Posts made by surreality

Damn, I even mentioned this in another thread and completely missed this one. The #2 'some day' weird idea I had was for a traveling space carnival game. Think of a mashup between Carnivale and Firefly: dustbowl/depression era troubles on fringe worlds struggling to get by.

Grid was the rag-tag caravan of ships, which would travel (over time) from border world to border world, as a group. The border world (if they were on one) would have been 2 rooms: of 'this is a general representation of this world, temproom off of here for any locations you find relevant as necessary', and the faireground room where the show gets set up to bring in the crowd. It'd be 1-2 weeks on that world RL time, with the weekends included at both ends, and the weekdays between for 'travel' to the next one, arriving Friday night -- so fairly easy to schedule around.

Collectively, through either dodging warrants or hiding out or just not being welcome or not being up to code and barely having resources as a group to do more than just scrape by and keep the lights on and food on the table, individual or small group 'go jaunt off to <other planet>' was just not in the collective budget, and/or there would be other reasons this would not be a thing. Ships aren't up to code for their legit port, not enough fuel to get there, that rich kid hiding out with the weirdos got disowned so there's just not the cash to cover the trip, whatever -- it would have been marked out as 'this is not a thing unless there's some big, effects everybody story involved, because it would effect everybody if somebody did it'.

It wasn't so much 'tightly focused' as 'holy crap, this is packed tighter than a tin of sardines'.

Highly weird, very gritty, but the reasons everybody would be in the same place -- even if that place was different every so often -- were built in. People could probably do something similar with a team of mercenaries or other group traveling around in a similar way, I would think. For a one-faction, PvE-oriented game, it should be possible to construct a setting that supports this without too much hassle.

It just likely isn't the kind of thing that people are necessarily looking for when they think of 'space game', where one of the appeals for some folks would be 'can be on any number of active worlds'. Star Wars is a perfect example of the sprawling space opera on many worlds at once that has a good potential for game longevity if people take to it, for instance.

That said, a lot of the most engaging sci-fi stories (to me, at least) are set in space either all take place on one ship, or one ship and one world (or only one world at a time). Some could have long-term potential, but a lot of them would be the kind of game you'd need to know from the start would likely have a limited lifespan and some top-down story arcs built in from day one. Think of stuff like any of the Alien films, in which the action takes place predominantly on one ship, or one ship and one world. You could technically have a game based on a film like Event Horizon, with the exploration of the ship taking much, much more time and a larger team handling salvage and research -- or, much as most people I know aren't keen on it (myself included), Alien: Prometheus could follow a similar model. The trick here would be to know going in what you plan to cover and know there's an expiration date when that collection of stories is played out.

The 'tell a story, do a time shift or location shift reset, continue the over all story but in a different time/with a new set of characters/etc.' concept that @Coin has talked about from time to time could work really well for something like this to keep the game going and give interested players more to do in the broader universe to tell more and new stories, even if it's essentially run in installments with resets and time breaks in between. (Something like the Alien films could be done this way, for example, just -- for fuck's sake -- things should be presented in chronological order.)

In a way, the 'we're all getting older and we don't have unlimited time' factor nudges me a little toward this being a more realistic model these days for a space game than one with the enforced travel and wait times of some traditional multi-world games. I think the sprawling space operas have a better chance of longevity without breaks or resets and such if people can get past that hurdle (or find a way around it as @Seraphim73 has described), but I have to admit, the breaks and resets model is uniquely compelling here, and I'd be curious to see if someone tries it some time to create a long-running game with defined 'chapter breaks' and troupe-style play with character changes throughout.

@Gingerlily If I ever pull up the droplet I had stuff set up on it would be easier to see than explain, really.

I had everything set up so the MUX could pull data from the wiki.

All the stuff on the wiki could be filled out with forms.

One of the forms was to let people fill out a series of preferences, under a list of pre-defined topics. This had some of the basics like 'political' or 'combat' and some sensitive subjects people tend to have strong feelings about.

This info would show up on the player's page on a tab, or in a collapsible section, with all of the information they typed out about what they liked, or didn't like, about anything they saw fit to make notes about. Bear in mind, this also had some really general things like 'times available' and 'pose style' and such as basics, also 'things I like to GM' for people who like to run scenes, if they had special sorts of things they liked to run or not run for others on request. This information could also be pulled up on the game.

Each subject also had a wiki page that would list the preference entry of all the active players who had filled it out.

Essentially, people could look at an individual player to see where they may have common interests (or indications that they would not mesh at all), or look at a page for the subject, and see the interest or lack thereof in that subject for all of the currently active players on the game.

So if you had a category like 'crime', on the subject page, you could get a listing of what characters currently active on the game were interested in criminal RP, and what kinds -- as victims, as people who wanted to avoid it, as a specific sort of criminal, etc. If you were a GM interested in running a crime plot, you'd be able to get a general idea of who was interested in what -- and could potentially contact those players asking if they wanted to do something, or at least know that 'we have 20 people who like pickpocketing, but nobody likes assassinations, so if I'm going to run a crime plot, I'm going to get more interest and participation if it's about pickpocketing rather than assassination', etc. If absolutely no one wanted anything to do with that, you'd see that, too -- which means no time is wasted constructing a plot around it and then wondering why there weren't any nibbles.

There was nothing percentage-based like +kinks code, or ratings like Cobalt's +prefs code; it was just a box where people could write something describing their interest in -- or strong aversion to -- a particular subject, to whatever level of detail they liked. For instance, there was a category for 'addiction'; some people find this to be great story fodder and are into it, others may be fine with alcoholism but are sensitive to drug use, others are recovering addicts RL and want nothing at all to do with this subject in their pretendy fun time.

In allowing people to just write, it spares a lot of false positives or negatives, especially in areas like the subject above, where some things are absolutely fine, but other things under the same umbrella might be really difficult for the player to encounter. It requires the work of reading and writing, but those are requirements in this hobby already and I don't have tons of sympathy for people unwilling to do a reasonable measure of either.

(And, obviously, people could just skip anything that there wasn't any strong feeling about in any way.)

I liked it. It's different than what's out there now -- but I think it would have been a good communication tool. Not advocating anyone else do it, but as it is different from the other pref systems already in use, it may help ease the confusion some.

Ack, posted this in the entirely wrong thread, ignore me...

@Lisse24 I sort of see these things as a MU* version of a fidget spinner, or pocket game of tetris, if nobody else is around. It's a little fun distraction that may get a very minor benefit of some kind, but mostly it's a fun time waster that's in theme and can give people an excuse to bump into each other. Bonus points if it's something people can do together in some way.

Even stuff like little coded tarot cards, chess, playing cards set up for this or that card game, etc. can be randomly entertaining in a non-grindy social way that gives people an excuse to interact on a casual 'well, it's an easy excuse!' level -- heck, have a random NPC object that plays 'the shell game' and costs or wins you a few coins, and emits something that gives people an excuse to come over and rubberneck the game.

It can really just be anything. MOOs were overflowing with this stuff, and some of it was pretty dang nifty.

I like the 'idle time fillers' a lot -- provided they aren't creating such a huge benefit that people feel they have to engage in them to keep up.

Little stuff to get people out and moving around and bumping into each other on grid is a plus for the people who enjoy it. It just shouldn't be a necessary thing, because then it turns into a grindy obligation.

@Rook I just sort of have to look at it and sigh and remind myself that I have cats and that means I can't have nice things.

Especially nice electrical zappy things.

The fluffball is already so zappy in the winter any time she crosses the carpeting that we named her Tesla.

Something might actually explode.

@Caryatid I am on the fence about this one, personally. In some ways, I strenuously agree, and in others, it gets a lot more murky.

I think @Sonder strikes a good balance with this one, from what I saw on my time on Fallcoast. If action had to be taken, it was posted with the players name, the duration of their ban (or if it was permanent, this was noted instead), and a brief note about why the action was taken.

This strikes a good balance, from my perspective. It calls out the behavior, the offender, and handles the benefits you're describing somewhat neatly.

The problem I see with this is this: people have to trust the evidence was there in these cases. If they don't, there's a real chance people may think action was taken capriciously, which can present a real problem. (Some of the worst problem children are really great at playing victim; see Spider for an extreme case.)

Select evidence? Nnnngh, then it looks like cherry-picking and not 'the whole story' and that has its own pitfalls.

All the evidence? Yeah, out the bad behavior -- but you run the risk of exposing someone who reported and exposing them to retaliation by friends of the offender, distrust among other players that they're a 'tattle-tale' or oversensitive, or potentially embarrassing them in some way, depending on what the issue involves. All of this makes me notably uncomfortable. Edit out the person's name? Then it potentially gets back to 'but was the source credible?!' and other paranoias.

'<name> was banned <permanently/for X period of time> for <reason>' I think most people could reasonably agree on.

From there, though, I gotta admit, it can get a lot more complicated and murky, and speaking only for myself, it really looks like 'choose the least problematic option' from a list of imperfect possibilities.

@Arkandel To be honest, the MOOs I started on were much like this. Cybersphere is, Ghostwheel was.

They were fun, and the 'busywork' things got you small gains and filled downtime like the old text non-RP games probably once did between running into other people, and random encounter pick-up scenes would typically ensue.

Sometimes, I really sort of miss that. It gave people reason to be out and about and wandering, which did give people more reason to randomly run into each other.

@Collective OK, that's pretty awesome. Now I sorta want one. Not the picture, but the thingie.

Most game settings• have very real unpleasant aspects of real life in them. Almost any historical setting will, for instance, and modern day real world has plenty, no matter how much progress has been made in many ways from some of the more popular historical periods to draw from.

This will be reflected in the characters played there, or should be to some extent -- even if this is just 'the character recognizes these negative things are real in the world they inhabit'.

Exceptions (toward more modern real world perspectives) almost always exist in any of them, and generally speaking, PCs are very often the exceptions in this regard. IMO, this is cool. Some people don't agree and think this breaks the game experience on some level, but provided people keep in mind that these are exceptional individuals with atypical views, that's more than fine enough; if they want a more harsh take on things, they can likely find someone willing to explore that with them as well in ways both players (players, not necessarily characters) will enjoy.

If the character exists in a world (Arx is a good example) where things are notably different, I would be more concerned with an insistence on exhibiting these traits -- because they'd be atypical.

Looking at the kinds of characters on a modern day setting WoD M*, though, there are endless gang members, hit men, mob characters, and so on -- and I wouldn't necessarily think the majority of the players behind them are idolizing these types or even glamorizing them in some way••, or that they're somehow unusual for the game world.

I would arch a brow a bit at the people insisting on including these things in a space where they are almost unheard of much more than a setting in which they are considered to be commonplace, where it may not give me a moment's pause or concern.

• I know the one I was looking at certainly did; in many ways it's considerably worse than anything people encounter today. 1715: not a lovely year if you weren't white, male, and whichever flavor of Christian your area took a fancy to in most cases. It doesn't disqualify it as a valid or fascinating setting to me, and I don't feel the people who would have chosen to play there believed that's the way things should be in the world.

•• Some do. Not something I find charming at all.

@Lisse24 I refuse to speed up for fears of that happening, though. If I see an opening that makes sense, sure. If not, no, no thanks, I'll wait for it.

Really, anybody who runs off to the chapel in 24 hours or less (and I wish I was kiddin', but it's happened, and plenty of people are close sometimes) on the regular is not somebody I would want to have to keep up with anyway in terms of feeding the level of instant gratification they're probably looking for. The whole thing sorta screams 'super high maintenance' in the back of my head.

@faraday That's fair; I was a little shocked by that wording, because it was... well, yeah, wow. Thank you for clarifying.

I really think different things will work better or worse for different setups and games, is all. I don't think your setup is wrong -- if it's working for you, it's obviously the right call for you and your game, and that's all around awesome. (No snark, I'm completely serious about that.)

I don't think that's going to work for the environment I had in mind as a full answer for a variety of reasons, so I'm looking for more options, that's all.

@faraday Wait, it's inappropriate to allow players this option now? Wow. Yeah, there is absolutely nothing of value to be had by continuing this exchange on any level.

@faraday said in Indicating Discomfort in a Scene (online):

@surreality My objection involves transferring obligations to any other player, whether they're a GM, or just someone in a pick-up scene. As I stated in my game's policy: if someone is sensitive to a particular topic, it's on them to figure out a way to establish boundaries. It's not on anyone else.

That's just it, though; I don't see how 'allow people to create a list that anyone on the game can refer to at any time' isn't just giving people a new means of making their boundaries known. Most games have rp-prefs in +finger, and similar stuff.

I just figure it's handy for people who are not always comfortable explaining themselves in detail when something has already potentially gone wrong, and being able to say, 'hey, I have a thing about that, it's here, can we work with this?' -- not 'hey, I have a thing about that, HOW DARE YOU GO THERE YOU MONSTER!'/etc.

Really, I think it would be much more useful for people looking to find people who are interested in the same kinds of things they are in the long run. "Oh, you like fishing RP, too? Rock on, let's meet up and do a thing!" So I'm looking at it from that angle, too, and would be putting in something like this for that purpose even if it didn't have a 'help potentially head trouble off at the pass/allow for an additional means of reduced conflict expression of boundaries and preferences' aspect to it.

@faraday I'm only talking about instances of 'transferring obligations and responsibility to the GM', which has been the objection (which I understand, even if I disagree with it), which seems to be the bulk of the argument.

Things are generally different in a GM-led scene than they are in a random pick-up downtime scene. A GM is rarely going to do something shady because they have a broad audience. It happens, but it's much more rare than the cases of two people off in a pickup scene -- and usually the moment someone invokes oversight, it's amazing how fast the shady lot backpedals, which... well, obviously, I 100% agree with and support that policy being one of the tools in the box. I'd call that one a true essential more than absolutely anything else, and if anything was a 'every game should absolutely have this or they are idjits', it's that one.

I went with a number of things. This included subjects that required consent to proceed, the ability to list interests and mehs and no-go-zones personally, the ability to label plots for controversial content to allow people to self-police and avoid the plot if it hit their bad mojo zone (in general, or even just that day, really; sometimes somebody normally fine with <thing> is just not going to be up for it right then), and a few other bits and pieces all designed to work together for that specific setting, the intended themes, and help encourage the measure of collaboration and consideration of others I want to see there on the OOC level.

If I ever haul something out of the mothballs, I'll see if it helps, or doesn't. I think it will help. In other environments it might not, or might be counterproductive and feel like needless work and hoop-jumping, etc. I don't think requiring this (or anything save for the one rule noted above) everywhere makes any sense as a 'one true way'; similarly I don't think dismissing it entirely as a waste of time or a bad idea because some people in specific circumstances that will not match what I aim to do have a way that works for them in their end use case.

@Arkandel Oh, I agree. I mean more that I wish we had more general variety, which is a common wish/complaint/wild lottery dream.

I would like there to be a FC-style game. And an RfK one. They appeal to different players -- or sometimes the same player, but different moods. And so on. I want to see sandbox games and heavily plotted games. I want to see all manner of themes, settings, and options. Crowd size is just one factor, and it can work against you just as easily as it works for you, as @Apos mentions.

@Lisse24 I am with you on this, and I (pardon the in-joke, I guess? ) sort of feel like we're on the same island on this particular front.

I get the whole cinematic or 'traumatic circumstances' reality that has people bonding rapidly under adverse conditions, but while some games are like this, most... not so much, at least not in downtime, and not so much over a sustained period.

I could see rapid (or pre-existing) bonds in a setting like The 100 M* much more than I do in the Anytown by Nights for those reasons.

It seems to be an 'across the board' situation, though. I've never been sure what to do about it, either. I always get to a point where I think there's some progress and a nice slow buildup of tensions and trust and confidences and then the next day I log in and that person I was RPing with has zero time left to do anything because over night they powerbonded with somebody fresh out of CG and they're totally married now and OMG all the things are perfect.

Then there is this. It is truly the only response I can muster at that point.

@Arkandel I would actually be really happy to see games all being so unique from one another that comparisons would be all the more obviously useless.

It does make a pretty big difference in the end result. All of those things that aren't factors there? They create complications even when people do speak up, and that's not a complication to discount. (And seriously, the idea of Elsa trying to pull that off is... welp, I do not plan to drink today, but it makes me really want to. It makes me really want to a lot.)

Also, I think part of it here is that -- from what I can tell -- this is something you're looking at predominantly from a GM's perspective. It's less likely for a GM to have the kind of controversial content come up in a scene (the rape example especially) as it is in a downtime PvP scenario. Technically, this can happen on any game, no matter what content it includes. Somebody off in a room somewhere could go off on a crazy space rape tangent in the middle of a My Little Pony all ages game, for instance, as out of left field as that is.

You mention that you'd never allow that situation to occur PvP, and I'm full-on in support of that, no question. The problem is: what happens when a player takes it on themselves to go there? Yeah, the other party should definitely speak up, but you have a situation here where some real damage may already be done. How would you ever stop this from happening?

You... can't, actually. Which is a horrible thing to realize. There's no actual way to prevent this from potentially occurring. The real freedom of these games -- that somebody can literally type anything, anywhere, at any time (and ultimately whether it's thematic or not, whether it even makes logical sense or not, whether it's within or against the rules or not) -- is sometimes a stumbling block in that respect. There really isn't any solution here that works.

That's the really frustrating thing, and for anybody who gives a damn (and I think that applies to absolutely everyone commenting in this thread, regardless of what implementation they prefer), it really is pretty damn frustrating. The freedom of any given setting (and however much someone adheres to it or not) is one of the most rewarding things about this hobby, but it definitely has its pitfalls, too.

I feel the more complicated or controversial a theme gets, it just becomes easier to label things on a slightly more granular level. Even a game set in the completely mundane real world could very easily contain a whole range of subjects that would eventually opt almost everyone in the hobby out. (The first IC IRS tax audit dropped by an event randomizer and you'd probably see the place clear out like somebody bombed the server, for instance.)

No questions, just a virtual hug in spirit for the passing of your friend, and lots o' empathy. Do what you need to do for you, since in the end, that is the important bit.