Posts made by surreality

re: Special: most tv, book, and tabletop games do focus on a smaller circle, so that smaller circle gets to do all the things.

The things need to be spread out more with a larger player base, even if it's a case of 'we all took down the satellites!' but group 1 took down satellite 1 with their group of 5 players in their way, group 2 took down satellite 2 with another five in their way, etc. Or maybe there's 'hacking team' blocking the satellites from seeing the ships coming in to blow them up, 'flying team' is dodging baddies and getting the demolitions crew to the satellites, and 'blowing shit up team' rigs the things to blow once they arrive.

The problem happens when someone has to be doing ALL THE THINGS, and cannot and will not be happy unless they're hacking and flying and blowing up at the same time in the latter example, or are in groups 1-5 of 5 in the former. (This is one of the reasons a lot of people can't stand Mage in WoD -- this type of player is drawn so often to Mage in ways that are desperately tedious.)

@three-eyed-crow said in Earning stuff:

Sometimes I'm genuinely unclear ooc if something is impossible or not. I don't care so much about failing at stuff it makes sense for my character to try. That can be really interesting. But it's a waste of my time and staff's time to go down a dead end and I really and truly would be fine with an ooc clarification of 'this isn't feasible at this time and due to future plots I can't tell you exactly why.'

I am absolutely this player, too. It's awful from the staff end, too.

When I was kicking stuff around, I worked up a history with a 'this is how the world came to be, and this is how things work in it. Your characters don't know this, and none of the NPCs you'll ever come into contact with know it, either, and in fact, no one in the world knows the whole thing and how everything works together at all for anyone to actually find out in the course of the game, deal with it' set of rough notes to eventually flesh out properly. This was an OT game, so 'as players, you need to know how reality actually works here, even if your characters don't and never will' is a little more necessary than it might be otherwise.

I think of this as 'the oWoD problem', aka 'here are a whole bunch of totally incompatible creation myths that are all totally true!' and then 'pick whichever you want for your table and you know we really didn't plan for games to cross over much so you really only need one, right?' Games have not been great on the 'pick one', historically speaking. I've seen, 'what's in the books is what your characters think, only staff knows the truth!' but, wow, does that ever clash and crash around a lot in ways that are not always easy to untangle.

So, it's 'This is how reality actually works. Your character doesn't know this and never will. As a player, make a character that fits within this paradigm, and don't break reality.'

As for specifics, like those in @Apos' example, other than the outline of existing plots, I planned to have all the world lore available to players, with spoiler tags in places where it would be tucked into other things, so that folks who didn't want to know didn't get an unwanted info dump. It's up to them if they want to read it, since -- with few exceptions -- they'd be able to incorporate these things in plots they run themselves. If they're willing to do that and provide fun for others that way, I'm of a mind to give them all the tools available to do it.

Plenty of folks run campaigns in tabletop off of pre-written modules. Plenty of players have played them before, or read that book, before or while playing. It doesn't stop them from having fun, and plenty of people 'play fair' by not automagically knowing all the answers. (WoD proves this. People have access to the books to know OOC how everyone's powers work, and characters are baffled by what's going on all the time while the players know precisely what mechanics to apply, etc.) Some people will be jerks about this, but people can find ways to be jerks about any option chosen, so I lean toward the one I like and think would be most helpful for people who want to make up new stuff or run plots to be able to do that on the OOC level with as little stress and mystery as possible. Mystery is for the characters, to me, not the people trying to add something to the game world in some way that is intended for the enjoyment of others.

@carex said in Let's talk about TS.:

It dosen't matter if someone walks in wearing a giant, neon purple, strap-on it isn't "forcing a kink" on someone unless that viewer finds it arousing and is made uncomfortable by that arousal.

In some cases, sure. But I wouldn't call this one a universal. (It's often easy enough to spot in the 'methinks thou dost protest too much' sense when this is true, but that's also not any sort of certainty.)

Some people are hot for gore and mutilation for sexual gratification; someone being made uncomfortable by that isn't necessarily going to be ashamed of their own secret sexual woo from gore and mutilation, they may simply find it horrifying and gross if they don't like gore or mutilation period. There are people into racist or sexist themes in fetish play; someone being put off by that isn't necessarily put off because they are ashamed they find it also hot, but because they're not fans of racism or sexism.

Even some of this is a RL vs. VR thing. If I walked into a fetish club and people were engaging in scat play, and that's allowed there, I may just be plain and simple put off by the smell and leave. Until we have smellovision in VR (OH PLEASE GODS NEVER NO PLEASE NO), that's not going to be an issue in the same way.

There are fetishes for damned near everything, so the reasons for an objection are going to vary a lot.

@arkandel said in Earning stuff:

It used to be staff were beyond criticism but that's no longer the case, which is a significant cultural shift in the right direction. Even when they protest they don't care (and they do, a lot) staff are seeing their players having expectations from them other than paying the bills.

The idea of staff being immune to criticism pretty much went out the door with the first WORA, which was a fair bit longer ago.

I'd be more inclined to say it's a pendulum issue. Pre-WORA, staff being shady were shady in the shadows, and there was nowhere this really came out. There might be some small exodus of a group of players from a game, but rarely did people from multiple games communicate extensively for that to have much impact on who came to play there later, and so on.

So much shady nonsense went on in the shadows and came to light that even now, most staff are considered untrustworthy by default, particularly on WoD games. In plenty of cases, all it took was one player being told 'no' to get someone's reputation completely destroyed, and telling people 'no' sometimes is absolutely part of staff's job, and staff has to be able to tell people 'no' when 'no' is the appropriate answer. It could produce calls for that staffer's head on a plate or a mass exodus of the game, or new players refusing to go there.

Essentially, it went from staff being immune to criticism or being told 'no' to players being immune to criticism or being told 'no'. Neither of those scenarios are good things. That seems to be starting to change only over the past 2-3 years toward something more balanced.

@arkandel said in Let's talk about TS.:

@surreality said in Let's talk about TS.:

@arkandel 'Where it belongs' and what qualifies is a huge area of disagreement, though.

But it shouldn't be, and staff ought to clarify it if it is.

I completely get your point, but after the constant drubbing and bashing I keep getting for suggesting I want to try to do anything like this, gods help anyone who does try anything but 'everywhere', 'nowhere', or 'use common sense! (and watch everyone completely disagree about what that is and endless needless and/or inappropriate bickering ensues)'.

@arkandel 'Where it belongs' and what qualifies is a huge area of disagreement, though.

Someone walking into a goth club or biker bar wearing a leash, for instance, has come up more than once (I can think of at least two or three instances of it off hand) as 'unacceptably forcing kinks on others' who are simply present.

This is a predictable thing to witness in those environments, full stop. It is RL, too. Slut-shaming these people and throwing rapey accusations at them about forced participation through just having to see it happen is by no definition 'sex positive'.

ETA: TR had more public strip clubs than clothing stores. People have an expectation of being allowed to go to any location on grid that isn't faction-locked or a private residence. Someone entering a strip club and claiming their limits are being violated because someone is posing being on stage and stripping is the one in the wrong, here, not the person engaging in RP involving sexual content in a space outside their private bedroom.

On the sex positive front, I think there's also another factor people run into a lot.

People engaging in a public spectacle (not my thing personally) tend to get judged, and hard, even when in a place where this could reasonably be expected to be happening, and there are very likely NPCs doing the same thing. They tend to get called all manner of horrible things that stray into the rape territory of unwelcome sexual advances, including 'forcing the participation of others' who are simply present and in no other way engaged with the activity.

That actually isn't sex positive. There's nothing 'live and let live' about that attitude at all. That's 'keep your shit I'm not into behind closed doors', regardless of the appropriateness (or lack thereof) for the play space in question.

People consensually flirting, groping, or grinding lewdly all over each other on a dance floor are 'a public spectacle'. It's also an entirely acceptable one for that RP environment, and someone claiming they're bad and should feel bad for 'forcing expectations on someone else' is simply bullshit. If it was a city council meeting? Sure, objections are absolutely reasonable.

'I don't like just seeing that, even if it's entirely expected and predictable in this grid space' is also forcing expectations in the form of unreasonable limitations on someone else, and is not cool.

https://weather.com/news/trending/video/usgs-dont-roast-marshmallows-over-volcano

@faraday I agree on the 'how much info' thing, believe it or not.

Thing is, I think there are viable ways of working around this that allow players familiar with the culture to skim over the basics and have full comprehension of almost everything that would be there, while still presenting the whys and examples and further info for folks who are new to the culture as a resource. It's not hard to set this up in such a way as to ensure the old hats, who are skimming over the same list of exactly what they probably would expect to find, are not going to be bombarded with endless details. That absolutely is important for the 'information overload' reason you describe.

There are different staffing styles. There are different game cultures. Different things are going to work better or worse depending on a variety of these variables. Game size is a factor. Are there similar games out there with an established culture people know? That's a factor, too. Are you using new systems or trying totally new things? That's going to be a factor as well. Is the player base primarily composed of people who have played together for years, with new arrivals brought in by that group and essentially mentored through the norms for the group? That'll be a factor, too.

This is not a 'one true way' or 'one size fits all' prospect. Someone who can make style A work and sucks at style B should stick with style A, and vice versa. It doesn't mean their a failure, wrong, or somehow lacking because they take a different approach that suits their skillset and the community atmosphere they want to cultivate. Just like we wouldn't tell someone who wouldn't be suited to running a horror game they should run no games, I think it's short-sighted to suggest that if someone can't make something work via only one approach, they shouldn't be using an approach that they feel is more effective and suited to their belief in the way things should be done.

All of the options have downsides, or potential pitfalls. All of them. All of them have strengths, too.

Beyond that, some game themes, settings, and game systems are just going to require some different information. You're probably not going to need a rape policy on a My Little Pony game. You probably will on a WoD game. You're not going to need a list of restricted or not-in-use bits and bobs from a published game system on an original theme game, nor will you need a policy that says 'don't ask us to add things from the restricted list, it's restricted for a reason'. (People do this all the time. Allllll the time. That up front 'no', when it gets added? Has stemmed that tide immensely, and diminished the amount of staff work and angst. I've seen it! It's a thing.) You're not going to need rules for XP spends on a freeform consent game that is statless, but you're probably going to need them for a game that uses an XP-based system. And so on.

@thenomain Anne Rice predated them, is why. They're more lucky they never got sued by her. She was a few novels into the vampire series when I was in high school; V:tM1e came out right when I graduated.

Edit: D'oh, misread. From what I remember, they were going after some really picky trademarked things. Many of which were aggressively WTF stupid. Like 'You used the letter V in regard to a vampire!!! THAT IS OUR THING!' is one of the ones I half-remember. (Ignore the fact that the V was for 'Victor' and not 'Vampire' in Underworld, I guess... )

There is some thread in the history of the board where the whole 'all disciplinary action should be 100% transparent including all the logs and names and communications with staff involved and posted to the public for discussion' that had a lot of people talking about how this was the best practice ever.

Sadly, it is not just one person suggesting this. <prophet voice>This is a thing that has happened before, and doubtless shall again.</prophet voice>

I don't think that included actual voting on a result... but the voting part really just makes it so much worse. Imagine that setup and Spider on that game. (I take no responsibilities for the emotional trauma that notion induces, or any vomiting that may occur.)

@faraday said in Earning stuff:

@surreality said in Earning stuff:

It's practically an epidemic on some games.

And yet it doesn't exist at all on many other games with the exact same policy. I argue that the policy is not the cause of the problem.

Most of the games where it happens are large games with a fairly diverse player base. It's not 'staff are just shitty there'.

Getting doxxed or stalked is horrible, but anybody who needs "don't do that" spelled out for them in policies is either willfully obtuse or beyond help.

And yet, how many people accidentally slip and use someone's real name when discussing a mutual friend? Reminders aren't bad.

On the flip side - sure there are some folks who will wander into unlocked rooms or private scenes because they don't know better. But if someone complains, you don't need to come down on them like a ton of bricks. You just make a gentle correction to clarify game expectations. Having a policy might stave off that step IF they bother to read it, but it's not automatically a huge deal if it happens.

If these things result in issues, I see that as staffer problems, not policy problems.

Nowhere is it suggested that anyone come down on them like a ton of bricks.

The game actually had a policy on this -- but it was named in such a way that someone unfamiliar with the terminology would never think it was relevant to that issue.

Policy should not be 'do not do this/you must do this or you will be horribly punished'. It should establish community standards and describe expectations. Barring a few 'zero tolerance' corner cases (stalking, harassment, knowingly cheating via code exploits), if you're presenting policy as 'thou shalt/thou shalt not or the hammer of the gods shall smite thee', you're already doing it completely wrong.

@thenomain This is actually part of why I'm keen on that approach, actually. There's some things -- using the lock example again -- that could be generating more staff work and complaints if someone, for instance, complains that someone told them to get the heck out of their bedroom and they'd assumed they could just wander in there because there's no coded lock, too.

@Arkandel You pretty much nailed one of the other things that I actually write down, because people will absolutely insist that because there wasn't a rule about their uniquely concocted asshattery, they can't be punished. (Generally, they will already have a reason this is not asshattery, whether they're playing innocent or are actually genuinely clueless, and that it's the other person who is not 'being an adult' because they're objecting to the behavior.) That's the 'if new policy has to go into place because of something you did, it was either horrible enough we never thought anyone would think it's OK to be that big an asshole without penalty, or it was a genuine blind spot no one realized would cause a problem before now'. The latter is massively rare, and it's usually easy to spot the difference.

Back on TR, the Firan flood brought in some folks totally unaccustomed to the different culture on the game. There was a player that, gods help me, she was the bane of my existence because she was genuinely clueless, and not deliberately obtuse, but she had no understanding of the cultural norms of the game and was very aggressive if they were pointed out to her by fellow players. This understandably caused immediate conflict and escalation that never needed to happen.

For instance, she believed that it was entirely kosher to wander into any of the occupied temp rooms without invitation, or a word at all OOC, and just plunk down and observe total strangers RPing as passive entertainment for herself. This actually is a thing in some places, and again. Some of it has to do with coded locks, but part of it has to do with the culture of passive observation being allowed. This sounds completely bonkers to a lot of people not familiar with it until you consider how many of us have run into an RP buddy 'just parking in the group hangout to watch the IC goings on of their RP circle and maybe chat a little OOC with buddies' while at work, or 'I'll pop in and if I'm able to pose in I will but I may just hang out and maybe chat today if things are busy', which, to the outside observer or new player, looks like 'sure, obviously, hanging out and just watching people play is allowed, that guy's doing it!' (without realizing there's any understanding amongst those players, or plans to pose in later, or that they had to leave unexpectedly, etc.).

Most of us would have little issue with a buddy popping into a room and saying, "Hey, can I hang out here while y'all RP and chat a little OOC about the group's plans today while I'm at work?" (And they get a yes or no and life goes on.)

I suspect plenty of people would take issue with a total stranger OOCly meandering into their bedroom and plunking their ass down with a bucket of popcorn, without a word, waiting to be entertained.

Culture and expectations are super relevant in these cases. Now, that this player would go on the attack if her behavior was questioned or she was asked to leave/etc.? Not OK. She still had, gods help us all, reason to be confused, and from her perspective, other people were the ones being assholes to her by telling her to get the heck out of the room. (She was not the brightest bulb, but she was not being deliberately obtuse, either. I think at least a few hundred sparkly white hairs from that year are owed to her alone.)

@thenomain said in Earning stuff:

I cannot express how many times I have seen a game with some kind of “don’t be a jerk”rule, then a staffer is a complete jerk and nothing happens to them. Players see this, and they form their own set of rules for the game. Sometimes they talk about them on game and sometimes staff shut them down because they either don’t know or want the double standard to prefer them.

This right here, definitely. It's why I think something should be there, visible -- it doesn't have to be done any specific way, but I think it should be done -- about the 'unspoken staff rules'.

I don't think it's either/or, either. For folks familiar with the culture, 'Don't powerpose for others' will cover it, for example. They just need to see that one sentence and they know what's what, and they're likely used to that cultural norm from other existing games already, so it's a quick reminder and they move along without fuss. It's the person who has never played before that has reason to click the link for 'this is what that means, and why it isn't cool to do that', which helps them avoid that -- they might not even know what 'powerposing' is.

It's like the locks problem. Some games with lots of code, you can freely enter any place your character can enter according to the code. Others, this is a big no-no. They're both text games, but the expectations are complete opposites. Letting people know which kind of game it is and what the expectations are helps avoid that pitfall.

It's also worth noting that I don't see most policy as an exercise in 'dare not, lest you be smote from orbit'. It's about describing the culture you want to see exist on the game, and letting people know 'and as you interact with people and code and RPG systems and storylines on this game, this is how to handle it'.

@faraday I have seen this happen in the way @ThatGuyThere describes for over twenty years now. It's practically an epidemic on some games. Some of this comes from the genuine assholes who are trying to screw someone over hard in a way they can pretend is totally fine and dandy. (Again, the solution on people like this is easy and this type reveals themselves more quickly than I think they realize they do.) I've heard 'You're an adult, deal with the creeper yourself,' from staff -- multiple times -- even when it was a case of someone constantly pressing for RL information about me and sending very unwelcome pages/mail, and just showing up in the room literally every time I was on grid to just stand there and watch everything I was doing as an intimidation tactic, not just doing something creepy IC. I've heard 'deal with it yourself like an adult' when someone who knew me from another game years and years ago blurted out my real full name and asked if I still lived in <location> in the middle of a crowded OOC room (information they'd stalked off an old domain name registration decades ago before there were many options for privacy available). And from staff? "You're a grown up, deal with it yourself." In the latter case, I got lucky enough that a few other players in the room immediately bombarded the guy with 'NOT COOL, DUDE!' and he eventually stopped, but only after handing out the ancient and no longer valid email address from that old domain and getting ready to move on to my landline phone number.

It does happen. It is really not great when it happens.

It's a couple things.

As for the edgelord creepy stuff, my response is in the other thread: it's the table. We don't have one. Looking someone in the eye when going somewhere creepy limits the amount of that you're going to see at the average table.

As for the endless bleakness, I think a lot of it comes down to a couple of factors:

• "We are so proving that this is not a game about tea parties!"
• "It's not the world of dimmer switches, it's the world of DARKNESS!!! ONLY THE DARKEST OF DARKNESS WILL DO!"
• The system actually does make success harder in nWoD/CoD than in oWoD by making all difficulty levels the same no matter what, and even success tends to come with some kind of downside (usually some drawback to the use of a power).
• Edgelords. If it isn't about raping baby seals while clubbing them to death, IT'S JUST NOT DARK ENOUGH.
• A lot of very commonly-assigned conditions and drawbacks are outright crippling, and written in such a way that they may be impossible to ever resolve.

More abstractly, some people do the equivalent of taking everything to the extreme, whether the horror they're aiming for is gore, torture, emotional terror, etc. My favorite horror movies are Nightbreed, Frailty, and Pan's Labyrinth. Most WoD games make me feel like I'm playing in The Human Centipede 3, Hostel, and the Saw series. From me, that is not a compliment. (I am OK if somebody goes Sharknado once in a while, because c'mon, SHARKNADO.)

@arkandel Yes. YES. Exactly.

And the people who want the TS and don't get it due to FtB are often very keen on trying to angle for this kind of misery as 'consequences' that are more long-lasting and gag-inducing than the TS would have been in the first place.

There was a dude on TR who kept trying to use biokinesis for all manner of sexual bullshit.

The GMC version of the power is fairly simple and straightforward. The nWoD version is a little more complex, but it was still a very specific list of possible effects.

None of these involved super sperm, inflicting extra fertility on someone, and so on, but creepers gonna creep.

To this day I remember the post that went up titled 'Biokinesis by the Book' that very tactfully reminded the playerbase that the merit only worked as described in the book and in no other way. If I didn't know about the biokinesis sex olympics going on from a number of people 'OMG WTF'ing at me at random when they'd run into this dude, I'd have no idea why that post was made, but knowing it absolutely had to be because of that (and his constant pressure on female players to impregnate them with it), I loved that super basic simple policy reminder enough to laugh my ass off when it went up, and I still snicker just recalling it.

@tempest said in Miami, Blood in the Water:

If anybody doesn't get "Fallcoast staff is panicking because it dropped from 100+ person who lists to 30 person who lists in the span of about a month" vibes from this "advertisement", I think it's a case of being willfully obtuse.

They've been talking about it for months in spots scattered all over the forum. It has a thread now -- presumably -- because they're getting closer to doing something with it. Wretched has a pretty cool thread about some of the neighborhood systems and such he was asking for feedback about from well before there was any mention of the new game here.

I'm just not seeing the muppet flail or the hair on fire freakout. People in this thread are also saying:

@icanbeyourmuse said in Miami, Blood in the Water:

@tinuviel Truth in that. A bunch of friends and I made a krewe and a good percent of them lost interest because of the reset.

...and similar's been said privately and in other threads as well. 'Something new is coming, don't get too invested or start winding things up' is a thing.

Asking for feedback and input from potential players who like their staffcorps and game running style, while giving people ample time to wind up their stories, is something that I'd put in the 'considerate and wise staff decisions' category rather than an indication of mortal terror.

As usual, I hope both games absolutely rock, and the people on them have a blast.

As usual, everybody who likes WoD makes a login on more or less every new WoD game that surfaces, and there's a huge attrition rate within the first 2-3 months if people don't find it fits their personal groove or doesn't click, because most people are eager for cool new places to play and are interested in checking them out. We've seen this with literally every WoD game that opens, people, c'mon. (It'll happen on Miami, too.)

I'm a little perplexed by the 'this is only coming up since a new game was announced' commentary. The Miami project has been discussed on MSB (and presumably on FC) for months now, long before this thread existed; this is hardly its first mention, and it doesn't seem like anyone's rushing to compete with another game. I know I've chatted with a variety of people in threads and in PMs about it over the past few months; pretty sure I wasn't hallucinating that.

(I did, sadly, drop the ball on getting random pics as I hoped if there was anything interesting, because I suck, and more or less slept too much. Other than a 'What In The Actual Fuck/Only In Florida' shot of the runways for the Fort Lauderdale airport, which are a highway overpass in places. <cue terrified scream here> Not sure how useful that will be to anyone... )

I like them. I love them. I love them like I love switches in descs for time of day and season and weather, even though nobody bothers reading room descs most of the time.

I am that old school asshole, still loving these things.

I also think an opt-out is just plain necessary, because for frequent players, it gets repetitive.

If there's some sweeping 'everyone in town right now would notice this', there's always @wall and similar commands or setups to make sure no one misses one time major emits like, 'oh, hey, a volcano suddenly erupted two blocks over!' just by turning off the ambience emitter.