Best posts made by ThatGuyThere

@faraday said in Player buy-in:

On a Western game, you can end up with people expecting everything from "Into the West" to "Little House on the Prairie" to "Pick a Spaghetti Western" to "Deadwood". These people will each have vastly different expectations on how the game "should" be.

Westerns are almost a perfect example of the issue, it has been a common genre for so long that just about any mood or tone can be found in it. So while my personal preferred take on westerns would be very classic John Wayne, (Big Jake was one of my favorite movies as a kid) but even if some one said John Wayne western there is a lot of ground there between She Wore a Yellow Ribbon or McClintock or The Shootist. All three are John Wayne movies but none would really mix well in theme or tone.

@faraday said in What is your turning point?:

@sockmonkey said in What is your turning point?:

how you can move specific plots along without scheduling some scenes in advance.

+mail Bob=The Thing/Got your IC message. My char would definitely try to meet with you about it. Let's try to sync up this week if we can. If not I suggest we ((backscene/off-camera/say we ICly missed each other/G-Doc RP/whatever fits the circumstances)). I'm usually on weeknights after 9:30EST unless my kids lose their minds or work explodes.

For me the way I look at it is my time has value, and if I am on a game it is to RP so unless we have some thing scheduled if I know you might be on at 9:30 but at 8 someone offers RP, no matter how important our scene may be I will take sure RP at 8 over possible RP later. Or even this tv program looks interesting at 9 over maybe RP at 9:30.
I can empathize over the feeling of a schedule making it seem like work I do get that, but with out that commitment it boils to the online equivalent of "Let do lunch sometime."

Mildly off topic but every time I open up this thread I hear Salt and Peppa in my head, then I realize how old that song is and by extension how old I am.

I agree with Raptor on the WoD table top issue though with one caveat. I think MUSHing has helped me run better WoD tabletops because I slow them down more then when I run other genres, and I know since that style change I have gotten a lot of positive feedback and more of the gaming group interested in WoD.

@gingerlily said in A (Mildly Complete) List of Current Games:

I have never found the common refrain of 'It was so much better in the 90's'

Whenever I hear this in regards to mushing I always wonder if they lived through the same 90s I did.
Not to say I didn't have a shit ton of fun back then but I would be very hesitant to all anything from then better. It was different some of the issues were different but I would also agree that from a qualitative perspective if not a quantitative one things have gotten better not worse.
Of course I don't tend to have much a sense of nostalgia in general.

@derp
For me it is at least partially me not liking the game making RP decisions for my characters, I have played multiple ogres in TT and Mushes since I generally like the big brute types. Most have wanted redemption in some form or another, a minority were just unrepentant bastards out for self interest and personal gain. That is one of those things like playing evil alignments in D+D if the folks running the game be it a table top GM or Mush staff and the player have zero issues with it I don't see it as the place of the game itself to moralize.
Note I have no issue at all with a Gm or Staff saying no to an unrepentant mob enforcer Ogre because it is not the type of character they want in a game but I find the game itself trying to force a redemption story to be a strike against it.

@Coin said:

@surreality said:

@Coin Same -- but there are people who do continue to press the issue, and will use the argument that 'if you avoid me, you're cheating, because you lurve me now!'

Which is more or less a giant disaster for players who are ethical and honest and want to play fair.

No, what it really is is a dick that needs to be pimp-smacked in the kisser.

And how often in our hobby does staff actually pimp smack the dick?
More often then not a complaint like this results in the complaining player being told handle it yourself, or worse told they are cheating.
The Doors system is fine assuming not asshats, but in a mush that is not a save assumption my any means.
True combat works that way as well but from what i have seen staff is a hell of a lot more likely to involve themselves when combat is involved when asked where when it involves social rules they tend to try and dodge involvement.

@BobGoblin said:

How much 'code' is too much code?

When it interferes with rp rather then facilitates rp is my answer, granted i know that is horribly imprecise and will differ for each game but that is also the truest answer I can think of.

@HelloProject
The difference is no one accuses Onyx Path of being professionals.

(Just a joke folks everyone take a deep breath.)

I would play on an St. Lake City game as long as I could use Heroin Bob from SLC Punk as my played by.

To me it is less about length and more about flow of the scene.
Some scenes are more visceral and for those I prefer short and quickly delivered poses to keep the emotional impact present.
Some scenes are more cerebral and artistic, in those i prefer longer poses and time really does not become a factor.
I like both types of scenes and both have a place but bad things can happen when folks are in once scene and each expecting a different type.

There is not right or wrong way to play these games.
To me the issue is games not being clear on what they are. To use table top as an imperfect example, in most of my games I states right away in the beginning that death can and will happen, a friend of mine in the same group when he runs is clear that only in the most unusual of circumstances will a PC die. Most players in both sets of games are the same and have fun, the tone of the games is different. His games tend to be more high action action blockbuster explosion-y stuff mind tend to be lower key gritty action more like film noir then summer blockbuster.
My issue with a lot of games where no death occurs is they are not clear about the expectations, so I play my char as cautious but active, not running from the plot but trying to do things in a smart way to maximize chance of success and end up being the char who never does anything because folks are rewarded for running heedlessly into danger. I have no problem being the action movie hero who laughs at danger but be clear that is the game you are running.

@Thenomain
I officially dub it theme drift.
Part of it in inevitable. In any game that is remotely successful staff will be outnumbered by players by a wide margin. PC tend towards being exceptional individuals that is why we play them but it is a very common theme to be the guy that pushes the envelope as a character. Look at Dirty Harry. He is a maverick cop. Lets say there is a game that focuses on realistic crime drama. Harry Callahan is a perfectly in theme character but near the edges, well the next char that want to play the common maverick trope goes one step father since who wants to be the lesser maverick . This continues until said Dirty Harry is the closest thing to exemplary police work and procedure on the game. players are going to play what they find fun, if that is hedging theme then it will be an uphill battle for staff to keep theme in place.

I was a big fan of West Wing so I think the rp/game part of it could be a lot of fun.
But if this primary season has taught me anything it is that people will use just about any comment to try and start a political argument, so the thought of the probable OOC rants being tossed at one another by the players would have me definitely passing on a game like this til mid 2017 at the earliest.

As an old man, I consider both tumblr and twitter to be blights on existence but yeah I would seriously doubt they are more crazy on average then MU* people are. Maybe crazy in different ways as each generation puts there own twists on the crazy, but not more crazier. (Yes i know what i did to grammar there it was intentional for hopefulyl humorous effect.)

@bored
Thirty percent of a population is a pretty significant number(For example according to the 2010 US Census it is larger then any single minority population in the US.) And I did say that was the minimum number i would put on it. I would not argue against most to be honest but that would depend on the game. I have certainly been places where most would be accurate.

Also I think you are over estimating the number of people that care about systems etc, I think most of the posters here do, but I see a lot more people on games being all like tell me what i need to roll to notice something.
I don't think the population of Mu Soapbox is really representative of the MUSH population as a whole in that regard.

@ThatOneDude
One big difference between any video game and a mush though. Get killed in a a video game and you might lose some gear or xp but you are back in things quickly.
In a MUSH you are looking at not being able ot play for four days minimum unless you have an alt already made.

There is not one XP system that should be used all over. To me who to structure advancement or weather or not to have advancement at all is part of the design phase discussion those building the game should have, because it all comes down to what kind of game do you want to run.
I mean i have my personal preferences, slower gain then most places but also a heavy aversion to justifications, but honestly barring a few extreme examples the XP format of a game has very little to do with weather I play somewhere. Now it can color my attitude towards a place. I played on HM for years and I think i only ever put in like three spends, mainly because of the justification requirement, not that I couldn't write them I just didn't bother. As a result I never really became fully invested in the game as others did. I would play for a bit drift away then return with that cycle repeating.
Though as I think about it I am far more concerned with policies on spending XP on games then I am with those pertaining to earning it. Giving out tons and heavily restricting the use to me is worse then giving none.

+jobs are like getting a prostate exam, no one ever wants to deal with them but they is necessary.

@Arkandel said in What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?:

I've been on MU* before where no one rolled outside PrPs. And I've played games where people did roll somewhat often but almost always for powers ("Auspex! What are your feelings?") rather than mundane purposes (you'd rarely see perception rolls like Wits+Composure for instance). I've even been on spheres where it was considered rude, a douche move, if you rolled at people - the rules never made it consent-only but the community had, at least for that particular span of time.

I have run into this dice aversion some places. even to the point where I was chastised at by the other person in a scene cause I rolled self control (it was an oWoD game and i was playing a type that have virtues) to see how my character reacted to a temptation. It was not that the other player disagreed with the mechanics of the role but they "did not want mechanics to intrude on a scene." To me it was a situation where it could go either way and both options lead to interesting RP avenues so I thought it was the perfect time to let mechanics shape the story.