Posts made by Roz

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.

It's so hard to find this thread every time, guys.

But: finding out that a person you know on a game is actually someone you've known for like -- ten years. You just didn't realize it was them. And then you laugh about it a lot.

Yeah, it really just is a matter of boundaries. The real difference between players who tend to find themselves caught up in a shitty game relationship versus those who don't are boundaries. People who have good boundaries will do what @Ganymede says: tell people early or immediately to stop doing a thing that's inappropriate or uncomfortable and, if they don't stop, excise them from your RP fun and, where appropriate, report to staff.

I know this isn't easy for everyone, but it really does come down to being the only answer. No one else can create and enforce reasonable boundaries for you; you have to do it yourself. Players with good boundaries don't just have the magical luck to never come across crappy players; it's just that they don't generally end up entwined with them.

@pondscum Wait wait. You got cards telling you to KIDNAP PEOPLE?!

@gamerngeek The thing I never get is, like. Don't other people also get annoyed when their friends are being obnoxiously, endlessly chatty? I mean. I still get annoyed when that is coming from my friends!

I was married to @saosmash on Second Pass for -- gosh, I dunno, a year or two? The entire romance was basically two years. It was great! It ended cause we left the game, which was sad. But they made it all the way to fatherhood and stuff.

We also apped in married on a different game, which was fun because we'd been friends for many years at that point and so trusted each other a lot. Sadly I was a jerk who only lasted a year or so before wandering off. Actually it was apparently longer than I realized.

@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.

@arkandel I'm sorry I'm the worst

@apos said in Spotlight.:

@three-eyed-crow said in Spotlight.:

This is what's frustrating to me about this stuff, because these complaints are incredibly burn-out inducing when they're about the little things. Oh, there were complaints that a person took part in a game at my party? Whelp, I don't terribly want to run parties anymore, because clearly doing ANYTHING gets you flack. Yeah, this stuff is silly, but so much of it's ABOUT the silly stuff that it takes away from legitimate complaints about game balance and favoritism.

100% the main cause of cliquishness in the hobby is people wanting to limit their exposure to microaggressions and griping like that. This hobby imo is powered entirely by enthusiasm of participants. It is incredibly easy for just a few persistently negative people to pretty much gut a game faster than a Custodius could ever dream of doing so.

I can get accused of spotlight hogging for doing little more than breathing. It's pretty remarkable.

@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)?

I've actually staffed on games that very explicitly tried to set up expectations as far as metaplot involvement vs character type. X-Men Movieverse: X-Factor, Mass Effect: Alpha & Omega, and X-Factor NYC all had a main faction that the game focused on. (Mutant secret agent group, a specific mercenary company, and a mutant investigative group, respectively.) For XMM, we specifically had a different character type for people to app support characters that were outside of the main secret agent group, they had different activity requirements, etc. I think for A&O and XF:NYC we mostly were just really explicit that "Hey, these core groups are going to be the ones involved in the metaplot, you are totally welcome to make a PC outside of that, but just be aware!" These were also small games, we had small staffs, and we had a specific focus we wanted to tell stories in.

So yeah, I think that just being clear is hugely important. If you have a broad setting and no real indication that "really it's just this one area of the setting that interacts with the metaplot," then the metaplot should be accessible across character types.

@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.

@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.

For people trying to select the option to swap which side the menu appears on on mobile -- I think it might take a few refreshes or a cleared cache on your mobile browser before it actually sticks. (I did get mine to stick eventually because man do I use the menu a lot and want it on the right side and I use chat a lot less.)

@apos said in Buttercup's Playlist:

@buttercup said in Buttercup's Playlist:

I am a bit relieved to be done with him in some sense. There is a large gap in immaturity where players associate characters with their players. I had seen a lot of it and understand this is a natural tendency for any medium like this. I took Tovell (the pious and dutiful knight) off the roster to sort of just compare experiences. I kept my use of him pretty much unknown and the difference in how I was treated as a player was amazing. Some of the same people that were crap OOCly to me with one alt were friendly, welcoming, and utterly different on the unstated alt. I enjoyed the OOC experience of playing a good-guy far far more.

In fairness to that, there's a marked difference between outright hostility ooc and just people being guarded, though. If someone is an antagonist, a lot of people just aren't comfortable being extremely communicative ooc because they feel they could be considered disingenuous if they then need to work contrary to you, or want to avoid ooc pressure over IC decisions. Anyone can be really friendly and chill when they know there is absolutely nothing at stake for doing so, and I tend to pay closer attention to the people that are that way when they know their own characters are at risk.

I honestly try to be OOCly friendlier when I play meaner characters.

@ixokai said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

@zombiegenesis said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

@ixokai The PDFs are out there...if you look. I don't want to post a pirate link but a simple google search will throw up a huge repository now-a-days.

Oh I know I could get anything if I wanted, but I don't pirate anymore.

I guess DND Beyond might not give you actual PDFs, but it gives you access to the books digitally?

@ganymede said in Make it fun for Me!:

@the-sands said in Make it fun for Me!:

As deep and philosophical as that is, hockey is still a competition and not a collaboration (with the other team).

My initial point is that you can be both competitive and collaborative. These are not mutually-exclusive concepts.

Others have already made my counter-argument, but, to be succinct, the game has rules everyone agrees to play by. When those rules are breached, there are penalties. Penalties tilt the competition in favor of the non-offending party, so there is a benefit to play by the rules that the teams, before the game, agree to.

But even if you don't agree that this is collaborative, at the very least the sportsmanship element sticks. People drop gloves and punch each other in the face, but they don't engage in snarky off-game attacks and shit, as we sometimes see in this damn hobby. And most of them don't bitch and whine at the officiating.

If you don't believe one can be competitive and collaborative, let me take a moment to explain how the practice of law works nowadays.

This is all well-said. I mean, we all know that there are players in professional sports who are respected for not just playing well but behaving well. And there are players who may play well but are known to be assholes in the game. You can absolutely be a respectful competitor.

@icanbeyourmuse said in Make it fun for Me!:

@the-sands I'm not entirely certain I agree with that. It might be competitive but they have agreed upon rules, times, and places. They have agreed upon codes of conduct. Yeah, they are competing to 'win the game' but they are working together, in a way, with each other and their teammates.

A competition having rules and codes of conduct doesn't make it any less of a competition.

@miss-demeanor I try not to remember Age of Ultron.

ETA: Or the really stupid narrative choice to give Clint a secret family.

@the-sands said in Good TV:

@wildbaboons said in Good TV:

@deadculture 2 is the remaining 12 would be him walking around New York telling everyone he sees that he's the Iron Fist

In all fairness almost no one in the MCU has a 'secret identity'. The only real examples I can think of are Spider-man and Daredevil. Black Panther, Hulk, Black Widow, and Hawkeye are probably 'secret identity adjacent' since I think just about anyone with some clearance can look up their real names but I don't think the average person on the street necessarily knows who they are.

Remember that Black Widow dumped all those SHIELD files public in The Winter Soldier. Folks don't need clearance.