Best posts made by Rusalka

So, when I apped my latest character, I wrote three or four major psychological sore points into her background. I figured they'd come up gradually, over the course of months and scenes with multiple people. Nope. One character managed to, totally organically and in the course of a single scene, hit on all but one of them in the best way possible. He couldn't have done it better if he'd been reading my app (and he hadn't). It was amazing. I've never, in all my years of MU*ing, had anything quite like it happen.

Unfortunately, the prize he wins is that my character will now follow him around like a little lost puppy dog that he was foolish enough to feed. (Which I don't think was his intention, but if so, well played.)

You've gotten a lot of really good advice, so instead of repeating that, I'll mention something I don't think has been really discussed yet:

If someone takes on OOC responsibilities and can't or won't perform them, don't hesitate to either remove them from that position or route around them. This can mean staffing, but it can also mean playing an IC leader, or a feature character, or other positions where someone is expected to contribute more to the game than the average player.

This also includes you. If you know you have to go away for a good while, make sure you have someone else in charge (even if they aren't allowed to make, say, sweeping policy changes). I once staffed a game where the headwiz was gone for months and didn't delegate powers in her absence, and trust me, there have been few things in my time MU*ing that were more frustrating than having to run a game without the power to, you know, actually run the game.

I think people understand this if someone's just slacking, but they hesitate if there's a good reason for the absence, or at least a sob story. It's just a pretendy fun time game, RL comes first, people don't want to be mean, etc. The thing is, though, the jobs still aren't being done. (The aforementioned headwiz had a thoroughly legitimate reason to not be around. This did not prevent the game from suffering.) Relieving someone of responsibilities isn't a punishment, just a recognition that, right now, they can't fulfill them.

@pacha said in So I read a thing... [Yet Another City of Hope Hate Post]:

I am living in hope for the day when someone makes WoD (properly) available on Ares. I think that will revolutionise it as we won't be beholden to the same tired old cadre of people to build and run them.

I'm actually working on this, albeit somewhat half-assedly. Trying to learn Ruby right now, but I managed to learn MUSHcode and even get MUX's fucky implementation of regular expressions figured out, and this cannot possibly be that much harder.

Please do not disabuse me of this notion.

@ixokai said in Where do you draw the line in having your character take what would otherwise be an "IC" action for them?:

Second, however, is that sometimes a player might come up with a clever approach using their niche powers that really do solve a scene all by themselves. This is good.

This is actually one of my favorite things when it's done well. My guidelines for this are that it's awesome as long as a) it's not the same player repeatedly doing it, and b) other players have had, or will have, the chance to do something. Sure, they're not going to solve the mystery or kill the baddie (the player in the spotlight did that), but they can actually get some sort of RP in. Maybe they got to gather a few clues, or held off some of the baddie's minions. Maybe they get to shine in another scene, or investigate the area after the bad guy's dead. Something other than showing up, getting one pose in, and then watching some other player do away with every single shred of conflict.

A lot of responsibility for avoiding this falls on the GM, but a sufficiently irresponsible and selfish player can still fuck things up. A few months ago, I ran a plot where a group of PCs needed to gather up some cursed artifacts that'd been auctioned off. They'd been bought by different people, so it was an easy way to give each PC something to do, if they were interested... until the most powerful character in the room decided that nah, she was just going to send her even more powerful pet mage after them all. Why? Because it "was what her character would do." This is exactly the kind of situation where she could and should have found an alternate option.

@geeklure said in MU Things I Love:

@rusalka Not, but pretty sure I know who you're talking about.

In that case, congratulations on not having a murderous prostitute for a stalker.

My standard is a) am I damaging someone's fun (including my own) and b) do I have any other vaguely plausible options. Sometimes, there aren't any alternatives. Yeah, there might be something awesome going on at the strip club, but a hypothetical nun character wouldn't go there. And no, not going after someone isn't much of an option if they, say, killed my PC's kids and spouse and puppy.

The vast majority of the time, though, there's wiggle room. Between circumstances, mood, and people generally being complex, actual humans do plenty of things that could be considered slightly out of character for them. Someone has a good day and is unusually generous and forgiving as a result. Someone is tired and not in the mood to fight right then. Someone is lost and ends up in an area they wouldn't normally frequent. There are usually at least a few possible reasons your PC might not murder that one asshole, might not get into that fight, might visit that part of the grid, might not derail that scene, etc.

And yes, I do consider scene stealing and derailing to be potentially damaging to other people's fun. I've seen it ruin scenes and plots ("I solve the whole thing immediately, by myself!"), and the people involved in the worst cases didn't seem to care because "it's what my character would have done lol." (I have several "wonderful" stories of what not to do, in fact, but those are probably better suited for the Hog Pit.)

New thread, because I didn't want to hijack @Seamus's. Okay, and I didn't want this getting buried at the end of that thread. Sue me. Or merge the threads. Whatever.

I've had an idea rolling around in my head of making a single(ish) sphere oWoD game. I know, I know, but I really enjoy oWoD, I don't much care for multisphere (and can't run it all by my lonesome anyway), and in any case, the only active place for oWoD at the moment is City of Hope. Which I do play at, actually, but I'm sure we're all aware of its many issues.

I haven't decided exactly which sphere yet, but I have some candidates, neither of which have historically been very popular. Which is why I'm posting this - I want to know if any of my ideas are of any interest to anyone but me.

Whatever the setting, the game would:

• Not be a sandbox. PRPs are fine (not that anyone ever seems to run the things), but I'd be running plots as staff, including larger, overarching ones. And even PRPs should be allowed to affect the wider game world.
• Have a cohesive theme and focus.
• Have open, fairly simple CG. I'd require a short background/concept explanation, but that's more of a sanity check than anything. You want to write more, great, I'll mine it for plot ideas to throw at you, but 2-4 sentences is usually sufficient to weed out the really crazy shit.
• Probably operate a little like an online TT, with regularly scheduled plot one or two nights a week.
• Eliminate as many OOC hoops as possible. This means automating whatever can be, and not doing things like requiring justifications for XP spends. I'd rather manage game power levels through house rules about how much of what you can buy.
• Not necessarily use the oWoD canon for splats that aren't playable. Sure, there are werewolves out there, but are they Garou? Probably not.

And now, the two ideas:

1. New York by Neon - V20 Sabbat (vampire and revenant) in 1980s NYC

Grit, glamour, and decadence: 1980s NYC is a playground for the Sabbat. This game would focus on intrasect struggles. Ferret out infernalists, compete with other packs for territory and resources, try not to get screwed over too badly by elders, and maybe indulge in a bit of the ol' ultraviolence in the process. I'd also like to actively give revenants plots of their own.

2. Apocrypha - Demon and some sorcerer in the modern world

Demons and occultists go together like peanut butter and jelly. And sorcerers are nothing to sneeze at, power wise, so they're not going to get totally overshadowed by the demons. The focus of this game would be digging up buried secrets, researching the past, trying to find magic artifacts, etc. Honestly, there are parts of a few other gamelines that would work brilliantly for this (Nosferatu, Hermetics, etc.), but I'd have to rip out the rest of the gamelines in question, and I'm hesitant to do that. I mean, does anybody really want to play "Mage, except there are no Traditions and no Technocracy, all the themes about blazing a new path into the future are missing, and you can only play a Hermetic style character"? As for where to set it, I've not decided. London or Chicago would be good conventional choices, but I'm actually leaning a bit towards St. Louis. Why? Because there's an honest-to-God mysterious lost civilization right across the river.

So, any takers? Am I the only one who'd enjoy either of these options?

@Gingerlily

I once had a character who ran a small art gallery. Paintings, checkout counter, that's it. Somebody came in one day and posed going over to the bar and ordering a drink.

@geeklure said in MU Things I Love:

@rusalka Not, but pretty sure I know who you're talking about.

Apparently we were not talking about the same people at all.

Which means this happened on two separate games, to two separate groups of players, on the same day.

@Bobotron

As I said in the original post, it's not going to be a sandbox. I'd be (or would be attempting, in any case) running longer plots and trying to keep a cohesive theme.

Thank you for splitting this, sorry for derailing. Please continue to fill the other thread up with gossip about CoH, because I love that shit.

Okay, so Ares. I've peeked at the code tutorials, and it looks like the main problem, if there is one, would be updating the plugins. If you adjust them, you can't automatically update them with a script. Which means you have to do it by hand. Which means bugs, pretty much inevitably.

This seems like it shouldn't be a huge issue if the base plugins are coded well: things like tasks, mail, etc., shouldn't need to be rewritten for WoD, and the FS3 system plugins wouldn't be used in the first place. The one thing I can immediately think of that might be an issue is the room, desc, and movement systems - I don't know if you'd have to adjust the base plugins to allow for Umbral/chimerical/whatever stuff. Ideally, I'd hope you could just layer a WoD plugin on top of the basic movement, desc, and room plugins, but I don't know if that's possible because I've just started looking at this.

People who're more familiar with Ares, does that summary seem right? Any pitfalls I'm missing? I might not have touched this codebase before, but I know enough to realize that how code seems like it should work and how it actually works can be two very different things.

As I have been feeling maudlin and nostalgic lately, here is a list of the major characters I've played (at least the ones I'll own up to). Say hello if you remember me and don't think I sucked too hard!

Past

Dark Destiny: Denver by Night

• Alexis, Euthanatos who HATED FUN. Also had a magic rifle, and an alternate Nephandic mirror universe version of herself that ate a baby. Good times. Eventually married an Etherite, who calmed her down a lot. (Confession time: for a while there, she got really batshit and just went round and round with the drama, which I'm sure rapidly wore out its welcome. Some of the stuff going on with her pushed my RL buttons, and instead of taking a breath like I should have, I leaned into the crazy. To anyone who had to deal with this, I'm genuinely sorry: it was the exact wrong thing to do.)

Metro 2.0

• Lara/Rebecca, Metamorphosist-wannabe Tzimisce who never seemed to learn to stop tangling with the Camarilla.
• Justine, Toreador antitribu spy on the Path of Cathari. Got blood bound to the Toreador Primogen because she wasn't nearly as good a spy as she should have been, repeatedly botched the Willpower roll to go sneak off and break the bond, and instead wound up so obsessed she built an honest to god little shrine to him in her home. That's not really an identifying story that will help jog anybody's memory, but it amuses me to this day.
• Aimee, Gangrel ghoul.

By Right of Blood

• Shirley Temple: Staffer! All the staff had alcohol names and I, uh, well, I don't drink and I know nothing about booze.
• Luz: Tzimisce pack priest who changed her appearance the way most people change their clothes and had very little in the way of visible emotions. Ran about a million Games of Instinct and Fire Dances. Also had that fun Flaw where you made everything around you cold and kill plants.

Current (sorta)

City of Hope

• Simone, Defiler demon and fae buddy.
• Lance, peacock pooka!
• Augusta, Tytalan Hermetic that I never play because, let's face it, CoH sucks. Also why I haven't been playing the other two characters much lately.

Sheltering Skies

• Laura: blackjack and hookers! For ten months. sob

There's a few more, but they're either too old and cringy to mention, or so boring and short-lived I can't remember anything about them. ("Oh, yeah, I played a mortal on... that one game set in Canada. No, the other one set in Canada. I think, anyway.")

For total newbies, how scenes actually work and what the grid is. I know this seems entirely obvious, but when I'd juuuuuust started MU*ing (back when trilobites roamed the primordial oceans), it took some figuring out. So I make a character, and this is how I pose and... then what? Some basic grid etiquette as well, like not wandering into private residences, could also be useful. Not that I ever did that as a rank newbie, thinking the entire grid was something I could explore. No, never.

• Spelling and grammar: I don't tend to enjoy RP that doesn't have these. Sometimes it makes me cringe, but mostly I just find it diminishes my enjoyment.
• Pose length: Meh, whatever. As long as they're giving me something to work with and aren't taking too long, I'm good.
• Tempo: This is my personal dealbreaker: either someone who talks all over everyone else by posing once a minute or, much more commonly these days, someone who habitually takes 10-15+ minutes to pose. There's one person I simply won't RP with because he takes 20+ minutes for each pose. Not only does it feel like the MU* equivalent of texting during a conversation - he clearly isn't giving me anything close to his full attention - but it means nothing gets done during a scene.
• Formatting shenanigans: I couldn't care less.
• Pose order: As long as someone isn't posing all over everyone else, or holding everything up by being slow while everyone is keeping to strict pose order, I don't care.

@geeklure said in MU Things I Love:

@rusalka squints at you suspiciously from afar

peers Wait, are you the other player?

If so, congratulations on your PC's new stalker!