Best posts made by surreality

@Arkandel I have some things I'm going to try for the pirate place along these lines.

Negotiated outcome is absolutely an option, and there's an XP benefit for even trying to accomplish this, even if no agreement is reached, even if it's (initially) small. It grows if a resolution can be agreed on, and there's a bonus for taking a loss that scales some on the magnitude of the loss. If I have to essentially 'pay' people to collaborate/play well/be mature adults with each other in this regard, I have precisely zero qualms doing that.

One option is absolutely, "Let's see what the dice say, but cap maximum damage at X," because there's no sensible reason to not include that option. If you can cap the 'worst case', people chill considerably, and there's good reason for that. That so many games completely ignore this option in favor of one extreme or the other makes me shake my head enough that one of these days, I'm gonna get whiplash.

@kk There is no longer any big deal, hence me wondering why in the fuck you're suggesting I'm the one who brought it up, for one, and are trying to stir shit that has settled already with a surprising measure of sensibility in order to sling some shade around in the most spectacularly clueless fashion I've witnessed in a few days, which is saying a lot around here.

@tek said in What do you WANT to play most?:

I would give my left foot for a good MU set in Seanan McGuire's October Daye universe.

...I would laugh pretty hard if she didn't allow M's based on it. It wouldn't surprise me in the least, but I would laugh. More than a little. (She's an infamous former M'er.)

@Ghost I get the 'take one for the team and let shit die down' logic.

I am not, however, in the mood to do that shit today. I'm over quota on that for the week.

@Ganymede It's laid out right there in the preceding text. Please stop being deliberately obtuse if you're asking for shit to defuse rather than escalate.

1. I consider being called a hypocrite an attack.
2. When someone explicitly references a former conflict in the attack, it's pretty clear that's what's on their mind.

Attacking someone today over some former conflict = grudgewank. And all grudgewank is bullshit, in my book.

I do not see this as a 'babe in the woods' innocent inquiry, ex: "You said you don't like beets yesterday. If you don't like them, why are you eating beets today?" I believe in keeping an open mind about such things, but keeping it that open, my brains would surely fall out.

@Ganymede said in PC antagonism done right:

If failure simply is not an option, so be it. Some of us might find you to be a horrid bore.

These folks are the ones I am still really not sure how to handle: the spotlight hogs/can't ever fail types.

I have notes in policy re: 'consent options don't mean you always 'win' and can never be on the losing end of a particular conflict', but when it comes to this particular crowd, I feel like I'm going to end up writing a monster of a long-winded thing about 'how to play nice with others' as a general advice/resource file on this specific point. (This is stuff that isn't policy, but gives examples, some of the reasoning behind why things are set up how they are, general advice to help someone find play, style guides, and general resource whatnots; that glossary thing is an example of the kind of thing that lives in 'resources' vs. The Rules, which live in 'policy'.)

@Ghost For some reason, this made me think of the most recent late night diner conversation I had with the husband, in which somehow we ended up talking about what would be theoretically contained in Sean Spicer's eventual resignation letter.

We decided it would just be a recording of Weird Al's 'One More Minute', in the end.

Re: topic: sometimes I'm willing to do that, but frankly, not today. It's somebody else's turn. I have enough people who think I'm fair game as a punching bag and everybody took their turn throwing a swing a few days ago, which I ultimately hand-waved off into the ether of being way too distracted by a combination of just not giving much of a fuck and trying to figure out where the hell to put the yarn I ordered, because 50lbs of yarn is a lot of yarn, and ultimately I'm as easily distracted as a cat on too much nip.

@Arkandel said in PC antagonism done right:

When it comes to it good players won't mind if their rival gets some rewards out of such things - I feel all this thread really is (or should be) about is ways to mitigate drama by compensating the conditions which prevent it.

Pretty much this.

It sounds like Arx is one of the relatively rare places where you could designate a group as game-wide antagonists (seek to end the world), but others, in a fairly reasonable representation of reality, aren't so cut and dried. It's a faction in opposition or competition with yours, and so on. (Everybody reading this thread needs to go watch Black Sails right now, seriously.)

@Arkandel said in What do you play most?:

Many games put their metaplot on a wiki and promptly forget it exists.
...
Good metaplot is a roleplay-generating engine. The vast majority of MU* don't have good metaplot, they have a wiki with someone's fanfic scribbled hastily in a couple of its pages.

Honestly? IF ONLY. It's not even that good. If the actual information was on the wiki in full and available to players, they could arguably do something with it themselves -- but many games are so wedded to 'secrets' that the actual information players would need to do something with that 'here's our basic storyline' statement is not made available to them. So it's not just a case of 'here's the idea, now back to watching my movie... ', which is bad enough, but 'here's the idea, now back to my movie... HEY STOP THAT THAT DOESN'T WORK BECAUSE SECRETS! THAT ISN'T ALLOWED!'

...so much hate for that.

If ever I win the lottery, I will totally hire Tina Turner to host some Thunderdome.

Maybe in a pool, though. With those foam floaty things that don't actually hurt when they hit you, but wow do they make great smacky noises when they land.

Chickenfights... to the death.

If by death, we actually mean 'the point at which somebody has to stop because they're too drunk, laughing too hard, or they run out of insulting words that are too ridiculous (shitgibbon, twatwaffle) to say aloud with a straight face.'

Losers can be made to walk the plank (read: diving board).

And anybody who actually grudgewanks people in person for dumb shit on the forum is simply not allowed in the bouncy castle, because fuck those people.

My lottery dreams are sort of weird like that, equal parts impossible pie in the sky and depressingly mundane at once.=

Also it's a bit overkill, depending on the behavior.

I may have no qualms interacting IC/when there's cause with Sally McChattypanties, but I may not want Sally page-bombing me the second I log in with huggy-snuggle crap and whatnot every time I connect, especially if I have only a few minutes to pop in and reply to a job or something and wish to do so without dallying over chatty trivia.

@mietze Have to agree here. There are literally three people ever I've met from this hobby I had issues with in person: the dude who grabbed me and kissed me uninvited at a meetup (like seriously out of the blue just turn a corner, dude's there, grab, yeah... ) and Spider and her husband. And I still more or less got along with her husband well enough (not in any inappropriate way, before anybody decides to read something uncool into that) since he was around more and more or less kept to himself and tried to be helpful often enough. On the whole, the folks in this hobby are absolutely not wastes of hair and tend to be pretty fucking cool, no matter what weirdness goes on on games/on the forums.

@Gilette I am not a huge fan of OOC chat lounge rooms, but I do feel they serve a few useful purposes.

Mostly, it keeps the 'I'm just feeling randomly chatty' chatter contained. There's a level of this no matter what you do or don't allow. The majority of it is harmless, and not something that you need to make a rule about, let alone a harsh one. I'm saying that with a straight face and I have rules for everything -- though that also includes what is and isn't cool for general OOC spaces on the game. I would much rather see this in a room designated to that end than see it spill all over channels intended for a game-specific purpose to render them even more useless than they often are already.

Socializing, within sensible bounds, does serve a purpose on a game that's important: it reminds people they're actually playing on the game with other actual people. It's fairly easy for people to lose sight of that, and it's fairly relevant for many of the types of games discussed here that do make use of OOC communication, planning, etc. (Just getting rid of, or never having, a space like this may be preferable in no-OOC-communication/RPI style environments, by contrast.)

Most games these days already do have a 'quiet room', which is an OOC room where you can't speak or emote. If one you're on doesn't, suggest it; spaces like this are a genuinely good idea for the folks who don't like the chatter spam without treating the people who enjoy chatting with fellow players like they're doing something wrong by socializing at all. (That's a pretty bad message to send.)

@kk said in RL Anger:

@surreality

You put words in the posters mouth which were not typed. I was one of those posters.

I cited a specific quote. Not from you. Zero words in your mouth from me.

Look. I realize that there's a disturbing tendency today (in the sense of 'generally in the modern day, thx politics' and 'literally today') in reading things in terms of some sort of 'faction-based' mentality in which anybody who isn't 100% supporting every single thing said by 'a member of the team' is 'the enemy'. This is really, really dumb behavior and I wish people would knock it off.

Like, seriously. Earlier in the thread @Roz and I pointlessly argued a thing because calling something a 'lesser evil' was 'a defense', and that's just depressing, y'all. 'Not 100% agreement, just 80% agreement' is... not 'the opposite thing'. I grokked where the confusion came from, bolded some bits, and it didn't come up again, presumably because the original intent was more clear as not being a defense or major disagreement at all. That's fine and cool, and doubly cool it seemingly clarified quickly, but seriously. This faction-based approach. It's kinda bonkers from where I'm sitting. I mean I guess people figure me and @Ghost are Team B or something -- but we've had way more brutal arguments than this one got in other threads and we disagree plenty and have in this thread, too.

I responded after I woke up.

You appeared to get upset.

Your understanding with others was not an understanding with me.

And this became clear later. Like I said: foot in mouth. That? I was actually not kidding or trying to be snarky with 'just own it, realize it's a goof, realize nobody's going to care you made a goof, and ultimately you shouldn't, either.'

Seriously. Nobody will give a damn two minutes from now. Most people probably never cared to begin with. That's because goofs are fine.

Admitting you made one -- even with a d'oh! -- actually does win people a lot of credit around here. No, really. Again, not snarking. This is true. Anybody it isn't true of is a jackass not worth paying any goddamn mind to, if you ask me, at least.

Think of it this way: if @Ghost had realized 'd'oh, didn't mean to hit a specific nerve, my bad' the original argument would have ended pretty damn quick, right? ...exactly.

You jumped on me for talking about this topic on a thread that was already talking on it a few days ago. You expressed it partly bothers you because you past. I apologized.

Yeah, days ago.

Though it was not because of the past thing. While a lot of people bang on about this whole 'omg princess martyr' thing, my 'high value victimization' that someone saw fit to make snide comments about is not shit that happened on games, and it is not anything I would be seeking emotional support for on this forum. This forum is not the place for that, and as blurty as I am about random silly RL crap, those things are not anybody's business. Some shit's been referenced at times, for example 'as someone who has been raped, I appreciate games that have a policy that does not allow this to happen without full consent of all parties', and so on, and there was one much more detailed thing I actually was throwing at @Ghost myself a few months back. (I do not consider this to be attention-whoring around the forum for consolation or sympathy, YMMV, apparently a lot of other folks' does.)

I pointed out that you are still talking about it yourself.

Yeah, I am. But it is in a place for exactly this sort of thing.

I still think a thread for this topic as it emerges/arises on games is a very good idea. (For two reasons, actually: it stops it from spilling over into every other thread, and it keeps the references to the subject together -- which means it's easier to spot trends and commonalities, which helps us collectively identify what kind of incidents are going around and better discuss potential solutions to this core set of issues.)

You appeared to get upset.

You expressed upset because you believed I personally attacked you. You then personally attacked me while expressing that upset.

Yeah, I do take hypocrisy seriously. I do consider it a personal attack. Like @Ganymede and 'obtuse' -- there's a reason I apologized for that immediately and did (and still do) mean it, even though we were arguing at the time about other things as well.

I'm still not denying anything about throwing something back at you. You were within your rights to call me something, same's true of me. Life goes on for both of us.

I admit I am not social genius, but I am not understanding this at all.

...and I am on about no sleep and medication that makes me incredibly loopy and testy, and I am miles from my best lately. No insult here, just empathy on the whole 'are also human' front. We've all got our crap -- and, you know? That is ok, too. Nobody is obligated to be perfect, and fuck anybody who says mistakes aren't allowed or that people aren't allowed to have off days or that being grumpy or confused or sad or angry is verboten.

@Wavert Yeah, pretty much my take on it, too. The stuff I'm working on now is pretty over the top on transparency re: characters and the game world. There are spoiler tags people can set up for the folks who want to preserve secrecy for themselves, but otherwise, almost everything but alt data and complaints are public information. World lore? Character sheets? It's all out there, because I want people to be able to find the RP they want. That's easier to do when you have information about what that is, and can brainstorm up something fun to do together.

I've seen people use this to good ends more than abuse it for bad ones. The bad eggs can be handled if necessary.

For all the folks cheering @shangexile on, let's remember that he's the dude from this log.

@ThugHeaven @Alamias It really does feel we're moving toward 'walking up hill both ways' instead of away from it in recent years, and that's a very sad truth.

@Meg I'm sure the other two will be along shortly, it's only a matter of time. (This is not "martyrdom", this is rolling my eyes so hard I can actually see gray matter and, again, some days, there is just not enough pained sigh in the world.)

edit: He'll start upvoting you, too, whenever you post, just so you know he's paying attention and 'present' -- presumably in some sort of creepy intimidation attempt. I actually got to watch the number of upvotes flicker wildly for a bit so multiple notifications would be sent. Thankfully, 'block PMs from this person' also blocks notifications from them. Handy to know, sorry that actually had to be passed along as potentially useful advice.

@Derp I've actually only seen one instance of someone pitching a fit over the use of social merits (contacts/allies/etc.) in the way you're describing. That it was someone who had used them plenty herself more or less made it nothing more than eyeroll-worthy, and the actions went through (just like hers had for others before). I don't see any wholesale rejection of those systems or ick factor associated with them -- there really isn't one to have -- as much as I see people not grasping how they work or what their value can be.

They get used about as much as social combat does, but the reasoning behind that is more cluelessness and people having no real idea how to manageably implement that staff-side (similar to the issues people are having figuring out how to effectively implement all the new investigation mechanics from CoD) than any ick factor, since there's no ick factor associated with blocking someone's resource spend or preventing someone's status raise/etc. They work on a macro and less intimately personal scale, while social combat works on a personal scale; the difference is clear enough that I don't see the same sorts of objections to using those as I've seen (and sometimes have) re: what some folks try to do with social combat going around, really. I mean, sure, you could probably use allies somehow to prevent someone from buying food until they cave and kinky-TS somebody's brains out, but that's more... roundabout and impersonal (and let's be honest, more overseen/observed/is more work/is less appealing to people trying to abuse a game system to fulfill an RL kick than 'because I'm just so damn charming' on a raw ego level) than the social combat approaches that raise some hackles.

@Ghost This is really the only reply I have left for him at this point:

Not sure if it is snarky enough. Perhaps this:

@fatefan said in Suitable system for a gritty fantasy game:

For me, I think one of the other big obstacles is making sure players feel empowered to contribute to the game world by inventing details (whether in the role of player or MC) that can then be used by others. A wiki is an easy way to try and help everyone keep tabs on this, assuming the playerbase buys into its use. But I don't know if they would.

I'm banking on this for a current project. I think people will -- but I don't know for sure, either. Part of the reason I'm following through with it in spite of a case of the blahs playwise is just to find out, and see if the tools and systems and whatnot help work toward that end. If and when there's a verdict there, I'll let you know.

My gang...