Best posts made by Roz

@arkandel said in Spotlight.:

@sparks said in Spotlight.:

and if you do, you're going to run into "you got a chance to shine once, a year and a half ago, so you can't go on plots anymore", which is a surefire way to burn out otherwise active players (who are the ones who stir up RP when you aren't GM'ing).

That's a pretty good point and a legitimate question on its own right.

Do all players deserve the same access to the spotlight? That is, if you are putting in a lot of your time building up a successful House which your character leads, run plots for its players, recruit others to it, making yourself available as someone in a leadership position and integrating yourself thematically into current politics, then should I as a casual player who's there an hour here and there get to have equal access to metaplot?

Even more so, does it make sense for me to? Decisions are often made among high-powered or important figureheads, so do I bring my sailor guy to the inner council meetings? Should metaplot be geared so that there are no closed door meetings in the first place?

I think the best metaplot is going to be the stuff not strictly limited by class/position. That is: you may need a high-powered figurehead to access certain parts of the political end of things, sure, but there should be more variety to how to influence metaplot than just that one angle.

I think there should be generally equitable ways for people to pursue metaplot. It's cool to hear from @Sparks that they actually have a GM tool to find people who haven't gotten GM attention so they can toss them seeds/hooks. But especially if there are tools that everyone can use to interact, the people who use them the most are logically going to get the most out of them. I agree that GMs should try to make a good faith effort to reach out to PCs who don't seem to have much, but that is still just trying to give people an extra nudge to use the tools at hand.

@Cobaltasaurus https://discworld.mush.website/

@faraday said in Spotlight.:

@pyrephox said in Spotlight.:

If you're going to have big nobles and tailors as PCs, then I think you need to design the game so that each have exclusive things that are important and meaningful.

Not necessarily. Every game has supporting characters. I may play a mortal bartender in a Vampire game and get some fun RP out of it, but I certainly wouldn't expect "equal access" to the metaplot. It's the same with a deckhand or cook on a Battlestar game, or a sidekick in a superhero game. A tailor in a L&L game seems to fit that bill as well.

The trick, of course, is to make the expectations clear. If someone is playing a supporting role and thinking that they're playing a starring role, that's a problem. But some people like to play supporting roles, and there's nothing wrong with having them.

Yeah, I think it's fair to say "this game is focused on this particular group." I wouldn't expect a cook on a Battlestar game to have equal access to metaplot, really. Although it also depends on what kind of Battlestar game it is. Maybe the cook is involved in secret shenanigans on the ship, I don't know. The TV show had plenty of variety in the types of stories they told, and the focus wasn't just on the military conflict. It could be done.

Similarly, I guess if your L&L game is specifically, purposefully, and publicly focused on the L&L politics aspect? Yeah, it can be more silly to expect to be involved in the politics as rando tailor. If a game just has nobles as part of the setting but the focus of the game is broader than that, I think it's reasonable to expect that there be different avenues of access to metaplot that don't require a top political player.

YOU'LL NEVER FIND ME OUT

@arkandel said in Spotlight.:

Without getting into pseudo-sociology here, why is spotlight wanted - and in some cases, needed?

What I mean is, we're not really talking about entertainment at this point, or even giving people stuff to do. The issue isn't that a bartender has nothing to do - in fact in many cases it's easier for one to participate in plots, because they wouldn't need to answer questions such as "why would my High Lady be on a rowboat to catch a special rare fish" before they sign up. On a day to day basis a bartender can find scenes easier - they are already at a bar!

So what gives? Why are (some, and not just a few) folks driven to stand out by being assigned prominent positions?

I mean, idk how you get into that without getting into sociology or psychology. Some people like recognition and spotlight in their lives. Some people don't. Is it important to gauge the reasons why, or is it more important to just accept the varied ways in which people have fun and find value in a game and try to make room for those varied ways (as far as makes sense/is reasonable)?

@TheOnceler No, Nicholaus Grayson--

Wait.

@faraday said in Spotlight.:

@peasoupling said in Spotlight.:

It really does depend on how far we stretch the analogy, I guess. Is the battle solely dependent on Luke's rolls? Does anything change at all if Porkins actually takes out those tie-fighters?

It really does, and I'm not meaning to tunnel vision on this particular analogy. But I think it's useful, because it deals with the aspect of having realistic expectations.

Let's say that 12 people show up for the Death Star battle MU scene. I think it's utterly impractical to give all of them Luke levels of impact. But if only one of them gets the killing blow on the Big Bad, does that really mean that everyone else is just window dressing? I don't think so. And how many Epic Big Bads can you really expect a game to have, if you expect staff to spread the Hero Time around?

Nobody wants to feel like window dressing. But not everybody can have Luke levels of Hero Time either. I think MUSHers need to accept the middle ground in there more than they typically do.

I think the big difference is that, in a MU* RP scenario, the whole scene wouldn't just be following Luke the entire time. That's what would really make other players feel like window dressing. But if everyone is a part of the process of fighting through the enemy, if it's not just following Luke the whole time with the forgone conclusion that he's going to be the one to successfully take that final shot -- yeah, I think that could still be a pretty badass scene for everyone involved, even if only one person ends up with the final killshot.

@MarsGrad ?!

Having done a poker game tonight with some improvised rolls (Luck and Wits/Intellect, then people doing social rolls as they like for their poker faces and/or bluffing), I do really like IC game minigames.

@gasket said in The Apology Thread:

@Roz said in The Apology Thread:

So: I both do not become immediate friends with people AND also can become very close friends with people on MU*s.

It's a super-fascinating part of the MU* community in general, for me, how very differently people can compartmentalize their online versus offline personas / how attached they can get versus how detached they keep, and yet we all manage to (occasionally) successfully roleplay together.

I keep a pretty short leash on my RL information, yet there are people I game with whom I'd pitch in for plane tickets like your example, even though they don't even know my name.

I can understand that, actually. People are often persuaded to be charitable to others that they may or may not know, and charity often doesn't have to involve sharing personal information at all. You're giving away something you're willing to part with -- some money -- but still holding onto what you don't want to give -- your personal info/access to a certain amount of intimacy.

I mean, people donate to GoFundMe campaigns benefitting total strangers just because they feel empathy with their situation.

@zombiegenesis said in A Game of Thrones MUX Discussion:

1. Custom houses. I think this would be one of the biggest draws to a game, getting a few people together and creating your own house. The RPG has fantastic rules for this. Would people actually use such a system?

People will make them if you let them, but honestly there are so many -- so many -- established houses in the GoT canon that I wonder at the necessity. But yes, if you set it out as a thing people can do, people will definitely do it. I'd suggest having a minimum number of people required to start it off and also consider rules about staff taking control and possibly rostering leadership PCs if suddenly the group of friends disappears.

2. Setting. The game needs to be political, sure, but it could be Big Political or Little Political. By Big Political I mean setting it in some place like King's Landing and allowing all types of characters from all over Westeros and beyond. By Little Political I mean setting it in one specific location (Casterly Rock, say) and focus on the politics of that region. This would obviously have an impact on what custom houses were available.

Base it in one location no matter what size political you're doing. I'd say go for wherever you can make it reasonably IC to have a large variety of characters.

3. Ready-made characters. Would having a +roster filled with characters that players could just do a small app for be worth investing time in? It seems to work on other places but I don't play on those places so I'm unsure.

Some people love rosters. Some people love making their own characters. I'd strongly suggest having at least some rosters, as it 1) helps new players dive in quickly, and 2) helps you to manage continuity of houses and the like as players come and go. As others have said, let people flag their OCs as being able to go on the roster or not if their player leaves. Have rules about OCs going on the roster if they're abandoned in leadership positions.

4. Sticking to canon. This is something I don't really care much about. I figure we start the game and not worry about if what we do would prevent the game from eventually leading into the books or whatever. Do what we want and have fun telling our story, not worry about the story that GRR Martin will eventually tell. Would this be a deal breaker for fans of the theme?

Pick a point in the canon to start from, and then throw out anything and everything that comes after it. I strongly believe this is the only reasonable way to handle moving canon. I think it's a huge mistake when games try to adjust around new material. (Taking inspiration from new material can be great!)

@Kanye-Qwest you love me

Yeah but like -- you can't even tell when and where you have activity in Potato spawns like 50% of the time. That's so broken.

@haven said in A New Star Wars game? (Legends of The Old Republic (Name pending)):

This thread needs more Kylo Ren!

You're welcome.

@thenomain said in What is your turning point?:

I try not to get too attached to anyone as RP partners, because it never works as well as you or perhaps they are hoping. An absolute death knell is someone inviting you to play on a game they like; what they are almost never doing is inviting you to play with them.

That is so strangely opposite to my experience. Whenever someone invites me to a game, they want to play with me. And whenever I invite someone to a game, it's because I want to play with them there!

#2 by a lot

@tinuviel I'm pretty sure that was a direct response to the idea of using the court of public opinions to literally vote on player bans on games.

I love coded weather and coded weather EMITS and was always sad I couldn't get them working to emit properly with Faraday's system on X-Factor.

@carex said in Let's talk about TS.:

@roz said in Let's talk about TS.:

you're ignoring the many people talking about how off-put they would be.

I'm not ignoring it. I actually acknowledged it previously on the previous page:

"I agree. As I said before, it would make things more difficult. That was never in question. I just question if that added difficulty is worth the effort to increase the longevity of the engagement of the players.

The consensus seems to be that it wouldn't be worth it."

No, that was your response to the idea that it would be too difficult and require too much effort. It's not a response to the fact that everyone on this thread is saying they would be actively horrified and off-put by seeing this policy on a game. That it would absolutely not increase the longevity of anything. That it wouldn't be worth the effort because it wouldn't at all work.

@lithium said in Code Discussion: Ambiance Emits:

Or just make it easy to opt in and opt out of. It shouldn't be that difficult.

It can still cause a fair amount of friction when people have really different expectations about something like that and are basically seeing different things. I mean, that's the scenario Faraday just described: one person is opted in and sees the weather says rain, starts posing about rain, the other people are opted-out and insist there's no rain. Both parties are basically pulled from their fun in different ways.

It's not codedly difficult, I'm sure. It's about cultural friction.

I totally agree with @Lotherio that people should wait for a couple poses to see what the scene they're ICly walking into actually looks like, and I've totally written that exactly peeve on the peeves thread. But I do think there's going to be issues of people constantly being like "are we listening to the emits in this scene or aren't we."

It's like @ThatGuyThere said: this is a matter of playstyle, how much people enjoy giving the game environment agency versus controlling it, and the two styles aren't hugely compatible when it comes to a system like this.