Best posts made by Seraphim73

Let's try this again, since it disappeared the first time:

I generally define PCs as characters played by a person for the purpose of telling the character's own story (hopefully) as part of the larger story on the game. I generally define Staff-run NPCs as characters played by a person for the purpose of adding to the larger story of the game rather than to tell their own character's story.

I strongly believe that Staff-played PCs should be able to get involved in whatever relationship they want, so long as those relationships do not come with OOC favoritism (as has been mentioned by others above, recusing yourself from a situation where your biases might change your ruling). Sure, Staffers have to be careful due to the inherent power imbalances between Staffer and Player, but they should still get to experience the game like any other player too.

I also strongly believe that Staff-played NPCs shouldn't be TSing unless how that TS plays out is going to have a noticeable impact on the game's story (I would assume that most TS wouldn't, but I don't want to assume that none would). I don't have a problem if a PC wants to seduce the town's NPC sheriff, but unless the -how- is important, I believe that it should be FTBed, so that Staff NPC time/focus can be spent on furthering the game's plot (note, I believe they can still do whatever the heck they want with their time on their PCs). I feel that even if the TS doesn't impact a Staffer's decision-making, a) it's a lot of time and effort that could be spent furthering the game's storyline, and b) there's going to be the perception of bias even if there's no bias.

@lotherio said in Something Completely Different:

Again, call me ignorant, but this continued pressure by a select group that has been a vocal majority has the perception of bullying

Isn't "continued pressure by a select group that has been a vocal majority" pretty much just people expressing their desires and a majority of the vocal population agreeing with them? Where do you draw the line between "the majority of the vocal people in the community speaking their minds" and "bullying?" Is the problem just how many people are saying something, because then it's dogpiling? Or is it how things are being said? Because I don't think there should be a problem with a majority of the vocal members of a community expressing their opinion -- that's how communities work. If members of the community are being assholes about expressing their opinion, I think that should be dealt with, but I don't think that members of the community expressing their opinions without being assholes should be a problem (do I think some of the people who were banned/left were assholes about it? Yup. Do I think that most of them were? Nope.).

I think that what's happened in the last couple of weeks was that precipitous action was taken by admin and a precipitous reaction was taken by some community members, and then both sides retreated and dug into their positions, each putting up some strawmen to take potshots at and restating the situation in ways that made them seem good and the other side seem bad. I think that it's quite clear that the trust of a large portion of the vocal community here was broken by the initial action and the actions and statement that followed. I think that a little self-evaluation is an important thing to do when you lose the trust of a large portion of your community.

@arkandel I think that the player of any character who could threaten the vision that Staff has for the game should get some version of The Talk, whether it's recognized in chargen or after. If you're planning a long-term war game, you can't have someone wipe out the enemy in a single strike. If you're planning a hardscrabble survival game, you can't have someone creating a utopia in the wilderness. If you're planning a politically-charged CvC game, you can't have a someone whose first choice of actions is to murder their opponent.

This doesn't mean that the characters can't exist--so long as the players recognize that they will never succeed in their goal (okay, the last one still needs to be hit in the nose with a newspaper and told that that's not what the game is about).

I have no problem with PC action changing the story Staff originally came up with (they should, or else you're just playing on a train game), but they shouldn't change the theme Staff originally came up with, unless Staff is all behind it. I feel strongly that Staff gets to decide the type of game they want to run and to take every (ethical) action they want to in order to run that sort of game. After all, they're the ones who created the game. (Generic) You want to play on a different type of game? Find that game or make it. I think that I understand what @Apos is saying, and think that it's important to make it clear as Staff that (generic) you are saying "your idea/character is not welcome here for reason X" rather than "you are not welcome here."

I also totally agree with what @Pyrephox said--discuss the situation OOCly to avoid the player feeling like they're picked on when their IC actions fail repeatedly.

@somasatori said in The 100: The Mush:

Having seen the first bit of this show, I can safely say it'd work well on a MUSH.

"Hey guys, let's go do all this constructive stuff and make sure that we're safe and have shelter, and collect food and supp-"

"NO LET'S ALL FIGHT AND FUUUUUUCK~"

Isn't that like... every MUSH ever? Just trying to find the right theme for MUSH players (I jest, it's one that I rather like).

The Weave:
<character names not remembered>

A Moment in Tyme (over 15 years, so yeah, there are a lot of characters there):
Angron Kirthak, Child of the Light
Njal, Queen's Guardman/Magistrate
Arbaal, noble's guard
Harkan Kirthak, Child of the Light, later Queen's Guard
Creon, Child of the Light
Agammon, Child of the Light
Mason, Warder Trainee
Daiyen, Aiel Spear
Keldane, Child of the Light
Termiane Koronel, Seanchan infiltrator
Gerrit Ajara, weapons trainer
Volkare Previn, Asha'man
Brienne, Aes Sedai
Liahm, Asha'man
Parol, Weaponmastery and War Staffer

Dragon's Fang
Harkan Kirthak, Child of the Light
Termiane Koronel, Seanchan-turned-Rebel Warder

Cuendillar
Termiane Koronel, Mercenary Blademaster
Sang, Warder Trainee
Raizo, Darkfriend Warder

Knights of the Old Republic
Volkare Previn, Sith Trooper
Rha Dun, Jedi Knight
Kieran "Key" Fel, Republic pilot
Salm, Feeorin mercenary
Shivas Anin, Jedi Knight
Kharss, Chistori mercenary
Bantha, Sith and War Staffer

Vampire Masquerade
Andrei, Russian Brujah

One of the Battlestar Games (Cerberus?)
Justinian, Tactical Officer

Dark Times
Victor Slade, Stormtrooper officer
Brodie Jaimes, Wroonian Mercenary
Sigil(?), Staffer

Chicago MUSH
Franklin, beat cop

Steel and Stone
Kamron Mallister, knight
Sterling, common knight
Darek Boldt, squire
Tyroan Nayland, steward

Game of Kings
Darrin Taniford (before the insanity)
Theme/Combat Staffer

The Fifth World
Nikomachos Sauveur of Cindravale, jouster and knight
Drake Danger, rocker
Victor Khournas, foot knight
Mars, HeadWiz

Generations of Darkness
CT-1231 "Dog", Stormtrooper
Brodie Jaimes, Human Mercenary/Rebel
Victor Slade, Republic Senator turned Rebel
Shivas Anin, Jedi Knight

Star Wars: Omens
Kajj'ik Previn, Dark Acolyte
Alpha-69 "Smoke," Alpha-class clone
Victor Slade, Republic Senator
Rockabilly, Combat Staffer

Realms Adventurous
Kamron de Dinton, worthy knight
Morlois de Willcot, unworthy knight

The 100 MUSH
Orion, Staffer
Grey, angry ex-Guard Cadet
Luther, veteran warrior

Arx
Gabriel Bisland, loyal duke (briefly)

BSU
Van, by-the-book Viper pilot
Gustavo, gentle giant Marine

Fires of Hope
Erskine Hylle, ex-CIS rebel
Devlin Cinn, Imperial deserter

The Eighth Sea
Leviathan, Staffer
Sebastien Achille, swashbuckler
Ebo, pirate revolutionary

CoMUX
Simon Green, OC SHIELD Agent
Frank Castle, The Punisher

Common Descent
Simon Green, OC SHIELD Agent
Frank Castle, The Punisher
Roy Harper, Arsenal
Barry Allen, The Flash

Spirit Lake
Diego Reyes, newly-hired Deputy
Etta Tuscano, sword-wielding glassblower

Gray Harbor
Kevin Walters, geeky journalist/conspiracy theorist
Marius Andersson, would-be Viking architecture student

The Savage Skies
Rome, Staff
Thomas "Flash" Bradshaw, American show-off pilot
Yao Sang, Chinese Shanghai Municipal Policeman
Jimmy Walker, American Marine
Stephane Idrissi, former French Foreign Legionnaire, “archaeologist”

The Network
Zack, Bruiser with a Heart of Gold
Roadspike, combat staffer

Crystal Springs
Oliver Webb, overachieving performer-geek
Marius Anderssen, geeky handyman

As several people have noted, I find that the location doesn't matter so much as the hooks that are built into the room desc. It could be a simple laundromat, or a bar, or a park, or whatever... but as long as there are 2-4 hooks built into the description, I'm happy.

Like, does the laundromat have one washer that always turns whites pink? Is there one corner that's always colder than the others, even though it's right by a dryer? Are there posters up for bands -- and missing people -- on a bulletin board?

Each of these gives me something to have my characters do, and something that they can do obviously so that they can use these as hooks to draw in other characters. My character can be cursing at the Pink Machine as he pulls a load of dress shirts out, or kicking it, or warning another player about it. He could be stepping in and out of the cold spot, trying to figure out where it stops and starts and why it's there. He could be putting up a poster for his garage band, or sadly perusing missing kids on the board -- or taking down missing kid posters (very creepy or very sad).

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

my only answer was to try to play as incognito as possible

If you can only avoid the drama as long as you can hide who you are... the problem may not be the environment around you.

1. Understand that the Hog Pit was a mistake, that the people who thrived in it are bullies, and to identify/cull bullies from the hobby

How is "excluding players they don't like" as bad as "abusive/stalker roleplayers who have rapey/disturbing/"in some cases illegal" behavior?" Excluding bad actors and players you don't like are entirely legitimate ways to staff a game -- I might even say they're good ways to staff a game, because why should you have to deal with players who are going to cause a personal problem for you while you're staffing a game? Staff doesn't owe anyone a spot on their game. And you clearly realize it too, because two paragraphs after you say that excluding players is as bad as all of that, you say that if you ran a game, you've exclude players for bad OOC behavior on other forums. Now, I've done that myself, so I can't and won't complain about the decision, but the sheer hypocrisy of the statements is ridiculous.

It's in staff's interest to keep as many players on the game as possible, because this affects whether or not people even try to make a bit at the game.

No, it's not. Because if you have asshole players on a game, even if they're popular within a group, they're undoubtedly driving other players away. It's in a game's best interest to remove problem players, no matter how popular they are. If you end up with 10 friends RPing together because other groups left? As long as you're having fun, that's awesome, and guess what, you no longer have assholes you have to worry about dealing with.

So a LOT of bad stuff just goes untouched, festers, and gets worse over time because the motivations behind DOING SOMETHING or NOT DOING SOMETHING tend to fall always in line with whether or not it'll affect the game, roleplay, or "popularity currency".

And this is exactly why you remove problem players from your community instead of letting them fester. More and more game runners seem to be realizing this, and to be willing to take the short-term playerbase hit to make a better community.

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

Paranoia of who is who, who they've played, stranger danger

You realize that what you're terming as paranoia is a response to people who have actually been tricked into interacting with people who have been creepers/abusers to them in the past, right? Denigrating that totally reasonable response like this is victim-blaming. It's horrible. You can do better.

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

Stop with the "red flags" attacks on new games.

Seriously? Some games are utterly filled with red-flags, and it couldn't be clearer that they're going to be toxic dumpster fires (like the one Vampire game with all the anti-Semitic BS in its theme). Calling games with massive red flags out on their massive red flags shouldn't be a problem (and if the big red flag is a mistake, a good game runner will see it and fix it).

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

In the past, most people have reported creeps and stalkers like Cullen / Azazello / Surtr / whomever through DMs to me.

In my opinion, while it's good to report creeps and stalkers to Staff in private messages, one of the biggest benefits of the previously-unified community of MSB was the ability to get the word out to lots of people at once: Hey, this person who the community has agreed is a problem is back on this game, watch out for them there, and it might be good to watch any people who are showing these general tendencies on other games too. That's how we caught DWOPP over at TSS and removed him. If it's a false identification, it can be discussed with others who might have useful information.

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, and let people enjoy their 10-person game if that's what it ends up being -- at least if they're all missing stairs, they won't have the critical mass to bring in other people to hurt. Find a place that will remove the missing stairs, instead of warning people about them and leaving them there to bite unsuspecting ankles.

@Wizz Hell, I'd be in favor of most anything in the 1920s/1930s NY/Chicago/LA. Being supernatural is a minus for me, but being Dresden another plus.

@Derp If an accusation isn't accurate, it can be challenged. History on this very board shows that it will be, often successfully. How many times have we seen someone accuse someone of crappy behavior only to have multiple people come in and provide evidence that the original poster was the crappy one?

Are accusations better with evidence? Absolutely. Are accusations better with non-corruptible evidence like Ares logs sent to staffers? Absolutely-er. Do some people not feel comfortable sharing evidence because they've been drawn into actions or RP that is banned from the server as a means to tie them to their abuser? Absolutely-est.

You've banned or driven off most of the people you claim were bullies. Shouldn't this board be able to handle being a clearing house of bad behavior now?

It seems to be a pretty strong consensus that proactive players--players who actively seek out things for their characters and the characters of other players to do on a game--are good for a game. It also seems like a bit of a no-duh statement.

And yet, it feels to me as if the number of proactive players, at least on the games that I play on, has shrunk significantly in the last decade.

Whether or not the second point is true, I would like to hear thoughts on how to find, cultivate, and encourage proactive players. Whether this is from a Staff perspective ("I was on a game and Staff did X and it encouraged players to be proactive") or from a player perspective ("When a game does/has X, it encourages me to be proactive"), I'm curious and interested.

@the-sands said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

However, [WoD/CoD] the system in use in most places.

I would bet that it's not. The plurality of places, perhaps, but not the majority. It's just MSB that is soaked in WoD.

I'm a firm believer in Hollywood Historical Accuracy when it comes to historical games.

Mostly, I think that the vast majority of players aren't going to do the research to portray "proper" social mores, even if there's a page on the wiki describing them. So trying to go "full historical" is just setting Staff (and the few players totally into "real historical accuracy") up for disappointment.

That being said, I still think that a single page on the wiki (or maybe 2-3 tops) with "differences from modern life" would be a great idea. Cover social structures, technology levels, and any majorly different things from modern life ("people talk a good game about sexual propriety in public, but behind closed doors, things are craaaazy" for a Victorian game, for instance).

While the PCs are of course going to stand out from the masses of NPCs, I still think that PCs who publicly flout common standards should get pushback from NPCs, and that this pushback should matter (want to lead a public faction? Don't tell society as a whole that they're wrong). Then again, I think that NPCs should pushback against non-thematic actions no matter the setting.

I think whether you allow history to be altered depends on the type of game you want to run. If the historical setting is the most important part of the game, then I would only allow minor changes to be made. If there's another part of the setting that's more important than the history, I would allow more sizable changes to be made -- as long as there's a good history page to catch new players up. Either way, the players should be able to make some change to the setting, even if only on a local scale, or else why are they playing?

There are times when this hobby (and the people in it) is insanely frustrating and maddening and not particularly good for my RL state of mind. There are also times when it is entirely fascinating, invigorating, and inspiring. There's definitely some balance, but I generally fall more on the 'good' side than the 'bad.'

Thank you all for the kind words. We're totally excited to see people out there and playing. Don't forget about our Plots-in-a-Box to give you a jumpstart for some instant adventure.

We're nearly out of roster characters, because so many people have been picking them up. We'll be aiming to add more in the next couple of days.

@de-villefort said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

Think about it, have you ever seen anyone actually have coffee shop chatter in the real world?

Yes. Regularly, over a hot chocolate or a beer or whatever.

Have you ever seen total strangers just sit down at a table and start talking about benign, mundane, stuff for no reason?

Yes. I mean, usually it's someone leaning over from the next table over to interject, but it can turn into all sitting together at the same table.

Ever see anyone organize a group of strangers for a one-off bowling game then leave without having any other form of contact outside of bowling?

Yes. Maybe there's just one lane left, and 2-4 strangers all want to bowl -- why not do it together?

Those people are freaks and weirdos in the eyes of the public because it's abnormal.

Thanks, I like being a freak, a weirdo, and abnormal -- actually I'm an introvert, but I've still been known to do all of these things.

Players' need to be spoon-fed. Here's where I get out the rocking chair and my false teeth, but I remember a time when we as players came up with an idea, maybe ran it past staff and maybe didn't, and then just ran it for our friends. Or we went out and sought out Staff to follow up on hooks that they'd left in their last event. Or we did something other than sit around RPing in bars, complaining about BaRP, and waiting for the next chance to shoot/stab bad guys. Now I can't even get players to follow up on hooks shoved in their frickin' mouths (this may be my fault for coming up with bad hooks, or being a lot more subtle than I think I'm being, but I think this problem is pretty endemic and not just me).

@Ganymede said in Identifying Major Issues:

I can't even imagine how long it took for whoever to code SW:DoD or SW:FoH.

Dahan (also known as Gizka way back when). As I understand it, he created the code for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (the MUSH, not the video game, and it's been used on about a dozen Star Wars MUSHes since). He's awesome. Just wanted him to get proper props.

I don't care so much about length as long as it gives me something to latch onto and to respond to. So, "how you use it" rather than "how big it is."

As for time between poses? Unfortunately, I'm easily distracted, especially now that there's a little one int he house, so I sometimes take longer than I'd like. For that reason, I like to also give people who pose slow a little grace. But more than 15-20 minutes is really getting kind of long (this is why scenes larger than one-on-one are great, because you can start your response to one pose while the other 1-2 people are posing, then just finish up after the last pose).

@auspice said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:

I will nip a dozen harassing players in the bud if it means healthy players can go out and play in the open comfortably.

I will do it gladly.

Yuuuup. Confirm, discuss, act, inform. Keep good players.

To ride along on @Arkandel's coat-tails, I think that the most important question any prospective MU*-runner can ask themselves is: What are my players going to do with their characters?

Between work, exploration, clues, etc, Arx has done a fantastic job with this. This is also where my own attempt with The Eighth Sea fell down (okay, one of a couple of places).

Even the most involved Staff can't be running things for players constantly, and you'll need to have a good idea on what you'd like your players to be doing day in and day out. And then you need to incentivize the heck out of doing that, and make it easy to do.

Tabletop one-shot, Shadowrun 3rd Edition, mercenary group, I'm GMing. They've been hired to investigate what Aztechnology is doing at the pyramids of Tikal. There are five PCs, including a sniper/demo expert who is also an expert on Aztechnology procedures.

They sneak into the area, take out a few guards pretty quietly, then they decide that they need to get a little closer, but also have some insurance. They ask the Aztechnology expert to make them up some charges that they can set if they get close to whatever is happening. The expert quiets his glee, then agrees to do so. The group splits up, with the mage deciding to hang out with the sniper at the top of an outlying pyramid so that the sniper can protect her body while she goes Astral.

Several minutes later, the sniper slits the mage's throat, detonates the charges, and lets Aztechnology know that the offending team will no longer be a problem. They never considered that the Aztechnology expert might still be working for Aztechnology.

The best part of this was, I didn't have to do anything about the situation as the GM (although I likely would have if this was supposed to be a long-running campaign), and the Aztechnology spy didn't have to suggest any of these steps. The team wanted to carry his charges, and the mage wanted his protection for her body while she went Astral.

Probably because it was a one-shot, everyone loved how things turned out... and the Stealth Troll (yes, really) even managed to scrape up a couple of successes to survive the explosive charge and crawl away into the jungle to plot his revenge.