Best posts made by Seraphim73

I've sat back on this topic a good long while, so of course, my opinion is worth more (I say, I say, that's a joke, son).

I tend to think that the difference between an NPC and a Staff PC (or GMPC or whatever you want to call it) is that an NPC serves a purpose that is not simply engaging in RP. That purpose may be dispensing plot info, it may be guiding PC leadership/PCs away from unthemely decisions, it may be generally reinforcing theme, it may be... well, there's a lot that it may be, but it should, in my opinion, always be something more than simply engaging in RP. That doesn't mean that they can't be involved in BarRP or come to a PC party, but they should always have a purpose in doing so that goes beyond their character. And while it might be fine to introduce an NPC in an awesome way to prove their bonafides as a source of info or an authority figure or whatever, besides maybe that one exception, they should never be the spotlight of a scene.

A Staff PC, on the other hand, is there to engage in RP, often focused on their own story. They may be used to dispense info, they may be used to give nudges into more profitable courses of action, and they may be used to reinforce theme, but their focus will be on engaging in RP, rather than serving any other particular purpose.

I fully believe that Staff should be allowed to -- nay, encouraged to -- have PCs on their game; I don't believe there's a better way to keep your finger on the pulse of the game than playing it. I've learned that Staff PCs should never hold the spotlight even as much as the average "engaged" player, and certainly well less than the most-engaged non-Staff PCs. I believe they should never hold any position more important or rare than any other PC (and usually nothing that several other PCs don't already hold). I believe they should never save the day, except in the company of others. I believe they should be within the bounds of an "average" PC in every way. Is playing a Staff PC less fun than playing a non-Staff PC? Probably a little, because you have to be careful that there's no perception of unfair advantage. But that's part of the price you play for having a game that is (or should be) exactly what you want to play.

An NPC, on the other hand, can be the One True King (to keep all the PC nobles from instituting direct democracy in what is supposed to be a feudal game or to keep the peace between squabbling PC nobles in what's supposed to be a PvE game), an ancient sorcerer, a computer superfreak who knows just about everything committed to electrons ever, or whatever awesomeness the plot/setting needs. They can have skills, powers, or rank that no PC can have, because they're a mechanism to enrich the story of the PCs. In my opinion it's fine to have scenes where an NPC is just there to be social -- it can help show who they are, and give context to their other, more plot-driven actions, but I think that the majority of their scenes should be driving plot or reinforcing setting.

Focusing on 1-2 PCs with a single "important" NPC is a good way to get the rest of the playerbase thinking that they're being spotlighted to the exclusion of others, whether the NPC is teaching those PCs, TSing them, or shooting craps with them, it's just bad optics.

Fly the unfriendly skies in airplanes that never were, casting spells, dodging dragons, and fighting fascism in the late 1930s. Characters will be members of a "free" militia, The Sky Guard, secretly serving the interests of the French and British governments from an airship base. They will crisscross the Continent finding high adventure.

The Savage Skies MUSH is a game of dieselpunk adventure and modern fantasy. Players might be flying against air pirates one week, gathering information on Nationalist Spanish movements the next, trading spells with minions of the Drachenordnung another, and then treating with a great dragon to convince it to join the cause at the end of the month.

All characters will be explicitly tied to the militia group at the heart of the game, either as a fighting member or one of the smugglers, informants, and hangers-on that work directly with them. From there, you'll work together with other players to create your own adventures within the setting and metaplot provided by Staff.

https://savageskies.aresmush.com
savageskies.aresmush.com:1616

@faraday has been an excellent RP partner, someone I've had a great deal of fun discussing game design with, someone I've butted heads with on game design philosophy and details, someone I've argued with and gotten frustrated with over scene details, someone I've gone right back to having a good time RPing with and discussing game design with, someone who has revolutionized (along with the Evennia team on similar paths) MU*ing, someone who has helped me set up and bug-check games using her code that ran contrary to what she thought was best for the code, someone who has donated what I expect is literal tens of thousands of hours to the community via her coding and Staffing, and someone I consider one of my better friends in the MU*ing community.

Thank you, @faraday.

@egg I would think of it less as 'dangling something enticing on RP Requests channel' and more as 'doing the work to set up the idea of the scene when you're the one who wants to RP.'

While it can be a pain in the butt to come up with a scene idea when you have no guarantee that anyone will join it, there's very little more annoying than someone coming on RP Requests to say "Hey, anyone want to RP" and then when you say "Sure, what did you have in mind," they say "Oh, I don't know. You want to go to a bar?"

1. When you're in a scene and someone does something that catches you totally off-guard.
2. When 1. happens, and you don't even have to think about how your character would react, it just flows naturally.

The Eighth Sea is a game of piracy and the supernatural, of wooden ships, iron men, and the dark myths that slipped through the cracks of civilization. It will explore the edges of reason and the tensions between civilization, outlaws, and the unknown.

While individual conflicts continue to brew across Tortuga, the crews will have to set aside their larger differences to find the cause of The Storm and, together, work to return to the world of the real. The focus will be on CvE conflicts, although there is no prohibition on individual CvC action (piracy and the supernatural are dangerous). We are playing a Hollywood version of history, with similarly Hollywood interpretations of real-world religions and myths. There will be darkness, but there will also be swashbuckling and derring-do.

And now how about some details:

• We're a game focused on supernatural horror and piracy around the island of Tortuga in 1660.
• We use FS3.3, the new Ares system by Faraday.
• We've integrated a magic system for Hollywood versions of Voodoo, Shamanism, Paganism, and Abrahamic faith.
• The people of Tortuga and the surrounding area are just starting to encounter creatures of myth and legend.
• We're just ramping up out of testing here in November, and it's a great time to get started.

Check out the wiki at www.the8thsea.wikidot.com or come aboard at 8thsea.noderunner.net:4005

EDIT: Changed the connection address, thanks @Sparks.

Players who are happy to share the plot hooks they've been given, spreading them far and wide throughout the playerbase so that everyone can get involved. Nicely done, folks.

@simplications said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

I wouldn't want to see any of these as posts.

I absolutely do want to hear about the person creating multiple characters to avoid a do-not-contact request. I don't really care if the unwanted contact is for the purposes of sexual RP, but if someone wants to add that detail to the story, I don't mind. I absolutely think that they should go to the staff on the game too (first, actually), but I think the community should want to hear about it. That's the only way that we repair the missing stairs in our community -- shining a light on them so that we can see that they're missing.

And if it's a false report? Then if it's made to the community as a whole, it can be addressed. The person being accused of these actions can defend themselves, other people can speak up for or against and people can make up their own mind.

One of the first things said about me on WORA was that I was only made a staffer on a game because I was TSing another staffer. Is that the kind of bullshit accusation that used to be thrown around in order to slut-shame people? Yup. Was I TSing that player's character? Yup. Was that why I got the position? Nope. Folks could speak up and describe what I was doing as a staffer, and people could see that even if it was why I got the position, I was being active and good for the game. Done. Was it annoying to deal with? Yup. Do I still remember it a decade later? Yup.

But unless we as a community out the assholes among us, so that we can remove them from the community, I don't believe that we can ever repair the community.

@Auspice said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

But the [person] who seems to be collecting a harem of [people] meant to be latched onto [them] and [them] alone while [they're] juggling six of them? That's fucked up.

I just wanted to step back into this one for a moment and point out where I see the problem in this scenario. It's not in one character juggling six other characters, it's in one player juggling six other players, while telling each of them both ICly and OOCly that they're The One. It's showing no indication at all that there might be something wrong when they say "Oh no, baby, you're the only one for me" ICly. That turns it from IC gaslighting to OOC gaslighting, and I'm not cool with that. The moment it turns from IC gaslighting to OOC gaslighting is the moment I think it's appropriate for Staff to step in.

@faraday said in Is Min/Max a bad thing?:
Unless you've got some grand scheme to sustain non-combat RP plots across your playerbase, just tell them up front that combat/adventure is going to be the main focus and make sure your chargen/approval process is structured accordingly. If someone REALLY wants to play a chef despite all that, make sure they understand that they'll be sandboxing their own fun.

It's all about expectations.

This is why I really appreciate the distinction between Action Skills and Background Skills in FS3. Not because physical skills should cost more to purchase out of Chargen, but because the distinction between the two types of skills can and should let you know what type of game you're playing. Sadly, it doesn't always, because Staff either want to run an adventure game or think that they have to have Athletics, Melee, and Ranged as Action Skills because they're active, and involve action. But they can!

Imagine, for example, a theoretical FS3 MUSH about Ministers of Parliament or Congresspeople -- Athletics, Melee, and Ranged would all be Background Skills, while the Attributes and Action Skills might be Composure, Hometown Support, Pontificating, Deception, Willful Obliviousness, Investigation, Connections, War Chest, Soundbites, etc. I don't know if that would be awesome, horrifying, or both, but the Attributes and Action Skills would certainly tell you what the game was about.

Howdy. Rome here.

We hadn't listened to the song on the character's page. As @GirlCalledBlu said, it's been removed and the player contacted.

As to the question of Japanese military characters, we've been very careful to ensure that those who have been approved are not aligned with the military forces who are instigating the war crimes in China and Korea (and would be responsible for other ones elsewhere later in history). There is definitely some nuance and question (from what I have read) about how directly involved in all of that Emperor Hirohito was, but I agree that we need to be careful -- probably more careful than we have been in the past.

I will admit that since the game is focused in Europe, we haven't put as much detail into developing South America, Africa, Asia, or Oceana, or our policies in regards to characters from those locations. We will change our policies to be explicit that any Japanese characters must be explicitly opposed to the harsh occupation methods and aggressively expansionist plans espoused by portions of the military. If I knew a common term for those groups that would be understood as well as "Nazis" is for Germany, I would absolutely use it. If any of you have an idea for that term, we're open to suggestions.

The same will be true of Soviet characters, they must be explicitly opposed to the purges and other horrors of Stalin's regime.

Here's the relevant part of our policy:

IC Discrimination
We've specifically designed our setting with the Great Upheaval to remove issues of discrimination against women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people. We've also bumped off Hitler and replaced the Nazis with the Drachenordnung to shift the focus of fascism in Germany away from Jewish people. So just don't do it. We're great with characters who just plain don't like one another, but this is not the game to live out your dreams of "historical" misogyny, racism, homophobia, or other -isms.

ETA:
Here's the new addition to the Forbidden Characters section of the Chargen Guide:

• War Criminals: Members of authoritarian states who are not explicitly opposed to the excesses and war crimes of members of those states.

Within the first 23 seconds of that video, I know just what it's going to be: cishet white male privilege on full whinging display (I say this as a cishet white man).

On a more useful note, @Carma, I love that worksheet for TT gaming. I don't know how practical it would be for MU* gaming, because then plot-runners have to check the responses for every one of the players signed up for their event, plus any that join at the last moment, and edit on the fly to avoid anything Red for players who joined at the last minute. That being said, I absolutely think that events in particular should include trigger warnings. Not because some people might be offended, but because some people might be harmed, as several other posters have mentioned. It might still work, it could just lead to a bunch of extra work for plot-runners (that being said, extra work is a pretty low cost to avoid harming those you are having fun with).

I think that pre-warnings are great because they allow players to either avoid topics that can be harmful to them, or to connect with plot-runners to see if a particular trigger is integral to the plot or if it might be removed. Sometimes things come up due to actions that PCs take, however, and the plot-runner might not be able to warn their players ahead of time. In this situation, I think it's important to do some check-ins with the players and, yes, roll events back if they're likely to be harmful to some of the players.

I understand what @Derp is saying about bad actors using this to manipulate events, and honestly I don't have a problem with a plot-runner saying, "If the current trajectory of the scene is going to be harmful to you as a player, I'm happy to help you extricate your character from the situation." Especially if it doesn't provide the character with a benefit or a detriment (as @mietze mentioned).

To @Arkandel's point about history, I think it's contingent upon the game-runners to acknowledge that they aren't experts on situations and to adapt to best fit their vision of the game. For instance, on TSS I freely admitted to not being an expert on Hirohito's involvement with war crimes, but when provided with evidence and examples, we altered the game's rules to treat the hardline elements of the Imperial Japanese government and the Emperor the same way we treated the Nazis and Hitler. Game runners can't be expected to know everything, but they can be expected to be open to education.

@faraday said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

Yeah sorry, I don't get it. The Holodeck is by it's very nature ICly fake.

Oooh! I think I can shed some light on this part of it... I don't believe that @Ganymede et al are using the Ten Forward/Holodeck 1 example as an IC example, but rather what it's like on an OOC level. For them it's the difference between going into a room that is always the same thing, and a room that can be whatever you want it to be... since one of them is wildly changeable, it doesn't OOCly feel as real to them as the room that is always the same (unless changed by IC events).

@Ghost Your hypothetical isn't applicable, because if I knew that Spider was on my game, they wouldn't be on my game anymore.

Now if, after I showed Spider off my game for being Spider, I had reason to believe that my friend had actually falsely accused them? I'd do my due diligence and check out. I'd talk to anyone else involved and then it seemed likely that my friend had falsely accused them, I would talk to my friend, give them a warning, and take any further accusations from them with a grain of salt.

As for a Hog Pit thread, I would likely respond something like, "From what I can see, this accusation is not accurate. However, this player has been banned from my game because they are Spider, and they have shown themselves to be repeatedly toxic to their community." Because yeah... I don't want false reports out there, but there are people in this community who are toxic and should be removed from it.

@Ghost said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

I think what they want is a place where they can shame people for being crypto-fascists

If there's a place where you can't shame actual crypto-fascists for being crypto-fascists, I don't want to be a member of that community. And your continued use of "some of these personalities" and "they" is complete bullshit, you were one of those most vitriolic members of the Hog Pit, you just couched things in terms you thought were nice (sometimes). @Kestrel previously called you out with receipts for some of the many times you've done this. You were/are part of the problem, and you were/are part of normalizing it, and now you're trying to shove that all on people who have been split (some by their own choice, some not) from this community and are in no position to correct your gaslighting.

@Derp said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

I think you underestimate how much support that can bring with it.

1. Thank you for calling those games wildly popular and the compliment.
2. Definitely not a coder, just someone who can play with numbers and hit locations to tell a story.
3. I certainly wouldn't call myself a core of either of the current two boards, nor of the MSB that came before the split.
4. Community members rallying to my defense came before any of this.

@Arkandel said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

@Seraphim73 is a goddamn (*) Whitecloak, is what he is.

Some of the most fun I've had on a MU*. And that's Child of the Light, thank you.

@mietze said in Historical settings:

So that's one thing that you'd need to take a hard look at. What DO you want in the scope of your game? Then be honest about it.

I really wish that every game started out with a Mission Statement:

We're making this game to do this. Characters will generally be doing this. This is what we want from the game.

Then every decision made in creating the game and staffing the game should flow back to the mission statement and support it. If you find yourself chafing under the "restrictions" of the mission statement, change the mission statement. I think it's a good way to get everyone--Staff and players alike--on the same page from the start. This also helps with the theme-flouting assholes you mention, you can always refer them back to the mission statement and say, "Here's where it says the type of game this is, your choice goes completely against that, that's why we're retconning it."

As you might imagine, I think that directly confronting theme-drift-players immediately is the way to go. Let them know where they're going wrong, why you're concerned, and ask them to stop. If they don't, they clearly don't want to play the game you're running, so remove them. Losing a player or even a few players will be better for your game in the end compared to allowing theme to drift into something you don't want it to be.

I completely agree with you on making sure you've thought of what you want the players to do. I believe that should be the first question every game-runner asks themselves: What will my players -do- with their characters day-to-day.

I don't even want this sort of NPC Roster limited to antagonist NPCs -- I'd like to see a list of NPCs from across the city who come up in multiple scenes.

If your character's a cop, is there a certain desk-jockey cop who always hassles them when they're in the bullpen? List them on the NPC Roster so others can incorporate them into their RP too.

Foul-mouthed Uber driver who always manages to shave 20% off any drive time? Put them up there. Someone else might want to listen to profanity while driving very fast.

Waitress at the local diner who your character asks about her kids whenever they're ordering? Someone else might want to check in too.

I love shared NPCs, because they make the world feel like a cohesive whole rather than a variety of different realities that sometimes intersect.

@Derp said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

This is just meant to browbeat and shame a person based on personal dislike for no other reason than to vent your spleen in an argument.

Actually, it was done to point out the hypocrisy, gaslighting, and rewriting of history on display. When someone calls for repair, suggesting that people act a certain way when they've acted in direct opposition to it, it's disingenuous at best and actively harmful to the efforts at worst.

@Derp said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

And frankly, you're intelligent enough to already know this. I know you are, I've seen it firsthand when we've talked.
Don't do this. You're better than that.

Is this a personal attack? It's certainly a personal appeal intended to shame me for an action that I've taken. Shame me for the action, through a personal description of me.

@Ghost said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

Let's stay on topic.

@Seraphim73 said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

So what do I think it would take to repair the community? In my opinion, fix the missing stairs. People you have to warn your friends about? Remove them from your circles instead of just warning the people around you. Tell staffers, share information, cut them out of the community. When they come back under a new name, find them (perhaps find out about them on a board like this) and remove them again. If you find yourself on a place that doesn't do that, or elevates their voices? Remove yourself from that circle. Vote with your feet....

Goodbye.

@Arkandel It's a Venn diagram with significant overlap for me. I've played characters who had interests (sexual preferences, kinks, etc) that don't match my own, but for the majority of my characters, I base their interests on my own, with a few items that I like that they don't, or that they like and I don't. Granted, a good deal of this could be because I only TS with my partner.

I think one important point that @ThatGuyThere made that got a little lost in other discussion is the need for original sci-fi to talk about daily life at least as much as tech. What do people do for fun, what do they do for careers? Not just the PCs (although that's incredibly important, obviously), but also the generic person on the street. This is why modern-day games are so easy: we all know what our character can do if they've got 15 minutes to themselves, or an hour, or an afternoon. We know what food is like, we know what music is like, we know what sports and games are out there. And this is all incredibly important for other genres too.

For BSG: what music does a rich Caprican listen to? How is it different from what an Aerilonian farmer listens to?

For Star Wars: what type of people enjoy grav-ball (either the type in zero-g or the field version) versus what type of people enjoy limmie?

For Game of Thrones: what sort of games do kids play, and what do bored nobles do to pass the time?

All of this information can really enrich the world, and the characters living in it, a whole lot more than knowing how a teleporter works.