Posts made by Roz

@thenomain said in Earning stuff:

@roz said in Earning stuff:

I think it's still important to note that while books often have more space to spread out than an episode of television, every scene in a book should still serve a specific purpose.

I still quite enjoy a lot of the Douglas Adams tangents that had, effectively, nothing to do with the story. Most of them were about Arthur Dent. (Arthur Dent and Fenchurch having sex while flying serves zero plot elements, and don't tell us much about the character, but it's still a fun story because it links to something later on.)

What I'm saying is that I think you and @faraday are over-analyzing this, and that I respectfully disagree with your position that specific plot-driven story is important as all that.

You're misunderstanding my point. Note that I didn't say the purpose needs to be about plot. I'm not saying that every social scene needs to delve into whatever plot is happening on the game. I'm saying that, in good writing, every word has some sort of purpose. Sometimes that purpose is plot, but sometimes it's about character, sometimes it's building something to call back to later, sometimes it's about revealing something -- maybe it's small, maybe it's insignificant, but it's still relevant and interesting in some way. Good writing has a point. I was actually specifically stating that the character growth in between plot is where I find a large bulk of my interest, and I specifically said before that when I said good writing has a purpose, I listed things other than moving plot forward. There are multiple kinds of purpose that are important to build in something like, say, a novel.

The problem is that bad social RP can end up without any purpose, without any point. You never manage to find something interesting in it anywhere. And when people have limited time to RP, they may not want to risk ending up in a total dud of a scene, even if there's also the possibility that they'll get something brilliant.

@thenomain said in Earning stuff:

This is a lot easier in books, where there is more time and effort given to it. Not every scene has to be The Most Important Thing Right Now, and I revel in that. I don't want to wait for The Most Important Thing Right Now. I want to have Right Now be important, even if it's not The Most Important Thing, and having to wait on events and people to decide to crawl out of their private homes to make Now be important is frustrating because I can illustrate games, past and present, where this wasn't a thing.

Random scenes is incredibly important for this, social or otherwise.

I think it's still important to note that while books often have more space to spread out than an episode of television, every scene in a book should still serve a specific purpose. Move the plot forward, reveal something about the character, build important notes of a relationship. The real difference is in how writing builds when it's planned versus unplanned, as in RP. The problem isn't the existence of social scenes, it's that you don't know going in if a social scene you wander into is going to manage to hit any interesting or relevant notes. Because sometimes they just don't. Sometimes you can't really manage to hook with the other player(s), sometimes you don't get to explore or reveal character or relationships. Sometimes the Right Now simply doesn't manage to be important or relevant, and that's what makes people bored. When people complain about BarRP, I assume they're talking about scenes that never really find a spark. And I'm not saying that all social scenes need to find something super deep in them, but I think the spark is what people are looking for. So when people have the choice between a private scene with a character they already have a spark with versus going out to maybe meet some new people that might be a lot of fun or might be dull as dishwasher -- sometimes people just don't have the time or energy to roll the dice on the latter.

I love social RP. I think the time in between the big, world-shattering events is hugely important, just as important -- if not moreso -- than the events themselves. How the characters grow and react, how their lives and attitudes change, all of it. And tons of my great, important IC relationships are built from a foundation of just -- meeting a random PC in public.

In a medium that you can write out and plan, every scene, every passage, can have a purpose, from big to small. That's what good writing does. And I think that's what most people seek in their RP: for interactions to feel alive and relevant in the world. It's just that the results of random public RP can be hugely inconsistent.

@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.

@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.

@carex You are incredibly wrong about how people would react to this and you're ignoring the many people talking about how off-put they would be if they were a player on a game with this as policy.

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

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

This whole scenario will just end up in game-wide civil wars and terrible toxicity the first time there's any sort of disagreement among the playerbase.

I'm sure they said something similar about having democracies instead of kings. Giving up control is always a horrible, unthinkable idea to people who have power.

It's almost like a MU* is a small hobby game and not an actual system of government!

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

@sunny

The court of public opinion...

You mean like a trial by jury? Courts of public opinion are the cornerstone of most modern justice systems.

That indicates a severe misunderstanding of the difference between jury trials and the court of public opinion, which are, in fact, two different things.

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

@carex Seeing that staff is willing to engage in public humiliation doesn't increase trust and investment by players. It just tells them that staff will be willing to humiliate people, including them.

And it would keep those kinds of players away from the game in the first place.

No, see -- people don't see "staff is willing to publicly humiliate you if you're awful enough." They see "staff is willing to publicly humiliate people." Full stop. It's not just going to be creepers who are suddenly worried about being dragged through this, it's going to be a large bulk of your playerbase, including people who may never have to be spoken to.

If you treat one kind of person terribly, it just shows that you're willing to treat people terribly in general.

What happens when you get the players who are serious issues but are also great at ingratiating themselves and forming shields of other players?

Ok, let's pretend that somehow this creeper creates a human shield of creeper-sympathetic players who protect each other from the ban, that means a majority of your player base wants to be creeping on each other.

People who don't want that kind of creeper RP would be informed by the votes to protect the creeper as to who these trolls are and avoid the problem people while the people inside the creeper's circle of friends would get what they want and keep playing.

Even in this highly unlikely situation where an army of trolls invades your game and become a majority, everyone would be better off by being more informed as opposed to banning the creepers one at a time and letting the others troll go on unexposed.

Even in this highly improbable, worse case scenario, you are still giving the players what they want which is the single most important thing you can do for your game's longevity.

If your goal is to keep your players engaged and playing, then this is one way do it. It's more effort than dictating justice by proclamation but it engages the will of the majority.

Give your players a justice system they are part of and your game will last longer with a more loyal player base.

No. This whole scenario will just end up in game-wide civil wars and terrible toxicity the first time there's any sort of disagreement among the playerbase. It's actually super common to have problem players who appear perfectly nice to a certain group of players. Suddenly their hurt and issues aren't just directed at staff, who can at least respond and deal with it, but the rest of the playerbase for literally voting their friend off. It's not as simple as "people shouldn't be friends with creepers." A lot of the time problem players are showing different faces to different people.

Players want to see in a game how they would want to be treated. They want to know that staff will generally protect their privacy. Literally no one, bad player or good player, wants to have their disciplinary action put up to a public game vote.

Staff should keep disciplinary matters confidential until the time comes for a ban, at which point they should clearly state the reasons for it. Your idea that putting up MU* discipline to a player vote will make the game last longer and make the playerbase more loyal indicates to me that you probably haven't staffed on a game. It's literally one of the most disastrous ideas I've ever heard.

@carex Seeing that staff is willing to engage in public humiliation doesn't increase trust and investment by players. It just tells them that staff will be willing to humiliate people, including them. And no one is really fooled by a "thin layer of democracy." Add to that that now all the victims get to have these logs of their harassment aired to the entire game, and soon no one will be willing to file complaints.

What happens when you get the players who are serious issues but are also great at ingratiating themselves and forming shields of other players?

The accusation of a MU* being a dictatorship isn't an insult, in most cases it's just factual. If players have a problem with a MU* being a dictatorship, they should find different types of games to play.

@carex That is a horrifically terrible idea.

@magee101 said in Let's talk about TS.:

@cobaltasaurus thats why I bring them both forward and figure out who what. I never said ban, banning is not the only punishment (there are plenty of IC things that would not take kindly to that sort of Hubris wink wink). You also cannot just on the first tume do anything.

YOU SURE CAN if the offense is clear enough and creepy enough.

Just start FTB/FFing the TS to move onto something else. Don't have to have any sort of OOC convo about it, you just do it, move on ICly to something else. If they eventually ask OOC, just shrug and say you just feel like RPing other stuff.

Think of it this way: what if you just treat it as any other type/theme of RP that you can get tired of if you do to much of. We all kind of feel there has to be an inherent awkwardness surrounding TS, but what if it was just as casual as being like "all my RP lately has been combat-centric, just wanna do some other stuff"?

If you just start FFing most of the time and the TS is the most important thing to the other player, they'll probably just beat you to the punch re: IC breakup.

@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.

I do think to a certain extent you kind of just need to make a decision either way and lean into it and let folks opt out of the game if it's not for them. It's just a different playstyle: some people are really into the immersion of environment, some people aren't. Some people want more control of those aspects, some people like having the game prompt it. @faraday's certainly not wrong that the fuzzy middle ground will likely just end up with more confusion.

I often forget to even think about the weather so I like the reminder because it then gives me more variety and color in my RP. I am fully supportive of putting a prefix on emits for people to gag, spawn, etc. as they like, tho.

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.

I'm not an expert at the server-side stuff, but I'm pretty good once the initial setup is done. Can help work with extensions, get templates and FORMS and properties set up and the like.

Maybe a Seedless going Seeded doesn't just offer them the personal benefit of becoming part of the noble caste, but allows them the means to also take care of their families. Obviously their Seedless families will never be PART OF COURT, but it might be a route to better, more comfortable living among the Seedless, and it provides more incentive for people to try.

ALSO maybe there are whole lines of cast-offs wherein people are descended from pruned royals and the magic returns to the line -- maybe it was just dormant, you know -- and now they're back and maybe they feel they have a CLAIM TO THE THRONE.

@cobaltasaurus said in What Do You Want In A New Game (3-options)?:

@roz Any particular reason? What kind of themes would you assume you could explore with that little idea-bite? What kind of themes would you HOPE to explore? Is it the idea of magic? The potential for a court-ish system? The potential for political intrigue? I know there's not a super lot to go off of, but it's meant just to be a seed (ehehehe) of an idea rather than a full fleshed pitch to people. So based off of what little is there, what interests you and what would you want from it?

I like MAGIC and I especially love ELEMENTAL MAGIC and also I like COURTS and INTRIGUE.

#2 by a lot

@ganymede said in Earning stuff:

@arkandel said in Earning stuff:

There's are some IC candidates for the position, none of them a clear forerunner but there's interest in the vacancy. Then a new person, OOC friend of the Captain's and known by staff creates a new character and voila, that PC is handed the keys to the Captaincy.

Poe was really angry when Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo took over the Resistance. Sure, she was a friend of Leia's and had some success in the field, but she didn't earn the command of the Raddus.

She didn't??