Posts made by surreality

@Seraphim73 There are aspects of this I like and some I don't, and I'll only really comment at all because I'm tinkering along similar lines, but from a different inspiration. (Aspirations in WoD. I don't think theirs is as ideal as it could be, either.)

The one thing that you can run into as a problem with this kind of system is that you have to be really careful when you set up those goals/aspirations/whatever you want to call them. If they're reliant at all on other things coming to pass, or other people, you can end up completely stalled out if <thing> gets endlessly delayed by something beyond your control, <person> you were supposed to do <thing> with ghosts on you, or <person> the goal was about quits/flakes/otherwise decides to chase pixies.

As a result, I like this as an avenue open for advancement, but I'm not keen on the idea of it being the only one, if that makes sense.

@skew BITN was on DigitalOcean for $10/mo + $2/mo for automatic backups, but yeah. It's not a huge difference, but I grok @Jim-Nanban's concern re: piecemeal costs and a confusing configuration. (Something set and steady you can plan and prep for is definitely better for me, anyway.)

@Thenomain said in Course Corrections:

@surreality said in Course Corrections:

This is definitely one of the harder 'no's to articulate but it's possibly one of the most necessary ones, not as a control freak trip, but in order to keep the game people signed on to play, well, still the game people signed on to play.

And yet we complain about games that don't allow players to make changes in the game world.

So let's take this and swing it back on topic: What about course corrections with staff? Is it okay to apply this concept to players but not staff?

I have to say I don't see a difference between the two there in terms of what I'm talking about, at least. A staffer deciding 'let's totally redesign the world through the introduction of space monkeys attacking!' is just as, if not more, dangerous to keeping the game even vaguely coherent due to their perceived (if not actual) authority, if space monkeys attacking is not within the intended scope of the game.

As an admittedly extreme example, any given player on a modern game could make the argument that their character could find the means and information to make a dirty bomb and set it off in the middle of the grid, wiping out the majority of the game's inhabitants or otherwise destroying an enormous portion if not the totality of the grid in the process -- or potentially turning it into a wasteland space from which everyone has to scatter with no hope of return within anything approximating a normal timeline. Any player on almost any game with a modern setting could put in a job to do this and do this through rolls with staff with no other players ever the wiser. Maybe it's because they just want to see what happens. Maybe it's because they secretly want a wasteland apocalypse game instead of a modern urban fantasy game. Maybe it's because they 'want to make a change' or 'want to make their mark on the game'.

As staff, what do you tell this player?

Do you let them do it simply because they arguably can, or are you also responsible for the fun of everyone other than that player on the game as well, and should you be considering them and their fun also?

Does the mad bomber's fun trump theirs?

There are some ways you could potentially handle this that might avert it through IC means -- possibly having contact/ally/etc.-holding characters start hearing rumors about something (if this is even feasible, depending on the bomber's plan) along with whatever they asked -- but there's also just, "No. No, we're not going to be doing that, thank you."

@Packrat That's quite well put, really. I'd sum it up as something like 'they all want to be the lead from Da Vinci's Demons', though I'm not sure how many people have watched it. (It definitely went to those kinds of places, and often aspired to be clever-er-er-er-er-er than that, even.)

That's a good point, though: how do you reasonably place those limits without getting extreme?

How much leeway does someone really have to say: That could feasibly happen IC but we really don't want to take the game in that direction.

I don't think it's necessary to, say, uncreate bats just so people won't make gunpowder from guano (though if someone wants to do that, that's their call and I support their right and choice to make it), or perhaps more accurately, I do not feel it should not be necessary to go that far in order to be able to say: we really don't want to go in that direction with this game/do not want to drastically change the game world in the ways that idea would inevitably change it.

There's some real questions there, I think, and I'm somebody who loves the idea of people being able to add things to a world pretty freely. At what point does the 'little thing' someone wants to add change the game world, or the experience of the game, profoundly enough that it's just not the same game anybody was initially drawn to/initially wanted to play in/would still want to play in?

This is definitely one of the harder 'no's to articulate but it's possibly one of the most necessary ones, not as a control freak trip, but in order to keep the game people signed on to play, well, still the game people signed on to play.

@Arkandel I can deal with the '' formatting things if it's in a log going up on the wiki. People have used /<text>/ or -<text>- or other things to indicate italics or bold for years and years, so using the actual thing that will translate it to italics or bold in the log just seems like saving time for whoever's stuck editing the thing to post later.

@Cupcake Gany got it in one. It's called 'Tales of the Gold Monkey'. It was a '1940s pulp adventure' thing in the wake of Raiders of the Lost Ark, more or less.

But no seriously, they absolutely went to the mud people place.•

It is... special. It is also funny watching them put Amish people on a Japanese island, all fucking up their thees and thous in terms of proper, uh, thee and thou grammar. Which annoys me on some level that I didn't know I had.

•The one we saw the most of at least was also a white girl in lots of makeup, though, I'm pretty sure.

@Ganymede Yep. I am just staring at this in horror and shock and 'oh no they fucking did not'ing out loud.

I am actually old enough that I saw it when it was first on the air.

We were on this weird survey list for the network, supposedly we fell into SOME kind of demographic they were after, so we'd sometimes get calls to watch a show pilot and me, mom, and dad would all have to provide feedback.

Apparently 8 or 9 year old me thought this was entertaining.

...we got called about Manimal, too. I am still not sure how I feel about Manimal.

Those kinds of scenes are honestly one of the reasons I strongly encourage people to watch the hell out of Black Sails. They really are. While it has its share of action, the prep/planning and aftermath/reflection scenes outnumber them dramatically, and they're excellent.

(The other reason is how much the characters consciously discuss the power of a story, whose story is believed, why it's important to tell a good one, which ones last and are remembered, etc. Genuinely amazing on this front.)

@Roz Yup, this. This is basically what I'm aiming at: a way of making sure that even if the log goes up the next day and so on, people are still getting 'you are being awesome and continuing kickass story things' credit where credit is due. Often, this stuff gets overlooked entirely, and that always bugged me.

This isn't exactly anger, but I can't call it something I love. More something that makes me wince with all the wincing: the husband sent a link to a show we watched as kids back in the 80s.

OMFG THIS SHOW WAS SO CULTURALLY INSENSITIVE IT IS A MIND-BLOWER.

I don't think they intended to be? But. Uh. OMG. What in the actual fuck.

If the very clearly caucasian lady playing the Japanese princess and referring to herself as part of 'us Orientals' wasn't bad enough in the pilot, the second episode where they had to free The Mud People slaves from a freighter, uh. Just. Uhm. UHM. Seriously. "Who are they?" "Oh, they're the Mud People!" I wish I was making this up. I am blinking so hard at this shit my lashes are probably kicking up a breeze by now.

What. In. The. Actual. Fuck. 1980s. ?!.

You have officially let me down.

(...and time for today's weird question and quirky explainer.)

There are a lot of attributes in this system. A lot of them. Oodles. There's a reason for that, but it's long-winded as heck and gets into some philosophical weeds I'd rather avoid while trying to get some progress in today.

Like WoD, the typical mundane human scale is 1-5. Non-humans and fancy humans may be able to go higher in some things based on the character type and class, with 8 as a hard cap PC maximum. There's always a trade off, though: higher in something(s) means lower in something else(s). (For instance, if you can go to 7 in something, you can only get to 3 in another, or maybe two other things are limited to 4.)

5 is, obviously, considered exceptional. Anything over 5, amazeballs.

For every level in an attribute someone has at 5 or higher, they get a special perk for free that's uniquely associated with that attribute. So if they have, say, a 6 in intelligence, they'll get two of these perks that they'll be able to pick from a list.

This gets a little into the weeds, but part of the idea behind this is that while many people eventually get to the point that they have fairly high stats sooner or later, everyone still wants to be at least somewhat unique. Being able to pick some perks help customize that high stat's strength and IC interpretation helps people further define their niche, so while two characters may be just as intelligent, there is a notable mechanical way on +sheet that they're intelligent in different ways and potentially likely to remain more distinctive -- which, let's face it, people like, whether it's 'I like my niche' or 'I like being a snowflake', and so on. (Being fairly anal retentively specific on attributes helps this along, too; that's partly why there's a pile of them. Also, the specificity helps narrow down which to use for what, which was often something of a squint-inducing headache to me in WoD, which seemed to generalize a little too much.)

Most of these are fairly low grade perks, or something that the character can pull out of their hat once a week or once a month if it's something more impressive.

The question: is there anything like this out there that you know of that you would recommend I take a look at for reference? (These are something I expect to see a flood of ideas for from folks during beta, honestly, but again, I'd like to get a nice selection of them in there before that.)

@Auspice Walled up behind legos. Super-glued together. Poe her in your mind. It will make you feel better.

@Cupcake (Apologies for the double.) I would bring it up in the context of 'do you think you could stick to the tense the rest of us are using, since it could be an awkward read in the log otherwise?' which may get the hint across. Useless if the game doesn't have a logging culture, but it could be a potentially gentler way of broaching the subject.

@Three-Eyed-Crow I did up a resource thing for a style guide. It's not a policy thing, but a section of what's more or less 'these are tips and tricks and random bits of hopefully helpful advice from the community'. It has a style guide for stuff like this, also for the norms for ANSI and ASCII use on the game (since this varies a lot from game to game, too), but there's also things like how-to walkthroughs for various commands or adding fun things to builds, etc. It's something I wish more places would do, honestly. The unspoken 'how it's done' from place to place can be a brutal social code to break sometimes, especially if a game has its own really unique or defined culture going for it (which many games, especially the long-lived ones, tend to have).

Re: Lego Lass: I would be tempted to Poe her. By which I mean wall her up somewhere, with the legos in place of brick, in chains. (But I'm having a more bitchy and bitter than average day, so take that with a grain of salt, or salted caramel if it helps it go down easier, your call, y'all.)

I would gently nudge.

Re: style stuff: If the game has a generally accepted standard they want or would strongly prefer people adhere to, they should post it somewhere. It varies a lot from culture to culture in online RP, so people may just have a habit of doing things a certain way and not notice. It may come off prissy to some, but most folks will be grateful they've been spared an unintentional faux pas (and/or potentially getting yelled at or vaguebooked about here).

...when you think things are looking up, then stumble over a file you forgot you still had that upsets you deeply.

And then the person it relates to does one of the things that drives you batshit on top, when you were really hoping they weren't going to do that shit again, either.

@Arkandel Gotcha. I was thinking back to one of the earlier discussions we've had about this one as well, which was focused more on, I want to say it was a plot involving animal abuse? I don't remember the specifics this early in the morning, unfortunately, and a very 'anti-warning' stance taken at the time, but... coffeeeeeeee, needed.

In all seriousness, for a lot of things like this, it's very much an honor system thing. We're not likely to extensively read through submitted logs for fine-grained detail. Plus, if they tick the warning boxes or what-have-you, it's fairly easy for those to be passed to a staff member who is comfortable with that subject matter.

We have a 'please do not go into gory blow-by-blow detail about these things in backgrounds if you choose to write a background' thing, but that's because backgrounds don't have the same markers on them to flag anything.

From what it looks like, there will mostly be... me, with @Coin as backup headstaff there if people have a concern about me, someone willing to do player relations, and someone willing to help with build. I don't know how much @Coin or the builder staffer are keen on processing log jobs, but the way it's set up, it's meant to be quick and easy with some shared work (submitter fills out the form, that will do the math for everyone, staff reads through the log and processes the spend script the form spits out) rather than 'we get a log and everybody argues for half an hour about the math and the job bounces back and forth three or four times before it gets anywhere'. I'm figuring this will be fairly simple, though, and faster for all parties, and best of all: consistent.

Ideally we will be able to find a few folks willing to do some jobmonkey stuff, too, but that's a ways down the line. We're aiming to make stuff as quick and simple as possible, and to keep the staff as small as possible. Even so, it still should be large enough that if somebody hits a 'nnnnngh' point in a log, there will be someone else who can pick up the job.

@Rook said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

This should be an ingrained part of our culture, don't you think? Doesn't this fall under Respect Your Fellow RPers? Maybe. Surprisingly, this is the EXACT reason why we need News files so explicitly and agonizingly worded.

This is pretty much where I am on this, yep.

Also, and I realize this is a deal-breaker for some, and possibly many, but: the game is hybrid consent. That makes it especially relevant, really.

What hybrid consent means in this case:

• Some subject matter will always require consent. Here's the list: sexual and romantic relationships, common taboos•, character type changes/becomings (mostly because this could force someone to freeze an alt they didn't want to if they already had one of whatever that was, and that sucks), complete personality rewrites (via mind control or social fu), pregnancy, sexual assault, and acts against/contrary to sexual preference. Again, all of these things seem like common sense to me; these are things you do not force on another player without consent in a mutually respectful game environment in which everybody's fun counts and matters.

• PvP defaults to consent/negotiated outcomes, in part because while there are factions in competition or conflict with one another, it is not designed to be a PvP game for the most part; it's permitted if people want it, but it's not the core direction of the game or it's primary objective. If people can't agree, call in a GM or staffer to help mediate, or go with the dice. If people want to go with dice from the outset, that's totally cool, too, if everybody agrees.

• PvE -- and this includes PrPs and plots, typically -- defaults to dice, though whoever is running it can opt for consent/negotiated outcomes in most cases. Because of this, the warnings become a little more relevant than they might otherwise, and I think they're relevant even without this.

We already warn about risk to PCs by rote almost everywhere, and PCs are ultimately not as important as the players behind them.

If we give a player a warning that something bad may happen to their character by participating in a scene so they can make up their mind about whether they want to join or not, not warning the player that something bad may happen to them if the scene/plot/event goes in certain directions for the sake of 'surprise' seems especially ridiculous.

•This was actually the hardest file I've ever had to write about anything. The game is not Shang, or designed for the primary purpose of indulging in sexy fun times. That said... if people wanna get their kink on with consenting partners (and it doesn't involve child sex)? I have zero issue, and it's nobody's business but the people involved and enjoying themselves at it. This was the final takeaway on that one, and was about as tactful as I could get without making a list (which I'd rather not do):

"If you want to go somewhere in a scene that involves any sexual taboo, ask first. We're going to define this as 'anything that isn't traditional intercourse (for your sexuality) or oral sex with a humanoid that is not a blood relative'. You're smart enough to be able to infer the rest from there without a problem, right?"

Just keep the donkey and the cheese log out of the public eye and I really just do not care. I can't even make myself start to care, provided both PCs, the donkey, and the cheese log are all consenting adults. This is horrible to spring on people, though, and having had surprise incest plot in a plot that started with a pitch insisting there would never be any incest! and surprise panther mind control wang! sprung on me personally within a span of a handful of months a few years back, well, people do seem to need to be told to ask about that stuff first. I mean, you'd think... but no.

@Arkandel said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

I'm not sure what solutions exist here and how many provisions games in general ought to offer their players to protect them from seeing things that trigger their particular sensibilities.

I'm going to be super clear on this and while I do not intend to be harsh, it may come across that way.

The statistics on rape in the US alone are fucking horrifying. I, personally, am a survivor of violent rape. My PTSD gives precisely zero fucks about how deeply integral to their master story plan someone thinks surprising everyone with rape is.

RL is more important than RP, and if somebody cannot respect their fellow players enough to provide minor information to allow them to make informed choices about the content they're going to engage with if it's reasonable to believe it could be problematic, that somebody needs to grow up more than a little. This does not apply to just rape, either. If you're including torture, gore, feeding babies to Zuul, etc., advise the players in the space provided for an advisory notice and allow them to decide how much they want to stretch their comfort zones by choosing to participate or not.

@skew did a great job of this on BITN, with warnings that 'X will occur and will happen to a random person at this event, if you're not down with that, do not come' and similar. (Seriously, he deserves kudos for this.)

(Generic) your surprise plot twist is not worth somebody's emotional well-being or therapy bill, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

People will have prefs set. People should use them to note things they have issues with; it's hard to justify complaining about how somebody tripped on a well-buried and unexpected landmine if you don't put up a sign that says: yo, there are landmines in this field, tread with caution, please. GMs should, ideally, glance over that info and tap people on the shoulder if they spot something that might be an issue via page before kicking something off to give the player a chance to opt out.

We've had this discussion before, and I grok your stance on it, @Arkandel. It is a fascinating philosophical argument to have; it's also completely irrelevant when compared to the practical truth that human beings are more important than any 'surprise plot twist' somebody has in mind on a pretendy fun time game. That reality is where policy needs to come from, because that's the reality where we, the players, actually have to live our real lives, sometimes dealing with some very real and very ugly things we would rather not have to think about in the time we want to spend relaxing, having fun, and enjoying telling stories together.

@Arkandel Posted events and such will have options for people to note any potential content the GM thinks may be problematic.

There are some things, not even going to pretend otherwise, that absolutely exist in the world but will not be permitted to be the concept for a PC. Arx seems to have kinda done this with prostitution somewhat, re: yes this could feasibly exist but we don't want PCs built around this concept. That's legit, to me.

That's essentially the tack I'm looking at re: slavery as an option, and 'human beings as a territory based commodity to harvest' is right out, full stop.

Similarly, it was absolutely not at all uncommon for young girls under ten (or younger) to be sold to brothels and not for training until they hit 18, either, but while PCs will likely be 16+, prostitutes may end up 18+ only, including any NPCs on screen. There are legality issues for some players in certain places about this. The US, where we're hosted, isn't as freaked out about it as some places, but Australia, for instance... just walking past someone posing something could cause major issues.

@Rook There's a complete preference setup on the wiki for this. Concept shamelessly stolen from Shang, it's just general game subject matter, not specific sexual preference things. (There are some general ones on the list, but it's folded into the sum including things like generic gore tolerances and how much you love/hate social scenes/etc.) Can look at a person's preferences from their page and see what they are, and are not, comfortable with and/or interested in. Can click on a preference and see who is interested in that thing, which is useful for GMs, since it can give them an indication of the kinds of stories currently active players are, or are not, interested in. If nobody on the game is into ghosts, maybe run something else, for instance. That one's been done for a year or so now, it just hasn't gone live anywhere yet since I wasn't going to drop it on BITN.

@Ganymede I will definitely take a look at it, and toss you whatever notes I end up with.