Looking at the application information/process on the wiki, I feel like I'm looking at a mush from the 90s (and not in a good way, these practices died for a reason). And yet, still mulling it over.
I do have a question, though -- the application process looks really rough, but there's the impression that things are quite dangerous and characters might die. An extensive application process coupled with a dangerous IC environment isn't a recipe for success.
While I am sure there is an audience for it, I'm with @faraday on this. If character death is heavily on the table, I don't care what genre it is, I'm not interested. It's not about how easy or not it is to make a PC, but the engagement and investment that go along with a character. There are plenty of other story based things that can be done -- kill swaths of NPCs if you want, whatever -- but if the only way you can think of to create the right kind of tension is to take my character away, no thanks.
I love him he is beautiful and I'm so happy he has a good home.
Not wanting stupid character death does not in any way indicate a desire to control everything.
If everybody gets the same amount of XP (roughly) every week, then yes, it puts it back to the point of: RP is its own reward. What you'll see are fewer huge scenes, and people doing more RP that actually matters, rather than doing something not-fun because they have to. Forced-activity isn't particularly fun activity.
I just had somebody come into my office and try to talk me into adding an international feature to their boss's phone without knowing what country he's going to. She emailed me after business hours on Friday saying it was urgent. I told her I needed the country. No response. I emailed her this morning. No response. She just came into my office to say she doesn't know but could I just add it anyway. Then gave me attitude when I said I couldn't.
I offered to add every international plan to his phone to ensure we got the right one. She didn't like that solution.
@Ganymede said:
I concede there are players who want a reward for being online and roleplaying above and beyond the enjoyment therefrom. I question if I want to set any policy to favor those players.
I agree with everything Gany has said here, but I want to emphasize this point. These things are a matter of personal taste, of what sort of game somebody is putting together. Some people want those people that need to be bribed to be online and out and playing. I don't.
I will concede that rewarding people for big scenes and random RP (+vote) does work to encourage big scenes and random RP. You reward what you find valuable, though. If I do not, as a game designer, give two shits about having a 300playerlogin game (please god no), or random grid RP, or huge scenes happening...well, I'm rewarding behavior that's not actually contributing in any way that I find meaningful for what I want my game to be.
I'm not interested in padding my WHO list with those who need to be rewarded for playing, or with random grid RP. I do not personally have time to spare on random grid RP these days, of going out to huge scenes just because I need XP. (Okay, yes, right now I do, but most of the people who I enjoy right now do not.)
XP as a reward can be used to encourage the behavior that you want. If you want public mass random scenes, +vote/here without a limit is going to do that. If you want people thinking in terms of goals, setbacks, and plots and approaching their RP that way...you reward people for that.
I do not want a game where nonsense RP is rewarded. I want a game where the meat is rewarded.
It's just the one guy, over and over again. His friends didn't come back with him after the first invasion or two where they were all banned.
Rape RP, specifically, is an issue when it involves / spills over to people that directly did not consent to it. It is different because of the type of mental impact that dealing with this specific line of RP can do to people, and the stigma PCs who try to ignore the RP receive when they can't deal with it because if your character is such a good person, why are they not...?
Somebody who's been shot during a robbery or something can speak up on this from their perspective, but I'm going to talk about this from the perspective of someone who was raped to try and explain why having to interact with rape RP at all is a problem when my PC murdering someone or character death or murder or whatever other crimes don't bother me.
There are two types of players that play characters that are raped IC. Those who have been raped, and those that have not been raped. Those that have not been raped tend to make light of / poorly portray / say and do things that are really, really, really offensive and hurtful to some of those that fall into the latter category. Watching some idiot essentially MOCK me about one of the most traumatizing things that have ever happened in my life is not something that feels good. It's just not.
Violence is in the theme of these games. Rape (or on this vein, childhood sexual abuse), a type of violence, is not specifically called out in violence. There are many, many, many things that you can use to brutalize a character suitably and get a similar end result to whatever you want -- there is no reason to employ something that is so fucking hard for certain people to deal with. Harm to good ratio here is waaaaaaaaay in favor of harm.
If somebody had had somebody shot in front of them and it traumatized them and it was a trigger, well, violence is in the theme of the game, they know by looking at the LABEL that it is not for them. Rape? There are probably only a handful of games where rape is actively part of the theme. If it was, believe me, I won't be playing there.
I know zombie is overdone and such right now, but iZombie is actually a cute little show. I'm enjoying it, at least.
Absolutely. And that's how I generally prefer it. But let's not forget that I am objecting vehemently to the idea that elitism to this extent is a reasonable approach to have. It's not. The ability to persuade someone via a specific IC character wholly using text does not in any way, shape, or form indicate that they are smarter, more capable, or even a better writer. It indicates a very specific skillset.
@gingerlily said in RL things I love:
@sunny said in RL things I love:
I am officially down 5 pants sizes from when I started working this job a year and a half ago (and by officially, I mean I am not having to wiggle to zip the pants up). Between activity levels, far less stress, and healthier eating (both in terms of what I eat, and also how I eat it)...I've just steadily been getting better. Is pretty cool.
Teach me your magic plx.
Cut back on soda and junk. Eat less more often, and especially breakfast. Get enough sleep. Reduce stress levels. I also went from a sedentary job to a fairly physically active one. Mostly I think it was the more sleep and the less stress, mostly.
@mietze Everyone looooooves to tell you what to do in a situation like this (obviously). There's lots of "this is what you should do" pretty much everywhere you turn the moment you indicate there's something like this going on. What I will say is that the victim's advocate for my local police was, out of everyone and everything, the ONLY person with advice that ACTUALLY helped. They have professional training in matching up situations with the right resources and steps to take, rather than just throwing things at the wall until something sticks.
ETA: I will add for the other folks reading this, sometimes it IS okay to let the offender "win" by walking away and letting them have their way and not fighting, because safety/survival is a more important goal than the principle of the matter. I was instructed to let several of my activities go because it was not worth putting myself in danger over. It was recommended I find a different job, because my ex husband knew where I worked and had displayed a willingness to show up there.
A metaplot is a game story arc that happens in the background and ties most (not all, but most) of the rest of the plots together. It is what is used to generate plots, not the plots themselves.
@onigiri said in FCs on Comic MUs:
I don't think I've seen gender swaps a lot, however, so much as creative interpretations of FC sexuality. Which is also always someone just wanting to bring out their particular fetish into the FC. I don't think I've ever seen that go over well. Ever.
Wait, what?
@Cobaltasaurus
While I'm certainly sympathetic to your point, if the kid was kicking somebody in the head, that's a massive parenting problem regardless of the conditions involved. I would advocate for keeping that particular child home, if they genuinely cannot help but kick people in the head. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but there has got to be a point where tolerance stops. Generally I would think that would be a bit before the point where someone is getting kicked in the head.
@faraday said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:
There's nothing wrong with drawing a line in the sand and catering to a subset of people with similar interests to your own.
This needs to be said more until people start hearing it.
