http://musoapbox.net/topic/2064/charging-for-mu-code
Will not do Stock Market, because I don't know how it works enough to do it well.
(Edit: Resume, since it occurs to me that there are still people who don't know who I am. The cheek!)
http://musoapbox.net/topic/2064/charging-for-mu-code
Will not do Stock Market, because I don't know how it works enough to do it well.
(Edit: Resume, since it occurs to me that there are still people who don't know who I am. The cheek!)
@roz said in Earning stuff:
The problem is that bad social RP can end up without any purpose, without any point.
And this is one reason why people don't put themselves out for it, sure, and we hit the mediocrity spiral, a critical mass of inaction.
I started this tangent putting Staff as a motivator, getting people out there with things to react to (Unholy Caine on a Motorcycle!) which also don't necessarily add anything to anyone's day, but does fill it with something interesting which is a huge reason we do this.
@faraday said in Earning stuff:
but those characters are central driving forces in their world.
And to me, the key word here is their. Not the. Not central to the story. They may be central to a story, but that's entirely different than making the world as we, the viewer, know it revolve around them.
I understand that you miss the "fully unscripted" style
No, I miss the less scripted style.
There are things I miss about AD&D 2nd Edition. I feel this version was more laid-back and far easier to get into than D&D 3e or 4e. (5e fixes a lot of this; this is an example, not a discussion.) It would be 100% wrong to say that I missed THAC0.
I am capable of deconstructing my darlings, and in fact I always am.
--
@roz said in Earning stuff:
I think it's still important to note that while books often have more space to spread out than an episode of television, every scene in a book should still serve a specific purpose.
I still quite enjoy a lot of the Douglas Adams tangents that had, effectively, nothing to do with the story. Most of them were about Arthur Dent. (Arthur Dent and Fenchurch having sex while flying serves zero plot elements, and don't tell us much about the character, but it's still a fun story because it links to something later on.)
What I'm saying is that I think you and @faraday are over-analyzing this, and that I respectfully disagree with your position that specific plot-driven story is important as all that.
Stricken and not deleted because the last time I deleted things I said when I was wrong, so many people got bent out of shape. I'm pretty sure this isn't what you intended, but it did read that way at first. I'm pretty sure it is what Faraday intends, as is her play style.
I also accept that Douglas Adams was that kind of writer whose exception proves the rule.
...
Though as I type the above, I realize that we're more agreeing than not: Character development is where I find my joy, the story of the character. "Random social scenes" can be great for this, if you and those around you are aware that presenting and furthering the character's goals and interests are always on the table.
@faraday said in Earning stuff:
I want that story to be as interesting as the story of my favorite character in my favorite TV show.
My favorite TV shows have been ones with imperfect characters, where the characters are part of the world and not the center of it. Where even social scenes are important, because they characterize, they connect characters and while they might not further the plot directly they allow the world-building that is important to furthering the plot.
This is a lot easier in books, where there is more time and effort given to it. Not every scene has to be The Most Important Thing Right Now, and I revel in that. I don't want to wait for The Most Important Thing Right Now. I want to have Right Now be important, even if it's not The Most Important Thing, and having to wait on events and people to decide to crawl out of their private homes to make Now be important is frustrating because I can illustrate games, past and present, where this wasn't a thing.
Random scenes is incredibly important for this, social or otherwise.
Willingness to write collaboratively, to seek narrative rather than structure it, is incredibly important for this.
If you don't like this? Cool. My tangent started because I do. I miss this deeply.
@faraday said in Earning stuff:
actual stories
I'm not interested in a plot structured story. I'm interested to write the story my character tells over its life.
So maybe you and I have different definitions of "story" and, for that matter, the importance of "random social scenes" in getting there.
Maybe the dichotomy is that I don't need a structured reason to have a scene and see where it goes. What you call "random" I call ... well, random, perhaps, but not without sense or purpose.
@faraday said in Earning stuff:
I have no idea what you're getting at.
That "90% of primetime TV airtime" didn't matter. And my current experience is that a lot of people don't log in to write, but to react.
@faraday said in Earning stuff:
And really, when you get right down to it, a+b constitutes, like, 90% of primetime TV airtime.
You know earlier when I said that way back when people logged in to write?
No?
Way back when, people logged in to write.
Even me.
Which just proves how bad of a writer I am.
@wildbaboons said in Earning stuff:
@thenomain said in Earning stuff:
You might laugh on a public forum that Caine just rode up to a seedy bar on a motorcycle in the middle of Albuquerque, but Caine rode up to a seedy bar on a motorcycle in the middle of Albuquerque.
Context? I'm not sure why this example is a good thing?
Because something is happening. Something BIG is happening. Something that you can react to, even if it’s a copious Gen-X or Millenial rolling of the eyes. You know that somethings going down on this game, something that has weight, and weight means gravity, and gravity means movement.
Caine was the first vampire in WoD lore, but even in vaguely biblical lore, Caine stopping by a seedy bar is still something that can happen between waiting for the next +event.
The games I’ve played on lately have had little of Caine On a Motorcycle, or even little Hey Let’s Talk About Current Supernatural Events.
And that’s sad.
I don’t need to earn anything. I log in to play a character and their story. Earning things makes it more varied, but it’s a tool for play, not a reason.
Tangent: I think Mushes I’ve seen have become a more like sandbox video games: Less about the story and more about the experience.
When I started, the stories we told could get confrontational, but they were things that people wanted to do with their character.
Doing things with the character on these games has become so pointless. Jobs-based events. Fewer people in public. Less engaged staff. You might laugh on a public forum that Caine just rode up to a seedy bar on a motorcycle in the middle of Albuquerque, but Caine rode up to a seedy bar on a motorcycle in the middle of Albuquerque.
I never thought this would be something I would use as an example of better than what a lot of games are doing now, but I would kill for this level of involvement again.
many WoD games took the first one.
You are a monster with powers far beyond human ken. This is like saying that because everyone plays a Jedi that who gets a purple lightsaber is important.
The sad thing is that this is seen as true. It’s a glitch in the culture of these games.
I’d rather charger be as simple as possible so that the decision on how to play the character was with the player, and not the player’s fear of having to engage with the system.
Kamikaze players don’t sound like fun people to deal with, but it’s a risk I would take for a smoother experience for others.
@shincashay said in Let's talk about TS.:
I love nerds. I'm weak for nerds.
Same. Smarts and cleverness makes me weak in the nerds.
@arkandel said in Earning stuff:
It's harder for things to be lost in the shuffle or for politics to emerge from a small, tightly knit team than an enormous group of them who're barely able to communicate with each other effectively.
This just means that any bad staff behavior is more deliberate. Ashes to Ashes is one infamous small-staff game where the behavior was planned. Shadowed Isles was another.
Large staff groups still rely upon and need to be lead by Headstaff, so if there is poor communication going on then it’s up to the chain of command to identify it and, if it’s a problem, correct it.
I only “got rid of” VAS because I said that her presence in Changeling was unwelcome and she had to go so she took her toys and went elsewhere. She came back. And was put on Staff. So much for staff behaving like adults.
@misadventure said in Earning stuff:
@thatguythere said in Earning stuff:
Best example i can think of is from the Reach which had a policy of "Be Excellent to Each Other." Nothing wrong with that on the face but it was definitely used (by players more so than staff) as a club to silence any who said something negative be cause "That is not being excellent to each other."
Definitely saw this at The Reach. However, the Reach was so big, and around more than long enough to give character players and staff players plenty of chances to show off their less than stellar behavior. it basically led to players not communicating on channels and finding other ways to complain, having already lost the chance to shape how play went.
The Reach had a very long-standing history of staff abusing players, and headstaff (of which I was one, even when it was happening) doing nothing about it. This makes staff look ineffectual because they were ineffectual. If staff wasn't excellent to each other and to players, why should players be excellent?
I think that WoD games on the whole are getting better, and that the understanding of the 'don't be a dick' and 'be excellent' statements are spreading throughout that particular game culture. This is nothing but good news. (A deflection to the next person saying 'game xx is doing yy': I stress on the whole.)
@bobotron said in #WIDWW pt 2 - ST, Player, or staff?:
It's about the derivation more or less,
And to me the correlation is pretty damn spot-on. But you say they're not and Anne Rice never pushed the topic, so this is all I have to go on.
So it goes. Here I try to give @Taika her thread back.
@bobotron said in #WIDWW pt 2 - ST, Player, or staff?:
That's not explicitly how that works TBH.
Sorry, I didn't see the logic between when Interview with the Vampire was released and why Anne Rice couldn't sue White Wolf.
I still don't see it, but since I'm not a lawyer, I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of how things "explicitly work" without a sherpa or a guide-book so I don't make this tragic mistake again.
@bobotron said in #WIDWW pt 2 - ST, Player, or staff?:
@thenomain
Interview with the Vampire came out in 1976. And VtM listed The Vampire Chronicles right there in it's inspirational books thing, so... yeah.
So if Underworld said 'inspired by World of Darkness by White Wolf Games', they wouldn't've been sued? I have doubts. Deep, pulsating doubts.
@taika said in #WIDWW pt 2 - ST, Player, or staff?:
Maybe somewhere along the way we lost that giddiness of chugging mountain dew, eating cheetos, and casting fireballs at the darkness?
Yes, it was called Vampire, 1st Edition: The 90s BDSM Goth RPG. Then Werewolf: The Fuckin' Metal RPG For People Who Are Fuckin' Metal. (Seriously, how did they get away with a lawsuit against Underworld when Anne Rice was sitting right there?)
Sometimes it's fun to subsume yourself into Too Serious for a while. This is my only explanation for Warhammer 40k which makes things so Grimdarque that it's camp, but you're never going to get Cheetos-eating silliness unless there's enough blood to make Monty Python and Gwar fans happy.
Angel had a Turned Into Puppets episode.
Every game can be silly within its theme. It's nice to get out of theme, but I don't think anything goes.