Best posts made by surreality

@Cupcake said in NO-GO IPs for MU*:

Can we all agree that Minmei needs to be shot in the head tho

Fuck Minmei, for rlz

She is like, the ultimate archetype for the kind of female character that inspires my stabbity-urge when I run across them on M*s.

All the stabbing. All of it.

She was useful, though. My supreme geek moment in college was when I was taking a literature course on love triangles in literature based on the Tristan and Isolde tale as an archetype. We had to find a non-Western not-a-book (had to be a poem, song, tv show, or movie) source and draw parallels to the myth.

There were actually so many of them in the Robotech version of Macross that my teacher, this ancient Russian man with an accent so thick you could barely understand him, immediately insisted on knowing where he could get a copy of this series so he could...

...show it to the rest of his classes if he ever taught that again.

My inner twelve year old anime nerd was so proud of herself that day.

@Cupcake said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

I would be the first person to sympathize with being in a situation where you are limited to the subjectivity of your own intent, but if so many people are saying this is how you came off, and if staff was willing to ban you for it, you owe it to yourself as someone who is part of a community hobby to ask yourself why and how you gave that impression, try to view it objectively, and take what you can from that.

I know nothing about this situation; I don't play on Arx. I will say: this is beautifully put and is a sentiment that should be bronzed and put somewhere it can be read on every game ever.

As in, may I please quote this, with credit given, in the 'general words of wisdom' section of the wiki I'm tinkering up? (This is not remotely a joke; I'm actively looking for stuff like this lately and just haven't been up to asking for suggestions/advice to include yet -- this nails a big one, though!)

@Packrat said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

This is so very, very true, a MUSH is a text only medium, people have no idea what your intended tone of voice is and thus how you mean to say whatever it is you just typed.

This is one of the reasons that if ever I have staff who have to translate surreality into people-speak? At least once, I need to have a chat with them on skype -- even if it's just once, because the number of misunderstandings this has prevented is stunning; same as if I end up talking to someone later and there's the forehead smack moment of, 'Oh! I totally get it, now!'. Problem being, I type in precisely the same weird-ass way I talk, but a lot of times I go off into crazy hyperbole that I know is meant in a silly tone to keep the mood light because I'm more or less a living cartoon of a person (it is so much worse with video, for real, no one would be able to take me seriously ever again), but... all the sigh in the world with that sometimes, because I forget how much tone is a thing.

@Miss-Demeanor said in Where's your RP at?:

@surreality Eh. Consequence of using a dice-based system. I'm not going to complain if a roll fucks up my character. Its just part of the game. I've had characters that lasted months or years, I've had characters that didn't last past the first encounter. When you play the game, you make a tacit agreement to accept the consequences of the dice. Yes, it sucks... but you are now free to craft up a whole new character with a whole new story and find all new fun things to do. That is where I don't understand. Why get SO wrapped up in ONE character, that you can't stand to see them go?

Edit to add: @faraday I refer you to the above. You are putting no more time and effort into the character that got blown out of the airlock than the one that got to ride off into the sunset. Sometimes your favorite character dies. This is a fact. When your favorite character in a book series dies, do you stop reading the series? Or do you keep reading and find a new favorite character?

I think this is a mindset thing. For instance -- think about the backgrounds thing. You prefer to go in light and evolve things. It's not so much of an up front investment -- and I think that should be supported as a play style.

By the same token, others do things with a lot of work going in, which is also an approach that deserves respect -- or at least enough respect to not dismiss it was 'being so attached to one character they can't stand to see them go', which is rarely the case.

Essentially, it's just a different approach to the game, and probably a little bit of 'wanting something different from the play experience'. Dismissing the folks who do a lot of prep and get disappointed if their work is ended in a footnote as being overly attached and unable to let go is, to me, as inappropriate as it would be to suggest that you 'just don't feel like doing the work and writing an elaborate multi-step background thing'. That isn't the case at all -- in both of these instances -- and unless the game in question is designed to support one of these general approaches exclusively, it's a space that people of both mindsets are going to have to share. The first step to doing that effectively is by listening to what someone is saying and not instantly diminishing/dismissing it as being indicative of one of the red flags in the hobby like 'overly attached' and 'doesn't feel like putting in the effort' both are, and both are not often accurately attributed at all.

@Ghost said in Where's your RP at?:

@surreality All my love, too.

I'm just going by this: game: a form of play or sport, especially a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck.

I think you're misunderstanding the holistic point I'm trying to make, so let me recalibrate.

• If we are opening playspaces to support players in writing novels, stories, etc about characters of their own design, where they get to decide what does and doesn't affect their characters (to maintain their enjoyment of the space), then we should come out and say so.
• If a playspace is using WoD or another game system as a system, and the game system is holistically important to task/risk resolution, then it needs to be stated up front that the entirety of PC story direction will not be decided by the player, but at times, by the dice.

See, here, we have no argument.

The previous points came across as 'all things are to be decided exclusively by the dice', and we all know that just isn't reality.

Games can also be structured as @faraday describes: under normal circumstances, use the dice; if no resolution can be agreed upon, use the dice; if there's no 'reward' you're trying to get out of it but some wholly in-theme and reasonable story development, don't stress it unless you want to.

And most of the time the latter is how it goes. Whenever my character makes a smartass remark, for instance, I generally leave that up to the writing to see if people around her think it's funny or not. If it was somehow important? Sure, I'd roll to see how charming it comes out to someone she's trying to influence, why not? Lies? Sure, I'll roll it, why not?

Bear in mind, I have zero qualms with risk floors being an option along with risk ceilings, and yes, I think it's reasonable for people to agree on such things when starting a scene. Stating: everyone participating in X event will end up infected with Y, this will be part of a long term story arc and there is no way participants will not be afflicted is as reasonable to me as this is a non-lethal sparring/training session; while your character is likely get get banged up some, regardless of any extreme rolls, severe injury will be the maximum damage cap that can be done to the character, they won't die.

Neither of these is 'just killing off a character to prove shit just got real' or 'players being unwilling to ever let anything bad happen to their character'. That's the point. And these scenarios are much more likely to occur in a game than the guy getting his head blown off for sitting on the favorite barstool, or someone screaming up a blue streak because they refuse to not be the prettiest princess in the room.

Reality lies in the middle, here. The reality is what people need to prepare for when running/planning a game.

@Goyim I heard we also masturbate with spray cheese instead of lube.

@Autumn This is both reasonable and... not at all reasonable to me at once.

Expecting a 'this is how the world works' document written by an unpaid amateur writer to be as engaging as a professionally written novel by one of the most popular authors of fiction writing in the world today is just not the most realistic expectation to have. From another perspective, this is like expecting the script for a GoT episode, consisting of names, basic stage directions, and dialogue to be as engaging as an actual episode of the show or one of the books it's based on; it's just not going to happen.

World information (or a script, or stageplay, etc.) and a story that reveals that information as the story progresses are completely different animals and one is almost always going to be considerably more engaging than the other: namely, the one where there's a story being told at the same time. That's the role the players take in the game: it's their story being told in a setting, often with characters they create themselves (unless the game has a roster setup).

A single-author setting also only has to take into account the things that affect the story they already know they want to be telling, usually from the outset. If you, as the author, know you're never going to go to Keep X, what it's for, who lives there, where it is don't matter; that information may be relevant in a game world players are going to explore in their stories and you'd better have those answers unless you want to open that up to players to create themselves (which, IMHO, people should be a lot more open to doing than they often are). There are questions players are going to have that as a single-author of a story you don't ever need to consider for an instant, let alone have an answer for, because you are in full control of the story and whether that ever becomes relevant or not; it isn't the case for a world built for the purpose of others telling stories.

On the flip side, if you build in too much story? You run the risk of considering your players to be actors following a script, and that way lies railroading and the entirely wrong sort of attention to detail.

Someone writing a novel is essentially preparing a stage, costumes, props, dialogue, and stage directions for the participants.

Someone creating a game world has to create a much more fully-fleshed out stage, costumes, props, directions for how the world will react to actions taken by the participants, a handful of improv scenarios, and the willingness to let go enough to allow those improv scenarios unfold as they will.

It's the difference between writing a bed time story and creating a playroom; while they have some elements in common, they're just not the same at all, and expecting all the qualities of each in the other is a bigger (and inherently more problematic) ask than most folks realize.

@Misadventure When I attempted to do that on Reno1, the typical cluster of loud voices simply screamed there was no plot.

Clearly, I needed to put THIS IS PART OF A SPHERE METAPLOT, GUYS! in highlighted red ANSI in all of the events for it that those very same people never bothered signing up for.

Did they still whine and bitch that there wasn't anything? Of course they did. In fairness, Reno1 at the time was not designed to have one, but there was an idea for one anyway to give people things to do.

Probably would have been fun if anybody actually ever showed up to do it other than @Scorn and one or two other folks whose MSB ID's I don't know off hand.

A wiki wouldn't be a bad idea, in all seriousness. I would avoid the sites that offer the pre-cooked ones like wikia on a wikifarm -- but mediawiki is not impossible to set up on its own if there's server space for it. (I was able to do it with Bobotrons help and Glitch's tutorial, and if I can do it, it can definitely be done!)

It wouldn't be too hard to set something up as a 'game page' template similar to the way games set up a character page template; it'd just require different fields. Even the categories could be set up in a similar way, just for games instead of characters: potential, active, dead, theme/etc. Since edits can be tracked and reverted as needs be, it isn't as scary to police as it could be if the need ever arises.

One of the greatest teachers I ever had was my 8th grade English teacher. One of our segments at the time was sci-fi, and our project for that semester was to build the very basics of 'a planet with life'. We didn't need to get into the details of why such a world was in its Goldilocks zone and such, or why it didn't need to be on the technical angles (we were 12-13 year olds, after all, and this was the 80s when it was less common for 12-13 year olds to know that stuff), and our actual focus was more about building an alien culture.•

"What conflicts exist here?"
"What do people understand about the world, and what are its mysteries?"
"What do people think they understand, but get completely wrong?"
"Do they know about other worlds and cultures? If so, how do they get along? What do they think about others? Why?"
...and so on. It was a good list of questions to consider, and it was over 5 pages long. I sincerely wish I still had it.

One of the worst exes I ever had gave me some of the best world-building advice ever, which is also mentioned here: "It doesn't matter if it's not going to come up. You need to know the answer in order to properly determine cause and effect for the world."

It becomes amazingly easy to come up with cool stuff when you start from the beginning -- the real beginning beginning, like 'how did this world come into being' -- and follow cause and effect chains from there. Options will suddenly explode in all directions, and that is a good thing.

• (I am that asshole who wrote thirty-odd pages for a 2-page project and oh, did I ever get something of a squint when I picked that paper up after it was graded -- but with a giddy sort of eye-twinkle, like that crotchety old coot just knew what I'd be doing with the rest of my dang life right then and there. He wasn't wrong, I suppose.)

@Gilette Honestly? No. Unless it means whapping them across the face with them, old school duel-style.

That saying about how 'what you reward is what you encourage' applies here, too; coddling this behavior encourages it and makes it seem acceptable when it simply isn't so.

Provided there are options to negotiate, various opt-outs someone can take, limitations that can be agreed upon, etc., these folks are not in the position of 'innocent bystander with a gun suddenly at their head before the trigger is pulled, cope!'

The folks who can never lose, never look 'bad', never let someone else have the spotlight/etc. generally need a reminder that the game (in my case anyway, and in most others I have seen this is equally so) is intended for adults, and they'll be expected to behave like one even when things aren't going their favored way•. This is where things get into the territory others have mentioned re: 'won't accept anything bad happening to them ever/won't make sure they outshine everyone else in the scene at all costs' types, and they're typically pretty toxic to the game's ecosystem.

Being extra gentle with them really isn't the answer. Reminding them about the old playground rule about sharing all the toys is pretty essential, and this is more than most staff are ever willing to undertake. It's rare someone will speak up to say: "Hey, we've had repeated complaints about spotlight-hogging/unwillingness to take even a minor hit/etc." to this type, and generally ignore them in the vain hope that they'll shape up on their own.

There are fairly freeform, full-consent games where people can generally do this with impunity, and it's generally not a problem. Otherwise? Yeah, it's a problem, and it's not gonna fix itself. You can delicately mention it all you want, and generally it's not going to make an enormous difference if we're talking about one of the soap bubble ego types -- if they can't take a hit, they're generally going to be even less open to OOC criticism of any kind, no matter how constructive or kindly in its delivery.

• Most of what we need to know to play nice with others we really did learn as kids on the playground. (I have a whole theory about this just waiting to get flung at some poor, unsuspecting wiki somewhere, some day.) That said, as adults, maybe we've strayed too far from those days to remember those lessons, no matter how critical they tend to be to getting along in daily life. Share the toys. Toss the ball to other people, too! Don't throw a tantrum when the ball was thrown to somebody else; you'll get a turn, too! Share your snacks. Don't crack dirty jokes in front of the nuns. Staff needs nap time, too. If you get hurt, it's OK to cry and ask for help from the nurse, and it's not cool to laugh at somebody who's crying because they've been hurt. Don't break somebody else's toy just because you can when they've shared it with you.

The list goes on and on, but really, imagine how many problems would be averted if folks kept what we all learned as little kids in mind, you know?

@ixokai said in PC antagonism done right:

@faraday said in PC antagonism done right:

Antagonism makes for good stories, but in a MU* environment I think it's a lost cause. Mostly for the reasons you mentioned, but it's even more than that. Let's pretend that there's a totally mature player who won't start OOC drama, needs no encouragement to play antagonism, and is an awesome RPer. I don't want that person playing my character's antagonist, I want them playing my friend.

Man I could not disagree more. If I can find someone who is cool, who I know is OOCly not crazy, who will be wanting to play a rival, antagonist or enemy, I'd value that person 100x more as my antagonist then my friend.

Making friends is easy.

Having meaningful rivalry (where its entirely IC and doesn't bleed over into OOC powergaming) is the true gems and value of what makes quality.

My ideal lands right between these two ends of the spectrum, but is somehow harder to find than either: my favorites are the "best of enemies" sorts. The long-standing rivalry with mutual respect for the other's talents, or the duo that utterly loathe each other to the core but have to team up from time to time against a common adversary.

This is one of the reasons I'm sorta against "designated antagonists", but strongly encourage games with factions in conflict, in competition with one another, or with rivalries or opposition to each others' end goals. Allegiances are more likely to shift in those cases depending on the circumstances, and the adversary of today becomes the uneasy ally tomorrow, and the double-crosser of the day after that, and so on. It strikes me as more dynamic, less black and white, and more flexible and versatile on the whole.

@acceleration said in How do you keep OOC lounges from becoming trash?:

Similarly, it is unusual to see players actively asked to stop making running ooc commentary in the middle of an active scene in these types of games unless they get particularly disruptive, or the reverse but related problem of players asked not to overshare the details of their characters oocly when they should be role-playing it instead. Granted, the latter happens everywhere but some games are better at minimizing it, while other maximize it by encouraging posted logs and wiki's full of ic information.

Here's the thing: the games that post logs and wikis to share information do not consider sharing information OOCly a problem, and not everyone agrees that it is one.

@Bobotron said in How do you keep OOC lounges from becoming trash?:

Myself, I think there's use in an OOC Room as a place to wind down/be between scenes; the whole 'backstage' thing mentioned previously in the thread is a great example. What seems to be the PROBLEM is not the OOC Room itself, but peoples' culture and concept of it. People need to be willing to police themselves, and this probably should be implicitly said, not just staff going 'hey, stop, that's a topic that's not cool'. You're never going to get a topic that is weird or divisive, like politics, that everyone has the same views on. Change the culture and fix the symptoms.

This is pretty much my take on it. I have a 'no RL political discussions' rule for the place I'm working on, for instance. It isn't just 'keep it to designated areas', it's 'no discussions of current RL politics, period'. Want to discuss the politics of the era of the game? Have at. Want to have that same argument about things we can't escape anywhere else on the internet? No, sorry.

Heavy-duty PDA is another issue in OOC lounge spaces (and channels generally) and that has its own designated space as well. I am not inclined to be the person who says, "Ew icky gross don't do that!" but considering how genuinely uncomfortable it makes many people, disallowing it on non-Adult public channels and in the OOC lounge gives players a space free from those antics pretty easily. There's an 'adult lounge' to go with the 'adult channel'. I don't mind if these things go on generally, but I am not keen on them being crammed down everyone's throats, everywhere. IC is IC -- if people are going to be lewd or snugglefucky IC it can be dealt with IC -- but OOC, that stuff's gotta get corralled off of channels with other purposes, because it quickly diminishes the usefulness of those channels and/or spaces by making others uncomfortable or just drowning out useful content.

...so some of us make rules. I am a tyrant, though. I even made a 'no snugglefuckery ever from a staff bit' rule. Of course, to me, that's common sense, since there's no better way to create an appearance of favoritism than to be engaged in snugglefuckery from a staffbit, even if it's only directed at other staffbits. And you know? That is not what staff is there for. I have never, ever been so uncomfortable as being on a staff that creates 'cuddle piles' in the staff room or spams half the staff channel with glomps and licks. Want to talk 'problem behavior'? Whoooboy, that one is a real can of worms. (Civil and respectful is important; so cuddlyfluffy snookum-boo-boo-kins your teeth rot to aching nubs in seconds and everything rings so shady and false and high school fluff-my-ego game... is bad news for many reasons.)

@Groth said in PC antagonism done right:

@Tinuviel said in PC antagonism done right:

@Bobotron The massive staff overhead suffered by RfK was due, in perhaps small but not inconsiderable part, to the behaviour of the headwiz. Without her it would have taken a fair slug of work, certainly, but at least they'd be able to get the work done without her going over everything to ensure it fit "her vision."

No, the staff overhead suffered by RfK was almost entirely caused by the fact it was originally conceived as a game run by the book as much as possible, including the LARP rules. However as the game grew more popular it became increasingly obvious that those rules scaled poorly and were not a great fit for a MU* environment meaning that a complete redesign was necessary designed for the MU* context from the ground up, however this is difficult to do when you're buried under the work of actually running the game.

This is one of those things I've written about and ranted about for ages. A system designed for probably 12 people tops around a table, which would be a really big tabletop game... does not work for a MUX. It won't. The overhead is far too high. A 12 character MUX would be tiny. Could still be great! But it's tiny for a MUX. Even smaller games tend to have at least 2-3 times that.

There's more talk about Arx by far here over the past few months than there has been about any WoD game -- or I daresay all of the current WoD games combined.

People do use WoD concepts as examples often when discussing abstract ideas for games since they are familiar to a majority, but often enough that's the only reason they're coming up. I've talked about a lot of my dev concepts in this way to provide an easy frame of reference for people, but I am not working on a WoD game, but one with an original theme and system.

For example, instead of spending half an hour saying 'we have the following kinds of stats and this what each type of stat is intended to do', it is much easier for people to understand (and takes less time) for me to say 'it has attributes and skills like WoD, but all the things like powers, merits, and conditions are handled under a broader catch-all category called traits that can be temporary or permanent, and instead of specialties, there's a list of established tasks associated with each skill that people can assign +/- modifiers to'.

It would take me walls of text to explain that without that reference, but I'm pretty sure most people who have played WoD even once or just read here enough to have had WoD mechanics hammer them over the head can get a general idea of what I'm describing.

@Three-Eyed-Crow I'm with you on the 'I don't think flaming should happen in an ad thread' thing.

Maybe make two: one for the ad, one for the heated discussion elsewhere. But I do believe people should let people advertise in peace, with a link to 'here is the discussion that is not basic questions about 'do you allow princesses/Sith/OCs/etc.' or 'what RPG system/edition/supplement are you using' and so on, without bitching and screaming if it's not the one the questioner prefers.

@mietze said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

I know some people that are coarse as can be here (though I wouldn't term them mean or anything, but blunt yes.), but in game they are even keeled, polite, respectful, dare I say professional in dealing with others. And there are some people here that talk up positive things that they have a history of crapping all over in game, and can be downright nasty and destructive.

Quoted for truth.

If I can't be positive, encouraging, and helpful on a game, even to the people who make me want to tear out my hair in clumps, I know it's time to step back. I have seriously valued this place as an outlet to vent the frustrations that accrue. I try to keep it anonymous and generic, and more than that, I try to wait a fair space of time before venting about <thing>, to both give myself time to chill out a little, and also to make it less likely for anyone to guess at whoever <asshole of the moment> is.

Because generally? Unless I'm naming names, which I'm not keen on unless I think it's someone people should be warned about (see the exchange with the troll on Shang from the other day for an example of the extremes I think warrant an exception -- attempts to impersonate an RL friend to attempt to traumatize someone RL? Yeah, I'mma call you out by login name and game), I really don't actually want a grand ol' mob to go torches and pitchforks on <asshole of the moment>, I just want to "OMG GUYS A THING HAPPENED AND I AM OUT OF EVENS TO CAN'T WITH!" and get it out of my system.

Maybe somebody chimes in with 'ugh, that fucking blows, I hate that, too!' and yay validation/commisseration/support network.

Maybe <asshole of that moment> sees it and even if they don't realize it's about them, that it's uncool to do <jackass thing> for <whatever reason> becomes clearer to them and they think twice about doing it again to somebody else.

Or! Maybe 'that is a fucking stupid thing to get all sandy-vag over, surr, plz go hose out your gravel and come back to us when you're not being crazy,' is the response, and I have to sit back and think, "Am I the one being the asshole here?"

I just don't see this as bad. Yeah, maybe I'm the freak in that if I'm writing something here that's 'mean', it's pretty fucking rare that the intention is to do someone harm or deliberately be a jackass to someone. I can think of one actual instance of deliberately being absolutely bitchy to someone• because I felt like being bitchy to that person for purposes of irritating them, and odds are pretty good people would never guess which post it was.

• (I'll tell ya: I @'ed someone on something specifically for purposes of them being more likely to read it, because they made a claim that 'doing X in RP means you're forcing RL THING into their face RL!' Which was total bullshit. So when recounting a story of RL THING on the forum (which is just a funny story, frankly), I @'d said person, because that, my dears, is forcibly shoving one's RL THING in somebody's face, not just posing about whatever subject in RP. Absolutely and totally deliberately bitchy. There's a reason I have a girl-boner for trickster gods, people, but to this day I'm all kinds of sad that the point was likely utterly lost on the target. Oh well!)

I always ask questions like this, and then a little too late realize that my own answer (which is only fair to include) is maybe not the easiest thing ever to give fully or honestly.

The simple short form is: at different times, different aspects of all of these things -- including the unhealthy variations of some of them -- have been the draw, or at least one of them.

And, yeah, that covers it, but it really doesn't. Or, more accurately, it isn't the whole story, and to not tell the whole story in a community that sometimes can only agree on one thing -- that we like participating, to whatever extent, in telling stories together, no matter how differently we prefer to go about it -- that seems like cheating, somehow.

I link to this as often as I possibly can. It applies to the hobby in a variety of ways that I think are useful, and often enough, it's in that context. The transcript is there, so it needn't be watched, though if you've never seen it, I'd encourage you to watch it anyway. (It's one of the two things I watch on seemingly endless repeat when things get hard, and both of them help.)

The whole section beginning with 'Fourthly' applies, but this especially:

And remember that whatever discipline you are in, whether you are a musician or a photographer, a fine artist or a cartoonist, a writer, a dancer, a designer, whatever you do you have one thing that's unique. You have the ability to make art.

And for me, and for so many of the people I have known, that's been a lifesaver. The ultimate lifesaver. It gets you through good times and it gets you through the other ones.

Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do.

Make good art.

It is, ultimately, escapism, but of a unique sort: it's collaborative and creative escapism. And yes, laugh all you like, but creative writing is an art. There is no yardstick here; there's good art and bad art and good writing and bad writing but ultimately, this is a hobby of creative expression and creative expression is art. (So laugh all you like, but deal with it, I guess.)

Something this addresses in a more roundabout way is actually interesting as hell. It's something that was touched on briefly, I think, in the mental health thread, but it's worth mention here: different thought patterns, over a long enough timeline, help to rewire the brain. If you have particularly unhealthy wiring in your brain, brief bouts of 'playing make-believe' can, actually, improve your well-being by helping to create the structures that allow you to see positive aspects of the world you might have missed otherwise, because your brain simply was not structured to recognize them before.

This is not the same thing as 'exploiting fellow players for therapy', which some people do or have done from time to time, as it's not (and can't really be) a conscious process. It's essentially a side benefit of setting aside one's problems for a little while and thinking in a (slightly or majorly) different way, as most of us do when we RP.

In short, if you are in a shitty situation you can't see any way out of, sensible doses of escapism can be incredibly good for you. Not if you lose perspective and ignore the real world or value the pretend one more than the real one, obviously, but simply letting your brain work differently for a little while can be a very real help.

It is actually sort of awesome.

It is even more awesome that this is more pronounced when engaged in creative thinking, creative problem solving, and creative expression: as you do this, you are incrementally building yourself a new brain.

I'm a professional artist, hopping around amongst a variety of mediums over the years. (Please note what I said above, and further note I am in no way claiming that I am a good artist!) Creative things, be it visual arts, performance, writing, even writing code, are enormously important to me, even if they aren't things I'm personally doing, good at, or interested in doing myself at all. I think they're genuinely important on pretty much every scale, from the micro-micro 'creative thinking helps "grow" your brain' to 'a little creativity can make your living space a happier place' to how much a culture values and encourages creative expression on the macro end of the scale.

This one? Well, it's easy. (Or, it was.) It's a neat one. It's there more or less on demand at any hour, and really, considering there's always some code that could be written or a room that needs a desc or a plot to concoct for people or some other 'thing to get to' that requires creative thinking, it really can be something that's a great creative outlet even in the crazy hours when no one else is around.

That doesn't compare to the big one, though: RP chemistry. Everybody here probably has that list of writing partners that they cherish and consider amazing because for whatever reason, when writing together, the whole is so vastly astonishing compared to its component parts. Any given group is like a compound chemical. Sometimes, you create a new rockin' alloy, sometimes you fizzle out into grey sludge, sometimes it explodes into a gory mess. It's still one of those things where it seems like you can really see the buzzword cliche 'synergy in action', and as an actual thing, rather than as a buzzword, that's something pretty spectacular, as it can lead to the most surprising and remarkable places, even if they're completely imaginary.

Even beyond that, even amongst the people you 'click' with as a writing partner really well, the result of that 'compound chemistry' is unique. With some, I've found more drawn to scheming and very plotty things. Others, it's pure soap opera. Others still, the horrific and surreal explored in very Barker-like ways. Once in very long a while, Penthouse Forum letter. <cough> Plenty of other things, too. It varies, and god damn, that's interesting as hell unto itself. (To me, at least.) Different partners bring out different things, and that means all of those new places for the brain to meander can sometimes be pretty unexpected and fantastic. (They can be dangerous, too, but those things are often easier to notice and avoid than they might be; often enough we know when a story is making us miserable and we'll drop it, after all.)

This... combines with another thing, for me. Stories. I love stories. I love making them up myself, with others -- I even enjoy just finding entertaining ways of telling ones that recount some real event of the day, or knowing a real event generated an interesting one to tell later. (I collect those. Seriously. It's my very favorite collection of all.)

That famous quote about how the universe is not made of atoms, but is instead made of stories? It resonates strongly with me. It's something I think of as a profoundly human truth. Stories, ultimately, are how we relate to each other, learn to empathize with one another's experiences, and understand certain things about the world we live in on a very basic level.

There's more to this, but it's OMG'o'clock, and the coffee's low. Happy Easter or happy day before a bunch of chocolate gets marked down to 50% off, whichever applies in your case.

@faraday I don't think be nice is an inherently bad goal.

I think it's a goal with some potential pitfalls, but I think the same thing about this place, and thought the same of WORA.

Be nice would be an easier goal if, as @WTFE mentions, nothing ever went wrong that needed to be mentioned -- but plenty goes wrong, and plenty of people screw up, intentionally or otherwise.

I think the thing many are wary of on the 'nice' front is that being nice and doing the right thing aren't, actually, always the same thing.

'Use tact and do not be deliberately hurtful' is, I think, a more realistic goal or guideline than 'be nice' when it comes to potential positive outcomes.

@faraday Pretty much that. You need to be able to point out flaws, or a place will turn into a mutual flattery and butt-kissing society, eventually, and that's not terribly useful. If you (or anybody else) actually aims to do this, I would suggest putting up some examples of tactfully phrased constructive criticism/etc., since that will help set the standard by example.

(We've seen how some of the 4chan trolls are considered too inappropriate for this place, but their behavior is standard fare there, etc., so examples are important.)