifested as a +2 bonus (or equiv).
The whole idea was exciting to think through, and while certainly gameable (what mechanic isn't), it was impossible to come up with a way to code it that didn't just end up being fruitless in the end.
The idea was kind of cool, though. Bob never uses intimidate, even when given a chance or three to do so... instead saving it to that One Time when he really pulls it off to high character effect and story impact: browbeating the detective to let them go.
Online retail outlets for common brick and mortar stores that refuse to allow you to sort search results on the site by 'Available in my fucking store', so you can at least shop, find and go pick up within the same hour.
To any potential players of this game, please take some time to observe one of the owners/headwizzes of the game in action:
https://twitter.com/hippoiathanatoi/status/607849072913989632
Just collaboratively work with a group of people on a series of short stories, with the aim of publishing them within a singular world or setting.
If you just crumple everyone's RP into a cobbled-together "story", it will be as disjointed as reading logs on any game site. No continuity, mistakes in continuity, and clearly flawed perspective changes constantly. Not to mention that, even with the sign-off of everyone involved, the writer will come off as a plagiarist to the readers.
I use smoked mozz in my cajun pasta that I make. It really completes the dish, me thinks.
Anitvirus programs are written for non-computer users. Seriously.
If you have a firewall/router between you and your modem, you stop 100% active intrusion. Then all you need to do is be careful what you do on the interwebs. The Microsoft-pushed malware detection stuff tends to stop most everything, and what it doesn't stop, turn on the 'Are you absolutely sure you want to allow <X> to do this?' warnings. There.
That's the breadth of my 'antivirus' regimen for 15 years. I've been malware infected twice, and those were from torrent installations by the cracker team kiddies.
The more 'dangerous' crap out there are the browser add-ons that you get tricked into accepting with installation setups. Java does it, as does a few other 'legit' pieces of software. Why Oracle needs to supplement their income with adware-driven crap is beyond me.
@Auspice
I would argue "She played a 23-year old this year in <movie name>. If it's good enough for movie audiences, it's good enough for MUSH."
Who lied to you? Here at the Dark Lords Foundation, we are always taking new applications from all walks of life. We do not discriminate, nor prioritize application processing based on race, credo, pants size or religion. Well, sometimes on religion....
@Arkandel I will when I get my Steambox. Then I will have zero fucking reasons to be on Windows.
I do most of my work in Linux anyway.
@thenomain
I am coming to you, sir, to critique and make recommendations if/when I get ready to open.
You called this down on yourself.
"To tell you the truth..."
"To be honest..."
Why, do you lie to me all the other times we communicate?