Best posts made by Thenomain

Supervising RP used to be okay until it became spying on players.

This didn't take very long in the hobby, either.

@shangexile said in RL Anger:

Much use of the word "creep". In honor of that, some musical entertainment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLPZmPaHme0

A far far better version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDjlaN-X8-0

@Apos

So what you do is: You do it anyway. If people use it, great. If not, you depreciate it. Find out how to make it work, not try to find out first if people want it to work. Unless you do a more formal survey of usage, you won't know until you try, then keep tweaking it until people use it by second nature or until the experiment is declared a failure.

Be respectful of the concerns; this is what your survey tells you. Make sure the room informs them non-threateningly. Maybe something like: This is currently a logged scene titled 'blah blah'.

Paging @EmmahSue and @Sunny: Request to unpack the past three days where appropriate to the Hog Pit.

Sorry in advance.

People on AetherMUX really liked the public-room-watch code, to see what was going on in a room without having to go there and spam the hell out of it. It was clear when people were watching, could only be created by wizards, and was always in a place of great RP importance.

I think this kind of code is worth exploring, and since it's public I don't think it counts as "spying".

@Bobotron said in Forum Factions:

ETA +req faction=Perpetually Has Something In Development Faction

My version of this is, "...Wait, what was I doing again?"

Because how many projects do I have going on at one time?

At the very least, somebody is getting screwed no matter what.

@Sparks

Blame? Look at the amazing cosmic power she has. I haven't seen this level of non-suckup up-voting in a long time. It's inspiring!

@Arkandel said in RL Anger:

Posts today that read "I'VE NEVER WATCHED A SINGLE EPISODE OF GAME OF THRONES".

... Okay? They're the same people around superbowl who post "I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO'S PLAYING".

Damn, that's not something to be proud of. You're not special because you don't follow the herd, guys. Plus it's one thing to say you don't like something and another to not be into it because it's popular.

Conversely: "Oh my god you don't watch game-or-sports?!"

No, you inconsiderate twerp, I don't watch Game Of Goreporn or Sports-Ball Extreme. Why, in this modern era, are you pushing your social agenda on me like this when I didn't brag about how I don't do these things and didn't push my social agenda on you?

That said, JRR Tolkien wins so hard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAAp_luluo0

@faraday

If the problem is that we are describing genre and calling it theme, then someone needs to press them on the point.

The slapfight continues because theme is not described well enough, and most of the games we play are pretty open-world. Without a solid foundation, the staff is seen as being pushy or bossy and not in control of the interpretation.

I left an 1800s western game when the players were having a charity auction, one of the beloved prostitutes was up for bid, and people started throwing numbers in the thousands of dollars.

As this game was not in New York City and those people were not rail or trade barons, I watched for a little longer, made an excuse to do homework, and never returned.

Both the theme and setting were ignored. Sure they had fun, but I wanted theme and setting. Ah well.

@kanye-qwest said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

If this place got rid of the hog pit and didn't allow the drama and slapfighting that goes on there, this place's traffic would slow down a lot

[citation needed]

Before Soapbox got Wora-y again, it was very active with positivity. I believe that a Soapbox For Happy People would be quite active, albeit the last time someone tried to enforce this (on an anti-Wora) the board was just as much about blind back-patting as Soapbox is about snarking.

Maybe my idea of meaningful conversation is different than yours, but I've found life outside the Hog Pit to increase my activity on the rest of the boards and my desire to have more meaningful conversation because of it; my pessimism wanes and I don't feel that speaking up would make me someone's punching bag.

I'm not wholly on board with @Ganymede's summary of needing to be on it if it's there, but I also no longer think that the shit-talking about a game matters for the health of that game. I'm not afraid of not having complete control, because people will judge the heart of a game by playing there, not by what spazzes think, or at least if they do then either they have a strong sense of self where they can see what the spazz is really saying, or they themselves are a spazz.

Mind you, Gany and I have gone back and forth on foundational Mu* game design for close to a decade now, and I respect the hell out of her approach, and really anyone who has tried and failed and taken that in stride.

No GIFs.

Sorry.

@faraday

At the time I missed that you asked how to better describe theme, and meant to agree with you that "western" is not a theme and therefore we needed to describe it better.

Let me start here:

"Just pick one and be clear about what you expect," you might say. Great idea, but it's *hard( to pin down a theme with that specificity, especially when every player is coming to it with a different expectation.

How to do theme better: I agree with @Ghost. The World of Darkness core books (Vampire, Changeling, etc.) give a list of various themes you could be going for, in the literary sense. I feel that this is more critical than setting, because it informs setting more than setting informs theme. This game is for playing X.

"Commander Adama runs a light ship but expects loyalty. His crew lets off steam, but anyone who goes too far can expect a few days in the brig out of the action they desperately crave. Everyone seems hungry to not just survive, but win, and win at any cost."

But in the immortal words of whomever said them, no game survives first contact with the players. You have to keep tweaking expectations and presentation; it's one of the reasons I'm so hard on games which don't clarify what they want to new players.

"In ThenoWestern, you are a European-American in the alien world of the newly explored, lightly settled West, where the natives are trying--and effectively--to stop your Manifest Destiny." You may not know much about the setting, but you know what's expected of you when you create a character, and what kinds of things you're probably going to be ending up RPing.

I agree with @Ghost as well; setting the literary theme will also be important. For ThenoWestern, it's: High Adventure at High Tea, served with an Intrigue Biscotti.

Am I describing Castle Falkenstin or Space: 1889? It doesn't matter, because you already have ideas for this game, don't you.

Whether or not my idea of what should be run and yours mix is an entirely different issue, but that's why you talk to players, that's why you try to keep things simple, that's why you NPC higher-ups to tell the Captains that they have gone over the line whipping their pilots.

And so forth.

@krmbm said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

So is the "[citation needed] but all proof/examples from the past are invalid 'cause they're old" argument.

This is a misinterpretation of what I said, but your being passive-aggressive rather than trying to find out is proving @faraday's and even @Kanye-Qwest's point: We apparently need to snark at others.

I'm not immune. I have a far deeper theory about what is OK and what is not in the way of being raw, snarky, catty, and even dramaful.

I choose to think that you are one data point in a sea of evidence that we don't have to do things this way.

There is a post-Forge indie RPG philosophy that goes like this:

Play for other people.

You are not contracted, obligated, or otherwise forced to do so, but if you include people in your character's play-space, you will become more popular and you will enhance that person's experience knowing that they will do the same for you.

I kind of do think that you are social-contract obligated to involve everyone in your scene, which means playing off their character and poses and making space for them to add to things. If they don't take it, if they don't want it, if they don't engage then hey, you did your part to create that upward feedback spiral of awesome that is an engaging situation.

So I would like to say it's everyone's responsibility to be engaging, and the level of engaging is enough to allow others a space to be engaged. Once two players are engaged, crazy fun shit happens, and it's such an easy thing to start.

Staff have a much deeper requirement, but this is going to mull around in my head a lot.

@faraday said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

"I don't like this thing you built and I think you're dumb for having built it and ZOMG can't you even see how dumb this is what's the matter with you?"

But we're not very good at either offering nor seeing creative criticism, either. "I don't like this thing because x, y and z" is not the same as "I don't like this thing because x, y and z are stupid", but this is how we often say and/or see it, even when it's not meant. It's ironic how communications is not our strong suit.

It certainly doesn't help when people interject with comments designed to push the conversation toward the absurd (looking in the mirror too, here) which can disrupt already tenuous attempts at what is tantamount to diplomacy. Maybe if we weren't so sensitive about our darlings or so used to people being dickwads at us we wouldn't be so sensitive or paranoid, but it's a reality that needs worked on.

Without people pretending like Heath Ledger's Joker had a point. That shit just be cray.

@Thenomain said:

Not to turn this thread into What's Wrong With Changeling Players, but Winnie the Pooh and Hedge Bars are from people who are unfamiliar with the source material. Once things like this get approved, staff would have to take a break from their otherwise very busy day and find a good resolution to make this stuff not happen. The discussion might start with something like, "I think you may have read the wrong book."

I had a point here that I forgot to conclude with: Once a character is approved, it's very hard to correct borderline non thematic actions, which breeds more, and more, as the border moves to accepted and the less accepted thematic violations become borderline and then, later, the norm.

This needs a name. It's why all WoD settings become Bland By Night.

Ninja’d by @Roz.

(Look, I’m posting a positive me too even after up-voting.)

@VulgarKitten said:

@Thenomain said:

You are not contracted, obligated, or otherwise forced to do so, but if you include people in your character's play-space, you will become more popular and you will enhance that person's experience knowing that they will do the same for you.

This is such a lie. I cannot count how many times I have experienced/heard from others "Well I invite you to all of my stuff, but you don't invite me to yours."

One of the things I'm finding lately is that I am pulling back from my usual hyperbolic ways, only to realize why I was that way to begin with: The number of times people take what I'm saying to some theoretical logical conclusion.

Making space for people is not bending backwards for them. Nobody who asks you to be a doormat has your interests in mind, and you should take no shit from them.

If you are turning yourself into a doormat, you are trying too hard. Relax. Chill. Take no shit from yourself.

MUSHing is an inherently selfish experience, where 9 and 3/4 times out of 10, people will take what they can get while excluding others who give them RP/plot for justifications x, y, and z. Maybe they're even legit justifications. But not usually.

Which is why I think that not doing this should be a requirement. Fuck these selfish people. Fuck them right in the ear. If people cannot share their play-space, they have no right to mine.

But you have no control over them. You have control over you. The only thing you can do to help the game is make the attempt, to give other people a chance to fail on their own actions and not because of your preconceived notions.

If you can't be bothered, even with the smallest amount of effort, to try to include people who are in your scenes, then you're part of the problem. It's these people who need a punch in the cloaca with a dagger and tossed out the airlock.

--

This is an extension of a discussion that began long, long ago on Swofa, I believe by TNP or PsyJack that was this: We are the source of many of the problems we complain about.

If this is true, then we need to think differently about what we do, change how we do it. I don't admit to massive failure because I'm trying to score humility brownie points with anyone, I'm doing it because we all need to take a more adult view of the problems.

Having a place to vent is nice, but who is trying to solve the problems? (Yes, several of you are. Cookies to each of you.)

Man, that's ugly.