Posts made by surreality

@Gingerlily said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

Maybe someday there will be a Mu* gaming and design discussion forum that has no place for or interest in bashing other people (whether they feel like that bashing is totally legit or not, that is not what I am focusing on here)

Apparently there is one. Someone passed along the advertisement for it the other day. It's new, so I didn't see any posts there when I signed up.

http://www.mushology.com is it.

Part of the issue that forums have is that one person's constructive criticism is another person's bashing. Some places (and I do not know if that is one of them) utterly forbid anything but 100% positive commentary about the forum's subject, with no negatives or crit allowed. I find those spaces generally useless unless someone wants a place purely to squee about something they're a fan of with like minds (which absolutely has a place), but they're not really a thing for me.

@Derp I actually agree 100% re: 'one true wayism' -- it's utter bunk, really.

I'm working on a system that may or may not suck. There are policies that may or may not suck (but are easy to replace). It's all set up on a wiki, pretty much, with slow tinkering on code to allow people to bring that data into the game. Chargen will be a simple web form.

Once all the various code and base game system is in, I'm going to be doing a clone of the droplet with a basic wiki design, stripped of any of the 'custom' stuff for this world and these policies to play in it, and... well, basically anybody who wants a clone of the stripped droplet can then have one to build from, with a system (that may or may not suck, but is/will be easy to mod/add to/subtract from) with little more than filling out some wiki forms required, really. No books required, all of the data required to play is right there on wiki and in game, sheets are being set up to be hot-clickable so you can double-check your weird ability X directly from your character sheet itself on the wiki (so no need for people to make themselves cheat sheets to remember what does what), just fill in the world/setting data you want, scrap whatever policies you hate, build your grid, and... well, ready to go, pretty much. (Part of what's taking time is that that means documenting EVERYTHING as clearly as possible.)

It'd only work through digital ocean, but they DO allow people to store a complete backup of a droplet, and then send copies of it to others, who can then boot it up on their own from there, and do whatever the heck they want with it on their own account with the framework foo pre-built.

Some things people would have to suck up, mostly: all the IC info (other than the content of jobs, alt IDs, complaints, and the necessarily very very private RL/OOC business of a game) is public due to the nature of mediawiki. Sheets are public. Backgrounds are public. Etc. But if people can live with that? It'll be reasonably painless, and I think/hope it may be one of the easier ways for new game creators to get a head start, since it'll mostly be 'fill out the forms with your creative stuff and it'll auto-populate the wiki and the +game files (which is hybridized news/+help/etc. with categories)'.

That's the plan, anyway. It would be easy enough for someone passably tech-savvy to adapt to an existing system, I would think, since I had it half done for CoD before switching over to the OT stuff, and I'm sure someone would eventually clean up the actual code to not be the kind of thing people look at and wince (while rubbing their temples and downing shots) in some later iteration.

So I'm working on a framework that can maybe be an easier head start, but the actual game? Naw, that's gonna be niche as hell and I'm happy with that. Separate things, just being built more or less in tandem.

Since I've been struggling with this lately, this topic came to mind.

While 'what are you looking for in a game' is a related question, it isn't actually what I'm asking here.

I think there are many reasons that draw most people to RP, and of the general questions below, most of them probably apply to everyone to a greater or lesser extent -- sometimes for good, or bad.

Escapism. Sure, this could be the 'my life sucks and I want a vacation from it' trope that immediately comes to mind when escapism is mentioned, but that isn't actually all it means and I don't think it's wise for us to limit the definition to that alone. For instance, escapism can be a way to simply turn off one's own thoughts and tune in to a different way of thinking for a while; people go to movies for escapism, play other video games, and so on, so I'm going to ask that that broader interpretation is the one to ponder here. Even if a game's premise was based on 'you are exactly the real you with no changes at all, but you're now dropped into a completely different reality where things work differently', it's escapism.

Wish Fulfillment. Again, there are the tropes and extremes here: the perfect one, the never-scared strongman, etc. That isn't all there is to it, though, and 'I'd like to let my brain wander through a fantasy where I don't have to ever worry about money', or 'I'm taller' or 'I'm a sexy bastard' or 'I want to imagine being someone who isn't in a wheelchair' or 'I want to be a supervillain!' (or the reverse of any of these things) are also equally valid examples here that aren't the negative trope extremes. While it ties in to escapism, it isn't the same thing.

Curiosity. Again, tied to both of the above, but not the same. "How would I react if I was actually <something different than who the real me is>?" This could be a different gender identity, age, class, race, imaginary thing, with or without certain capabilities you do or don't actually possess. This is the "I wonder... " rather than the "I wish... " above.

Creativity. How much does the basic process of creating something feed into, or detract from, your enjoyment of the hobby? Do you love creating character concepts but then just not feel like playing them? Do you hate the hurdles of chargen and just want to get into the meat of creating stories? Do you like creating stories for others?

Collaboration. Does this matter to you? Would you be just as happy creating in a corner and dropping toys on the playground for others? Do you like, or dislike, planning or brainstorming ideas for a story as a collaborative effort? Do you prefer or especially enjoy freeform collaboration of simply interacting IC without any plan ahead of time?

Winning. How important is it? Does it matter? What do you consider 'winning' -- beating another player at something? Solving a puzzle? Playing a scene you enjoy writing? This is one people talk about often, but the definitions of what 'winning' is in this hobby are often not simple ones. Even with varying definitions, by whatever your own metric for 'winning' is, how often do you want it to happen? How much or how little 'winning' are you willing to settle for, or consider a minimum to enjoy a game?

Challenge. How much of a challenge are you seeking? Tied to the above, but not quite the same. Where do you want the challenge to come from -- the world? Other players? Staff?

There are definitely more of these, but this is what I've got off the top of my head.

I've recently hit the 'I don't think I can do this any more' in terms of RP point, which, as @bored mentions, is a bit of a thing sometimes around here.

It isn't a lack of options for me, that much I can say. I long ago lost count of all of the people who, with genuine good intent, always reached out to invite me to join them on a variety of games whenever I'd mention being in a slump, frustrated, etc. There are genuinely good people here, full stop, who give an actual damn about the other people here.

So it isn't lack of options, at least not for me. It's that I genuinely appreciate people who, most of them barely knowing me from a hole in the wall, are that open, considerate, and welcoming. It's that I have had a pretty epic string of bad luck going on for about 8 years now, with what looks like it's gonna be the final blow to whatever heart I had to try the 'delve into a story and whee!' again; I've been dropped on my head too many times in a row on that particular trust fall and am brain-damaged at this point, more or less. The latest incident of this [not the batshit crazy story] involved a very dear friend of a handful of years, someone I can honestly say I trusted more than I've trusted anyone before in my life, and... well, it has all gone so sideways that somebody may as well have reached into my chest and tore my heart out, shrugged a little, tossed it over their shoulder, and wiped the blood off their hands on their pants before insisting everything's cool, right? Right? Yeah... no. After that, my heart for that part of the hobby, and any last little flicker of hope I could find any happiness there, is hidden under the raccoon's butt, y'all.

(Sorry... but it's about dead on.)

But about... 2-3 years ago, now, starting on WORA, I asked a lot of questions about how people do stuff. How would they improve it? And I watched the same arguments play out over and over, with very little ever getting resolved, and the only real agreement being that there was no way known to solve any of them. I stopped asking the questions, and instead started looking for the roots of the problems, as I saw them, and try to come up with ideas outside the echo chamber of 'it can't be done'.

And for the most part, I shut up, retreated into my cave, and tinkered. I expected it would be a process that would take, say, a few months. It's been years now. I'm still tinkering. It's slow going, but it's going. Maybe it will work. Maybe it won't. Once in a while, I still ask questions. I'm still interested in that project because, as of right now, at least, it's a problem to solve, and maybe it's something that could be useful to folks, some of whom I mention above as doing things I think are good and good-hearted things, and plenty of others who I have had plenty of fun with over the years.

There are always new and more problems, and when they emerge, they seem to do it here. Then they can get added to the list of things that, frankly, may not make me happy the way RP once did, but at least help to take my mind off of the being sad bit when I have to beat my head against code (which I am incredibly bad at) and so on.

Also, since after the weirdest round of crazy ever on Shang...

1. I do have an OOC hangout/login bit on Shang to keep in touch with a few friends who are there! If you don't know what it is, you have other means of contacting me. (Like, y'know... here.)

2. No, I don't currently actually RP there and haven't been on the grid in upwards of three years now. I quite literally have a login in a rented room that sits there to talk to a couple of friends OOC once or twice a week to catch up on our lives in general.

3. I am not besties with staff there. Until having to file a +complaint about someone deciding it'd be happy fun times to harass me tonight, the last time I had any reason to talk to them was:
   -- 'hey, is your rental room code anywhere? I'd really love a copy if so!' several months back, probably around Thanksgiving 2016
   -- 'Weird, this shows multiple failed connect attempts to my account that I don't recognize all occurring within an hour, can somebody look into that?' (One once in a while isn't terribly rare, since it you try to create a name already in use from the login screen, it'll show up like that. 3 or more within the past hour? Yeeeeeeah, I'mma ask somebody to look at that plz!) in October 2016
   -- 2015, when I had to report someone for crazy levels of abuse.

So! That seems to have had to be said. The reason why will be in the 'Batshit Crazy Sightings' thread. (Edit: http://musoapbox.net/topic/1454/batshit-crazy-sightings/241 -- seriously, I am tired of being crazy bait.)

Cybersphere is home to my favorite memory of a bizarre IC name issue.

Since it's cyberpunk, most people used handles.

I was playing a chick who unfortunately was named 'Michael' after her father, because her mother was a sentimental idiot and he was dead, blah blah blah.

She meets and falls for a dude, and all the while, whirlwind romance, never knows the guy's actual name until they're trading vows, and she suddenly discovers she is now...

Michael Caine.

That will never stop being funny to me. Never.

If it's still the same place I remember from the 90s, it's a MOO. It has some mud-like random wandering monster things to smite if you're into that sort of thing, and is generally cyberpunk themed. There weren't really any staff run plots or PrPs like people think of them these days at that time, but it's entirely likely those things could have become a thing in the 20 years or so since I played there (and I'd be a little surprised if they hadn't).

It was always generally pretty neat.

I am pretty much not a fan of the dick pic, y'all.

An ex of mine used to send them to me on the regular. This was wince-making in a lot of ways, but it made him feel fab, so whatevs. He was also very self-conscious about his (totally normal and not at all small) size to a pathological degree but still seemed unable to ever stop himself from whipping it out when on what had otherwise been perfectly normal chatter video calls sometimes.

Year or so after shit ends, I run into another chick online he was apparently cheating on me with. She talks about all the dick pics he used to send her...

...and how huge he was.

I make a joke about 'well let's just be grateful the firecrotch is out of our lives' because he was VERY much that.

And she was initially confused as fuck, because, '...but his pubes were like BLACK BLACK.'

At which point we both realized he had apparently scoured the internet for a sizable number of someone else's dick pics to send her to pretend to be the proud owner of a 12 inch cock.

@Miss-Demeanor said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

@Thenomain You know, I have never played a 7th Sea game, but i have had so many friends tell me how amazing it is that I would absolutely try it. Also... pirates. God I would kill for a good pirate game. I WANT TO BE A PIRATE DAMMIT.

...that is actually what I've been working on since late October. OT/MUX, not 7th Sea/Evennia, but more Black Sails + non-WoD/Original Supernatural weirdness.

As another person in the top ten loudmouths present, I've played more original theme stuff than I have played WoD by an enormous margin.

I also think WoD is just really not that great for MUX and am often pretty vocal on that particular point especially. I reference it a lot, for the reasons stated above: most people know it and that can make a lot of things considerably easier to explain than they might be otherwise.

My third favorite thing to get mouthy about is that silly thing about different setups working for some games and being a bad idea for others.

(My very favorite thing is still carping on about creepers being creepy. Thankfully since I more or less stopped playing they aren't really an issue any more. Whee?)

@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.

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.

Seriously, is there some kind of limit to the number of times somebody can completely fuck you over, brazenly lie to you, and stab you in the back?

Just... fffffffuck.

I keep in touch with the original 'Jaded Gamer' from time to time on facebook. (I am almost never on facebook, so it's kinda rare.) In the last few times we spoke, a while back, he wasn't happy with where the original thing went, because it seemed like the monsters that had once been held up for exposure? Well, everybody else became monsters, too, as things went more than a little too far. I agreed with that, and still do.

There's a difference between talking about something shitty that someone has done, and endlessly fucking with that person because of it, and the old WORA had more of that going on that a lot of people could stomach. There, however, calling it out was just painting a target on one's own head.

Not so much the case here. Logs of "Look at this stupid rule on this game! Ha ha ha see how I trolled them about it?" do not get a warm welcome here, and for good reason: actually fucking with people just because you don't like their decisions or choices is not cool, it's not justified. Discussing the stupid rule here is a different thing entirely, particularly if it does not dissolve into personal attacks on an individual. We have plenty of folks who seem totally keen on personal attacks anyway (I've fallen into that trap myself, usually 'omg wtf with your reading comprehension?!' kinds of shit, which is about as far as those kinds of things go here anyway). We do not see things like the old picture of Jessica Rabbit in her underwear, drunkenly passed out in a hallway with her legs spread and propped against the walls, which was the kind of personal attack WORA was famous for.

As a brief update, I will be finishing up the current project as a sample for others to work from.

The thoughts of being able to return to the hobby pretty much went the way of the dodo tonight after a few particularly brutal revelations about a pretty awkward and painful personal situation I'm not going to discuss here under any circumstances.

Anyway, I'll update again when things are done. If I decide to try to run it, I might, but I won't be playing there, or, frankly, anywhere.

Discovering the person you thought was your closest friend is actually complete monster is something I really didn't want to have to go through twice in this hobby, but clearly I am entirely capable of making the same stupid mistake twice.

@faraday That's actually the biggest difference I see between here and WORA. Here, it's ideas and actions that get grilled and shredded, and usually with nowhere near the levels of vitriol common to any incarnation of WORA. WORA, it was people, full stop.

Perfect? No. But an enormous change for the better.

@Gingerlily I used to be a mod on the big abortiondebate forum on livejournal. I have seen some shit. <rubs salve on all the scars> So I know precisely what you're saying about it just kinda being how people are on the internets.

@Thenomain said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

What Wora was, though, was a reflection of our WoD-centric corner of the hobby. Even as late as 2010, if you didn't see slut-shaming a-plenty on WoD games, then I envy your sheltered online life. I was just as pissed off at VASpider and I can't remember who all mocking people by spamming conversations with talk about being served drinks by cabana boys and the deliciousness of pie, because they were not much different than the people they hated for spamming discussions with more boyish shit-stirring. I don't think the ability to distract and derail a conversation is something to be proud of.

I'm with you here. In part, because even now... everyone thinks I'm one of the people who championed that, and that continues to bug me. (Though, actually, no, that wasn't me -- it was the other chick with vast tracts of land, and everybody always got us confused because nobody could leave that pointless fact alone ever, either. Even I don't recall her forum name now.)

Someone whose opinion I respect says that Soapbox has gotten boring, and that's the downside of it; being afraid to offend is not conductive to discussion. Sometimes discussions will get heated, and that has to be okay; even frustration or open criticism needs its safe space.

I've never felt that heated discussions, frustration, or open criticism is at all unwelcome here. The only difference I have seen is that there's an active focus on shitty behaviors, explaining why they're shitty behaviors, and bitching about the damage those shitty behaviors have done -- rather than just going with the 'X is just shitty and should die in a fire!' with a dogpile of insults to a person that only tended to skim the reasons they were a problem. Really, the latter there is fine for venting, but it doesn't actually accomplish much in terms of identifying why they were shitty, and preventing someone else from doing that shitty thing again.

The Elsas and Spiders still get crucified. There just aren't as many Elsas and Spiders these days, compared to the number of them that once existed. They were the majority once, and that they're no longer the majority -- well, I wouldn't say WORA is the only reason for that, but it was certainly one of them.

WORA needed an endless supply of Storms and Jessica Rabbits and so on, and that well ran relatively dry after a while. Smaller things started to get the same response and level of vitriol as they had quite rightly earned, however, and that's not a great thing.

One of the things that people who haven't read here due to their opinions of WORA probably haven't noticed is the low tolerance for pointless shit-stirring, slut shaming, and slur crap. Some of this may just be a factor of people growing up, and general culture changing since those days, but they were all prevalent on WORA. Very prevalent.

I see a pretty marked difference between MSB and WORA.

People still argue here, and play devil's advocate plenty -- but rarely is there the constant trolling amongst regular posters occur that was fairly prevalent on WORA (in all of its incarnations) and SWOFA that made it nigh impossible to actually have a productive discussion about anything.

Many games never even make it on the radar here, but the ones that do, one way or another, tend to have their dirty laundry aired if there actually are soiled knickers scattered about the joint. It's entirely possible that the games no one ever mentions here have plenty that reekingly remain, but if there's something sketchy going on, it will often come to light here.

That's both good and bad. I think some of the worst breed of staffers are less likely to attempt to get away with shady garbage because of the fear of exposure. Fortunately, that means that the old-school worst abuses are much more rare today than they once were.

Unfortunately, that means that a lot of minor stuff, or stuff people just worry that maybe it could happen (not even could be happening but just could happen) gets elevated to the same level of hysteria that would erupt over things like staff banning somebody for turning them down for TS, or a staffer setting their husband's PC's stats to godlike levels for no reason, and so on. The closest I think we've seen to the kind of old-school horrors that raised the alarm are Elsa's email stalker campaign with channel meltdowns and Spider's illustrious career on TR and FC.

Even suspicion seems to be enough to condemn someone lately, and I'm not so sure I'm keen on that. Considering most people are aware of this, ironically enough it makes it a lot harder to find quality staffers, because you have folks now terrified to make even the slightest innocent minor and easily remedied mistake lest they be crucified as an eater of babies and kitten rapist -- and doing the damage control (which almost never works anyway) required to even attempt to correct the impression is enormously time-consuming, and usually futile.

That worries me. It can't not worry me, because in that way I see that there's real damage being done to the hobby. There's so much talent here in this community, but plenty of people are (quite understandably) not at all willing to do things because it's like painting a target on their face, ass, and heart all at once.

Do I think this is balanced out by the ability to impartially review ideas and concepts, or call out real major abuses and the like? Yeah. I do think the over-reaction stuff needs to slow its roll some, however, for this place to be as productive as it could be.