Posts made by Three-Eyed Crow

@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.

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.

@lordbelh said in The 100: The Mush:

I would very much hate a game where Staff went: 'please guys, make your characters nicer, we're getting a reputation.'

Yeah, this. If anything, hearing that there's some ongoing IC conflict makes me more interested to poke my head back in down the line, because it's so easy for environments like this to become overly hugtown-y.

The OOC side of this is trickier because, as stated earlier by many in the thread, most people play 'WOE AS ME I AM THE ANGSTIEST' stuff as just really boring and tedious after awhile. But that's a different problem, and one not unique to this game by any means.

@Coin said in The 100: The Mush:

What this thread has taught me is that no matter what, "good game" and "bad game" are subjective and people will always find something to praise and something to damn about anything, and that someone will always rise up in defense and someone will always double-down on criticism when that happens.

This is also a new game, one that's gotten a decent influx of activity upfront, so it's kind of in what I think of as the NEW PUPPY stage. Which I'll admit is the reason I decided 'Not for me' after a couple weeks. I find the players at this stage of a game exhausting. In my experience, there's a tendency to over-hype new games they're enjoying as THE BEST GAME EVER, or declare they're doomed after two scenes.

This is helpful in generating momentum, and it makes me hopeful this place will be around in six months, but I can skip it. Also, like @lordbelh said, it means it feels like everything is happening SUPER FAST even though staff has made an effort to slow down the time ratio (I think it's 1 IC day for every 2 RL days right now).

@Monogram said in The 100: The Mush:

That all being said, I think the game is great and has a good playerbase and players that don't seem to be absolute jerkwads. But playing a Delinquent can be mentally exhausting at times, especially being around particular alts that seem to just want screw just about everything up. But hey, what game doesn't have that aspect of things?

I'll confess I'm less attracted - in general - to playing teenage characters and near-teenagers because...this is more or less what they are. It's an age where everything is emotionally heightened. You're a self-involved angst-bot. I'm enthused about Ground apps (and possibly other stuff in the future) because it can be something other than that.

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.

@Lotherio said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

It is forcing a 'you were not at your post'. Player cannot be on 24/7, or even every day of the week. Their char would be, this is making a weird cross over of OOC/IC.

Yeah, this. Half the reason people burn out on these games is the implied, inflated obligation they sometimes feel like.

Also, on the more code-heavy games I've played, there was usually coded resolution that staff could apply (or NPC commands players could access) if a particular PC in a particular role wasn't online at the exact hour they were needed. Because the two PC doctors that exist on a game usually aren't, sensibly, the only two doctors that exist in the entire city.

This seems like a more interesting variation on the bullet-points style BG I've seen some places. Sometimes I find this much easier in terms of building a character. I don't always feel it works (and there are some cases where really important stuff isn't something I decide on until I get into play), but it's at least a cool twist on the existing formula.

I'd do something like this enthusiastically as a post-approval character-building exercise (I do a stupid amount of those) on my own steam.

@Lotherio said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

Also, this is a peeve of mine with any RPI RPE MUD. Because I was on-line, I'm accountable for any 'shunning' or ignoring by your character, to your character, from your character.

This also seems to ignore that...it's not a purely IC decision to go to the town square because you see 4 people RPing there on +where. You're making an OOC decision to go where the RP is at. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that and I dislike games with limited +where because it creates a hurdle to finding RP. But this is also an OOC calculus, just a different one than 'This scene is too big so I need to ease out of it.'

ETA: I'm really sympathetic to the ease of 'public room = public RP' when you're a newb who doesn't know anyone. That's the environment I came up in and I still finding asking for RP occasionally awkward, though on the whole I prefer the ability to get smaller, more focused scenes. I just don't see this so much as an IC vs. OOC split. I see it as one OOC concern and another OOC concern.

@Arkandel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

... why on earth won't X+Y+Z, who are idlying and not part of any scene, for whom any scene would do, go off and make a scene of their own? Why does it need to be the one already in progress? Just start something, you have enough people!

This is always my question. Multiple ongoing scenes are better than one giant, semi-incomprehensible scene for me, every time.

@faraday said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

I also think it's polite to try to work people in when they ask, as per the second bullet. But there are legitimate situations where that's hard/awkward/impossible.

These also usually aren't scenes I want to join. If two people are having a intensely personal conversation in a public space, sure I could RP with them. But my experience with those scenes is they tend to become really banal and not about anything, and I usually feel I'd have been better off just starting my own thing. I would always be better off starting my own thing than trying to parse a scene that 8 people have piled on.

RE: Preacher

I'm specifically putting off watching the pilot because I want to be able to do two or three episodes at once. AMC shows tend to need a little time to spool for me to get into them. From the interviews I've read, the creators are both lovers of the source material and aware it's going to need some tweaks to translate, so I'm cautiously optimistic. I've liked the casting so far, which is half the battle.

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).

@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.

@lordbelh said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

A certain subset of mushers are extremely conflict averse. Since I'm not, I expect I tend to attract other players who aren't, while putting off those who are.

And it's also sometimes tricky to tell who's conflict averse and who's not, or who's OK with conflict among players they know and who just wants to avoid it altogether. Because players who want to OOCly avoid this stuff don't necessarily play PCs who're un-wonky or super-easy to get on with ICly. I don't know that there's much you can do about this other than try and be polite once you're aware of what someone's OOC comfort level is, and self-select out if you really aren't compatible.

@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.

Very neat write-up. Not much to add except that I'd play something like this if it existed (time and eventual execution permitting, of course).

@saosmash said in What are you playing...?:

XFNYC (http://xfnyc.riverdark.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page) is the superhero game. I guess "superhero" is kind of a strong word because, as aforementioned: losers.

Also playing here. Enjoying it.

I poked my head into the new 100 MUSH as well http://www.the100.wikidot.com/ . With New Job I didn't have the brain-energy for another game right now, but I liked what I saw and will probably give it another go when I do. Ground apps opening appeals.

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.

How hard is it to be polite to someone without using their name?

I've honestly never felt the urge to call an employee at a store by their name on their tag. If anything, I think I'd feel awkward doing it. I just try to say 'Please' and 'Thank you' and not be a dick about what I'm looking for.