Posts made by Thenomain

@Coin

That's why the advice is for cool, not cold water. When your winters dip below 40 F, like over half the world, "the cold faucet" is not good advice.

@Apos

Except that I don't believe keeping a player happy as a matter of our goal is working for us, and it's been a while since I heard that "keep the player happy" should be the goal.

The phrase I hear more commonly these past years is "facilitate player enjoyment", and pardon if that sounds like I'm being pedantic or picking nits. I have a hard time trying to think of any game that puts enjoyment before the rules. Games are usually written with rules first.

RPGs do break the mold of more traditional games, as they leave a lot of room for hand-waving, a lot of room, but they happen within the space provided with the rules. Even if those rules aren't spelled out, like "this is a London where magic is real, but demonic". If you don't like the word "rule" for what I'm describing, there are other words, but the goal of statements like that is to enforce limits on the game space. While I adore the limitless potential in Calvinball, it is play but not a game.

My thesis is that we have tried many was to explain and prescribe what is "IC" and what is not. Nowadays the term is exclusionary, things are either IC or OOC, but this isn't the way it could be and it sure isn't the way it should be.

Changing the undrstanding of what IC is or means doesn't stop anyone from having fun any more than changing the understanding of what the word "game" means, and I have tried to chase down this term for a while now. The forced separation of IC and OOC doesn't work, so I think it's worth finding something that does.

---

Now that I'm not on a tablet, I can quote one thing:

One group sees their characters as essentially avatars for themselves [...] Then at the opposite of the extreme, are players very focused on the stories.

I don't see either of these groups inconvenienced by the idea that IC is a subset of overall play and play choices. You're edging toward the Bartle Test, which is not a good nor a bad thing but is well-trod territory when looking for player goals.

But maybe you're answering the part of my thesis where I call characters "puppets" or "toys", but I think it's more important that we at least view IC as a framework, and characters (and other things) as tools to interact with that framework.

Like the original poster here, it isn't a final version, but a series of thoughts that hits close to the heart and soul of trying to let more than just the "I", just the ego have fun.

@bored said:

I guess we'll just have to agree to agree that we think the other is shit at reading comprehension.

+1, would upvote again

Sorry, @bored, since you decided to be a cock earlier in this thread I thought you were continuing along that theme. They read the same to me. My bad.

And yeah, that link says pretty much what it looked like the first time I read it, too.

@Lithium

And I apologize about getting heated, but I have been, and seen others be, hurt by all of this. My comment about "it takes egos to keep all this running" is because we seem to only have popular, long-lasting games when staff are utter jackasses. How is this fun?!

I think (and here, yea, opinion) this is because we have been hammered with rules and concepts and labels over the past decade to lead to this, mostly by strong-willed people who will fight to get their ways which are usually pretty selfish, from this kind of person.

I get passionate when I think people are abusing one another, and I feel very strongly that this cycle needs to be broken even if that means breaking and discarding a term, or how we see something, because how we see the interaction of IC and OOC is a cause of major drama.

Characters are tools, puppets, toys, things to be enjoyed but eventually put away. They serve a role, but we've learned to make the character far more important than the game itself.

Not that I haven't taken games too seriously. I swear, if I'm forced to play another game of Agricola...

---

edit:

@bored said in Halicron's Rules For Good RP (which be more like guidelines):

@Halicron

You can't put up a definitive list and then wave off criticisms of it with 'all lists are made to be broken'. If that's your feeling, you probably should have written a different post to begin with.

You may have missed this part of the thread's title:

(which be more like guidelines)

If you didn't miss it, then maybe you don't know what it might mean. Let me help you out, there.

I read the post as "if you do these they would probably help you quite a bit". I'm not alone in this.

@Lithium said:

@Thenomain I don't think it's belittling to call any disagreement a disagreement over semantics.

And I don't care if you don't think so. I do, and I was pretty goddamn clear about that before you typed this response. Learning how to get along with other players is the whole point, and if you can't bother to try in a discussion like this one then I don't see you as being the kind of person who can be trusted to honor the give-and-take that's necessary to play an RPG drama-free.

@Lithium said:

@Thenomain So essentially, we're sticking over semantics

I'm arguing over cultural expectations. I don't feel that's semantic. I feel that it's critical for the health of our hobby. If this means that we agree, so be it, but I don't feel my point deserves belittling by calling it semantics. I think how we see characters is pretty fucking important in learning how to not just accept but have fun with these puppets on a string that we call characters.

If anyone says that you are a horrible person for how a character acts, @Lithium, they may or may not be complete jerks. They probably are jerks because they don't care to share the same game goal as you do. The unwillingness to cooperate and negotiate are jerk actions.

Or as Gany says, maybe you're the jerk because you're motivated in a way that attacks someone else's play. (I'm not accusing you of this, I'm just saying again that she gets it.)

Goals, theme, setting, character, NPC, environment, these are all tools. When we talk about "IC" we should be talking not about a tool or an action, but the context in which we see our actions and these tools applied.

The tool can be applied to tell a story, or the tool can be applied to fuck with someone else's telling of a story, but it's still just a tool.

The problem with talking about "IC/OOC Separation" is that has become misleading as to the nature of these tools, and that's something you've ignored me saying (for reasons I literally cannot understand don't understand). The term is now a label, and practically a cliche, that does not help our hobby one bit.

Maybe, some day, we can excise it from our vocabulary because we can better understand our relationship between ourselves and the IC framework. IC is not apart from OOC, it is a subset of OOC.

@Lithium

In your words, I literally cannot understand what you're trying to say or do, here. If you think that what I'm saying is an opinion, then you're not able to help fix the problem. If you want to try to understand, then you can "literally" have an idea, it's just up to you, not me, to show that you want to have an idea.

Your push-back indicates that you don't. So don't. As you say, it's okay if you don't want to participate, tho at this point I'd thank you not to associate me with your inaction.

Gany gets it.

---

edit for @Ganymede

You tell people to pre-pose. I see people pre-posing an entire pose which either ignores everything they weren't posing for, or shoe-horns following elements so that they end up posing independent reactions to everyone. When I warned before that bit that I was going to be wrong or pedantic to make a point, this is kind of what I meant.

That is, I know that "write your entire pose as fast as you can and fire it off without consideration to the happenings around you except for last-minute" isn't what you mean, but I found @Halicron's "pre-pose a framework, but not too much" to be the same advice, better phrased.

@Lithium

Well what do you want me to do about it?

@Lithium said:

I literally have no idea how you can feel there is zero separation from IC and OOC.

Then maybe you should ask me what I mean instead of telling me that I'm wrong.

I never understood how someone could admit to not understanding an argument, yet still make a conclusion about it.

Sadly, I understand why.

@Lithium said:

@Thenomain said:

Everything your character does is because of what you decide about the character. Everything. Ev-er-y-thing. There is not one single aspect of the character that doesn't come from you. If your character runs from a fight, it's because that's what you want for the character. If your character stands on a table and strips, it's because that's what you want for the character.
<snip>

This is false except in pure consent games.

Nope. It's entirely true. 100%.

It's OOC that you agree to cede control to the game rules as appropriate. You agreed to it by the mere act of logging in or showing up to the table. You agreed to follow theme and setting and rules.

And when you don't want something to happen, you appeal to the other player, in an OOC manner. This is the social aspect of RPGs. This is why the table is important. This is why context is important.

My "IC==OOC==IC" statement is because there is no such thing as pure IC. The term "IC" should be used as a way to describe actions of the character vs. actions of the player, but we Mushers have, over the years, become increasingly control-freaky about it to the point where it's sometimes hard to remind people that without depending upon that OOC element of socialbility, this entire hobby is toxic. You cannot, ever, put the character before the player. Cannot for good role-play, and cannot for good mental or social health.

Incidentally, a lot of people here have realized or are realizing that this entire hobby has become toxic.

Which is good.

--

edit: I don't mean "this entire hobby is toxic" in the sense of literalism, but hyperbole. The toxic parts of this hobby are those that put the character before the players, the rules before the players, and one player before another. It all comes from you, from me, from us. There is not one element that we don't have control over, even if that element is to leave. Or to stop drawing fire from staff. Or negotiate. Or change the character so that you and those around you have more fun. Or fudge the dice so that you and those around you can have more fun. It's about us, the players, not them, the characters.

We've gotten is so ass-backwards that it takes mighty egos to keep it running that way.

@Lithium said:

@Thenomain I'm going to disagree that IC is OOC and OOC is IC, but I think we're talking context.

And I'm going to tell you that you're wrong, and this is a lot of (but not entirely) why:

I guess we could redefine IC/OOC separation as: Play true to the character, not yourself.

Everything your character does is because of what you decide about the character. Everything. Ev-er-y-thing. There is not one single aspect of the character that doesn't come from you. If your character runs from a fight, it's because that's what you want for the character. If your character stands on a table and strips, it's because that's what you want for the character.

You choose whether or not the character exists today by deciding whether or not you log in.

I think it's too late to talk about "IC/OOC Separation". It's been used too often to mean something that can't exist. For the same reason, we don't talk about "OOC Masq" anymore, because we've gone beyond the original label and thank effing god we did. Too many people using it as a weapon, too many people trying to shoehorn an idea about it based on how they expect it to be used versus how other people expect it to be used. Putting a label on a concrete thing or generally accept concept helps, but putting it on something that we want to be is just wishful thinking.

I wouldn't call you hit and run. Unless you weren't prepared to reply to thoughts about your thoughts replying to thoughts about replies.

@Arkandel said:

How do you put that into practice, what does it mean? What do you actually do?

There is no specific right or wrong way to "play for those around you"; this is why our discussions on this heavily rely on talking about "the table", or context, or situation. Taking the second part of what I said out of context of the first part destroys both.

How do you do it? Pay attention to the rules and files the game has put forth. Pay attention to how your character operates. Pay attention to what the scene is about and who else is in it. Then formulate your response in a way you think is best for the other people.

The only thing that @Halicron says that I didn't that I think is important is "give other people something to react to". And yet this isn't always true, it's one of those rules you'd give to someone to get them into the mindset so they know why you give other people something to react to.

That is, I don't think rules (or even guidelines) of behavior are any good without known goals, and that was missing from the twenty rules.

---

Here, just for you, Ark, I will break all of these rules. For everyone else, go ahead and skip this. I'm doing this to yet again tell Ark that he's being contrary just to be contrary, and it's something that everyone can do and that it often misses the point. You will see me miss a lot of points, below. Yeah, I know that.

There are twenty of these. Gonna take a while.

1. Try to address the environment around you.

I don't think the environment needs to be important except to get the scene going. If you miss it, if you want to essentially turn the role-play into an Aaron Sorkin walk-and-talk, then do so. He's a popular writer, good at what he does, and he very rarely points out the environmental context. If he can, you can too.

2. Agree upon the use of tense and stick to it.

This is a bugaboo that people have but you're not writing for awards. Generally people will gravitate toward a single narrative and tense. It kind of bugs me when people mix second-person and first-person, too, but this guideline is more "how to write english" and not "how to RP well". If we're going to have discussions about being able to let go bad spelling, then we can let go other elements of grammar.

That said, learning to English in a written medium is pretty important.

3. Try to describe your character's mood but do it without having us read your mind.

I do this a lot, so go ahead and ignore this guideline entirely. I absolutely suck at getting across the subtle details that body language and spoken inflection get, so you get mind-reading powers. I do try to make it interesting and not the horrible OOC-fueled metaposing that everyone hates. Don't OOC-metapose in the mind-reading tricks.

4. Try to develop some character quirks or routines.

I like this one. It's good advice that should be in a "how to make a character" post, but I said I was going to break all the rules so I'm going to break this one too.

Having a quirk or a routine does not make you a better RPer. You need to apply it in a way that other people can appreciate (positively or negatively) and react to (ditto). It's disingenuous of me to take this out of context, but Ark's implied I've oversimplified so I'm purposefully removing context.

5. Use props.

See #1: Aaron Sorkin.

6. Be descriptive.

Our hobby comes from the tabletop environment, and I can count the number of times over seven years that we were told to "be descriptive" or that the actions of the players have played into the game as a very low number of times. What we enjoy is the discussion afterwards where we imagine how it played out.

Sometimes the pressure to be Pulitzer-award-winning writers or people turn their nose up at your pose is so annoying. You don't have to be descriptive, you just have to be interesting.

7. Divide up your actions into small pieces.

As much as I dislike power-posers who are responding to everything in the room at once, a lot of people like this, so many that I know that I'm playing Grumpy Old Man when I complain about this. I grin and bear it because that's the context of the scene, but enough people don't do this that it's how I'm breaking this rule.

8. Know a little bit of what you're going to do in your next pose. Not all of it, but some of it.

This answers such a huge peeve I have, especially when @Ganymede says to "pre-pose".

Uh, I can't break this one. Someone help me out on this one.

9. Be proactive.

It's okay to be reactive. If someone jumps out of the dark scary woods and goes, "RAR!" then your job is to run away going "Eek!" Your job is to let them be the big bad wolf, and that means falling into a more passive role, and let me tell you this is a hell of a lot of fun.

10. See step 9.

No.

11. Get a sense of timing.

What's described with this seems boring to me. Sometimes your response to someone's gabbling on is nodding, mmhmm, and letting them babble on. This very specifically undermines rules 9 and 10.

Halicron's applying to reality in this step ("For talking, it's very easy to fall into the trap of carrying on two conversations at once, but really, who does that in real life?") undermines even this rule. In real life, a conversation is usually dominated by one person but can be interrupted mid-stream. We have no cultural training on Mus to let this happen. I know if I spit out a thought in five-second intervals I will get interrupted by someone posing by Mu Culture Rules, which are spit out as much as possible at once. But my thought of going 'thought, pause, thought, pause' would force the other player into the role of nodding and smiling and being passive until they feel like jumping in.

I think this is okay, but by these rules, I'd be wrong.

12. You're playing with people.

See #11: You're playing with pose robots. If I were playing with people, I could be passive, I could flex between short and long poses, I could offer cues in any way I wanted.

13. Know your character.

I've addressed this already in #4, but let me add a bit here. I hate games where they demand that you come up with a life history of the character, all their motivations and dreams, before getting to test these ideas.

14. Be time-courteous.

I'm not going to break this rule, because "be courteous" is never bad advice, but if I'm multi-mushing it's nobody else's business, but if someone asks why I'm non-responsive they're asking to change what I assumed the acceptable behavior were for the scene and I can either ask them for understanding, tighten up my pose time, or retire the scene. Why isn't critical.

15. Avoid powerposing.

Again, "be courteous". However, I'm being grumpy gamer so let me grump: Don't avoid it, just don't do it. But like all rules, if you have a good and trusting enough relationship with the other player it's up to you if you want to break it.

By the way, power-posing is not: I pick up your unconscious body.

16. Play in theme.

Huh, @Arkandel, sounds familiar doesn't it? Doesn't it?!

17. Plan for Consequences.

Prepare to fight against Consequences. Just as people use "Consent" as an unreasonable defense, people use "Consequences" as an unreasonable attack. People will use their OOC distaste for things you did to create an IC situation against you. I've been the victim of this, myself, and knowing how to fight against Consequences that your character is involved in is just as important.

That is, this rule is broken without the trust to go with it.

18. ME ME ME

Again, sound familiar, Ark?

19. IC is not OOC.

Utter and complete horseshit. IC is OOC. OOC is IC. You cannot, cannot disconnect the two. The expectation that we put a wall between these two concepts has caused more harm than good.

What is meant, though, is that the character is a puppet, a thing, a toy, not an extension of the player. We use the character to act out a narrative, and that bit of information is why I have any problems with most of rules 1-18. By our culture's expectation of putting your heart and soul into the poses, into the role-play, we fuck our brain over when separating character and self.

20. And lastly.

I think I've made a decent case that having a bunch of rules isn't enough. It can confuse the issue, it can give people too much to juggle without having a goal to work toward.

And lastly, our mutual goal is to engage in social role-play. How we do this depends primarily on the "social" aspect, since we all have a fairly common ground on what a "role" is and what "play" is, though I'm sure Ark could pull one of his famous, "nnnrrrr, weeeellll it deeepeeeeeeeeends" like someone who hates people coming to common ground.

---

@Halicron, I don't disagree on a lot of what you said, but I was challenged that your approach was better than mine. The only point I have a strong emotional feeling about is #19, because I have seen people use this specific wording point to attack others. Far too many times have we, as Mushers, come up with rule but not the guidance for it.

We don't tend to come to common ground on our own. We don't know what the expectations are. We also, as a hobby, do a shitty job of communicating this up front, or helping people ease into it.

The fact that I can disagree with most of those points was my goal, my own version of "nnneehhh, it depeeeeeends". I feel a little bad about it now, but I don't think I'm going to change how I pose, or what I think is important in scenes.

Holy shit, those are a lot of guidelines. Can we summarize down to:

• Play in context of the game, theme, character, and scene, in that order.
• Play for those around you.

Thanks.

(edit: Added 'and character ... in that order' to playing in context. Being true to the character and telling their story is a lot of why people log in at all and should never be pushed to the side, by you or anyone else. The same is true, though, for the rest of it.)

@Jaded

Scan the staples.

I'm only being halfway sarcastic there, as the scanner will catch a little bit of the front and back, and if Hasbro-WotC doesn't accept it then they will be taught a valuable lesson.

@ThatOneDude said:

Picture below for @Thenomain because blah blah bloo blee blah

You know what I think is cool, it's that you care, that I got under your skin this much.

XOXOXO

--

Sorry, everyone else. Well, kind of sorry. I'm of two minds of the core question. One is that if you don't want to fail then don't roll.

The second is that you're all there to enjoy the game as you see it so if that means fudging rolls then so be it, though it's so very easy for the GM to fudge the result that should are few occasions where the GM has to fudge the roll.

It is harder to spin the rolls of the players, since they're usually engaging in a rules system that they're rolling for and the expectations are, and should be, clear before they pick up the dice. Before then is the time to apply changes up to and including "don't bother rolling".

And if not? Then as a GM, you have to take the lumps. Mind you, it's a game for you as much as everyone else and if you're not having fun then you approach the table with the problems and try to find solutions together.

So WoD is now going to become a big-brand trademark now, huh. Cheaper than trying to get rights to Underworld, I guess?

@skew said:

@Lithium said:

Now I want to make a vampire game where it DOES ward them off.

Perhaps a stuffy Englishman who just cannot stand the stuff? Absolutely detestable!

The CofD Changeling (not out yet) has rules for exactly this. If you want your minor tweak to be "garlic", then as long as you're around it you take lethal damage, and if someone damages you with the stuff you take aggravated damage. Get powerful enough and add "sunlight" to that list.

So you could be a real movie vampire in Changeling. The bonus over Vampire is you don't lose your emotions or lose your head to The Beast, so better than a vampire.

I'm there.