Posts made by Rook

@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.

In any sampling of MU*ers, I think that 1 out of 20 is a dirtbag for any of the following reasons:

• racist beliefs, subtle or overt
• sexist beliefs, subtle or overt
• hidden need to dominate/ruin others in the name of 'fun'
• someone simply looking for sex/rape/BDSM RP, no matter the theme of the game, or even discussion leading up to.

It's been pretty much my experience that WoD games simply have a higher concentration of these assholes, as most people don't equate other genres with at least the last item above. The first three? Everywhere. EVERY. WHERE.

Anyone who MUs has run into one, or a dozen, of these pricks, and yet people still sort of freak. Staff still acts dubious, gives plenty of chances, meanwhile pages are happening and people are quietly leaving...

Yet, no one wants to hear of a staff that sets the reported player SUSPECT and carefully watches EVERYTHING that they do on the game, including pages. That's a violation of privacy. Well, if you feel that way, fine, but you leave the Staff one course: play he-said, she-said and maybe rely on logs that may or may not be edited to support whatever argument they are presenting.

For me, such a pace needs to be discussed up front, and commonly... before my character is built. It becomes a character goal that I build the character around, a long-term thing that is worked towards.

Not just romantic relationships, but business partners, ye old Master/apprentice type relationships, and so on. All of them take time and focus, and with limited buckets of RP time, you have to be sure just how much time the other person really, truly wants to invest in relationship RP over any 'advancement' or 'plot' sorts of things.

I don't think that everyone that wants a relationship as a central goal to their character/RP necessarily wants to spend months building it up. I know it is very, very rare to meet anyone that does. Nowadays, it seems that "Longterm" means two weeks with most.

Gated RP is a game killer. It has been my experience, both personally and learning from others in conversation, that if you don't "get in at the ground level", you will play hell catching up.

In several "Leveled" RPGs, that can be detrimental to inclusion into plots because of power level requirements. Try running a combat scene for a 10th level character AND a 2nd level character, and you'll see why the old adage of "birds of a feather".

I'm not saying that level-less RPGs are the way to go, but maybe there is validity. I love D&D, I really like WoD, and a few other game systems I've had the chance to play. But some people make a fair point that those TT systems just really aren't working well with MU structure.

Almost every game system (popular, main-stream) out there focuses on personal character advancement through some sort of XP structure. Players have been conditioned to feel that this is the only way to "make progress" in a game. Game goals and stories are fluff, to many. Look at your "hardcore" players and everything boils down to optimal builds, mathematical breakdowns and so on. Once someone identifies how to build "character X" in an "ideal way", if you don't build yours that way, you are screwing up.

I've worked to get away from that thinking, but it's hard when everyone seems to bring it up.

Fuck online bookstore businesses for not, in 2017, enhancing their online bookstore to show data on a book such as:

• other books in the series and where this one falls into that series
• information on series books on chronology

Further, fuck technical/computer book publishers for not clearly and prominently including specific information about what version of whatever software that they are speaking to in the book. It matters more and more, nowadays, that you have the right information on the code that you are reading, and if I have to anecdotally pick that up from Chapter 3 commentary, then you are doing it wrong.

We already have something like 5 sections in the prologue section of the book, add some requirement data under 'Who this book is intended for', for instance!

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.

@faraday
But our goal here is to discuss the framework of the RUNNING of the mush, not the Theme, Setting and the draperies of the mush itself.

The approach that you are using is of interest to the conversation, whereas the fact that it is BSG might not be.

Specifically, let's explore:

There have been a number of people who got bored and quit because they're looking for something the game doesn't offer.

@Tempest said in Indicating Discomfort in a Scene (online):

@Thenomain said in Indicating Discomfort in a Scene (online):

I think PvP became more of a social stigma in the WoD circles so its use diminished, but it still exists here and there.

I think, in my 5~ years of WoDing, I've seen a whopping two instances of genuine Player Killing.

And both left a pretty foul taste in my mouth for different reasons.

WoD's theme, from the books, is all about PVP. The fact that the social act of RPing in the theme precludes PVP for very obvious OOC reasons should be a huge warning sign toward people, yet, we do everything in our power to shoe-horn things so that they work. We kludge the fuck out of the game.

PVP when there is no respawn SUCKS. Even MMOs have to address the problem of character death, and come up with crazy ways (see: Eve Online) to explain it away.

@faraday
Which explains the popularity and success.
Kudos.

Question: If staff involvement is so damned critical to the success of the game...

...why do MUDs have magnitudes more players connecting to them, having fun?
...why do MMOs find success?

I fail to agree that staff intervention and chaperoning a game is a required element for plots, story and RP. People RP without staff support on Shangrila, and even have long-running actual RP plots with multiple people, generated entirely from RP.

The difference is, I think, that a WoD game is so over-powered that serious game destruction ability is in the hands of most of the average players.

@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.

@Tempest said, in another thread:

The vast majority of MU'ers appear to be incredibly lazy and entitled when it comes to making little effort to get involved in things and expecting everybody else to feed them story. And it has to be a specific kind of story usually, or they'll complain about how it doesn't fit their character.

Character 'power level' is a problem tied to MUers being spoiled brats. You literally do not ever need 100+ xp in 2e nWoD, yet I constantly see players talking about how they need like 150 xp to 'finish their character' or some absurd shit. Yes, at 100+ xp, any character in any splat is basically god.

Players need to be more willing to consider running their own stories and be more involved in the ones that are already available.
Plot breeds RP and staff aren't the only people who can do things. And they shouldn't have to shove story down player's throats.

----- Herein lies the intent of this thread. Begin Attention. ------------------------------------------------------------
It seems like the structure of MU*s has hit a wall. Sporadic RP coupled with heavy +jobs doing all the lifting doesn't seem to be a formula worth pursuing on any future games aspiring to come to life, in my mind. If it's failing everywhere, then the approach needs to change.

Maybe, with the maturation of the playerbase, as noted elsewhere (though I am not sure I agree that we have aged 'nicely' in all cases), there is an opportunity to restructure and approach MU RP differently.

My ideas are these:

1. Narrow the roleplay of all players on the game, giving all characters reason to interact with all others. WoD, as an example, does not seem to lend itself to this, in fact it does the exact opposite: segregate races and characters apart in order to keep thematic secrets. Make a game where the meta-plot can either be ongoing, episode-based, or

2. Get rid of the dependencies on +jobs. Enforce interaction. Let's get back to Q&A on channels. Don't +job an activity, RP it. If something that you want to do seems non-RP fodder, then maybe consider something different. This would require people to wean themselves from dependency on the staff of the game to Do Things. Staff should structure the game to be player-run, player-resolved. Everything from coded systems for CharGen to any combat needs to any crafting, economy, etc. I am not saying that the game needs to be code-heavy, just code-supported.

3. Revamp XP gain to be non-singular, non-vote dependent. My idea here was to base a global XP gain pool based on the amount of RP happening on the game. Granted, it would take some hooks into POSE and likewise, but can be done. The more RP, the more XP gets split amongst active characters. On top of that, story goals being met, game being explored and added to, all of these activities add to the XP pool. If you don't RP, you are not active. Channels, paging and OOC conversation do not count. RP in private rooms does not count. While it might further your personal character, it does not further the game, so it is no different than a table-top ST in ruling that your pretty character sheet and folder of pictures gives back nothing to the game at large, so it is not worthy for an XP bonus.

Maybe these are stupid ideas, but it seems like we as a community need to change the course of the ship.
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The entire MU community feels very 'passive' lately.

Entirely agree. I understand work, life, whatever impinging on playtime. But, it seems very prolific that laziness ABOUNDS on games, nowadays. I get more interaction and enjoyment out of coding AIs for Screeps than trying to find RP on games over the last few months.

This reminds me of "Big Little Lies" on HBO, and how Nicole Kidman's character and her husband have violent sex, and enjoy it. It is abusive, and the show tackles that subject matter head-on. Not something that anyone who has rape triggers could watch, I am sure (it is HBO-graphic, not shying the camera away too much that you don't see the struggle involved).

I am not saying that I don't understand the polices, the need for them, and so on. I made that comment in order to remind people that WoD games are... Dark.

@Misadventure said:

Recall a time when something that was okay to RP with knowing players was spread to players who had no warning as to the content they were getting into. I myself recall when a scene at The Reach involving sexual assault went from two very engaged players having an intense scene they were enjoying, to it involving other players and then staff without warning. The after effects are ongoing after years, minor now, but still around.

The community has changed because of bad apples, bad experiences. I remember back ~1995-2000, when the WoD games that I played on had this same thing happening, but it was kept locked away. It was RPed by consenting adults exploring that facet of the fictional characters' lives, the world, etc. Then Bad Happened, someone got triggered and something exploded on a game, and within a year or two, policies changed, news files became bloated with common sense advice and rules.

It's just an observation. I'm not claiming right or wrong, in any way. Just pointing out that rape is, thematically, one of the least worrisome outcomes to a character when you look at everything that can happen to them. Yet, it is the one parallel between real and fiction that cause the most triggers that I have heard about.

I completely agree with you, @Coin . I think that, as a community, that somehow RP styles and expectations have changed. It seems that consent has become a rarer thing, and people have become very accustomed to giving it up implicitly for scenes/stories/plots without any idea what is coming?

Sexual assault and sexually-themed violence seems to be a major, recurring issue talked about on WoD game threads here. Yet, are the one genre of game that have the highest levels of Consent, Privacy and Conduct types of rules in place.

The genre is designed from the 10,000-foot-view to be gritty and realistic in a modern-world. Gritty and realistic horror is not the life that most people who have triggers want to live, even as a character.

Like, duh.

It seems like you are suggesting a coded system that sets a value that the ST is then notified of? has to go and actively check 'stoplights' every few poses? I think relying on players, as @faraday states, to proactively speak up... well, it is the only responsible way. I agree with the hoisting comment.

The main problem with scenes "going bad" for most players comes from the ST trying to throw either tension escalation into the scene (to make it fun) or a plot twist as a shocker or introduction of a new element. Both of those have the potential to be both surprises and shocking moments to players that can push their buttons. I don't think that there are any ways to preserve that 'shock value' for the ST and the story, yet give players heads-up opportunity to stop something before it triggers them.

The Lines and Veils is really the only way to prevent that. The only thing that I've ever seen work, because of the above approaches to STing, has been the X Card approach.

The Door Is Always Open is not that feasible in my opinion, due to the multiplayer, multi-thread sort of gameplay "MMO/Persistent World" fact of MUing.

As a general note... this is the reason that I have checked games out in the past, found nothing happening, no friendly conversations, no RP hooks to pull me immediately into someone's plot/clique/group play... so after a few days, I give up and leave.

I am not alone. I have spoken to several people who did the same thing.

CharGen, especially on a WoD game, or any game that requires approvals, is a huge mountain to climb for the rare person that is coming into the three-decades-old game system. Most WoD games that I've seen are very much of the mind, publicly, that "if you don't talk the talk", you get ignored or left without help.

Is every WoD game out there so fractured and fragmented that there is stagnation? Is there literally no movement on the game outside of bar-rp or slice-of-life? I get it, it's hard to not have huge, earth-destroying types of plots long-term on WoD games, given the power levels of even mid-level characters in almost every one of the game systems (races)... but damn.

Characters seem so powerful that challenge is rare to find, hard to not overcome in a single scene or two, and tends to be very race-specific.

No ipv4 IP octet can go above .254, so yeah, the .555 is a typo. Maybe .55?

It's ironic, then, that the measuring stick for "quality" on most games is the length of a pose. Or, maybe... it is the tell-tale sign of desc-skippers? Those that pose one or two lines get bored after reading one or two lines?

Fuck, who knows.

@Coin said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:

@Rook said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:
I mean I'm a dick sometimes but I try to aim my vitriol and trolling at bigger jerks than me.

Your quoting is messed up. I didn't say what you are attributing to me, just for the record. I don't even know how to spell vitriol.

I would love to see someone do a Forgotten Realms (D&D) MUSH, where it is focused on a darker plot, maybe in the Western areas.

I don't think that there are many D&D games around any more, are there discussions about them that I could see why in?