Posts made by Three-Eyed Crow

I feel like the answer to this question is always, do the best you can to find the illusive happy medium, because both staff-run plots and the feeling that I can do shit if I want to do shit are necessary for me to invest in a game. What turns me off are the extremes. I'll leave a game where staff runs no story much faster, I guess, because I'm just not into the disconnected sandbox 'All PrP all the time' thing. It's just not a style I particularly jive with.

I prefer scheduled scenes these days because otherwise I'm, realistically, going to miss most shit that happens, just because my time is somewhat limited and MU*ing is a thing I fit in (and I'm not nearly as limited as a lot of other players, even with that). Doesn't mean I h8 the idea of impromptu scenes, just that I'm probably not going to be able to get in on stuff if all scenes are totally rando. I also think STs should have the freedom to do unpredictable shit if they want, though. Like the above, I think it's a balance.

I've also, honestly, never thought of 'PrP' as 'do something vaguely more interesting than meet-and-greet coffee shop RP'. I think of them as actual plots, however long they last, that are a bit more involved than random one-off scenes you decide to do off the cuff one night. I come from cultures where if I want to run a random bar fight, or do little riffs with an NPC in the background of a scene, that's just regular RP and I've never had anybody get weird about it with me. I get that this isn't the case everywhere, though, and this is one of those conversations that seems to come down to 'how are we defining this word' as much as what people want out of PrPs and game rules surrounding them.

@surreality said in Play-by-post analog to MUSoapbox:

I've been looking at options for something kinda 'play by wiki'. I want to make that at least an option for stuff I'm developing, mostly based on this same general need/concept.

I've always kind of wanted to see this tried on games. A wiki is theoretically just as useable for it as a forum or gdoc or journal, if the players involved make an effort not to edit over each other (and I suspect this'd be most useful for small scenes anyway), so I can't think of a reason not to use it in this way.

@Coin said in The 100: The Mush:

Not to mention that cliques are necessary; it's just that in this hobby the word 'clique' has such heavy overtones that everyone loses their god damn minds over it.

Yeah, it's a thing where I always feel like I'm getting sucked back into High School Mentality vortex when people complain about it.

Which is unfortunate, because there are actual issues that I think people actually kind of mean when they talk about the evils of cliques (sharing plot spotlight and making sure there's an effort toward newbie integration) that are really important to game culture and the hobby in general. But it turns into 'ZOMG CLIQUES EXIST!!!' in a way that's really lame and doesn't address those things.

There's a ton of RP via dreamwidth journals. It's not something I've tried, so can't direct you to a game, but it's been mentioned on this board a time or two, by folks who're more involved in it, as an option.

@Arkandel said in Good or New Movies Review:

And while talented people make good films in any genre people will show up to watch them.

I'd quibble with this. I think there's a genuine issue in the marketplace right now with studio over-reliance on a couple big tent-poles a year and a lack of medium-budget movies (could you make something like Shawshank Redemption today as a non-indie? I kind of doubt it). This is a more complicated issue than "superhero fatigue," though, and those movies are just part of the landscape to me, not the actual problem. Whatever criticisms one might have of Marvel right now, they're making an effort to do good-quality narrative stuff.

@ixokai said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

I'll play just to see evennia in action.

Same. Everything I've read shows a lot of promise but I really want to see what playing on an Evennia game feels like.

@Arkandel said in Good TV:

I guess they don't call a guy the Sword of the Morning because he isn't a goddamn badass.

All I could think of while watching that scene was all the GoT MUSH PCs I'd made fun of for trying to be cool by having TWO BROADSWORDS!!!111ONEONEELEVEN.

I guess I can't do that anymore now that the show's enabling them.

I like them for flavor, I'll admit. It's one more toy on the grid to play with to give it a sense of place, which I honestly do think helps me in RP. Weather, that is, and having it in the desc is more than enough. Time of day I don't feel is particularly useful, since it's something you're going to need to change most of the time anyway depending on what the PCs present need to play out.

@Lotherio
I never understand why the players who do this don't just start another scene. I mean, I understand it, but how do you not see that's bad social etiquette? Even if there's somebody there they want to RP with...dude not cool.

@mietze said in Finding roleplay:

Most players are far more conservative with what they want to do.

I think it really depends on the player. I'm pretty conservative and engage in a lot of self-censorship, but I've seen enough wonky idiots to know that's not the norm. It's not really rare, but a lot of people really lack for common sense.

Not that I really think this is a reason to create PrP hoops. That Guy is going to do nutty stuff anyway and you'll probably just have to deal with it one-on-one eventually whatever you're doing. The vast median generally needs to be encouraged to do something, even if it isn't perfect, so creating as little work for them as possible is probably the best idea.

I feel like both, or like the latter builds off the former for me. I start with a lot of the 'create to the game' when I start making the bones of a PC. It's (part of) why I dislike porting character concepts, because I try to build at least something key into them that's tied into that world or that take on the theme. I want to feel like there's something I can sink my teeth into in what the game's doing with itself, even if I'm not sinking them particularly deep. After that, though, I need to connect with the character and find them fun and interesting to play little personal stories about if I'm going to stick with them for any length of time. With my main PC, at least. Alts tend to work for me best as pure 'color' characters who can come out once a month, be kind of entertaining, and then go back in the box without anyone minding.

@ZombieGenesis said in Something similar to WoD, but not quite:

Ugh, Buffy. I tried running a Buffy game but...players ran me right off. I hate to be "that guy" but every day was something new and horrible for me to deal with. I allow Highlander Style immortals but that's not good enough, I need to allow 1,200 year old Highlander style immortals who get extra points for combat stats you know, for reasons.

I remember looking at that game and shying away from it when I saw the Highlander-style immortals, actually. Not that I guess it's a terrible idea, I just didn't get how it jived with Buffy or even more generic horror tropes. I was curious about the reason for including them, like if they had some importance to some kind of metaplot or something. Though if it's just 'Highlander's cool' that's fair enough.

A lot of people in another thread mentioned Dark Spires already.

http://darkspires.org/wiki/Main_Page

Is there more butthurt over the downvotes lately, or is it just Certain Posters? I can't decide. Possibly both.

@Coin said in Finding roleplay:

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

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

@Arkandel said in Good TV:

I like a lot about the show. What they're doing with Dorne is a travesty though - the writers' only chance for redemption in that regard is if they are aware of the fact, and they're leading things to a meltdown there. I can't tell if they think we should be fist-pumping for the Sand Snakes or what.

So so bad. I hope Alexander Siddig got paid massive bank for his cameo. None of the Dorne plot makes any sense (if anything the premier made things worse in that regard) and I suspect they're going to keep on keeping on with it, sigh.

Also really looking forward to Preacher, if only to see how they realize it.

@Arkandel said in Finding roleplay:

The flipside of it is people whose schedules, socialization skills or plain newbie status prevents them from being organically part of interesting scenes which grow to be more. Organized +events give them an in, and from then on they can cultivate IC relationships, show off their RP chops to people and gain hooks into the game's theme. Sometimes a STed PrP let me grow my still generic 'grumpy cop' into a legitimate more three dimensional character.

This was my issue back when more random events were more common on games I played. They never seemed to happen when I was online, or would be in progress and have started an hour ago, when I was still at work. My only objection to somebody dropping something on me would be that I sometimes only have a couple hours a night to RP, and if a random scene happens when I've just got an hour left, it'll probably be less frustrating for everyone concerned to just beg it off.

I am sad the practice has died, though. It at least shows an ST is trying, even if they aren't dropping stuff I'm 100% in the mood for or can participate in, and I appreciate the effort.

@Coin said in I will design you a MUX:

I would actually play the fuck out of this. I have been kind of jonesing for a Lords and Ladies-type game that is also set in modern times (kind of like the ill-fated one-season series Kings). Modern conveniences and technology, but with antiquated governmental structure? Now that sounds interesting.

Oh Kings. So weird, so good, so doomed. I still pull out the DVD every now and again.

It is a good model for alt-history, in the way it said, "OK, it's basically modern times except in a made-up country that still has a king, just fucking go with it."

@Arkandel said in Universal Basic Income:

At some point the notion of "why do we work?" has to be examined as well. Is it that much better a human being pours gas into your car than a machine? Is it fulfilling for that person, did he/she grow up hoping to do that? So if we give the same salary and let the machine do its thing failing the bootstrap dream?

Ideally, what I hope comes with something like basic income is a fundamental change in how we approach the labor market. There are plenty of tasks in American society that are woefully under-staffed (child and elder care, and some middle-class jobs like nursing) and massive infrastructure repair and maintenance projects we're ignoring because we just don't have that kind of public works commitment. Those are jobs that need doing and there's no reason you couldn't shift a large portion of the labor force into them if there wasn't as pressing a need to go into the widget factory 40 hours a week for so many people. But like BIG itself, I don't have particularly high hopes of this happening anytime soon.

@Arkandel said in Mudstats:

We're in a dying hobby. But look at the bright side, it's Friday!

Fri-yay!

Shame if Mudstats has been abandoned. I find it much more helpful to sift through than Mudconnector, particularly the activity charts. Alas the shifting sands of time, something something.