Posts made by Three-Eyed Crow

@Coin said:

@BobGoblin
All I can say is: if you want it, build it.

Pretty much this. It sort of touches on something that was mentioned else thread. There are a lot of people who like the idea of theoretically playing something, maybe, if they can be arsed on a given day. The population who will proactively play something and tend to its existence is smaller and games die without a certain number of them. The population who will staff it, ST it, and build it, is microscopic.

As for fantasy MUSHes, I feel like right now any who start, even with different intentions, will attract the Lords n' Ladies/Game of Boyfriends crowd. It's probably possible to make one that's actively not that, but you really have to fight against it, because those people will find you.

I just figure people who need me to motivate them don't actually really want to participate. They just kinda want to participate, maybe, some time. Which is fine, but it's not my responsibility. I've stopped worrying about it (which is weirdly hard, at least for me). It's not my job to cat-herd you if you're not into something, even though I'd be perfectly happy if you end up really wanting to at some point. Pro-activity goes hand-in-hand with really wanting to do anything, for me.

This is totally different than actual unavailability due to RL or health or whatever. That's just life.

@Coin said:

MUs have a hard time developing groups due to scheduling conflicts and the fact that familiarity breeds contempt sometimes, in my opinion. I have tried and tried and tried to geenrate groups that work together and complement each other. It often fails, but that doesn't mean it isn't the intent and desire of many.

While scheduling is certainly part of it, I think it's also a mentality thing, and not just among people who don't enjoy RPing together. Even players in a a regular playgroup kind of have to be forced and directed to actually collaborate. Even in settings where building characters and plots together is actively encouraged, and when timezones among a group are somewhat compatible, people just don't have the instinct to do it. As much as we talk about Lone Wolfs as a problem, even decent players have a hard-on for them unless their noses are slapped, and I'm not sure how best to circumvent this.

MU*ers don't understand these are fundamentally social, interactive games, and it's bugging the hell out of me lately.

I think this season might be my favorite. I replay the Urkel sketch and the aerobics one often.

People Don't Like Things They Aren't Used To (TM).

This seems like a fun exercise, even though I've never tried WoD, so the overlap here will probably be minimal. I’ve been MU*ing since 1998/1999, so there are likely many games and many of my creatures that I’ve forgotten.

• Tales of Ta’Veren MUSH – First place I ever played, fuck me I can remember character names. The only one I’ve retained is Lara, farm girl archer who ended up joining the Valavendil adventuring group. It is probably best that it’s all a vague blur. I was a newb and pretty terrible, always been grateful to the players here who were patient with me.

• Chicago MUSH – Old one, not the reborn version, though I’m occasionally tempted to try it. Kate the Chicago Tribune reporter

• Harry Potter: Alere Flammas: Sally/Orah/Odette/Eru. A few others, but those were probably my ‘main’ PCs over the years there. I was also Merrow when I was on-staff.

• TGG: Strife in my staff incarnation, too many poor dead bastard soldiers to name (my favored children were probably Singh/Byrd/Christiane, and Konstantinov for the lulz. Gallipoli is the most hands-on I've been with a campaign from beginning to end as a staffer, and I recall it fondly).

• Steel & Stone: Jarod Rivers/Lady Rebekkah Nayland

• Game of Bones: Kevyn the squire/newb knight briefly, before IRL ate me

• No Return: Reece

• X-Factor: Kade

• Something a Great Notion: Trakas

• Arx: - Tila (1st?? one), Pasquale (1st one), Esoka (ONLY ONE), Raya (1st one)

Lots of BSG games. I peeked into most of them at least briefly, but these were the chars I stuck with:

• BSPacifica: Theda
• BSGenesis: Rhea/Bell/Timon
• BSCerberus: Cidra/Hydra as Staff
• BSOrion: Phin/Neko
• BSDeimos: Iris
• BSU: Callipe

Current:

• Arx: Filshiar
• The Network: Demi
• Spirit Lake: Manny (PC) & Selkie (App Staff) in Beta; Yuritzi in Alpha

Lots of other places that I flitted away from quickly and without note. I am better at creating characters than sticking with them, apparently, unless the planets are properly aligned.

Edited to add some names, since I'm playing semi-actively again at this exact moment.

I don't focus on the bad, but it's much easier to quantify the bad. We also, frankly, tend to cut our friends a lot of slack on their flaws and inflate their good qualities, while zeroing in on petty bullshit from randos and people we don't particularly care for. It's human nature, but it makes me reluctant to either call people out by name unless they've become complete atrocities, or give someone a public compliment unless they've done something amazing (I give private compliments pretty frequently, and it's the kind of feedback I put more stock in and prefer to receive myself).

With all that said, I did have an experience recently as a Guest that I really liked. I was actually invited to watch ongoing RP, and @tel'd to the grid by staff so I can get a sense of what an actual scene was like. I wish more games would do this, as the way the players and ST interacted gave me a much better idea of how the trains actually ran at this place. There are obvious pitfalls in doing this (namely, a lot of People on the Internet can't master basic courtesy and will be disruptive), but it was the first time I thought, 'Huh, this is a decent idea and there are ways it can probably work.'

I think this needs to be quoted here. You can't tease something like that without going all the way.

@Bennie said:

So maybe the point is that the way in which Plots are advertised is too lazy. inviting the All Game to the rodeo instead of saying Characters 100-200 with Social primary is an option we should be exploring.

Tailoring plot to power levels would solve a lot of the issues I have with uber-statted PCs. It's hard as a plot-runner, though. The nature of MUSHes mean that your PrP group is more often than not cobbled together from people with compatible schedules and whoever the fuck wants to engage with it at a given moment. This isn't necessarily bad, but it makes it difficult to expand your tailored plot beyond 2 or 3 people.

I picked this up when it was featured in the holiday Steam sale. Haven't gotten into it yet (work, and other gifted games) but it's getting some quality time this weekend.

Should I start with Saints Row 2, or skip straight to 4 (which was actually the one I'd been meaning to buy forever, just seemed wise to get them all since it was the price of a relatively cheap game) and backtrack if I enjoy it? Never played any of them.

I liked and still enjoy both Lost and Harry Potter for what they were (and I expect no more of them), but they're definitely good examples of aggravating fan communities. I ignored them back in the day, much like I ignore the "A Song of Ice and Fire" fans (in all its Nymeria'ness) these days.

Evangelicals of any stripe are annoying, particularly when it comes to popular entertainment, since you're evangelizing something inherently made for mass appeal. You'll spend a lot of time having arguments with hipsters (also really annoying).

"Twink" is one of those words that's gotten down to having no real definition other than "Guy who does stuff I don't like." I hate these words, and I've gotten away from using the term except in tongue-and-cheek ways because of it. So I guess I don't care about 'twinking' in RP MU*.

The term I prefer, that an RP buddy of mine applied to another player awhile ago, is "stat bully." It was specific to this player, but I realized it's what I think of when I want to default to calling someone a "twink." The character was in a role that didn't generally hone a person into having sky-high combat stats, but had them anyway, to the point where they were more skilled than experienced PCs who in theory spent all their on- and off-screen time doing soldier-y things. This by itself is, whatever. People buy combat dots for no reason because these are RPGs and that's what you do. But this character also spent all their time getting into situations where they could throw their bloated dice around and "win" minor contests against other characters. Not even life-or-death stuff, because that wasn't the nature of the game. Just dick-measuring.

This isn't a twink, but it's the thing that aggravates me, and I feel like it's more often than not what's actually be criticized when the term is used.

There were obviously always people who were buddies in other types of games or forums, who'd chat on IM or even who knew each other through university groups. And I made semi-real people friends with other MU*ers who I exchanged emails/IM handles/Facebook invites with. It was always a really small group who I'd played with for a long time, though. It definitely feels more common now. I think I got my first out-of-the-blue request from a player I didn't know terribly well to Skype about two years ago. They clearly weren't being weird of stalkery about it, they just thought it was normal to Skype with people they played with casually. I've always been fairly guarded about keeping my RL separate from my gaming (different than OOC separation to me), so mileage may vary.

I feel like this is good, really, even though it occasionally makes the Old Man On Porch With Shotgun side of me (maybe my favorite side, if I'm being honest) cringe. I'm actually encountering newbs more often than I did those same two years ago, even if the player pool itself certainly hasn't gotten noticeably bigger. I think it opens up the hobby a little bit, and allows easier recruitment from other types of gaming.

Ravaun is one of those players who I wish could be tagged and radio collared, so he could be tracked and shot (banned, I am not advocating real-world ninja assassination) on-site. Dude is either a genuine psycho or committed to some of the weirdest troll performance art I've ever witnessed.

What most dramas centered on persistent criminal environments have in common (someone mentioned "Sons of Anarchy" in another thread, the first show that came to mind for me is "The Wire," where the cop and criminal characters interacted semi-regularly, but there are a handful of other good models) is that they put their criminal characters within an organization that supports ongoing crime'ing. Your crime boss will get you a lawyer to find the technicality to get you off on. Your low-level enforcer friends will make NPC/guest character witnesses disappear. Your mole inside the police department will tamper with evidence for you, and your crooked politician will make sure the crusading prosecutor and/or judge are dissuaded from doing anything about you. Crime is dangerous, and if you don't have protection from the societal rules erected against it, you won't last long.

There's very little care taken with setting up a criminal infrastructure, in my experience. Also, players want to play lone wolf criminals which, in reality, probably will get arrested and/or killed fairly quickly. And in fiction (since this isn't reality we're talking about), can't interact with anyone else and aren't very interesting. Lone Wolf Anythings suck, but they're particularly unsustainable if they're criminals imo.

Kind of obvious, but I got it for Christmas and so far it's living up to the hype. One of the best books released last year.

"The Bone Clocks" by David Mitchell

Echoing the thanks for putting this together. For better or worse, WORA was the only MU*-focused discussion board that really existed, and it'd be a shame to lose it for community's sake.

I do hope the old board is eventually recovered as an archive at least, like SWOFA exists now. I still occasionally direct my fellow players to old threads, just for the record-keeping of it all.