Posts made by surreality

@Entropy said:

@surreality said:

@Entropy said:

I think somewhere along the way my message of optimism got misconstrued to a call for utopia. I'm not that naive. I understand that there is no way to create a perfect game, or anything ridiculous like that.

But certainly I can help create one that is better than the choices we have at the moment. Which is all I'm trying to do.

Sure.. Staffer A is always not going to like Player B. They might have some bad blood. I just want Staffer A to be able to let Staffer B take over things for that player so that their personal issues don't negatively impact the game.

Here's the thing: you can do that, and obviously that is what one should do and what I'd do and what every sane staffer ever has known needs to be done, but that is absolutely zero guarantee of the result you're hoping for. Why? Because staff behaving badly are not the sole cause of trouble on a game. Bad players are the other side of that coin. And a bad player may still not be satisfied with that outcome, or may be convinced there's something shady going on behind the scenes, or think Staffer A still made the call but Staffer C just signed their name to it, or Staffer C is just Staffer A's lapdog, etc. -- and said player decides to tell everyone with ears exactly this. They may scream and kick up a fuss, demanding they will never get fair treatment so long as Staffer A is staff at all for any number of reasons from the reasonable to the ridiculous.

You cannot overlook this source of strife. As someone who went through more or less exactly the above for months of genuine insanity, I can tell you from first hand experience, this player is as common as the actually malicious shady staffer is -- but they are equally toxic to the environment of your game.

You keep focusing on 'good staff', but you can actually have good, ethical staff, and still encounter these problems, these accusations, and a whole pile of completely crazy bullshit that's just as unreasonable and broadly damaging as the Elsa example described above.

You need to be prepared for this, and accept the reality of it as something you will absolutely have to contend with -- and unfortunately I'm not really seeing any evidence that it's even a part of your understanding of the kinds of actual problems one can encounter as you're considering taking this all on. I'm not saying this to be a cunt here, I'm saying this because I know from experience that all the sincerity and transparency and honesty and good intentions and best practices in the world cannot prevent this or other problems from the player side from emerging.

If you are only looking at 'staff being a problem', you're only seeing half the picture.

Think of it as a math problem written on a page in front of you. Cover half the equation with your finger, and try to come up with the right answer, while missing half of the mechanics required to arrive at that answer. Maybe you can? But you're going to get a lot farther a lot faster if you're looking at the whole thing.

You need to look at the whole dynamic and you need to be realistic.

Or when Staffer B makes a judgment about Player A's request, and Player A isn't satisfied with the result, Staffers A and C might take a look at it and open a dialogue with Staffer B so that it's not just "Oh, this is my call and I don't need a reason for things being my way".

And some people are never satisfied until and unless they get their way, exactly. This is another area where you're going to have to get realistic and understand that sometimes it's staffer caprice, and other times, it's that the player asked for something that's completely batshit cray cray, because both things happen.

You talk about digging in on situations like the above, but in the example you've presented? We have one side of the story. We don't know what the app entailed. We don't know if it was asking for restricted or forbidden things. We don't know if special exceptions were being requested, if there were special criteria that needed to be met, and so on. We're just supposed to assume, I gather, that everything asked for was above board, and you can't do that as staff.

Is that a giant pain in the ass? Damn right, it is. But that's the reality on the ground, and it isn't so cut and dried as one might think.

I actually do take into account the idea of problem players. Part of the reason that I've stated that I'd want to do a comic based MU* was because I find a more (generally speaking) positive playerbase on these games than I do on the WoD and Cyberpunk/Shadowrun based games that I've been on. They're not perfect, and there is definitely some cray cray out there. I realize this. And if that player in the example was requesting something retarded, then it's the job of the staffers to realize that. Having a dialogue and discussing the issue doesn't mean that the player is going to get their way. It just means that people aren't going to be just shut down arbitrarily.

I speak mostly about the staff side of things because I feel that a competent staff can handle the problem of the player side of the equation. And because I'm not here to just talk about this utopian theoretical game, but asking for people who feel that they can be mature and work with a team to follow the expectations that I'm laying out. Those expectations aren't "I need you to be totally cool with everyone", or "I need you to give the players anything they desire". Those expectations are "Don't be an asshat", and "If you have a problem with someone pass that person off to someone else" and lastly, "If you shut something down and the player tries to make a clear point of why it should be, then hear them out and consider it, rather than taking umbrage that they dared question you".

I don't really think that these are unrealistic expectations to have.

What I'm essentially telling you is that the examples of behavior you're describing are the behaviors I've seen staff broadly exhibit -- and I mean the good examples.

They don't head off the problems at the pass the way it seems you expect them to, is the thing. What you're describing is standard practice at every game I've ever staffed on, going back to the 90s. It really is. I haven't been everywhere, obviously -- but there's nothing remotely revolutionary there. All of those games still had problems, and they had them because those aren't solutions...weren't.

Believe me when I say I wish they were, because reasonably they should be, but that's assuming everyone is being reasonable.

ETA: Gah, damn cough meds and edits and meh.

@Entropy said:

I think somewhere along the way my message of optimism got misconstrued to a call for utopia. I'm not that naive. I understand that there is no way to create a perfect game, or anything ridiculous like that.

But certainly I can help create one that is better than the choices we have at the moment. Which is all I'm trying to do.

Sure.. Staffer A is always not going to like Player B. They might have some bad blood. I just want Staffer A to be able to let Staffer B take over things for that player so that their personal issues don't negatively impact the game.

Here's the thing: you can do that, and obviously that is what one should do and what I'd do and what every sane staffer ever has known needs to be done, but that is absolutely zero guarantee of the result you're hoping for. Why? Because staff behaving badly are not the sole cause of trouble on a game. Bad players are the other side of that coin. And a bad player may still not be satisfied with that outcome, or may be convinced there's something shady going on behind the scenes, or think Staffer A still made the call but Staffer C just signed their name to it, or Staffer C is just Staffer A's lapdog, etc. -- and said player decides to tell everyone with ears exactly this. They may scream and kick up a fuss, demanding they will never get fair treatment so long as Staffer A is staff at all for any number of reasons from the reasonable to the ridiculous.

You cannot overlook this source of strife. As someone who went through more or less exactly the above for months of genuine insanity, I can tell you from first hand experience, this player is as common as the actually malicious shady staffer is -- but they are equally toxic to the environment of your game.

You keep focusing on 'good staff', but you can actually have good, ethical staff, and still encounter these problems, these accusations, and a whole pile of completely crazy bullshit that's just as unreasonable and broadly damaging as the Elsa example described above.

You need to be prepared for this, and accept the reality of it as something you will absolutely have to contend with -- and unfortunately I'm not really seeing any evidence that it's even a part of your understanding of the kinds of actual problems one can encounter as you're considering taking this all on. I'm not saying this to be a cunt here, I'm saying this because I know from experience that all the sincerity and transparency and honesty and good intentions and best practices in the world cannot prevent this or other problems from the player side from emerging.

If you are only looking at 'staff being a problem', you're only seeing half the picture.

Think of it as a math problem written on a page in front of you. Cover half the equation with your finger, and try to come up with the right answer, while missing half of the mechanics required to arrive at that answer. Maybe you can? But you're going to get a lot farther a lot faster if you're looking at the whole thing.

You need to look at the whole dynamic and you need to be realistic.

Or when Staffer B makes a judgment about Player A's request, and Player A isn't satisfied with the result, Staffers A and C might take a look at it and open a dialogue with Staffer B so that it's not just "Oh, this is my call and I don't need a reason for things being my way".

And some people are never satisfied until and unless they get their way, exactly. This is another area where you're going to have to get realistic and understand that sometimes it's staffer caprice, and other times, it's that the player asked for something that's completely batshit cray cray, because both things happen.

You talk about digging in on situations like the above, but in the example you've presented? We have one side of the story. We don't know what the app entailed. We don't know if it was asking for restricted or forbidden things. We don't know if special exceptions were being requested, if there were special criteria that needed to be met, and so on. We're just supposed to assume, I gather, that everything asked for was above board, and you can't do that as staff.

Is that a giant pain in the ass? Damn right, it is. But that's the reality on the ground, and it isn't so cut and dried as one might think.

@Arkandel said:

Your fallacy here is assuming you have a group of mature, intelligent people able to work with each other.

...and as my experience on Reno taught me, you really need to have all three. This isn't one of those 'two out of the three is fine' situations. You need all three, and you need a fourth on top: it needs to stay that way.

This is why it's more or less doomed, unfortunately.

A group that can't come to a consensus, or that simply steamrolls members of the group or ignores their input, will create the the very uncharming paradox of utter chaos and major stagnation at once.

It is not good.

@Entropy said:

And maybe the staff favoritism/corruption stuff isn't as prevalent as it once was, but you still have a lot of talk about the Troy/Sonders, VASpiders, Zero/Elsas and whoever else I'm not thinking of at the moment.

Your mistake is in thinking they are representative of the whole. There was a Storm, a Jessica Rabbit, and a handful of other gloriously shit staff back when, too.

There's also all the Coins and the Thenos and the Cobalts and the Sunnys and everyone else I could name that are actually active (unlike VASpider at least, and there hasn't even really been any bitching about Troy around here lately) who make constant positive contributions to the community and the games they work on.

Basically, your assumption of the quality of the sample out there is fundamentally flawed, as is the conclusion you're drawing. Frankly, most staff fuckups do not come from self-interest or malice or corruption, but from simple dumb mistakes like forgetting to follow up on something or overestimating what they can accomplish within a certain deadline, none of which indicates any of the nasty qualities you seem to be attributing as being abundant.

Just as many problems spring from shitty players with unrealistic expectations, paranoia, greed, a desire for special exceptions, etc. and until people grow the fuck up already and realize this is not a problem with staff and it's not a problem with players, but a host of generalized problems in the community rather than some insane Us vs. Them reductive and typically false dynamic, nothing is going to improve.

@Entropy said:

most of the complaints I see about games are about crappy, self-interested and thoroughly corrupt and/or malicious staff.

You see people discussing, generally, old shit and paranoia the old shit inspired, or taught people about what potential pitfalls are out there.

There aren't a hell of a lot of active stories of shitty staff these days, nor are they anywhere near as prevalent as they used to be.

Most of the shit you hear is about 'we tried to do more, we didn't make it', which is not remotely self-interested, corrupt, or malicious. Is the end result crappy? Sure. But the people sure as shit aren't.

@Coin said:

@TNP said:

@Coin said:

You essentially just need: a MU, a sheet, a grid, and an approval process.

You don't even need a +sheet, really. Just keep all the stats on the wiki. It's easier to read there too.

I know at least one person who would love to help with that when she's not busy dying stuff, right @surreality? XD

I have some wiki magic for that, more or less. Or can dev stuff. I don't know when exactly, but I did have a proto sheet thing for an OT worked up at one point that did calculations and whatnot.

@Thenomain said:

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

I've played on games with public +watch code on "hang-out" type locations and nobody cared.

Because watch code is done transparently. I've seen more people get upset about the friendlist/watch-for-login (aka The Other +Watch) than remote-room viewing, because you don't know who's stalking your logins.

The old +watch code on Reno -- +friends, I think -- would give you a list of who was watching for you. I don't think the current version does, but at least that was a thing.

That version went the way of the dodo when the +watch/all rubbed someone wrong. (Which essentially does what it says on the tin, it monitors every non-dark login/logout on the game.) Personally, I don't see what the big deal is about that specifically, as it strikes me as being more annoying than useful and nothing prevents someone from just adding everyone to their list anyway.

@Groth said:

The biggest problem I tend to discover in the transition from being a player in a game and staff in a game is that as your awareness of behind the scenes things increase, like player requests, metaplot etc etc you often lose awareness of what's going on at the player level since you don't get to interact with people in scenes the way that you used to. Spying on players is one way to gain that sort of awareness but it's something that is easily abused and can lead to the loss of player trust.

I agree with your assessment of the problem; I've observed the same. You at once know more and less from the staff side -- what you know is simply different and it is not quantitatively or universally better or more useful. It's a different perspective, and one that comes with advantages and disadvantages that, frankly, are often overlooked entirely or hand-waved away, though they are indeed real. (This is part of the reason the 'but staff knows metaplot!' argument is generally a bag of horsepuckey; in reality it's a trade-off.)

I do not think spying is an appropriate means to address this, however.

@Sessurea said:

so what other way is there for the few people who do want story to find each other, connect, play, without having to be perma-braced for the text-only version of unsolicited dick pics?

...or, sometimes, three offers+ of actual dick pics daily. For no apparent reason. I'm gonna go crawl into the shower and scrub that memory off, now.

@Jennkryst said:

Include the Delmarva peninsula. We have giant squirrels, the fountain of youth, and probably blackbeard's treasure. Probably. I know pirates were a big enough deal that there were laws requiring people have guns to fend them off.

I think we had Captain Kidd. I think. I always get my pirates mixed up.

Even today, though, some of the DE beach state parks have "No, srsly, you are not allowed to dig for pirate treasure here, people!" clauses. Which is kinda awesome and giggle-inspiring at once, because of that old 'by the time somebody has to make a rule, it's already too late' truism.

I think these really are good points -- it's easy to think missing an intended deadline is the end of the world. I'm still struggling with that mentality. (I admit it, I struggle with a perfectionism fixation and workaholic craziness as well, and this is really the battle between all the various brain-wonks, it's just that the beneficial ones won out this round. )

The reasoning @Apos mentions is pretty critical: assuming there will be time to catch up later is begging for problems. Invariably, the stuff you left for later that didn't seem mission critical is going to be someone's intensive focus the first week out of the gate -- maybe it's Murphy's Law, maybe it's people looking for less common niches to fill at the start -- but so help me, I think it's inevitable. It's one of the lessons I learned hard on Reno, actually; it proved out pretty consistently.

It's relatively easy to make a game.

It's not easy to make a good game, and that's already taking into account the fact that one man's passion is another's poison.

If it's going to take time -- and really, it tends to -- it needs to be allowed that time to develop into all it can be.

There's this weird tendency for people to naysay about this particularly -- the whole "ha ha it's taking longer than planned to finish everything it's a turkey!" crap -- that, to me, misses the point by a mile. The only failure there is predicting how long a notoriously unpredictable process is going to take, but people interpret it to mean a dozen other things it often doesn't. ("There must be drama causing this!" ...not really, could just be the holidays making people busy, man. "They don't know what they're doing!" ...or they do, and know it's going to take more work than originally predicted. "Nobody is interested in doing anything!" ...or maybe their job just dialed up their hours to eleven and all the give-a-shit in the world isn't going to add more hours to the day, etc.)

So thumbs up to @Ganymede on not going down that road; she's right, it's got way too many potholes.

@Apos said:

Probably be a month or two on launch, was hoping to have it out by new year's but don't think the economic systems and war game type systems for moving armies around will be done by then.

I feel you on this. I was aiming for the same and then the reality hit that if I kept up the pace I was at, with the amount of stuff I wanted in place... burnout would occur before the place even had a chance to exist. This was good to realize, and you get a thumbs-up for favoring 'done right' over 'done right now'.

@Cirno said:

I'd just like to also testify that I have also observed this paradigm shift in these games. I've been playing for about 10 years or so, with a recent very long break, which I am now trying to bring to an end, but I am also not really enjoying the new scene. I remember people walking around on the grids of games, doing stuff circa 2006 or thereabouts.

I enjoyed this, because it was more organic and felt more realistic - the spontaneity resembled life. You really became absorbed into your character. You were forced to improvise on very short notice. It was tremendously immersive.

I've seen this as well, and it's something I consider a sad change.

I can grok the reasoning for planning pivotal scenes and events, and real life makes that necessary enough. At the same time, those things were never what gave a character real depth to me, or created a sense of immersion. That was always the little shit, and the little shit was fun, and the little shit mattered. It rounded out the corners, it filled in the gaps, it created unexpected but later immensely impactful alliances and enmities, and dammit, I miss the fuck out of that.

I suspect if you could somehow integrate it with mediawiki (as an extension or something compatible running from the same domain), it could gain some traction.

I have no idea how feasible that is -- but it may provide some ideas.

@Arkandel To be fair, there is one circumstance I'm generally cool with it -- if someone is leading a meeting or giving a performance and there's some reason their poses need to stand out as a matter of convenience in a huge crowd of deathspam, for instance. It's actually helpful and useful, in that case.

It's things like going to the square in Shang and seeing someone posing pink, another cyan, and another yellow that makes my head spin and then there's frothing and wanting to kill things.

(Edit)
@Apos It's usually the simple '' code for bold or italic. It's not much more invasive than the other random punctuation used to denote emphasis in text, but it gets especially annoying in the wiki code configuration because depending on your font, it's easy to mistake it for quote marks at times unless you're looking closely.

I admittedly have done some... not often done things with ANSI. This may make me a terrible person, but I try to be relatively sane about it.

Hate ANSI in descs and OH GOD I HATE IT IN POSES DIE SCREAMING IF YOU DO THIS, but I did color code headers and footers for room parents by area/zone on a grid. It's not the text of the desc, but still, I can't claim total innocence in the ANSI wars.

Apropos of nothing other than it immediately coming to mind the moment anyone mentions cod.

@Alzie I'm not saying 'werewolves exist in their own reality'. I have explicitly stated, repeatedly, that I don't agree with that.

What I'm saying, and have said repeatedly, is that it is valuable to have someone on the game who is most knowledgeable about that system to be the one to make the more complicated calls in regard to it rather than 'anybody can'. Because 'anybody' is not equally informed, period.