Posts made by surreality

@Thenomain That's essentially what I'm talking about, yeah.

The smaller the game -- or the smaller the game's focus -- the lower the ideal number is going to be. It's not something there's a one size fits all answer to, which is what I kept seeing suggested (sometimes with bad apple examples portrayed as being universal).

On a game like the one that spawned this thread, which is mage only? If they don't have m/m+ as well, one alt isn't an unreasonable prospect.

On a game like TR or FC? Not so much.

@lordbelh I know what you're saying in this regard, but that's not, IMHO, as damaging as the restriction can be. People are considerably less likely to create more niche concepts when they know that character is their one shot to find roleplay on a game. That results in a significant net loss to a game's environment, to my reckoning.

Also, it's worth noting that while there are people who are happy with playing just one character each on three games, there are also people who prefer to only play at one game at any given time. It's simply a difference in play style. That doubles down on the restriction for them, while the 'player investment' of time/energy/attention etc. would be the same for both people if they were both allowed to play three characters.

It's pretty easy to restrict roles without being draconian about players having alts (or insisting they have all of these other crappy traits in the process for flimsy justification of it).

Most games that allow alts already have restrictions regarding what those alts can be, such as 'no two in the same faction/family/sphere/character class/etc.' and 'no more than one character of rank X/status X/in a political office/in charge of a faction/etc.' (whatever system the game uses) is not exactly a stretch to add to this list. Some games already do have a 'no more than one fachead/family head/gov position/etc.' and this problem is rapidly resolved.

I favor allowing a reasonable number of alts.

Not everyone plays the same way, and goddamn, it'd be nice if people respected that more than I'm seeing in this thread.

A lot of what I'm seeing as reasons for 'oh no, only one, or the world ends' are another example of taking the uncool actions of a few and generalizing about everyone else as though playing more than one character on a game is going to guarantee they're going to lack focus, lack investment, try to take over every sphere on the game with a clique, and suck up more staff time than someone with one.

20 years of experience has taught me every one of these assumptions is faulty, and are inappropriate to sling at people who just like to play differently than you do.

@Arkandel My mom has a friend like that. He's in his early 90s and runs marathons and loves to go mountain climbing.

...these are things I could not have done on my very best day, to the extent that I look at even someone in their prime doing them and doff my virtual hat.

@HorrorHound Good luck with that.

@Arkandel I think this is all of us once we get out of our twenties. For so, so, so many reasons in some cases.

@Ganymede Fair! I just tend to point that one out because it can harm you (but really, I'm a smoker -- I am not so much a hypocrite as to tell someone they can't do something they know can harm themselves), too, and... really, a lot of people genuinely believe it's totally OK to use that to try to shame people with permanent injuries or actual physical problems into pushing it way, way more than they should.

@Arkandel Think of it this way: yeah, a lot of people have it worse, sure. That's actually a huge reason to work to preserve what you've got, and avoid recklessly breaking stuff that isn't broken by pushing too hard. While that may seem hokey, it's pretty sound. Slower, safe progress is progress -- which is the sane person goal, really. Patience is IMHO more badass in this regard as plowing ahead when your body's trying to NOPE that. Anybody can push it long enough to hurt themselves. Not just anybody can stick with something long enough for real, enduring results.

@Ganymede There's still... issues with that. It's one of those pieces of bad advice that people apply with a broad brush, even to folks like me who live with permanent injuries. (As in, no, when certain things hurt, stopping is the only option that won't prevent further damage, crazy people.)

I live with a massage therapist, and even for muscle strain, that can be really really bad advice to take. He rails about this to all of his clients (and I get it second hand). Tired ache and actual pain are different things, basically. Tired ache you can work through (within reason). Pain really is your body's way of telling you: something is wrong.

@Arkandel That whole 'pain is weakness leaving the body!' is the talk of morons, yes. Again, I think fire would cure them of this silly notion pretty quickly. Perhaps permanently.

@Coin Thank you! You know I you, but it's in like ALL THE THREADS lately... and seems to turn people away from universal contributions once it seems all WoD-centric.

Polite request that yet another thread does not become a yet another WoD/CoD/etc. sales pitch?

Thirded. Too many business expenses for fun that isn't free.

@Ganymede I wouldn't call your comments hateful, no.

On the rest, I'd still bet the female equiv would end up being something more along the lines of Flirts n' Skirts, which would make my desire to stab things crop up again.

@Ganymede I get what you're saying, but... two things.

First, the serious bit, being that I don't think a niche game that states up front they're a niche game needs to fight every social battle in the comics arena. (Even though I strongly share your view re: goddammit can we please treat our heroines equally.)

Second, the 'I wish I was just kidding' bit... about 90% of the lesbian or bisexual heroines I've seen on games have been played by men as pure porn bait. This... really only exacerbates the problem you're describing. Which is unfortunate.

@Arkandel He did say primarily non-het male chars -- which really is functionally different from 'everything is allowed, but the vast majority is heteronormative' even if the het crowd is actually very chill and welcoming. Which... is not always the case.

I still think it's more chill and welcoming now than it was ten years ago, but ten years ago it was pretty fucking wretched.

My answers on this one.

Just about any subjects will do, save for those I specifically avoid, but there must be more than one. Variety is necessary. It doesn't matter if it's my favorite thing ever, if it's all that all the time, I am going to get bored. I am going to get bored much faster if it's a perpetual downer, if not put off entirely.

Further, some semblance of balance amongst those elements is necessary. (A token political intrigue plot once a year on a game that's otherwise all war all the time isn't what I consider balanced.) If a game has a lot of bleakness, it also needs a dash of wonderment. If a game is high conflict, it needs moments of peace and celebration. If a game is mostly fluff, it needs moments of gravity and danger.

A semblance of balance of good and bad is needed. This doesn't need to be equal at all. Even 25% good and 75% bad is, in my perspective, viable.

Specifically avoided:

• One no-win scenario after another. I think these are good to include, but they need to be included sparingly.

• Something that cannot be resolved, explored further, learned from, or is otherwise nothing but a dead end, and is ultimately suffering for suffering's sake or Monty Haul gifty-wanking bullshit.

• Any time people think they're pushing the edgy envelope for its own sake, or shock value. Every time I've seen this done, it completely lacks any and all depth or actual gravity. (This can happen in any genre or on any subject, really.) If you're going to go over the top, have a firm reason for doing so, and be sure to convey that reason clearly in the course of play.

• Lack of time to ICly process events in personal RP or lack of necessary staff-supported followup on the consequences of plots or other major game action. I'm not looking for a roller coaster; if there are breath-taking highs and stomach-dropping lows, I want the characters to have time to fully experience them, think about them, and figure out how these events actually are somehow relevant (or not) to them in their lives -- not immediately skip ahead to the next high or low as though these things have zero impact whatsoever. If they have no impact, what's the damn point, anyway?

Staff support: some things, it helps. Others, I don't want them involved at all. I don't want staff butting their nose in to track TS/rolling to see if my char is suddenly pregnant/deciding who my character is involved with/etc., for instance, but I do want them there to answer questions or handle rolls if my character is doing followup on a staff-led plot.

The biggest thing for me is that staff not 'wrongfun' things that are explicitly permitted on the game. If you don't want people doing it, don't allow it in the first place. Don't make the players feel like shit for pursuing allowed fun, or that the only reason that fun is allowed is so that staff can use it as an excuse to hammer anyone who enjoys it. Similarly, don't publicly revel so much in one kind of fun that it makes it seem like it's really the only thing that is really acceptable, and everything else is barely tolerated while you pinch your nose and disdainfully glance away.

What themes and subject matter do you look for in a game?

This can be anything -- adventure, angst, romance, sci-fi, fantasy, historical, politics, intrigue, mystery, heroism/villainy, impossible challenges, etc. What permutations of these subjects do you enjoy most?

Do you look for one thing specifically, and don't care about the rest?

Do you need or want a balance of different elements?

What themes and subjects do you specifically avoid?

Do you feel the themes and subjects you're interested in need top-down support from staff on the game, or can they be exclusively player-led efforts?

I'll answer this one myself in the morning, but I'm curious to know what people are actually looking for. Not what systems folks are interested in, or if support code for those systems exists/doesn't exist unless for some reason those systems need to be there for you to get any enjoyment out of that theme or subject. (For example, if someone likes chasing down wandering monsters, a game would need to actually have wandering monsters on it.)

@Vorpal Was a restaurant, and they certainly could have used it, because we'll just say 'sensible financial choices' were not always their strong suit. (They used their profits to build a house that ended up being more than they could afford, and ultimately had to sell the old mansion, from what little I recall of it all. They'd moved away to the new house, so I wasn't hanging out with their daughter any more really, as previously she'd just been in the next development over from us.)

This was also in... god. 1982-1985 or thereabouts? So quite some time ago. They haven't owned the place for at least 20 years; it's a private home now from what little I know of its eventual fate. It got turned into a 'decorator show home' for a while in the interim, and I was always curious if that changed anything (if anyone could even tell from a show tour length visit), but I only found out about that about 3 months after they stopped doing the show tours, unfortunately.

I know I would have loved to know WTF was going on there. Especially that damned closet, because yeeeeesh. Of all the creepy crap I've seen over time, that's the one thing that genuinely gives me the shudders. Not really due to any 'omg mean ghost' thing, but just... whatever the heck that was, the idea of being stuck in that closet (not like it would be possible with the shelves in there but still) is frickin' awful to even contemplate, no matter how what was happening was happening.

@Vorpal The kind of stuff you're describing here is the kind of thing the folks I know specifically look into. That's basically what I've been saying here: they're not trying to prove 'it's ghosts!' They're looking at accounts of hauntings and seeing: "Hey, what could be going on here?" They don't automatically rule out 'ghosts', but they also have a lot of different classifications under that heading that are, actually, pretty relevant.

A lot of what they talk about is, generally, that somehow some event is 'recorded' by the environment in some unknown fashion, and simply replayed like a recording. This has nothing whatsoever to do with magic, pixies, or even whether there's an afterlife or not. It's something most of these folks think is some kind of natural phenomena we simply don't grok yet.

There were, absolutely, a lot of the 'omg a shadow out of the corner of my eye moved!' 'creepy noises!' 'blinky lights!' etc. going on in that restaurant, for instance, but even as a kid I wrote off stuff like this because there's just too many normal things that could be that people love to scare themselves about.

Three things stood out about that place, though. Two? OMGWTFweird. One? I'm pretty sure someone could find an explanation for by digging into the walls similar to what you describe.

The last was something multiple folks experienced, myself included, multiple times. There was one room upstairs which would grow horribly cold -- and I mean cold enough we'd see our breath cold, even in the middle of summer -- in an instant, the lights would start to flicker, and everyone in the room would feel a weight on their chest, not too different from the feeling of that lead blanket someone drapes over you when they take dental x-rays, just heavier. Almost can't breathe heavier. And it'd stop as quickly as it started, generally lasting 1-3 minutes. That? Fucking terrifying as a kid, sure, but I'm pretty sure that could be explained.

The second is an OMGWTF, but definitely falls under the kind of events you're describing. The third floor of the place was closed to the public, and we'd always be up there during the open business hours. One night, we're meandering down to put in our dinner order (since they'd feed us up in yon attic-land) and we see a man in a suit starting to come up the stairs. We both see him. My friend says, "Hey, no one's allowed upstairs except the owner and family." And this guy, who is dressed like he's stuck in the 1920s (yes, I did know what a 1920s suit and hair and facial hair looked like as a kid, I have been a costume geek forevah) doesn't even seem to see us despite the fact that we're standing right there, too, and he just heads up the stairs right between us, and as we're just having to start to turn our heads to see where he's going? Gone. Nothing. No one. We ran all around the top floor looking for the intruder, and there's no one. She called her father to come up -- no one is there. And this guy? Just looked like a guy. Nothing remotely creepy about him save for his vanishing act and the retro chic. So while weird as fuck-all, there was nothing scary about that, really. That is the kind of thing that folks I know would likely consider potentially infrasound, as you're describing, or the 'something got imprinted on the environment here somehow' notion, which, again, is not something they think is outside the realm of what we may some day be able to explain.

The last one? Fuck, NO CLUE. Her father's office was a disaster. It was super clutter-land. She asked me to get some tape for some crafty crap we were doing, and I figure I'll go to what I assume is the supply closet rather than trying to find it on his desk, which we weren't supposed to touch. I open the supply closet, and she's going dead white while I'm asking, "WTF, this closet is empty, why don't you keep anything in it?" It was just a linen closet with full-width and depth shelves, and it would have made the desk less of a disaster. Instead of explaining why she was white as a dang sheet, she just picks up a pencil cup from the desk, and puts it in the closet. She closes the door. She opens the door. The pencil cup is now on a shelf higher than it was before, and the pencils are scattered on different shelves throughout the closet. I'm like... actually, "..." really does sum it up, so I gather up the pencils, put them back in the cup, put it on a different shelf -- and same thing, again. At which point she just looks at me uncomfortably and says, "We don't use this closet." She didn't exactly have to explain why, and... explaining would not have really explained shit.

That one? Zero fucking clue.

So, yeah, I am not mocking them for wondering wtf was going on in their place, or deciding to dub it 'haunted', ultimately, even if even I would explain it differently. It did accurately convey, 'hooooooooly crap, some weird shit goes down in this joint!' and they were seriously not kidding.