I think there will be a 'Viking Werewolf' setting coming up soonish in some of the published material, if it isn't out yet. It was one of the options in the kickstarter voting, and while it didn't win its particular round, they got enough interest to include it anyway. It's one I'd be all over myself, in addition to the Victorian setting.
@Groth Something with the general vibe of Penny Dreadful would be more or less spot-on for that. And well-worth playing on, I think.
I would still really like to see a WoD game set in the late 80s through mid-90s -- any time in that range. (Edit: The TV series 'Wicked City', for instance, strikes me as having an amazing setting for a WoD game.)
It isn't so distant as to be incomprehensible to most, but many of the changes would have a profound impact. The lack of mobile tech, and the difference in the state of average consumer tech, has the potential to make a considerable difference entirely on its own.
Tempted to spin off a 'Jealousy on M*s' thread, but it's a lots of work day. But there should be one, because that is one hell of a broad subject.
I see the roster thing described here more or less like the feature characters on a superhero game. There seems to be some implicit understanding that there will be some differences in the way A plays Superman vs. how B is going to do it; this strikes the same chord.
I also think @Miss-Demeanor pretty much nails it in cases in which you have a group of people apping in together. LOST and The Walking Dead have a lot of good examples for this alone, and there's enough in the genre to provide more options.
Some policy has an impact here, too:
For instance, you could have a requirement that a first solo character needs to be taken from the roster, but a second can 'come in new' with a group once the player has found people they enjoy interacting with on the game that wish to form one, or the player wants to invite friends to play there as a part of a new group application.
@mietze said:
And I 1000 percent agree that if someone is using the "I'd be all over you but poor me my other lady friend won't let me" excuse? Maaaybe the lady friend is a total bitch, but it's 99.9 percent the case that the poor guy caught "in the middle" is an even bigger asshole.
Yup. I have seen exactly three exceptions to this in 20 years. (In that the people caught in the middle were not worse assholes, that is.) In all three cases, there was a lot of passive-aggressive 'go ahead and do the thing' 'YOU SHOULD HAVE MADE THE DECISION TO FORSAKE ANYTHING THAT DID NOT REVOLVE AROUND ME ON YOUR OWN!' crazy motherfucker head game bullshit. In all three cases it also involved RL relationship-foo resulting in the head game control freak having more influence than they would over the average stranger.
That saying about exceptions proving the rule comes to mind... fast.
@Apos Yup, and the 'there's drama there' affects both the poster and the named person exactly like you describe.
Very rare is the conflict on a game that is 100% one-sided, and the kind of player that can't stop themselves from provoking others or behaving in an inappropriate manner is going to stand out on their own, and usually pretty fast. Basically, in the cases of the worst offenders, by the time you read in someone's +finger that whoever you +fingered has a problem with that person, odds are good whoever is doing the reading has figured out that JoeBobFuckFace is a jerk already.
@VulgarKitten said:
Or start making lists of people they don't want to play with and post it up.
I'm on the same page with you re: 'there is a very short list of people I will not go near if I know it's them'. It's about six people long after 20 years, so it could be worse.
I wouldn't list them on +finger. Here's why:
Nothing provokes certain personality types to engage in creepy bullshit than being called out for engaging in creepy bullshit. One of the people on this list, while he didn't do this to me, has been known to deliberately deceive players that have told him, "Do not interact with me OOC, I want nothing to do with you ever again," in order to fuck with them without them realizing who he is.
Most people are nothing like the example above, and the reason we don't get along with them isn't some deep-seated malicious intent, but because we simply don't get along. They might be 100% fine interacting with everyone but us, and it's just not kosher to label someone a 'problem' like this -- because people will see it no other way -- and potentially avoid that person. Which is not fair. People used to do this on Shang; it's now one of their few rules that it's not allowed. I agree with them on this one.
It prolongs whatever drama inspired them to be added to that list long after it's best left dead and buried, and can contribute to further hostilities on that front. If you added them because you don't want whatever drama interacting with them entailed? This is not the way to get there.
@Apos I get what you're saying, definitely. I started on MOOs that were very similar to what you're describing. (Ghostwheel and Cybersphere, they had coded everything, and it was pretty neat.) It is a huge adjustment between the two.
The sandbox thing is more 'is there a metaplot' question than anything else; sandboxes are generally 'there's no metaplot, do whatever you want to do within reason' and there's not really any over-arching storyline for the game that's being led by the staff. TR wasn't a sandbox for a long time... then it was when the metaplot ended. I only got there after it ended, so I can't really compare the two in terms of experience.
@Apos Barging really isn't realistically a thing in public spaces. It's intended to prevent people from entering privately-owned builds, or temprooms, not prevent them from joining scenes on public areas of the grid.
The rest is predominantly a realization of the fact that most events on a game don't occur in real time, and real life sometimes prevents people from completing a scene in one sitting. There's mention, for instance, of how five minutes of game time could take hours -- or sometimes even days -- to type out or roll through if there's a large combat going on. It's not too uncommon for people to play from work or while otherwise occupied (there's a lot of talk about it in the random bitching thread recently) and taking really rather a long time to complete a scene that in IC time may only be a brief exchange, one that would be over by the time the other person arrived.
Time-skew can be pretty unavoidable without it glitching in one direction or the other; either the 5 minute exchange that takes 10 hours to type actually took 10 hours IC, or it's over before the additional person arrives, so neither setup is really a solution. It breaks reality any way you slice it, pretty much.
There are also certain circumstances that would make it less likely -- for instance, your characters have left the bar proper and wandered to the alley out back that isn't represented as a physical space on grid -- or you're picking up a scene that began and ended days before in IC time, etc. (I would argue in the latter case, finish up the scene in a temproom, but people don't always do so.)
There are non-asshole reasons inclusion by default is sometimes unrealistic.
@Thenomain Yup, that's why 'label your intent right up front' is so critical.
@Thenomain said:
That these games or players on these games don't think of ways to be inclusive to players (not necessarily the characters) is I think a major part of a larger issue, but I boil it down to "how these games are presented to be played need to be fundamentally changed to really work on-line".
This is kinda what I'm getting at.
One game's interpretation may be to remove that theme from the game and turn it into sunshine land. Some players will be drawn to that, enjoy playing it that way, and have a good time.
Another game's interpretation may be to insist that players adhere to the source material explicitly and instate OOC policies to enforce acceptance of the consequences of those thematic conflicts in certain ways. Some players will be drawn to that, enjoy playing that way, and have a good time.
Drop a player from GameA onto GameB, they're either going to have to learn to have fun under the different rules and within the culture of GameB, or they're shit out of luck. If they continue to behave as though they're on GameA, they're likely to piss people around them off pretty quickly. Even if you 'anger a clique', generally speaking, you actually did something that didn't fit the expected norms of that game. Sometimes people are just assholes, but rarely are people assholes with absolutely no cause.
Kinda. Slowly.
Think I need to find a way to get some fun in first before I go full bore on work again, though.
It may eventually be a thing?
There's a lot that ultimately goes into this -- on the primary thread subject, that is. (I would diagram this to make it easier to follow but this ain't wiki, so we're probably all fucked if my usual communication fail is in play. Sorry, y'all. Seriously, this is some flowchart-requiring shit.)
First: is it reality, or perception?
Frankly, much as we may not want to admit it, sometimes it is the reality. If it's the reality, why?
People can be cliquish in the bad way; sometimes they realize it and sometimes they don't. People can be exclusionary or distrustful or might simply be jerks. They might just be there to hang out with a handful of close friends that are the only thing keeping them in the hobby at all these days and not have time in their RL schedule for more, which, while it isn't deliberately exclusionary or any value judgment on the outside party, ultimately has the same end result.
More complicated is this: sometimes it isn't the other people. Sometimes it's us. Sometimes what we want out of the game is not what the game is designed to be, or is out of step with the game's culture. Sometimes games will adapt or players will play along or find these new avenues interesting, but that's a case of fighting inertia, which realistically is not often going to be a very successful prospect. It doesn't mean we're doing something wrong, or that what we want is somehow bad or wrong, it's just not what the game culture has evolved to be or include. The people who go there generally go there because they like what it is and what it currently offers. (Though plenty of us play on games despite what they are, and everyone sucks something up to a greater or lesser degree about any given game, the good has to outweigh the bad for anybody remotely sane to stick around.)
'Fish out of water' can be a fun character type to play, but it happens on the player level, too. Sometimes people shy away from players like this because they just don't get what that player is trying to do, or feel they're out of sync with what drew them to the game in the first place. Again, what I'm talking about isn't something bad about the game itself or about the player who feels excluded, but of the player having different expectations of the game and/or its culture in a way that hasn't been addressed directly in the thread before (as it was with the 'level of welcome/invitation to things'). Examples:
A highly PvP-focused player arrives on a game with a long-standing exclusively PvE culture and proceeds to play as they always have elsewhere.
A player accustomed to highly specific code for many details of their existence, such as an RPI might have, arrives on a game with minimal code, and asks where the commands to make sure they've eaten that day are, then requests staff add these things because 'it's just not a game without them'.
A player seeking an elaborate and in-depth metaplot and major staff storyteller presence guiding the course of events arrives on a sandbox game, where staff primarily alter the world to reflect what they players have impacted the setting if the players run plots and events that create these changes on their own initiative.
...none of these wants, play styles, etc. are bad or wrong. They're simply a better or worse fit for any given game. No game is going to be all things to all people, and it's a mistake to try. (It's a recipe for failure.)
These things can contribute to making a player unwelcome in reality in two important ways: other players may feel they're unwelcome or not want to interact with them, or, more subtly -- but I think a lot more commonly -- the player feels they don't fit.
I think there's a lot more self-awareness on this latter front than there once was; I know I see a lot more 'the place is fine, it's just not for me/it's not my style/it wasn't what I'm looking for' than I did years back. The sad truth is, not everybody has that self-awareness. They just see people shying away, and may not understand why, or how their expectations are impacting the situation. Without that awareness, they're just left with the sting, uncertainty, and feeling more and more unwelcome. (Which sucks.)
Even the generally more with-it folks I know, I've often seen say things like, "That game is just dumb because <reason that boils down to it not being exactly the opposite of everything it says it actually is>!" No, the game isn't stupid. You just want something out of it that it isn't designed or intended to provide for you. (Another reason that labeling intent and focus is important.) It doesn't make you stupid, either, but it's still something of a self-awareness fail. I do not go to Taco Bell and order Chinese food, after all -- so why would I go to a game labeled 'sandbox' and expect to be fed endless metaplot and staff-led PrPs? Why would I go to a game with heavy code and expect to just be able to ignore it all because I personally find it no fun to interact with extensive code?
All of that can contribute to a wholly internal sense of 'what I want isn't what I'm getting here', which, unless somebody's really paying attention to the fine points, can feel a hell of a lot like 'I'm not wanted here' after a while. It's understandable from both sides: you're looking for something the game doesn't really provide, and you're asking for something the game's culture has not evolved to give you. While there are rare exceptions, generally, this is going to lead to someone being progressively less involved with others on the game. You're not getting what it is you're really looking for, so you invest less. You're asking people for something that isn't what they're interested in, so they take you up on your offers less or invite you around less.
Both of these reactions are entirely normal and they are not indicative of 'bad' or 'wrong' or anything of the kind. They're pretty much the standard evolution of this rather typical reality. That process of weighing the good and the bad of a place to determine whether you're going to stay or not? As this progresses, 'leave' tends to get more appealing, even if the player trying to balance those scales isn't entirely aware of why.
It's a lot more subtle than being outright ignored in a scene, or having no one respond to offers of RP, but I have a strong suspicion it is a lot more common than either of those things are or ever will be.
...as to the perception thing, that's kinda been covered already.
@Luna If we had a bayou it'd make a lot more sense -- it's entirely practical in that case.
What kills me is that there's a huge park that allows the use of ATVs about 2 blocks from here, and another area that's perfect for it (and has no car traffic) that's literally the next development block over and is also 100% open to public use.
But nope. Up and down the hill for hours at a time. Just up and down the hill, gunning the motor as inefficiently as possible to create as much noise as the already noisy thing can manage.
It's very much a case of "I am a teenager trying to make everybody look at me and my toy" attention whoring, which would make sense maybe if there were many other teens around to be impressed by it. The hill? All old farts. Literally 'we just lost the 99-year old' level of 'old farts'.
The mind boggles.
@mietze Peacocks? Oh, god. You win. shudder
The noise they make is not compensated for by their level of pretty. Not even close. And they are seriously pretty creatures.
The only thing close to that we get here are foxes, which generate a few calls to the cops every year in the neighborhood since in mating season, well. "Someone is being murdered! Come quick!" about sums up the racket.
@Ganymede I 
you so very much right now. I may have to do that.
Seriously, it isn't even like... sprawly suburbs. It's dinky paved street. Currently, icy paved steep hill street.
(C'mon, gravity, do your thing. We used to live at the bottom of that hill, we remember how many cars ended up in the tree whenever we get weather!)
Dear kid with the ATV:
Do they not make mufflers for that shit? Or at least better ones than that?
Because goddamn, if you chain-gun that fucking motor one more time, I'm investing in caltrops. 
We live in the suburbs, you noisy little shitweasel. Running up and down the crappily paved asphalt of the hill is not even what that thing was designed for, and yet, every damn day, you're going up and down that hill for hours.