Best posts made by surreality

@Cirno said:

I'd just like to also testify that I have also observed this paradigm shift in these games. I've been playing for about 10 years or so, with a recent very long break, which I am now trying to bring to an end, but I am also not really enjoying the new scene. I remember people walking around on the grids of games, doing stuff circa 2006 or thereabouts.

I enjoyed this, because it was more organic and felt more realistic - the spontaneity resembled life. You really became absorbed into your character. You were forced to improvise on very short notice. It was tremendously immersive.

I've seen this as well, and it's something I consider a sad change.

I can grok the reasoning for planning pivotal scenes and events, and real life makes that necessary enough. At the same time, those things were never what gave a character real depth to me, or created a sense of immersion. That was always the little shit, and the little shit was fun, and the little shit mattered. It rounded out the corners, it filled in the gaps, it created unexpected but later immensely impactful alliances and enmities, and dammit, I miss the fuck out of that.

@faraday said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

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

In other words, most games are designed around the idea that if you 'should' know how to do something you already do. You don't lack the points to buy everything you 'should' have because you've already got everything you 'should' have for free.

I'm just saying that if you actually read the game system's descriptions, that's actually simply not true.

FWIW, I'm not posting much due to project hackville, but I'm on the same page here.

I think a major step people can take in development on this front is to actually define what I'd essentially call a 'level zero' that represents standard baseline knowledge in that area without points being spent.

(Granted, I am also a crackpot that's looking at a means by which people can take negative modifiers to a specific task to actively really really suck at some aspect of that thing as a tradeoff for a minor boost to something else equally specific in the same skillset, so I should probably shut up, because all the dedicated min-maxers probably just collectively made some involuntary and very socially inappropriate noises just reading that.)

@Entropy said:

And maybe the staff favoritism/corruption stuff isn't as prevalent as it once was, but you still have a lot of talk about the Troy/Sonders, VASpiders, Zero/Elsas and whoever else I'm not thinking of at the moment.

Your mistake is in thinking they are representative of the whole. There was a Storm, a Jessica Rabbit, and a handful of other gloriously shit staff back when, too.

There's also all the Coins and the Thenos and the Cobalts and the Sunnys and everyone else I could name that are actually active (unlike VASpider at least, and there hasn't even really been any bitching about Troy around here lately) who make constant positive contributions to the community and the games they work on.

Basically, your assumption of the quality of the sample out there is fundamentally flawed, as is the conclusion you're drawing. Frankly, most staff fuckups do not come from self-interest or malice or corruption, but from simple dumb mistakes like forgetting to follow up on something or overestimating what they can accomplish within a certain deadline, none of which indicates any of the nasty qualities you seem to be attributing as being abundant.

Just as many problems spring from shitty players with unrealistic expectations, paranoia, greed, a desire for special exceptions, etc. and until people grow the fuck up already and realize this is not a problem with staff and it's not a problem with players, but a host of generalized problems in the community rather than some insane Us vs. Them reductive and typically false dynamic, nothing is going to improve.

I'd hazard to say that discussing stats initially outlined in a way that isn't how WoD works (even if they are the WoD attributes as the example set), by default we are explicitly talking about something nonWoD, so the hyperfocus on WoD is doubly sighsome.

I love how much this thread shows us how old we all are. Well, except @tragedyjones. Whippersnapper.

@seraphim73 And this kind of hassle and head-desk-inspiring circle-jerking is exactly why a number of us are interested in writing our own damn systems instead of using WoD.

At least:

1. You know who to yell at if the reality and the wording don't match.
2. Ideally, that person will give enough of a damn to fix it in one direction or another.
3. The author's sitting right there and can answer you so you're not guessing blindly in the dark about 'what was the author's intent', which a lot of this is boiling down to (again, surprise surprise).

@skew said:

@tragedyjones was actually thinking April 1st. So, he did move the opening date... that fiend.

That was the actual April Fool's prank: not actually opening on April Fool's Day.

@roz Yeah, that's.... nngh. Again, another reason I'm into systems that are OT/OS and everything can be on the wiki, so everyone has equal access to all the info available.

@ghost For what it's worth, they blocked it a long time ago. Probably near a decade by now. So it's worth factoring that in re: what other things might have been available to people otherwise at the time. Ads for VPNs and such are everywhere these days -- even in actual TV commercials and whatnot -- which was definitely not the lay of the land then.

@ghost I didn't need any of this info to make that call. "You need to go spend $120 so I can play at your virtual house," was more than enough for me to re-re-re-re-re-click the little eyeball on Nemesis. There's pretty much no amount of technical expertise (real or imagined) that would make me want someone with such a major sense of entitlement on any game I'd run. Who would?

Really, $120 is a year of hosting on digitalocean right now for plenty of space for a MUX w/wiki. If someone is concerned about their own security and is going to spend money related to a game, I would think they'd be more likely to spend it on something like that.

@faraday Pretty much, yes. No one should be forced to play baseball if they only like basketball.

They shouldn't, however, turn every game on the playground into a basketball game, or anyone not keen on playing basketball is apt to leave the playground, and rightly so.

@three-eyed-crow I actually agree with this completely -- it's just more that this person seems to want something that is more in line with the style of game that... dang, what was that other forum Jeshin kept promoting here while dogging MUSHes in exactly the same way, re: 'they are WRONG for not having these things all the time'? They seem to be looking for something more in line with those criteria, rather than the shared story world approach that is more common to the games discussed here. That not all games have the things they want does not make those games wrong, bad, or failures, they just make them not what that person wants, and they seem incapable of comprehending this.

@faraday said in The 100: The Mush:

I feel an air of WrongFun on this thread that rubs me the wrong way.

I do, too -- thing is, it's 'anyone who doesn't want to deal with 24/7 antagonism is doing it wrong' wrong-funning, along with a side order of slut-shaming and wish-fulfillment special snowflake accusations raining down at someone saying 'the uniformity of this experience is not one I enjoy'. None of which is cool.

It's head-scratch-worthy to me because white knights and black hats can just as easily be any of the above as the other.

@tinuviel said in MUSH Marriages (IC):

With a few exceptions, I'd say that many of our number are rather hesitant on the confrontation front - however mild it might be. Are we misinterpreting things, are we being too sensitive, are we being childish, are we, are we... we aim the blame for our discomfort at ourselves.

@arkandel said in MUSH Marriages (IC):

I know, and it's why we keep getting drama. It's a direct effect of people perceiving this hesitation as weakness so they prey on it.

It is also amazing how many people will know this, and deliberately exploit it. It's not just preying on the unwillingness to speak up, but to gaslight the shit out of people when they do.

It is dazzlingly common and it's something we (collectively) need to get better about taking action about -- in resisting, reporting, and continuing to state our boundary as necessary.

To be fair, there's an option #3 there: wasn't online/wasn't interested in either scene, too.

Things like coded gambling and similar I can get behind, simply because it adds something IC that people can do together to the game world. Same with things like coded tarot and similar.

Thing is, most people I know just go to any number of available websites for these things. I know I've done it for tarot readings IC and it has universally been easier and more fully-featured than any text-based code, with zero stress on the coders.

Similarly, stuff like the scrabble game I described... odds are high a group of people from the game could all hop on a channel and head over to a website for that. I know The Reach did something like this from time to time with Cards Against Humanity, which was fun and OOC social bonding fu for players. This kind of thing shouldn't be underestimated as a means of generating community goodwill amongst players or creating opportunities for new people who don't know anyone there to chill a little with folks socially if that's what helps them get their comfort zone going. I'm completely down with the idea of setting up a game account or group or whatever on such places and putting a channel or similar on the game for that sort of thing, but in these cases, finding a way to do it on the game itself feels a lot like re-inventing the wheel... as what will probably be a less functional and feature-rich wheel.

@VulgarKitten I'm kinda with @Arkandel on this one.

For instance, there's like... very few? people in this hobby that I actively, persistently, dislike. I could count them on a hand and have fingers left over. There's Rex/Sovereign, Jeurg, a chick who seemed to make it her life's mission to make me miserable OOC for no reason I could ever fathom other than that her life had taken a turn for the suck (which I could still empathize with) and a chick from Shang made entirely out of the crazy sauce on a level that's just whooooooaaaaaaa man look at ALLLLLLLLLLLLL of those colors. (Neither of the women post here.) But that's really it, and I don't have to deal with them much, if ever.

The people I argue with tooth and nail here from time to time I don't actually hold any ill will toward, which I think is the key thing. It isn't so much being desensitized as it is not feeling the need to hold grudges.

I remember shit, but it only tends to surface in a 'waaaaaaaaitaminnit... ' way when I see some kind of inherent contradiction (which is what I think you were aiming for here?) or, more often, to remind myself to be a little cautious or 'clarity first' around <person> because they don't like <subject> and I should avoid it around them (or conversely, they tend to enjoy <subject> I dislike and I need to make it clear to them I'm not interested in that particular joyride).

OK, I also remember shit when it's stupidly obscure and funny, like in the wayback SWOFA days when Lethe claimed to be a swarm of sentient cats. (Whyyyyyyy is that still in my brain? I dunno, but it still makes me giggle.)

There is stuff around these parts that will still piss me off. It's pretty rare, though. The creepy rape thing a month or so ago, for example, didn't really bug me, beyond the extra moment it took to register, "Did I really read what I think I just read? Whuuuuuuuuuuuut." Usually, the only things that actually piss me off are when I see something that makes me want to tear out my hair because I can't tell if someone is genuinely clueless or being deliberately obtuse to be a jackass. (Considering how often both happen around here, uh... it's surprising I still have hair? Or blood pressure that doesn't require medication? )

I've been posting on these places since an unholy forever ago, though. I actually found a few scratch pad text files of posts recently when doing a computer backup, and... goddamn, yeah, I've actually mellowed a lot.

I would have wanted to punch c.2001-2003 me right in the damn mouth and wince hard when I think about it. More than I do about anything anyone else has ever said, really.

@prototart said in Roleplayer's shower thoughts:

idk if it counts but a conversation about underwear for like She-Hulk style characters led to a conversation about the market for super-people clothes led to "there would definitely be shops aimed at superheroines" "yeah but basically nobody would ever be dumb enough to make a char out of that other than me and I'm def not gonna do that"

which led to me making a character out of that

...and clearly this person has not heard of Edna Mode, who is one of the most amazingly awesome characters in a movie in more or less forever. NO CAPES!

(I would totally do this, too.)