Best posts made by surreality

@brent It'd only be that if I was the one who made that report. I'm most assuredly not. I whine about 'omg people not everything is WoD or Arx' out in the open like a sensible person if I can be bothered to care.

There's that old saying about how it's not the size or how long you go, it's about 'the motion in the ocean'. And y'all likely know what old saying I mean.

I find the same applies to a scene.

Short or long poses, long scene or short, none of it matters so much as how well it flows and what gets accomplished.

You people better be taking notes for when I have to write up weird shit for fish people next month. I'm counting on all of you to remember this shit then when I'm flailing around wildly for ideas and my brain is dribbling out of my ears.

@ixokai said in Where do you draw the line in having your character take what would otherwise be an "IC" action for them?:

Finally, its very, very important to let each and everyone who can reasonably do so -- shine in their moment. Note the first -- if the character is playing like they solve everything ever that's another matter. But if you have your iconic moment of awesome, the GM shouldn't hold to a rigid set of reality that punishes you for it unless you went a bit crazy. Let the player shine.

This is what I think is the #1 qualification of a good storyteller, or a good group/faction leader (whether that position is IC or OOC). So often, the IC roles of this nature go to the people great at taking the spotlight themselves -- when in fact it's really the opposite of what makes for a healthy IC group, where creating and sharing those opportunities is the real key to creating maximum fun for everyone involved. This certainly includes that player's character as well, but to no greater or lesser extent than anyone else's in the group.

So in addition to 'is this fun for me' or 'would this be extremely unfun for others', there really is 'would an alternative end up being a lot more fun for everybody, even if that thing is not the bestest wishlist ideal for everybody in the room (because everyone having a good time, just like everyone being miserable, is pretty contagious)?'

It's also worth mention that polling folks for ideas is never a bad idea. Sure, there are the folks who have no clue themselves (and then nope everything anybody else suggests), which is common enough to be discouraging, but often enough, people can and will surprise you with something that turns out to be strangely perfect and inspiring that you may never have expected. Those moments, to me at least, were always the ones I loved best: not when I was able to scratch something off some character goal wishlist in the back of my head, but when something I never even thought of suddenly takes off and takes on a life of its own, organically moving in a direction I never could have predicted.

@Apos @faraday Exactly that.

Beyond that, these kinds of threads are currently scattered amongst Ads, Constructive, and Shout in the Dark. That's not really helpful, and proves how much they don't really have a home. If (generic) we are serious about growing this hobby and improving things, having a designated home for this content -- and to encourage the creation of games and innovations in existing ones -- it needs its own space.

It is actively heartening to pop into some of the threads where people are brainstorming like this. Others, yep, personal experience included, become nightmares of 'I hate that and it's just stupid because it's not what I like' or endless 'unless it's just like <other thing> it's going to be a piece of shit' or 'this thing (that almost every game does with no ill effect) will completely destroy this if you allow it to occur!' kinds of garbage.

These are the kinds of things that aren't constructive, aren't well-thought-out, aren't even thought out on the most basic level, and yet... people end up responding to them at length to either clarify or reassure or just defend themselves from personal attacks piling high (ALL OUTSIDE THE PIT) based on the most absurd nonsense.

That gets in the way of someone making a game purely based on how much time is being wasted dealing with a parade of Chicken Littles and shit-flingers and One True Way-ists in addition to how annoying, frustrating, and discouraging it is. Especially since most of these people would never play there anyway -- so it's not even a matter of 'oh well you'd have to deal with this on a game from the same people, too'. Well, that kind of shit is generally not allowed to go on for pages on end on most games, and that's the case for a very valid reason.

How the same people -- and I'm talking about the communal pool of everyone in the hobby here -- can't internalize 'this would be shitty behavior on a game that would never go on like this without everyone calling it absurd and obnoxious' can think it's perfectly reasonable and not equally absurd and obnoxious here sometimes blows my mind.

We have space for absurd and obnoxious, and it shouldn't be in brainstorming/creation/concept/innovation threads.

I strongly recommend looking closely at Semantic Mediawiki specifically.

It has a lot more going on under the hood that even I don't fully grok -- but it's worth looking at. (Read: it's worth it for someone who actually knows what's really going on there server-side taking a look at it to see what the possibilities are; I just know what it allows me to do on the user end. I just follow the instructions to install it, this doesn't mean I actually know quite what I'm doing back there.)

On the user/wiki-admin side, it allows for a lot of things that aren't standard in the box with mediawiki, and to the best of my knowledge are not in wikidot at all either.

Forms are a big one for a number of reasons.

They make things much easier on non-wiki-savvy users, for one; it's possible for a user to create a page without a single shred of code know-how with them, and templates can be made fairly easily for just about anything the game needs. (I've been working up some basic ones for things like grid locations, player pages, etc. similar to the ones on BITN's wiki, and when the generic versions are ready I want to have them up where they can be grabbed and shared.) It's possible to enter specific instructions for every step of the process, for every input on the form, with as much or as little information as players or staff may need to ensure the information is correct, useful. It helps ensure it's easy to understand what to do, how to do it, and why it's needed (or even if it's needed or optional). And this is all without needing to know a single thing about wiki code on the player (or data entry staffer) end.

The extra bonus for forms is that it's possible to set up lists of default allowed values that will appear in the template; while that sounds little, it can be big for things that the MUX expects to appear in a very specific way. Whether something is 'Circle of the Crone' or 'The Circle of the Crone' can make a big difference code-wise, for instance; if it's set with a drop-down rather than entered manually, it's always going to be consistent and there's no need to remember how it's supposed to be done. (Because nobody always remembers. It always gets screwed up somewhere, some time. )

I am also not sure if wikidot uses/allows the use of DPL or not at all. DPL is extremely useful to create auto-populating listings throughout the wiki that massively reduce the need for constant direct human maintenance.

Defenestrate?

@Roz It's a shared peeve, really. Which is why 'television series, series of novels, etc.' is in there, even in what you quoted. Trust me... I am beyond tired of arguing about why an idea won't work based exclusively on why it wouldn't work in WoD, which is prevalent.

Edit: People saying this who still play on WoD games are IMHO the worst offenders, because as far as source material goes, it has the most I've seen that people are expected to be familiar with. Dozens and dozens of books. So when typically WoD players complain about having to read something on a wiki being too much work, they deserve the full anime mallet treatment for having the gall to be whining about this. That's why they're singled out there.

@bored That's why I've been asking for a space like that for ages now -- I think it's something that would be a net positive without screwing anybody else or forcing any other changes on folks -- and it's something scattered right now and that makes it confusing re: what rules apply where to such threads. Thankfully... @Auspice just created a space for it. So this is a good thing all around, yeah?

No offense intended, but simply reading this left me feeling 'throw in the towel' exhausted.

That doesn't mean it's a bad idea at all, actually -- for some games, this could be very helpful, particularly if it only kicks in after a certain point.•

Back to the exhaustion for a moment: some people enjoy sheet maintenance, min-maxing, and any or all other forms of sheet and mechanics math. It's possible these folks would love this, too. There is also a non-trivial portion of the playerbase of any given game that does not, not for a hot second, want to have to math in their pretendy fun time games. I speak for no one but myself in saying I would enjoy this roughly as much as I enjoy doing my actual taxes, and to drive home the gravity of this statement, I say this as a self-employed artist who has to do the long form every time and has to pay up since nobody does any handy-dandy withholding for me that might mean going through all of that hassle means I get some kind of refund at the end of it.

Mechanically speaking, however, this is going to depend strongly on the system. The 'tax' would be one thing under a GMC/CoD setup with flat costs, and something entirely different in a system that uses multiplied costs such as nWoD or oWoD.

Even under GMC/CoD, you're going to end up taxing some character types more than others. One dot of <Powerstat>, for instance, will cost a player the same as one dot of Contacts (Bloggers) -- never mind the fact that these two things have nowhere near close to the same impact on the game. It'd end up making it more effective for players to pile more XP into high cost powers, rather than low cost merits. When you look at the fact that the latter are the only thing available to most minor templates, it definitely gives the minor templates the crap end of the stick even more, as their powers tend to be bought on merits -- so the thing a super could do with one dot of a discipline will be something that costs four dots to a minor template as a supernatural merit, thus costing the character who is already 'the little guy' in all other respects considerably more simply to keep what s/he has.

It's an interesting thought, and the inspiration is understandable, but I wouldn't go within a mile of a game that implemented this as described, as I don't consider it to be something that actually improves the game experience in any way, and instead penalizes certain character choices and does so unevenly -- in addition to being more math than I feel like I need in my life.

• You would be better off doing something similar to what a few other games have been described as having done -- diminish the amount 'a beat' is worth as the character's XP total gets higher, and ascribe the 'lost' XP to maintenance. That hits across the board evenly regardless of what style of character the player has chosen to create. For instance, at 60XP, a beat is now worth 0.175 instead of 0.2, at 90XP, it's worth 0.15, at 120 it's worth 0.125 -- or whatever other staggered reduction metric you prefer.

Scanners.

@Arkandel said in Which canon property/setting would be good for a MU* ?:

@surreality said in Which canon property/setting would be good for a MU* ?:

Do people typically dive into a game and begin CG before skimming the information available on it? That's not a snarky question; it's a serious one. The very idea is completely alien to me, as I always valued my time enough to glance through these materials before ever coming within a mile of a login screen.

Obviously I can't speak on other people's behalf, but just from my own experiences and conversations... yes, absolutely.

Then that's on them if their time is wasted. Seriously. I'm not kidding. We are not children. "I can't be bothered to see if I like something or what it's about before diving in!" is the antithesis of logical behavior.

It should never be a reason people are given to not create original themes, settings, or systems, and yet it often is. This is the most stifling nonsense in the hobby and one of the most insidious problems facing anybody trying anything new -- from XP systems in existing RPGs to new settings to something completely new from the ground up. This is not even absurdist doom-saying, it's

(Generic)Your laziness or unwillingness to be proactive is not the creator(of anything)'s responsibility, full stop.

This is another of those lessons people should have learned in gradeschool: you don't do your homework, it's likely you're going to have some issues. This could be not being prepared for a surprise quiz and failing that, or having grades that suffer from just not doing the thing.

For example a very common scenario is being invited to a game by friends. A while ago I was asked to go play a comic book MU* and I did so - I had to familiarise myself with a (pretty interesting, as it turned out) system but that was after the fact... my real interest was rolling Dr. Strange, figuring out what the theme was, etc. There was a lot to absorb.

Again, things we learned in gradeschool: you should still be looking at what your friends are asking you to join them in doing. My friends have asked me to join them on everything from international cruises to bungee jumping to breaking and entering and hard drugs -- I did not just blindly follow them into these activities, and in three out of four of those cases, "Uh, no," was the answer they got. The 'yes' on that list -- the cruise -- involved a lot of 'homework' in securing visas, etc. that, had I not done it, the entire experience would have broken down entirely.

"My friends invited me," is common, sure, but it doesn't turn off one's critical faculties. Those friends should be helping you acclimate if they're going to extend the invite, and they should be pointing out things you need to know, or telling you important things re: what the place is about.

Would anyone here think 'my friends invited me, and didn't tell me anything, so I didn't look further, I just created my login and dove in' was an excuse to go on and on with horrified outrage about the things that go on if the place someone was invited was Shang or a game similar to it? To those friends, maybe, but not to the game, its creators, or to the game community at large, because it's not the fault of the game, its creators, or the game community at large -- it's on (generic) you and (generic) your friends.

"My friends asked me to" doesn't absolve someone responsibility at all, barring some pretty extreme circumstances that just aren't relevant to this hobby. ("Dude, that friend saved my life, I can't ever say no to that guy about anything!" is the kind of thing I mean here, and that's not really a common scenario in this hobby.)

There are also folks who simply go and play where most people are - you know, that whole 'numbers beget numbers' thing. This happens with Mage all the time but its mechanics are just tricky enough that I know players who've been playing for years and don't really know how it works.

...and this is not the fault of the game in any way, nor is it a reason people should be discouraged from building mage games. This is a real problem that really exists, but the blame for that problem needs to be placed where it actually belongs: with the people who are just too lazy to read or learn before diving in, not the people who make a Mage game.

1. The blame needs to go where it belongs. (If the information isn't presented well, as @Ominous and @Lisse24 describe? Then there's reason that blame should be shared to some extent -- but this is still wholly contingent on someone bothering to look before they leap, which is the behavior I am specifically calling out as problematic.)

2. "Some people can't be bothered to read it" should never be used as a rationale for not trying something new or to discourage innovation or new ideas no matter what their scope, and that is exactly how it is often used in this community. Stop it. Stop insisting we're all stifled and stymied and backed into corners and no one is willing to innovate and in the same breath insist that nobody should ever attempt anything new at all because some lazy and irresponsible people can't be bothered to even take a look at it to see if it seems like it's worth learning first. (Generic) You want new and different, (generic) you want things that work better than what we have now, then (generic) you better be willing to glance over new things to see if (generic) you think they might be for (generic) you or not before trying to shut down the very process of creating new things with the insistence that there is any legitimate excuse for people to not bother at least glancing through something to see if it seems worth trying or learning.

(Ominous and Lisse's points get their own post. Data organization, it's IMPORTANT, for real.)

It's worth mention: all three of the mods here are people I think have good heads on their shoulders, and are well-intentioned people who do their best to make ethical choices in their role as moderators.

Just... maybe divide up the tasks, then? If there's disagreement about how different things are handled, divide up the tasks into 'we can all more or less agree that X should be handled in Y manner, and <mod> is best at that, so that task will primarily be <mod>'s wheelhouse'.

Y'all might get a little further with that approach, or at the very least, it would mean that when X situation crops up, if it's always handled by <specific mod>, folks will have a better idea of what to expect.

(Yes, this is separate from generic posting, and should be. We're all entitled to a shitpost lawlgif here and there, an unpopular opinion or criticism, and whatnot, including the mods when not in their role as mods. The collective we forum-wise should try to be the smart people we are about telling the difference.)

@Hexagon said in XP Tax:

What I'm learning is that this method may be suitable mechanically, but it hasn't been tested or applied by any known system out there.

Er, not really. It is heavily biased toward certain types of characters and certain types of spends.

You haven't remotely touched on the problem of a 4 dot merit costing more to maintain than 1 dot of an out of clan discipline, for instance, despite the fact that their initial XP cost is the same. This is a real, functional problem that impacts supers considerably less than minor templates or mortals. Both of these things cost 4XP to buy, but the merit will cost the player 20% to maintain, and the discipline dot will cost 5% to maintain, despite the fact that the power granted by each in play is likely to be about on par.

While that may not matter to you, it matters to plenty of players out there who enjoy these character types -- and they're already weaker on the whole, so adding yet another detriment to playing them is a very bad idea under the heading of 'well they already aren't as special'. It also heavily penalizes characters who invest in social merits like contacts and so on, to the extent that it may make those character concepts considerably less viable on the game.

The way you've laid this out, it is best to play a super, and buy high-cost-per-dot powers instead of skills or merits, because that will ultimately be 'taxed' less, despite the fact that these things are considerably more powerful that things that would 'charge' the player the same 'tax cost' to keep.

If you can't see that glaring problem, I dunno what to tell you, because it is one. @ThatGuyThere raises a very good point re: characters freshly created, too.

@faraday The deepest irony is that it's often the same people who are saying both things. Mind-blower, you know? Internal consistency, it's a thing! Heh. It's kinda no wonder those are typically the folks never satisfied.

Your system is another proof that innovation is entirely viable, and while I haven't learned it myself, it doesn't sound like it's horribly difficult to learn if someone wanted to play on a game that employs it.

@thenomain There's a reason I always suggest a drink after I have to whip out the stereotypical Libra 'it depends'.

It's typically because nuance is relevant.

Nuance is also damnably hard to police.

Regarding the dogpile problem, it isn't as hard. When a number of people all express the same opinion, it may or may not be a dogpile.

Is it a group of random posters? Then probably not. You very likely have the 'someone said something stupid and is getting called out on it by multiple people' situation @Apos describes.

Is it a circle of friends all spouting the same accusation at them that is not directly based on what's written? That's the telltale sign of a gossip circle commiseration spiral dogpile, and is worthy of note.

Is it a circle that regularly goes after the same person en masse with the worst possible assumptions about them thrown around as accusations and insisting they need to 'own' all of this crap they dreamed up in their circle jerk but doesn't exist in actual reality outside their circle jerk? That may be a sign of bullying, and is also worthy of note.

It's not a difficult pattern to spot. It really isn't.

Entirely decent human beings can fall into these traps, even in the process of attempting to be the best decent human beings they can be. It doesn't make their behavior any less inappropriate or problematic, or their commiseration spiral conclusions and accusations any less faulty, or their ganging up on any less troublesome when it occurs.

"It depends" == "there is no black and white answer without further data, and the best you may be able to hope for even with further data is a very murky grey".

I'm actually thinking about setting up a link exchange when I get more of my site together, with a template setup folks can use for the same. Since a lot of folks don't come to forums even to lurk, it seems to be a good way for the community to spread the word about the kind of games that are out there on the sites people are most likely to find if they're looking for actual games.

@faraday First... I really wish people would google that case before citing it as an example of absurdity. The warning on the linked image in this article is not for the lulz. https://www.2keller.com/library/the-mcdonalds-hot-coffee-lawsuit-do-you-know-what-really-happened-.cfm (There's a whole movie about this.)

The games you've run, from what I gather, don't often tread into triggery territory in the ways many people think of it. I don't recall if you mentioned running, or playing on, the one historical war game set in one of the world wars or not -- but that would be the closest I could think of from the games I've heard you mention that might warrant a tag here or there -- mostly because we do have a lot of active duty military in the hobby and there are some folks who may want a heads up if today's plot involves something along the lines of a gas attack or land mines (since there are people who we play with who have been through these things, or the very real threat of them, within the last decade). For instance, I would be inclined to mention, 'hey, tonight's GM'd scene involves a raid and rescue mission in a concentration camp; be advised' on a WWII game -- and I do not consider this in the least bit unreasonable to give players a heads-up about so they can self-police to their sensitivities. I'm not talking about labeling for every possible phobia or personal dislike here, but common extremes.

@Lisse24 I always figure it's best to have a general category for a pref -- and space for people to write what they want, rather than a checklist. So people could write whatever they wanted, at whatever length or level of detail they wanted. I've seen a lot of 'maybe, page and ask' on Shang, for instance, in +kinks, on things that people sometimes like but only under very specific circumstances they don't want to advertise, or if it's something that's great when they're in the mood for it but it's no-nay-never on a normal day, and so on.

The non-confrontational part is kinda huge, too. Some people are awkward bringing things up -- but even more often, I've noticed that people are awkward at explaining something when they're put on the spot. More people are willing to say, 'hey, this is a bit uncool for me' than are really able to explain what exactly isn't working when they are in that moment of active discomfort. When someone can explain themselves in a calm, unchallenged, pressure-free state of mind, it's a lot easier. There's no potential pressure to explain quickly to not hold up a scene and maybe miss something or get tongue-tied and potentially run into a misunderstanding, there's a little less chance for someone to feel pressured to omit something just to 'go along' and not stir the pot, and so on. When something comes up in scene, something's already wrong. It may be very wrong. And while it's important for people to speak up, sometimes it really is easier to have that written down somewhere and point rather than try to explain oneself when you're already upset, and know you run the risk of upsetting the other person by interrupting or disrupting as an added pressure on top.

@haven Thank you. I understand the need for levity, but the signal to noise ratio in this thread really does seem to be better served with a minimum of gifs and snarky shitposts. Once in a while, serious thread should probably stay fairly serious.

@Arkandel said in How To Advertise?:

@Brave-Saga-MUSH said in How To Advertise?:

I know that this location would be one place to advertise and I know sharing ads between MU*s is another one, but is there any advice anyone could give? Other locations that could be used? I would love some suggestions and I am even sure that there are probably some new folks out there that could be wondering as well.

My advice is this: Advertise when you are ready and know what you're going to offer, and when you're going to offer it, but not before.

Most projects fall apart well before they come out of the "hey, I got this idea..." stage. And we, fickle lot that we are to begin with, have seen way too many projects disappear well before fruition.

Seconding this. I won't even post anything until I'm at what I consider 'half done'. And the thing I did went on hiatus for something else -- which I'm not gonna post until it's ready for beta at this point 'cause I know me too well, shiny things distract me.