Posts made by surreality

Back to the serious bit:

#1 Have a solid idea of what you want the game to focus on. Know why you're choosing what you're choosing in each instance.

• PvP? PvE? Blend of both?
• Consent? Non-consent? Hybrid?
• What type of roleplaying do you want going on? Social, combat, smut, adventure, exploration?

#2 Be able to answer all of this before considering theme and setting if you're going to create an original theme/setting, and especially if you're looking to use your own system. This is because the themes and setting you choose should be consistent with what you want the experience of the game to create. (Ex: If you want fluff, sunshine, and rainbows, you're not going to choose WoD. If you want grimdark danger, you aren't going to run a ponyverse game.)

#3 When working on themes and setting, think about how they encourage the kind of play you want going on.

• Consider incentives for the kind of behavior you want to encourage. This can be for anything from 'agreeing to an outcome that isn't advantageous to the character to foster further roleplay' to 'smote the most monsters this week' to 'ran a public event open to everyone on the game'; there are endless potential examples here. These incentives are usually XP, but they don't have to be, and not all games use XP anyway.
• Consider the power levels appropriate to what will create the environment you want. Is it a super-powers game? Underdogs game? Skilled normals team-up game?

#4 Explain all of this as clearly as possible. Avoid nebulous policy and unspoken rules. Explain the reasoning behind the choices made, even if it's as simple as 'because I want it this way'.

#5 Organize this information in such a way that people do not have to dig around desperately hunting for it, or are likely to miss something important.

#6 Have an actual playtesting period. While plenty of folks think things can just be done on the fly, this is not ideal, and causes needless stress on whoever has been putting the place together as they scramble through the opening flood while bug-hunting and fixing-on-the-fly at the same time as helping players through the basics.

@BetterJudgment Well, better than there being an angry, flailing spider there, at least? (I'm an arachnophobe, anything is better than an angry flailing spider.)

For today's rage bait: There is a show on television called The Rich Kids of Instagram. And here I thought the whole Kim K-clan thing was stupid shit no one should ever give the first casual damn about. This... just wow.

@Haven Already workin' on it. (Not the first time, either. Soooooo not kidding about that list of examples. )

@Arkandel ...sadly, I think the answer to that is already covered.

@surreality said in Making a MU* of your own:

And let's not forget the cavalcade of idiots that define interesting as:

• Thinks the concept is such genius the rest of the unwashed masses just can't understand when it actually makes no sense. ("You would realize it's brilliant if you weren't so stupid!")

I get sad when people stick so closely to such a cliche script.

@Haven It's definitely not the right forum for this kind of craziness, and I already have him on ignore now, so... have at!

@Swaggot <pat pat> You just keep on keepin' on there, in those interesting times, man.

@Haven Really, this thread is a pretty good primer for staffing. Sooner or later, you will get someone so in love with their idea that the very notion of changing from a verb form to a noun form of their character's secret clubhouse name means that you're castrating their concept for being too interesting.

And thus is the life of a staffer, in a nutshell.

Be prepared.

@Swaggot <pat pat> Maybe I'll believe that when you can actually make an argument for your 'too interesting' theory.

@Swaggot I insulted your assertion that people were denying these concepts for being too interesting, not you.

Because that assertion is, apparently by consensus now, ridiculously stupid.

It does not take much analysis to come to that conclusion.

@Swaggot said in Making a MU* of your own:

Literally anybody who defends this one-sided "analysis" is a cunt. Are you a cunt? The choice is yours.

And there you go again, all adorable, thinking you can make up the rules for the world to follow. <pat pat>

@ThatGuyThere And... exsanguination and exsanguinity and exsanguinator are nouns.

Edit: @Coin Indeed. Though if this is his definition of castration, he must get castrated an awful lot, and... shit, that explains a whole hell of a lot.

Edit edit: I think I found the real problem...

I wouldn't approve that, either.

@Autumn Exactly. People that don't make their expectations clear are very much a problem, and that's a problem they need to solve.

We had a corner case thing on BITN the other day. It's one of those 'people generally know to not do that and I've only ever heard of it even coming up once before in the history of wiki-having games' scenarios, but the moment it did come up, it was noted in policy within an hour on game and wiki. Staff was polite about it. The player was 100% cool about it and totally understood.

ZERO drama.

@Swaggot said in Making a MU* of your own:

@surreality I hope you realize that the majority of your post is declaring something uninteresting,

No, Rick. I'm sorry that you still seem to be failing at reading comprehension, but no.

"I don't like those concepts." --> valid opinion

I don't give an opinion about whether I like any of those concepts or not. Anywhere.

"Disagreeing with me about what is and is not interesting is 'ridiculously delusional stupidity'." --> ridiculously delusional stupidity

Which might make some sense if... no, actually, there's almost no way that could make sense, so I'm not going to even try to get through your skull.

Let's look at your first objection more closely:

Is this stupid and hopelessly pedantic? Sure. Wanting to use a verb for a name doesn't make somebody more interesting in any way, though, so failure to defend a ridiculous assertion #1.

What is and is not interesting is subjective. Are you deliberately being a cunt, or are you just clinically retarded? This is of non-exclusive or, so you can be both.

I am always a cunt. But if you think a verb in place of a noun is inherently more interesting, my gods, man... you're aiming pretty low for 'interesting'.

(I see how you focus on that rather than the first point, too, which is, "Wow, that's an incredibly stupid rule to have." We'll just overlook that for now and carry on!)

Either of these conditions can be corrected, but the first step in solving any problem is admitting that you have one.

<pat pat> Dear Pot, go find yourself a kettle, this teacup finds you tiresome and unintelligent.

Onto your second:

You're going to have to clarify here

No, I'm not.

Yeah, you kinda are, because you aren't, it seems, telling the whole story. And people who don't tell the whole story are usually trying to hide something that would prove their ranting claims invalid.

The fact that they changed the rules mid-game and acted like I was the one at fault is, in itself, their issue, not mine.

If you didn't keep current on the rules and this was made clear? Yeah, it is your fault. No staff worth its salt is going to say, "Well, we've since banned X, but we'll change that back just so you can have it." Because you're asking for something you're not supposed to have at that point, which makes you an entitled little shit.

No further explanation is needed.

Yes, it really was, as it did sorta prove the point. Just because you want us to ignore it so you can support a claim of horrible wrongs done to you because you're just that interesting doesn't mean anyone with a single lick of sense actually will.

Is your reading comprehension this low that you didn't notice this detail, are you too dumb to understand this fact, or are you deliberately ignoring it in the interest of screeching at me over the Internet?

I love it so much when you ascribe some crazy shrieking tone to me like I'm flailing wildly, screaming at the monitor, and railing at cruel, bitter fate that the guy whose lifelong dream to play EE&E has been crushed has so deeply wounded me.

Again, dear Pot: the teacup finds you in dire need of a mirror. (Or maybe a good therapist to explain 'projection' to you.)

Your third:

It's pretty common.

I've seen maybe one other person do this and I've played Werewolf for a while so, I think you're exaggerating just a wee bit.

And I was werestaff for the better part of a year, played in the spheres online for ages, ran the sphere in a couple of LARPs going back to the 90s. I think maybe, just maybe, I've seen more concepts come and go than you.

How about your last one:

OMG you're still going on about this? Really?

LIKE OMG I CAN'T EVEN is a line of thought that clinically retarded cunts use a lot.

...and it's my reading comprehension that's in question here? <squint> Again, loving all the stuff you ascribe to me! You make me so much more interesting than I actually am! May you live in interesting times, man.

But no, really, I just find it hilarious that you're on like... what, your third or fourth account now to keep fighting a battle over whether or not you were allowed to play a trio of cartoon characters on a pretendy fun time game like it's a serious struggle against oppression. This is like, wayyyyyyyyy beyond the definition of 'first world problem', for real. I would take a dude who got one too few shots of caramel in his Starbucks fluffacchino more seriously than I take this, and for the sake of everyone's mental health, you may want to consider doing the same.

Based on this, I'm leaning toward "both" after reading this. This is a non-argument and basically gives me license to ignore the rest of your post.

You ignored all of it already, save for what you wanted to seize upon to go psycho and persecution complex. Mostly, all the places I was calling you out on your evasions and bullshit. (Which you're now trying to do with more obvious baiting nonsense and ad hominem, because you still can't support your original point that 'people get denied for being too interesting', and on the whole that's sad and boring.)

No, dude. People get denied because they're not playing by the rules. If those rules are not posted? Yes, that is a problem, and they need to fix that problem by posting those rules, and doing so clearly. It doesn't, however, mean the denied party was denied for being too interesting, unless the actual rule is, "We don't want anything interesting on this game."

@Swaggot said in Making a MU* of your own:

@surreality Here are a few examples of something being banned for being too interesting:

Not a single one of these examples is a case of 'too interesting'. Not a one.

• A Moros character can't have the Shadow Name "Exsanguinate" because Shadow Names can't be verbs, you should take uh "Thanatos" instead (WoD game),

Is this stupid and hopelessly pedantic? Sure. Wanting to use a verb for a name doesn't make somebody more interesting in any way, though, so failure to defend a ridiculous assertion #1.

• You can't make a Cleric who worships a Magickal God even though the game lets you, and even has special messages for this, because Clerics are supposed to be Anti-Magick (Imperian, decided about a year after I had been doing this IG),

You're going to have to clarify here. Is it a system based on a book game, or an original thing with just the game site? Most games based on books have house rules that restrict some shit or disallow it entirely. Was this the case? Was this a case of the game changing the rule and expecting people to comply? ('No grandfathering', or 'grandfathered chars won't be lost, but no new characters of this type will be allowed'? -- both very common.) Was this a random staffer just being an asshole?

Regardless of all of the questions above, there's nothing interesting about this one, either. It's someone asking for an exception and being told 'no'.

• Your escaped convict werewolf can't have three dots in Brawl or Weaponry even though he spent the last decade fighting in a hyperbolic WoD prison on a daily basis, he can have two dots instead (another WoD game; no rule to this effect was in their guide, they just didn't like combat stats),

Do these people need to write that shit down if they're going to manage stats that way? They sure as shit do! Is it a stupid guideline? Yes.

...but as a former werewolf TL, I can assure you, I've seen this concept so many times there's not a hint of anything remotely interesting about it. It's pretty common. (It's also pretty stupid one because good luck surviving prison as a werewolf who has already gone through their change without being exposed.)

Again, this has zippity-squat to do with 'interesting' and everything to do with 'we don't want our game a certain way'. Which people need to be up front about. People having unspoken rules? Still has not a goddamned thing to do with whether the character or concept is interesting or not.

• You can't play Ed from Ed, Edd, n Eddie because it's too silly, but these slew of other people can have canon Pokeymanz and canon Ponies (MultiverseMUSH)

OMG you're still going on about this? Really?

I can go on, but to no insignificant degree staff often expects people to color inside of lines they don't actually write anywhere, and much of the time the lines they do write are literally there to preclude one from making all but the most cookie cutter, lame shit. So pointing this sort of thing out doesn't really qualify as "entitlement" so much as it does "entirely valid criticism."

Should these things be written down somewhere if they're going to be enforced? Of course. That is a valid criticism, absolutely. Absolutely.

It still has absolutely nothing to do with whether they're interesting or not in any way, shape, or form, and these things are not the same complaint. They aren't even in the same zip code.

"People expect me to follow rules they don't tell me about!" <-- Valid and sensible objection.

"People are just castrating my ideas because they're too interesting!" <-- Ridiculously delusional stupidity on par with the people who once altered the real wikipedia to try to pitch an absurd concept and try to pretend it was historically accurate.

It sounds like the place isn't just a guy's private home, either, but some kind of small apartment complex or shared home with tenants. That means it isn't just his personal concerns he has to keep in mind, but all those of the people paying to live there. Also means it's a lot harder to determine if it's someone who should be there or not -- it wouldn't just be his guests there, but his tenants' guests, and a lot of places keep security logs of that if it's in certain areas. (I know one building I lived in when I was in Los Angeles sure as hell did.)

I'm mostly horrified by the people insisting the guy is a douche for not letting people on his property like he's the jerk. Who is going to get sued if they get hurt there? Him. Who is gonna get sued if one of his tenants gets hurt because of people trespassing? Him. Who is gonna have to pay for the damages of people tromping through/extra groundskeeping/having to clean up when even less thoughtful people litter/etc.? Him.

I kinda can't help but empathize with this guy. We have two empty house lots (that now need to stay that way, thanks nature! Long story.) that we used to let the neighborhood kids play in for over thirty years, because that was just being neighborly. Until a whole lot of entitled parents decided it wasn't their fault when the kids broke my folks' windows playing, ripped up stuff my mom had spent hundreds of dollars planting, and started insisting the folks improve/add shit to the field to make it safer for their kids to play there. Yeah. People who wouldn't even fix the shit they broke were demanding the people who were being generous and nice should be the ones to lay out more money so they could continue to be taken advantage of. Like my retired, elderly, broke-ass parents are going to walk the property every two days looking for gopher holes to fill or pay a landscaper to fix so their kids can play on it and continue ripping the place up? I don't think so. (You would have loved the looks on people's faces when my father -- who is admittedly clueless -- suggested, "Why don't you just have the kids tell us if they find a hole, or one of the older kids can fill it in before they start playing?" You would think he'd suggested filling the hole with one of the little kids' dismembered bodies.)

@Kanye-Qwest Yuuuuuuuuuuuuup!

And let's not forget the cavalcade of idiots that define interesting as:

• Something no one is supposed to be able to have, but they get to. ("I'm the exception!")
• Being more powerful than everyone else. ("I'm better than anybody else can be!")
• Gets to be a dick to others without any consequences. ("But being a complete cockmunch is my concept, you can't make my character suffer in any way for playing my character!!")
• Thinks the concept is such genius the rest of the unwashed masses just can't understand when it actually makes no sense. ("You would realize it's brilliant if you weren't so stupid!")

I love the last group the best. When they hit the grid, they are simply baffled as to why their character -- inevitably a deaf-mute leper trisexual princess/rabbit-hybrid with Tourette's from c.1500 Zanzibar who tries to murder every second person she encounters due to the horrible curse of Azzzzblatt the Destroyer on her saintly family line -- isn't the most popular character ever.

@ThugHeaven The soundtrack is so 80s Carpenter film it's giving me nostalgia cramps.

@tragedyjones This is why I keep harping on everyone re: 80s game. Dork.

@Insomnia There are a couple of orb weavers that do that.

Some will build the web in the evening and take them down in the morning, and it tends to leave stuff behind. We get them on the door and awnings here, too.

They tend to hide out during the day, but you have to watch at night to avoid getting a faceful of unhappiness.

A better scenario is, uh, maybe they were just passing through and left a strand. I don't think they turn off the faucet so much, so it leaves a trail behind more or less everywhere they go.

@Swaggot said in Making a MU* of your own:

@surreality I've seen the requirements to go from "no" to "yes" in a lot of cases and it usually amounts to castrating the concept.

I'd love to know what kind of examples we're talking about.

• Are they people asking to play an LOTR elf on a Game of Thrones game? (Heard about it, didn't see it personally. Have seen someone come to a WoD game and ask to play a Strix, though, that was... special.)

• Are they people showing up on a game where everyone is given the same amount of points to spend to create a starting character, and scream and flail when told they won't get more to make their character because they just don't want to play a starting character so why should they have to? (Seen it. "Because everyone starts with the same amount, no exceptions.")

• Are they people showing up with, "And I was a fairy when I went to fairyland, and then became a vampire in WoD, and now I'm also a mage from when I played on a Dresden Files game, and then I also became a werejaguar when I lived in Anita Blake world!"? (Sorry, this game is not that game, and we don't have fairies or mages or vampires or werejaguars in ours, so you cannot be or formerly have been those things in-character.)

• Did they show up on a game that had a list clearly labeled 'forbidden concepts' and seemingly concoct their order off that list like a combo plate menu at a Chinese restaurant? ( @WTFE probably remembers this list, how extreme the concepts were, and can imagine how hilarious that had to be when that one went down.)

All of these examples happened. All of those above? They're the just plain "no", because all of the situations above come down to: "We have rules, and you're expected to play by them, too."

This is not staff being assholes. This is not staff "castrating someone's concept" for "being too interesting". This is staff not granting some people permission to break rules everyone else is following just because the player wants to, thinks they're special enough to warrant an exception, thinks they're just that much more amazing than everyone else, etc.

This is the entitlement problem in the hobby.

The most important parts of the concept are what are usually expected to go because they're too interesting.

I have not once seen a concept denied for being too interesting. Not in 20 years. Not even in the years of tabletop and LARP before that.

So you're going to have to define what you mean by interesting, here, I guess.

I'm not going to touch the objections to the article with a ten foot pole. (Not even someone else's ten foot pole.)

@Swaggot said in Making a MU* of your own:

@surreality I think there's a lot of malice that gets attributed to simply saying "I don't like your character idea" to people.

It isn't really even a case of ascribing malice to it, really.

Most people aren't going to bother making a character they don't like or aren't eager to play, and put time into doing it, so even before the character gets a yes/no to enter the game, there's some measure of investment there, even if it's just a minor investment of time spent going through whatever motions are of the initial chargen process. (Considering how involved or time-consuming that can be for some games, this isn't always something that somebody could breeze through in ten minutes or so.)

So for some folks, they're looking at it as: "You wasted my time, you asshole!" in addition to "What do you mean my Unicorn Star Princess Ninja Babe with Sparkefairy Magic and the ability to control turtles with her mind isn't the most brilliantly original and thematic concept ever?!?!?!" (<-- Not an actual concept that I have seen pitched, but less dumb than the actual dumbest concepts I have seen pitched.)

...none of which is good. For that player, it does suck. They liked the idea enough to try to make it, and they have now wasted their time.

Sadly, it's often people asking for the weirdest, most out there, most 'did they like, even read the game theme or setting?!' concepts that will be the most vocal, histrionic, and irrational about this. This is because they usually have read the theme and/or setting info, and they really just don't give a fuck, because their idea is just that special, and clearly you, the staffer, will be so blown away by their masterpiece that exceptions will be made for them (even if everything says no exceptions will be made to anything for anybody).

No, really. It's like a sliding scale, it really is. The borderline crap? Most people are all 'eh, ok, I'll change X' or just drop it and try something else with minimal drama. The more batshit bonkers the concept they're pitching, the more over the top crazy the response to the 'no' is going to be. I'm sure there's the rare exception to this, but I haven't come across them yet.

I don't blame you for not wanting to do the customer service rep thing on your games, though. It's a game. You're staffing on this shit because it's something you do for fun. These things almost never generate revenue and real profits, so I don't think there's any expectation of impartiality.

I don't actually staff for fun (because mediating arguments, doing jobmonkey work, etc. is not remotely fun), or with even the faintest interest in financial gain; financial gain is not even a factor I bother to consider. I staff to help facilitate a space where fun can happen -- for others, for me if there's time for it, and ideally for both.

Only some people want to hear 'that's crap, gtfo with that shit' and consider the matter closed. Others want to find a way to work with elements of what they came up with and try to find a way they'll work, which does involve changing things to reach the point at which the 'no' becomes 'yes'. I've seen considerably more of the latter than the former over the years.

@Swaggot said in Making a MU* of your own:

I think the use of professionalspeak in the context of a game about pretending to be a vampire or whatever is just plain cringey; it betrays how seriously you take yourself.

I also think I'm in the minority for perceiving things this way.

Yes and no, I think. We disagree on impartiality. A lot of people merely pay it lip service, but plenty of others I've seen adhere to it.

It's a more -- and less -- complicated issue than it might be otherwise. Less in that, yeah, you could tell people to please just fuck off, but more, because of, well, entitled attitudes and people expecting a customer service rep mentality.

Meanwhile, this is the core policy for staff professionalism I have set up for whatever I end up running someday:

Staff on <game> are not bound to the traditional image of a customer service representative who must endure abuse with a smile as a measure of their 'professionalism'.

Staff is here to keep the game operating as smoothly and efficiently as possible. A customer service representative is actually there to fix your problem, take down your feedback, check on the status of your package, or take your online or mail order, not sit there getting kicked repeatedly in the face because you're unhappy. Similarly, we're here to help you get your character approved, run plots, process +jobs, mediate disputes impartially, and make fun things happen whenever we possibly can.

That's our job, and doing our job efficiently is what professionalism actually is by our definition here.

...and then there are further rambly-ass notes with a link to this and this, with the latter example as the better standard to adhere to. (Essentially, "Don't feed someone bullshit and call it filet mignon, people are generally not that stupid," -- which goes in both directions along the player <-> staff continuum.)

I'm sure things will go swimmingly when there's a bunch of people pointing their phones at a playground full of kids to catch pokebeasties bouncing around. That's gonna generate some angry letters.

Or when one shows up behind, say, Sean Penn or something.

(There is a part of me that would start photoshopping paparazzi-punch photos of celebs with pokebeasts in the background and a phone overlay, but I am far, far too lazy for that, which is good, because this is a terrible part of me that should not be encouraged.)