Posts made by The Tree of Woe

Most recent:

Staff on a super-hero game engaged in behavior that deeply violated player's privacy and then proceeded to organize what I can only describe as an "arranged stoning" of that player in front of people they had communicated with when handing down the decision to expel them from their game. During this, uh, hearing, they refused to provide any concrete examples of genuine malefactor behavior, at least, from the player being banned. This has been talked over extensively in other threads.

More recently on a WoD game, I chose to leave because I realized I had an incompatible temperament with the person running the vampire genre. Some people were (and are) fine with them -- I viewed them as witheringly mean, trying to take a "stern manager" approach and coming off more as "Horrible Boss", trying to use something I wanted to do to steer me toward PvP in ways I wasn't comfortable with (said staffer has, based on my observations, developed a rep for going after people's +sheets without talking to them, and engaging in excessively punitive response without adequate communication as a storyteller, among other things), etc. In the end, I realized my experiences with that person made me dislike and mistrust them tremendously, there was no "corrective action" that could fix that, and that the best solution was for me to say my goodbyes and quit logging in.

I would say a couple of things.

One, as hard as it can be to see it, remember that the power they have over you is wholly artificial and is predicated on you not wanting to let go. Letting go is the fast, sudden pain compared to the methodical, drawn-out grind. You can always, always start again, and the people who will like you will still like you, unless they never really liked you at all, in which case, fuck 'em.

Two: Not only do you not have to take that shit, you shouldn't have to. I recently had an experience with a staffer who was just mean as all fucking hell. Everything they said was peppered with unnecessary insults, what I can only call unprofessional tone (yeah, it matters) and all the other "Bad Boss" earmarks. I didn't even want to open +jobs because they'd be handled by this person and... naw dawg, just naw.

After one final encounter, I sat and I thought about it and I realized, I don't like this person, in fact, I eminently dislike them. They weren't going anywhere; there was no 'fix', and I went through the usual path of talking to one of the game-runners who told me their hands were tied.

So I said goodbye to the people on the game I liked and deleted it out of my client. No +jobs, no posts, nothing like that.

Yeah, I remember that stuff. How seriously it all got took. Sigh. It was a more innocent time masquerading as a less innocent time.

@weirmonken Uh... god, it was so long ago. I was the Cannonball everyone hated.

Hey, I remember you. ...I was absolutely terrible in the MXT days. Carry on.

@collective Burns your crops with his army, but spares your tea... your peasants can eat tea, right?

Which is why you don't duel a Crane, you trample his fields and burn his castles. I hate how they're essentially treated like they're invincible, because they're pretty.

Cranes dance. Lions fight. If their honor's so out of joint, they can bring their army, and I'll bring mine.

@Collective Lion, thank you very much.

I don't care what system you use, as long as I get to punch the Crane Clan in the beak.

But really, what I would like to see isn't grilling people about characters or asking a series of questions... more akin to a conversation. I love talking about the characters I play; I could do it all day. But I understand the unease about sitting down to an interview to see whether or not you can play a bit.

@ixokai It's not without its bugs. I'm mostly mulling ways you could get away from the traditional model of app-writing. It's ancient, and while it's still serviceable I can't help but feel like there's got to be a better way to handle it.

@zombiegenesis said in X-Men Utopia MUX:

I remember the games that required thousands upon thousands of words on even the most simply powered characters. I always found it to be an exercise of self-indulgence (either on the staff side, look how elitist we are, or on the player's end, look how much I can write on my favorite character!) Either way I never once thought it helped keep bad players out of the game. I can, however, remember countless instances where RP scenes broke down into bickering about how a power or ability was worded (or was not worded). Essay style traits, in my opinion, do nothing but prolong character generation.
I like using RPG systems because they work. You can the same info from essay style traits at a glance, saving a ton of time both in character generation and in play. Marvel Heroic is about as basic as you can get (though I personally prefer FASERIP) and I think will work fairly well for what I'm looking for.
Of course mine is just one opinion.

I feel like having pertinent character details up on a wiki (along with links to more in-depth backgrounds) and a character sheet is a superior choice to a written app. The 'application' should be a player talking to staff about the character and what they want to do with them and then getting the nod. Staff working with an OC to work out their background and build their sheet is essentially the same as reviewing an app anyway.

@ixokai I do believe the attitude and expectations of staff sets the tone for the whole game. It's one of the reasons why I push Dystopia Rising's codes of conduct so hard -- the behavior of the people running that event was the most empathetic I have ever seen from people running a LARP and everything about the event reflected it, from the behavior of the players to the number of women and minorities who legged it out to the sticks to participate in the LARP, which was set right in the heart of lily-white Western New York (Dansville).

No shit.

The thing about Deadpool is whoever's playing him needs to TURN IT THE FUCK OFF WHEN HE'S OOC.

And they never do. They think it's fun, or funny, or clever... and they never turn it off.

@ghost That's fair, but ultimately I guess I do err on the side of nurturing people's ideas.

I'd even have to cop to allowing (ugh) Deadpool... he hangs out with Cable a lot and has positive connections with characters like Genesis. Against my better judgment.

But yeah, if somebody wanted to app Vance Astrovik or Firestar, even though they've never worn the X that's not that hard of a logic hop.

Also, in my mental canon, Scalphunter totally winds up the cook in Utopia's canteen. Because the idea of that terrifying killer handling the cooking tickles me more than a bit.

Wiccan and Speed are also Magneto's grandchildren, which is their third connection. They have strongly alluded that Wiccan will inherit the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme from Stephen Strange and become an X-Man at the same time in various recent media, which is a smaller pip, but still a pip.

And honestly splitting hairs about who to exclude isn't really a good idea in any event. If someeone wants to play Hulkling and their explanation is his declaring 'Where Billy goes, I go' then that's that. If Speedball shows up and says 'Can I crash on your couch, somebody stole my wallet' he's not exactly bringing the whole Avengers roster with him.

The X-Men themselves are winding up further and further afield these days (Rogue, Cannonball, and Sunspot are all serving as Avengers right now) and the X-Men to me have been Mutant-flexible. Warlock is not Homo Sapiens Superior but they let him in anyway (it's because he can turn into a spaceship, always handy).

A thought I had was basically 'Secret Empire' (Ugh) ends so badly that nobody's sure that the United States is going to exist as a coherent entity past that point, so the X-Men go back to Utopia and create 'Nation X' but honestly Secret Empire is such a trashfire even I only sorta like that idea.

In the Utopia era different X-Teams had different jobs.

New Mutants: Take this list of loose ends and missing persons and tie them up/find them and either give us a status update or bring them here.
X-Force: This can not be allowed to exist. Get rid of it.
Etc.

No alts on the same team seems fair.