Posts made by Three-Eyed Crow

@Arkandel said:

@Rook said:

Sorry, if it isn't on Facebook, MSNBC or Fox News, half of America won't see it.

Agreed, but where's the other half?

Yeah, that's the thing. We live in a time where there's more information available than ever. And you don't even have to try terribly hard and follow non-Westernized sources, you can just keep up with the BBC or Reuters or something. Most people just don't. Which is another kind of problem. Not that I don't think the death of on-the-ground reporting and media consolidation are problems (my first attempt at a career was as a daily newspaper reporter, and I fled the industry because of the dying of it). They're huge problems, but consumers are both victims of them and complicit in perpetuating them, because all the excuses for not trying a little bit to look at the wider world occasionally are mostly gone now.

@Quibbler said:

People. My most 'successful' characters have been the ones that others have been interested in/intrigued by/found funny.

Same. I start out playing a character I find interesting, but I stick with it because of the way he/she bounces off other people and if they continue to develop interesting IC relationships and stories (that don't become static).

I also need stuff of consequences to occasionally happen ICly that I can be a part of, but that's a more general 'what keeps you on a game' thing and isn't character specific.

@Sundown said:

I find it weird that I can't get the feel of a decade after the 80s. The 80s have their specific flavor, but the 90s, what's that? Past 2000, it feels like everything is just a mishmash of sorta-modern. I wonder if this will change as those decades "age" and children born in them become nostalgic adults.

The key thing about the 90s to me is that they were the last somewhat analog decade, even though the Internet was kind of a thing. You can really see this if you watch TV from the 70s/80s/90s and compare it to plotlines on shows today. While there were minor differences and jumps in technology, those eras aren't radically different from one another in terms of the kind of stories that were told. But you add the one basic element of everyone having a cell phone, and it torpedoes or radically alters most old sitcom stories. I'm not sure those of us who grew up in those times and adapted to them reasonably well appreciate how different 2015 is from 1995.

@Cobaltasaurus said:

• Make a character with hooks, but not tied to any one because they can and probably will flake out on you. e.g. Play someone from the same college/workplace as someone you're interested in playing with. Do not play their sibling/boyfriend/some-who-won't-function-if-they-disappear.

I think this is right, though for me it's more, "Don't make your character so dependent on another that they're unplayable without that person." Which I don't think precludes making characters with very close IC ties. I apped into a game as someone's twin once. They idled out fairly quickly, but I never felt like I had trouble finding things to do with my character, and played him for a couple years. He just wasn't single-mindedly attached to only that one person (which I think is a mistake people make when they make connected characters which leads to ALL sorts of problems). Be open to IC bonds, but be aware you need to make your own fun, is the way I approach it.

This is my process. Parts of it are probably ‘wrong,’ but it mostly works for me, in terms of making characters I’m excited to play (and being excited to play something is, I feel like, the most important aspect of getting me off my ass and actually playing).

• I keep my backgrounds pretty lean. I’m down to a page in a Word doc usually, and I feel like even shorter would be better. I avoid defining as many relationships as possible, to leave room for people to claim to be my Old Whatever ICly. This both keeps things open so I can figure my character out as I play, and keeps me from over-story-ing my PC. So they can actually do interesting things ICly, rather than just having a lot of interesting stories. It’s the old writer cliché of starting your story at the most interesting point in your character’s life. It doesn’t always apply, but I think it’s a pretty good general rule to watch.

• If it’s taking me too long to design a character – either in terms of history or concept – that generally means there’s something about the basic idea I’m not really into, and I trash it and start over from scratch on something entirely different. I think too often, players force things that seem like they SHOULD be cool and assume it’ll come together in play. It’s natural to take awhile to find the character’s voice, but if RP becomes ‘work’ I cease wanting to play.

• I try to go into a new game as blank as possible, and design my characters to fit the world, rather than the other way around. I realize not everyone does this or enjoys doing this, and plenty of people create characters and then find places to play them. For me, though, it’s a really big deal. I feel like it makes it easier for me to plug into whatever action I want to be a part of ICly, rather than drifting around as a loner without a reason to connect with anyone.

• I always build into my background an NPC my character has or had a relationship with that’s strong enough for me to generate internal stories. Sometimes a sibling, or an old nemesis, dead husband, whatever. This will never, ever become a PC I ask anyone else to play, because that’s not the point of it. I’ve found it’s an element that gives my character some grounding, because I can imagine how they relate to this other imaginary person, and I can use that to figure out how they relate to the characters they meet ICly. It also allows me to generate mini character advancing things for myself that are entirely off-screen. Like, if nothing’s going on ICly that I’m super into, I can generate stuff to talk about by bitching about my ex-wife trying to ream me in our latest court fight, or roll my eyes at my roommate’s latest soon-to-fail business venture. It gives me a handle on what my character does when he/she is off-camera, which I find stops me from being ‘bored’ if IC action is a little low.

I don’t play WoD, so I can’t help with game recommendations, but I feel like a lot of character creation stuff (beyond, like, mechanics) is universal. These are just the things that I know personally help me get a PC going (some still fail, of course, but that’s life).

Do/did you play in a tabletop game now or in the past?: Technically, yes, but I never got into it. I had friends in high school and college who were in TT groups, and I occasionally played with them, but that was it. I haven't in a good decade.

What games(s) do/did you play as tabletop?: D&D primarily.

Are/were you the GM/ST/DM at your tabletop?: Nope.

Would you tabletop if you had the opportunity?: I might try it again if I had friends IRL who were into it, but it never held the same attraction to me that MU*ing did.

Do you have the opportunity but choose NOT to tabletop?: I guess, not that I'm actively avoiding it. I live in a pretty big city and occasionally do board game/chess nights at the local used book store, where I suspect it'd be easy to find a TT group. It's just never something I've actively wanted to seek out.

Misc: Agreed with @Caryatid that MU*ing is primarily a creative writing exercise for me, albeit a collaborative game of one.

@Roz said:

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

@Roz said:

From the perspective of someone who places ads on places like Tumblr in hopes of hooking in the younger generation that doesn't realize there's a way easier way to do this RP thing, promise, clients are a barrier to entry.

Hell, I spent two years RPing on raw telnet just because I didn't want to download a client.

Well that's just stupid. Which I say lovingly because I'm your friend but WHY.

Bwahaha. Pure dumb obstinance, which is the beginning and end of the reasoning behind many things I did in college.

From a user standpoint, I'm excited about things like Evennia, and what I've seen of AresMUSH, just because I want to see where they go and what they look like when people start playing with them. Even if the future is imperfect, I like the idea that people are still interested in working on it.

@Roz said:

From the perspective of someone who places ads on places like Tumblr in hopes of hooking in the younger generation that doesn't realize there's a way easier way to do this RP thing, promise, clients are a barrier to entry.

Hell, I spent two years RPing on raw telnet just because I didn't want to download a client. You could be that stubborn/young and dumb back in the day and still get involved, albeit in a way I didn't realize was horrible and broken. You can't anymore, unfortunately, though I think web clients you can log into directly off a game's web page are a promising way to confront this.

@Ganymede said:

Crimson Peak is a wink-and-nod to the gothic horror genre, which very few people have actually read and fewer appreciate. It is actually a very, very, very good movie from that perspective.

One of the better reviews I read about it called it "a ghost story, not a horror movie," which I feel like is an important distinction. I went in expecting that. I feel like a lot of viewers didn't. Then again, I also love frock dramas like Rebecca and the literary tradition that comes from.

I was on a nostalgia kick today and was wondering what Wade @ Battlestar Cerberus was up to. I used to have his contact info, but it's all ancient, and his Wikidot account no longer exists, so can't message there. If you are out there, buddy, I hope all is well, and you're remembered fondly. Also, I'd really love to play again some time.

Cidra @ BSCerb

@Wodchelle said:

• Science-Fantasy game. Magic and Steamtech. Something that combines elements from both that I love.

Arcanum (the PC game) MUSH.

Thanks so much. The board's Search tool is worse than useless.

@TNP
This. I vaguely remember them, and it was a great essay, but it's now sadly lost to the mists.

Or just lost to the awful search function on this forum, if it was posted here again at some point.

@HelloProject said:

Personally, I don't think it would be wise to go the monetary advertising route with MUSHes or RPIs that use commercial properties. The average MUSH already skirts a thin line when it comes to the legality of its existence, as the average one would be like advertising an interactive fan fiction.

Yeah, that's the thing. Charging money for something introduces real, legal intellectual property questions that (despite what Nymeria thinks), will fly under the radar 99% of the time as long as something stays free. Especially when you're getting to the point where you make enough money to call something a full-time job (and theoretically have tax and business filings). @Jaunt mentioned Shadows of Isildur. Could you run a LotR pay-for-play game without giving the Tolkien estate/Tolkien Enterprises a cut? What about the various other entities that have some rights to individual book content, like the various studios invested in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings?

Professionalizing original content wouldn't be a big deal, since you just need to work out licensing and ownership with you-the-creator and you/whoever-the-coder, but so much of this hobby overlaps with various fan communities that that's a Pandora's box probably best left alone.

There's a ton of debate on these issues within the MUSH community (whether and what staff should play, how common PC death should be, how combat should be setup and how to automate it/simplify it, etc,), and you'll find tons of games that have implemented them differently. I suspect searching this very site would provide you with many threads where whether or not staff should play on their games is discussed (I think they should, with limits on position, but not everyone thinks that and I'm not shocked fellow MUSHers don't agree with me on all things). It's not a monolith, just like I don't think anyone who's played RPIs would say they're overly monolithic, either (that's the impression from players of them not affiliated with OR who've commented in this thread, at least).

@Sundown said:

@Misadventure Well, it certainly depends on what kind of writing you're doing. I don't really see the importance of any such divide, especially as I also stress the importance of work habits.

I don't know about this. I think the divide exists, at least for me, but I don't think it's "art" versus "work." I think it's in how we approach our "art" versus how we approach out "work." I started my career as a newspaper reporter, then moved into audit investigation (where I had to write 10-page monster narrative reports on financial fraud), and I'm in technical writing now. None of this is strictly narrative (even journalism always felt to me a lot like story assembly) and I could always bang out the actual work pretty quickly (getting the information for it was always the time consuming thing, but I got a charge out of actually writing the stuff, particularly on deadline).

It's much harder for me to sit down and get my shit together to write creatively, at least in terms of narrative fiction (I waste plenty of time MU*ing). Part of this is because, after doing this shit for 8-hours a day, writing even more fun narrative stuff feels like more grind, and I want to do other things. But it's not just that.

I think the primary difference for me is motivation, and I don't just mean monetarily. Having deadlines that will fuck something up if I miss them, helps me. Having a manager yell at me if I'm not turning around something quick enough, helps me. This has to be done, and it has to be done now and fixed with your editor later if it's not perfect, and I can't sit around and polish it and play with it until it's just a thing nobody but me will ever see.

I essentially need to create consequences for myself for not doing shit. Which is how you treat your art like work (I agree this is what you need to do), it's just really, really hard without a yell-y boss supplying the need to get shit done.

@Jaunt said:

My reaction to you right now is not territorial protector mode. It's anti-sales&marketing mode.

Do I come off like a salesman? Granted, I do have a marketing/fundraising background in real life (specifically for the theatre companies I work for), but I wasn't aware that this was a perception of me on this board.

I think the idea that some folks here are so adamantly anti-marketing is interesting. I can relate to a certain extent. I hate commercials. Because I hate commercials, I only use streaming services that don't have commercials to watch television and movies now.

Yes, you guys come off like salesmen (when you in particular aren't coming off as Internet Avenger Righting Wrongs, but that's just stupid and you don't seem to be doing it just now). This is the advertising forum, so it's not like that's unexpected and kind of what it's for. But you also occasionally come off as bad, pushy salesman who can't read, "I've heard your pitch, now stop making it" cues. I thought pulling back on the update postings to once a month was a good start.

I'm not anti-commercials, but I work at a Too Big To Fail and am immersed in corporate bullshit all day, and reading an amateur version of some of that stuff weirdly transposed in a hobby forum is...well, to me it's a bit funny, because I recognize most of it and know when to just start ignoring it, but to some people it might be annoying.

I don't really understand why wikis aren't more popular for play-by-post stuff, come to it. I've got a friend right now starting up a game on a dreamwidth journal, which is the first time I've really been introduced to that medium, and I can't help but figure that doing stuff like that via wiki would allow for the same play style but much better organization of content. All about user preference, I guess.

One of the (less traumatic) stories a coder buddy of mine told me about his days at Serenity is how he'd frequently get spam-endorsement requests from Brice/Mal. So many MU*ers could get in on this, I'd imagine.