@Roz said:
Roleplaying is a team sport, not a solo one.
Yep, this. The back-and-forth/improv aspect of MU* RP is why I enjoy it, and why I could never get into journal or forum RP. I've known lots of really good writers who aren't at all good RPers, even if they were sometimes interesting to read. If I just want to read, I have plenty of books.
I just never say 'I'm bored' on channel. Never. Because it does, to me, come off as "Entertain me, masses!", however anyone means it.
It's not that I never am bored, but I can just quietly go play a video game or go read or something.
@Arkandel said:
Agreed. And you know, even in games which ultimately failed I can't help but think players were expecting staff to hand-feed them entertainment a bit too much, and gave up too fast.
One of the (many) reasons I think I'll never staff again is how intolerant I've become of players needing to be hand-fed entertainment. Passivity irritates me to almost irrational levels these days (this is not a good thing to be irritated about if you MUSH). I realize players often have their reasons for it - both bad experiences elsewhere and just personality - but zomg blargh.
@Ghost This is so hard. See, in my experience, people with technical writing issues (spelling/grammar/or just style things like the people from forums who pose in past-tense), they will know there are areas they can improve in and they will get better - sometimes very quickly - if they RP with other people they can kind of copy. And like I said, I will RP all day with folks like this without complaint.
The guy who's problematically self-absorbed thinks they're an awesome RPer and doesn't need to improve, so what do you say to that?
I'm pretty blunt, both IRL and online (as I mention probably too often, I used to be a reporter IRL, and if nothing else this made me pretty unself-conscious about approaching strangers and badgering them until they play with me), but I try to keep in mind I'm in an environment with a lot of other players who aren't like that. I'll admit this is sometimes hard for me (I'm sure I sometimes steam-roll people without meaning to, sorry), but if someone can meet me half-way, that's usually all it takes to make me happy.
MU*s are fundamentally social games. This is obvious, but I don't think a lot of players really stop and think about this enough. I do think this means you have to throw yourself out there if you're going to enjoy them. I realize this is hard for a lot of people, but I think you just have to suck it up after a certain point. Other players absolutely should help you, especially if you're new (I think pretty much everyone should go out of their way to RP with newbs, and I like to think I try to). It just needs to be a two-way street. I think we owe everybody one or two times of hand-holding, but if it's every time something needs to change.
@Roz said:
But here's the truth: sometimes a player's RP is just not as well-liked by the rest of the playerbase and others just aren't as interested in RPing with them. It sucks, but that's just a fact of the hobby. Some people are more fun than others. But as staff, I can't make someone RP with a player they don't want to RP with, nor should I. That isn't my responsibility. We shouldn't punish players for RPing with who they want to RP with.
I think the best way someone can remedy this if somebody feels like maybe this is happening to them is make an effort to RP ABOUT other people if you're in a scene, rather than themselves. Like, ask about somebody's IC job or how they feel about that thing that happened ICly or whatever. I feel like this also helps in the being inclusive thing. I don't mind people who pose less-than-perfectly, as long as they're engaging with me and not expecting it to be All About Them 100% of the time.
It strikes me as much easier just to tell someone they can't do something than to see the stupid thing they're doing and try to stop it.
I think if you want open CG, you have to accept that the game will have a certain amount of crack, and it can't be helped. Which is a valid trade-off to make, it's just a trade-off that's inevitable. I don't see a hybrid of open cg/approval really pleasing anyone.
I like having short-desc information to reference (like, how tall somebody is compared to you really affects how you interact with them) but there's no reason you can't stick that on a wiki or even just plug some information into a form in cg that autofills, like you do a +fullname or whatever.
@Ghost said:
EXAMPLE: On Battlestar Genesis, I believe, we had a char named Gars. Gars' PB was Linc from Tropic Thunder (Robert Downey Jr playing Kirk Lazarus who was playing Lincoln, an "Amos and Andrew" talking Mississippi black man from 1967 who was in the Vietnam war). The problem was, he wanted to play the character, but saw nothing thematically wrong with being a marine who, mid-firefight, would say things like "Come get some, n+gga! Huah! Mississippi Black Snake in your MOUTH, Bitch!" in a setting that took tens of thousands of years before Earth history, in outer space, where there was no Vietnam war, nor Mississippi.
Oh God, I remember this guy. He was also one of the many players who never seemed to accept that gender roles are not the same in the BSG-verse, and that female fighter pilots and Marines are commonplace and had been for his entire career. I was always surprised by how hard this particular idea was for a lot of people to grasp (including a not-insignificant number of female PCs who played stuff like 'altering' their uniforms to show more boobage, sigh).
The first game I ever had a character die on was The Greatest Generation (it was the first non-consent game I ever really got into). I had lots of characters die there, just because of the nature of how the combat code worked, and after awhile I kind of got a kick out of it, in a macabre way. My poor bastard soldiers got a reputation for turn-over after awhile, both because I was very active at times (and able to make lots of battle scenes) and because I actually did shit in scenes (and 'doing shit' is either glorious or ruinous in some high-risk situations). I also did a lot of soft RP, so my characters were pretty well-developed by the time they died, and a few deaths seemed to actually impact other PCs and created a lot of ripple RP I loved to read (reading about your dead characters is the best kind of mention porn).
I was cool with losing my characters on TGG (and most of the players who stuck around for any length of time were), I think, because the headwiz was very, very upfront about the level of risk in combat scenes, and I always felt like things were fair. This is all I ask out of a GM. Be clear about the chance of a character dying, even if it's remote, and I'll happily roll with it. This is one of those things that requires a high level of trust, though, or else it's not fun, and trust is a frustratingly tricky commodity between players and GMs on MU* settings.
I don't think characters need to die for RP to be worthwhile, or to feel like there's a certain amount of risk in a scene (though I do, always, want stupid, stupid IC actions to have consequences somehow, even if it's just be a mission failing or an injury that the PC has to deal with). And I'm fine with players don't want to go there, as long as what they actually want isn't "I always want to win because winning is the only fun thing." But I do think it can make RP and stories more worthwhile, in the right situations.
A lot of the examples of MU* campaigns mentioned here touch on something I think is important. I think it's a LOT easier to do a satisfying, game-wide story on a game that's focused on PvE, rather than PvP. This is one of the reasons I prefer those types of games, though far from the only reason.
@Ghost said:
I played plenty of the Battlestar games, like Cerberus, which had endings that were pretty much months/years before the intended close time due to loss of player interest or staff disappearance. Those games dropped one of those "let's all write our closing endgame points, but the game is closing on X date" things.
BS Pacifica managed a proper closer (I actually came back for the finale after taking a hiatus, and it was a great experience), but @faraday puts us all to shame, in a zillion ways. 
@SG said:
Has anyone played on a Mush with successful campaigns?
On Battlestar Cerberus,we sure as hell tried.
Did we succeed? I think for a long time yes, though the players would be able to say better than I can, and ultimately the game's plot heaviness is what made it unsustainable, when the headwiz went to law school and we ran into problems with what we'd envisioned as a major turning point arc on Gemenon (it was both over-plotted and under-plotted, somehow, and suddenly it was time to do it and none of us who were around could 'fix' it on the fly).
This is our game timeline, and I think it basically held together through the big Pegasus Rip-Off arc, which was about a year and a half into things. So not too bad. http://battlestarcerberus.wikidot.com/timeline
I don't know if I'd staff like that again. It was a stupid amount of work. But it was, by far, the most fun I'd ever had and the most invested I'd ever been in a position, and that was because we all cared about the story so much.
Also here to proclaim my love for my Fitbit and put my link in if people want to add me. Always looking for more Challenges.
https://www.fitbit.com/user/3JB9QB
I'm a data obsessive (I work in fraud investigation IRL), so this thing is perfect for me. It's easy to quantify stuff like, "I should do 1,000 more steps a day if I have this many Cheetos," instead of stressing about exactly what kind of exercises I should be doing at the gym or whatever.
Same. I don't think it says much about my writing style. Just, as a buddy mentioned recently when we were chatting about this, the default tends to be Dude on the Internet unless there are obvious indicators otherwise.
My login name at SWOFA (which is the first of these boards I think I posted at) was Three-Leaf Clover, because I was 19 and precisely the kind of cliche that handle implies.
Then I was 3LC on WORA, which made very little sense but at least didn't make me cringe.
Now I'm an incorrect Game of Thrones reference (since it should be Three-Eyed Raven).
@Admiral said:
I get accused of being a guy all the time.
I used to get called a guy all the time by readers when I was a reporter. Which amused me far more than when I get called one other anonymous places, because my byline was right at the top of every story and, if a dude named Sarah exists, I've yet meet him.
@Luna said:
Losing weight is super simple. Eat less than you burn in calories a day. Just because it's simple doesn't mean it's easy.
It takes a fucking long time to see results, was my biggest problem with it for the longest time.
Once I'd accepted that I just wasn't going to lose what I wanted to lose in the first two weeks/month and stopped discouraging myself, I dropped like 30 pounds last year.