Best posts made by Three-Eyed Crow

@Sunny said:

Most of the couples I know, they're not even remotely a problem. A lot of the time you'd never know without someone telling you. There are a few loud couples, but for the most part enh. The few toxic ones I know, one person in the relationship or the other is toxic beyond just that.

I definitely think this is one of those things where you tend to only notice the obnoxious cases, unless the couple-players make a point of telling people about it. So it's one of those things that seems more annoying than it is, because you generally only notice it when you're dealing with specifically annoying people and not the rando couple who just plays the game like normal folk.

@Coin said in Finding roleplay:

It's a lot of silly nit-picking over vocabulary used.

Silly nit-picking? Here? The hell, you say.

I don't feel like all game-wide plots staff run have to be saving the world, either. They can sometimes, but I like larger-scale stuff that isn't Mega Destruction, but still reinforces major aspects of the setting, or introduces smaller changes to the status quo.

@acceleration said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

IMO, the etiquette rules are typically harder to get a grasp on in MUSHes because MUDs have coded constructs to enforce the rules and are typically anti-OOC-chatting-while-playing.

I also think it's important to keep in mind a lot of game culture issues vary, sometimes quite drastically, from game to game. I don't know if that's true in MUDs are not, but I'm hesitant to make blanket statements about my experience in MUSHes when it comes to the use of meta, how the grid is treated in terms of being a public space, OOC secrecy, etc. I came up in one environment, have played in many others, and have my own preferences that I've developed over the years. A lot of this stuff, in its less extreme form, isn't right or wrong, but a matter of preference that's been discussed on boards like this a lot (and debates can still be found here, I suspect, though I am not using the terrible search function to find them).

ETA: What I consider "required" for this stuff is doing a careful read of the game's rules and observing the overall OOC culture. Not every game's going to do things like I personally most prefer, and that's fine. If the culture is too different I probably won't last long, but new players should be aware of their environment, just like games should make a particular effort to help newbies integrate. I feel like it's a two-way street and forcing expectations from another game on a new place leads to a lot of easily-avoided problems.

@Kestrel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

This boggles the mind, really. Surely if one doesn't want to participate in IC yelling matches, they shouldn't play a character prone to yelling. But I know exactly what you mean, and I've seen that this isn't, apparently, common sense.

I think sometimes players just misjudge how people are going to react to their character. Which I'm sympathetic to up to a point and then...less so. I really and truly try to be courteous if someone lets me know something they did came across radically different than they intended, but it's tough sometimes. And this probably is something that's a bigger issue on MUSHes because, as @Lotherio said, your interactions with other players are so much of the game play. I don't know that this has an answer except, "These are social games and social interaction is occasionally hard, so do your best to deal with the inevitable issues that arise." Which is not great advice, but it's the best I've managed. Minimizing OOC interaction helps with some of these problems, but creates others and isn't a way I like to engage with a game. Mileage varies a lot on this, though.

Metaposing, and even what constitutes meta and what's just additional observable-but-intangible information, is so incredibly subjective that it's hard to give advice about. And it's also an area where it's hard to use other players as examples, because a lot of other players do things with meta that me me cringe, but aren't actionably "wrong." I feel like, if you're unsure, this is a style of posing it's best to avoid until you're comfortable with both your character voice and the preferences of your RP partners. It's hard to go wrong if you err on the more straightforward side, even if those poses might not always be ultra-colorful (and ultra-colorful doesn't always equate to good RP, to me).

I haven't written a bg that's longer than 1.5 pages in Word in years. I try to keep it to three-ish paragraphs if I can, and flesh the rest out in play.

If staff objects to this, that's a sign this game ain't for me.

Dear God, 10 years. We are all old. I am, at least.

An old MU*ing friend of mine was posting last night about the 10-year anniversary of a game we used to play on. Brought back a lot of very fond memories, which I think says something about how meaningful these games can be, even if they are also deeply silly. I've made a lot of long-term connections with some very cool people, even if I've also encountered some I'd rather never deal with again. It's a net positive, and cheaper than most other time-wasters.

I do go back to the post now and then. It describes the feed-back loop petty game drama balloons into in your own brain well enough, and we all need to be conscious of our own culpability to be THAT GUY sometimes. I think it's best used as a mirror, though. If you're citing it at somebody else, you're probably at least a little bit THAT GUY in that moment, whatever stupid shit they're doing.

@VulgarKitten said in Pretendy Fun Time Games:

You know, I've found it's very hard to know when someone is actually being a dick to you, versus when you're making a mountain out of a molehill. Anyone else have this issue?

I don't find passive-aggression difficult to pick up on. The person doing it usually thinks it is, but it's not (which is why I find Wade's post valuable, as this is what creates so many problems).

Whether that's always intentionally being a dick is something else. Some people just don't express themselves well online, or come off differently than they think they're projecting, or are engaged in their own drama feedback loop of misinterpreting something I've done...and so on. I try to be respectful even if I don't love dealing with someone OOCly. There are trolls and manipulators and genuinely toxic people in this hobby, like in everything, but I've found they're (thankfully) rare.

Sometimes someone is just a dick for a day for reasons that have nothing to do with you (this is a solid 85% of Internet drama, I think). Sometimes it's more than that, and I either need to examine my own behavior or disengage from someone (or both). Only person I have any control over is me, which has always been a liberating thing to keep in mind for me, even if it's also frustrating.

@Bobotron
I definitely feel like there was more of an assumption, when I started back in the late 90s, that you'd get randos wandering in who had no idea wtf a MU* was. I remember a 'New Player Tutorial' walk-through of rooms after you logged in being pretty commonplace when I started (just a series of rooms that would explain posing, channels, etc.), and those have largely disappeared, at least on games I play.

I'd played on MUDs previously, so it wasn't as foreign to me as it would be to someone coming in from Tumblr, but I feel like the barrier for entry has gotten quite a bit steeper as the community's aged.

@ThatGuyThere said in Roleplaying writing styles:

@Arkandel said in Roleplaying writing styles:

This reminds me. How do you feel about revealing things about the character through narration and not in any visible ways? For example: "Bob sits down and grows silent. Ever since he returned from the war he's been reserved in social settings with people he doesn't know well. He lifts his glass and...".

I am absolutely in favor of this sort of thing. Mainly because human communication is mostly non-verbal on a much we are forced to just use verbal because all we have as tools are words. If someone is really good at posing body language this can lesson the issue but body language is not constant across cultures so things that would absolutely be understood ICly get lost OOCly.

I don't do this kind of thing with new people, but with players who're supposed to know my PC to some intimate degree? I use a little more narration/meta. And OOC communication, though sometimes sticking things in a quick line in a pose feels less disruptive to the RP. I try to stress body language/tone more and make the cues more subtle than that (idk how good I am at subtle, sometimes not), but your friends and family pick up on a lot of shit rando strangers don't.

I also try to play my PCs differently around people they're close to versus people they're not. Not radically, but I think we all have a private face and a public face (and a face we show our family versus our friends, etc.) to some degree, and feeling that out gives me more colors to RP that keeps it fun for me.

I'm honestly not sure what my writing style is when I RP. I feel like I'm a medium poser? I've asked people I play with on the regular before and gotten variable answers. I usually do 5-ish lines and get length-abusive mostly from dialogue rather than prose. I'll take a shorter poser who gives me a response in under 10 minutes to someone who takes 20 minutes to pose a screen at me any day (I usually don't got that kind of time), but if I'm one-on-one with somebody I care a lot less as long as I'm getting something engaging.

@Ghost said in Where's your RP at?:

@Misadventure A question I have not answered because I think my input is moot. I gave an example in relation to AllFleshMustBeEaten further back, and would rather hear from other people since I have no issues with risk.

I find zombie and zombie apocalypse boring as fuck, generally.

Which just means I'm not the target audience, and there are LOTS of games I'm not the target audience for which are very viable (I feel like my instincts for what I want to play are often counter to what would make a big game). That said, since this was the question, I'll provide an answer.

I gave up on The Walking Dead because it just got boring to me after awhile. I find it to lack a larger 'story,' other than the character's surviving another day and postponing the inevitable. For two or three seasons I was cool with this, but as it went on I just wandered away because hopelessness, at a certain point, isn't an arc. It's just hopelessness. I find the characters shallow and am not interested in their relationships, precisely because they're designed to be somewhat disposable. Ultimately, for all its sins, Game of Thrones' ability to make me invest in new characters like the Viper while still maintaining an ability to pull the rug out from under the audience is what makes me respect the hell out of its writers and keeps me coming back. But this is a high-wire trick that even most professional writers and showrunners can't pull off, let alone most MU* GMs.

Even The Greatest Generation suffered from lack of characters I cared about at various points, and I had far less fun in those campaigns. It worked best for me when people REALLY gave a shit about whether or not their character lived or died. Which, I'm fine with building something up just to have it torn down. That's tragedy, but tragedy can be great drama, and I enjoyed playing it. But some people didn't and idled out when their favorite characters died, and I can't say they were wrong. Not only was their investment gone, I can think of several cases where the campaign was lesser without that character. Not that player. That character. In persistent environments, relationships are what makes this stuff meaningful, and when that's gone it's not easily replaced.

All this is to say, I have no problem with character death. I have zero interest in making a disposable character for a 'hard core' GM who's going to run a Walking Dead-style MU*. I doubt I'm the majority. The Walking Dead is very popular, and post-apoc with a high bodycount in general is enjoying a pop culture moment right now. I won't even argue that you don't need character death in a setting like that. I think you do, because occasional meaningless death is a part of the point. But it ain't my bag and there's why.

I write +finger information expecting it to be read. It's basic public info. I expect other players to write theirs assuming the same. So everyone should, by definition, know the public information they are writing to be read is being read at various times.

I object to them behaving like juvenile asshats and making me give up using this very basic command because it's easier than dealing with them.

Whatever a game does, they need to be upfront about it. It's like a consent/non-consent policy. This shit is important for players who're deciding whether or not they want to play somewhere. I strongly dislike PvP to the point where I'll generally avoid games that emphasize it, but I can tailor the design of my PC to minimize my need to engage in it (and generally prepare myself for something I'm eh on) if I'm aware it's a thing. If I'm not aware OOC, I can't do this.

@Thenomain
I'm not really disagreeing with you. I said up-top that this stuff is very well likely in keeping with MSB. I'm just stating that it bugs me when it happens, and it happens frequently, and it is a carry-over from WORA culture, good/bad/indifferent (I had thousands of WORA posts, I am no saint).

I think @surreality had an idea that's my ideal world. There's an ad thread that does just exist for advertising (maybe locked to the originator, though I do think questions that are actual questions are useful) and a more general thread where comments/criticisms get dumped (honestly the random OMG THIS IS THE GREATEST THING EVER is just as if not more irritating to me, it just leads to total derails less frequently). I honestly don't know if this even bothers anyone else, but this is the meta thread and this is my big meta complaint with the board. I take/leave/am cool or indifferent to the rest of how it's run.

ETA: Also, I'll admit, the 4chan wanktards spamming ad threads with bizarre and trolling questions has set me off about this. But it's a long-standing issue with me.

@Ghost said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

• The creation of cliques centered around board veterans, and the weird maintaining of ooc reputation through board posts alone

I wouldn't mind seeing the reputation system done away with, since some of the high rep people are MU*ers I know personally are drama-flaily hypocrites I would like to reach through the Internet and punch in the goddamn face.

Though I also like the ability to register mild agreement or mild disagreement without posting anything. So idk.

@Arkandel said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

@surreality Well, it's not porn, but for most of us it's not safe for work either. But that's my point - very little is safe for work.

Safe for work is a concern for me, too.

It would also, as a newb, make me wonder what the purpose of the game was (like, am I playing a sex game?), if it was on the front page. Maybe that's not fair, but it's a first impression. Art deeper in the wiki or on char pages I wouldn't care aobut.

@ThatGuyThere
Oh, yeah, I agree completely. A lot of the complaints I hear about FS3, I instantly think, 'Well, the GM was clearly doing xyz WRONG in that scenario...' But you can say the same thing about FATE (a fun game I've been involved in terrible campaigns of because of the runner), d20, or anything. I don't know how prominently to put the 'don't be stupid' language, because with some people it'll just never be enough. As was discussed earlier in this thread, I find the general way the combat system spits out results cool and feel like it gives me and the runner freedom to decide what happens that I like. Other players who want more structure/direction find a simple EVADES confusing. It's a balancing act.

And, again, you 100% cannot fix stupid with rules.

Max/Custodius is VERY dedicated about working newbies and people unaware of his reputation. There's only so much avoidance can do on a game that size with the amount of players from other mediums (like RPIs and forums/journals) it draws.

@Auspice said in Identifying Major Issues:

However, I had a class that went in depth on studying the whole 'Digital Immigrant' vs 'Digital Native' and there's a sort of 'Bridge' Generation between the two as well, which is where I think I fall. Most true Millennials just sort of accept a lot more (like spam mail) than the rest of us. And then you get the even younger kids (think the toddlers) who just expect every 'screen' to be a touch screen now. It's wild shit.

I really enjoyed the first Serial podcast in large part because so much of that murder investigation hinged on 'Bridge' generation tech no one who didn't go to high school in a fairly narrow window in the 90s would have much if any acquaintance with. Cell phones so shitty you also had a pager! Pagers as a thing high school students had at all! Oh, those times.