Posts made by Tributary

On Arx, I spent 5 months OOCly doing research and writing songs, involving people in the investigations, RPing with them about what they already knew, and practicing my lyrics on willing victims. I talked with people about what I was doing, got them excited about things, made social connections between other characters, and even got a little NPC action in. I made a lot of friends ICly and introduced them to other friends. Much RP was had.

Then, in November and December, I spent six weeks doing 5 concerts, one a week with a break for Thanksgiving, to present my songs and to answer the general public's questions about them. I highlighted people in my Q/A sessions who might have a better perspective than me, and in general, I spread a lot of "secret" knowledge out into the playerbase. This led to people approaching me afterwards to ask questions about what I'd said so that they could gain "evidence" in the form of @clues. Everyone who attended got a copy of the song for reference, and most of the songs were chock full of useful information. I made a lot of connections and gave people a lot of fodder for subsequent RP scenes.

I recommended people get in touch with the Bards and the Scholars, and I included both the Bards and the Scholars in my formal @action to staff to essentially sum up what I'd done to get the songs out into the world. For some people, this was their first @action, and they were giddy about helping, and I got to walk them through how to do an @action assist. Socialites jumped on it as a way to use their social clout for Team Good. It was a purely social @action, and I had four pages of helpers because people loved the idea so much.

Turns out, staff loved the idea, too. They gave me a new title, and there were some interesting effects of the @action, including the refurbishment of the Hall of Heroes, a new statue for Sorrel's hero Copper (who died between her concert and the final concert), and the fact that the songs actually are spreading across Arvum. Staff was thrilled that a social-only action touched so many people and garnered so much RP and was an entirely player generated piece of work.

It feels good to be appreciated!

Honestly, I think that if @clues are being "hoarded," it's because they're secret or considered dangerous. That, or the player is trying to control something.

There are tons of people out there who are happy to dump all sorts of @clues on people who ask them to. @clues are a great way to get new players involved. Getting your first @clue is really exciting for a lot of people, and collecting a set or more is a good goal for a lot of characters. It gives people things to talk about, things to trade.

The truth is, if @clues went away, people would just start filing them in databases. I mean, right now, they're in a conveniently searchable database. So the double-checking would only be made more inconvenient, and the relevance or lack thereof is debatable.

There are plenty of controlling characters out there who want to keep the stream of information tight. There are also plenty of information-generous characters out there who want to talk to you about their @clues.

@Quinn Life and work are going to be like that. A PhD always takes longer than you think it should. Always. And then 40% of your elderly committee dies, and two of the three remaining won't talk to the third, and you get a job in industry and start thinking, "Maybe I don't need a PhD for my career..."

@fortydeuce I'm at 6 years ABD! Also, 2 of 5 of my committee passed away, so I'd pretty much have to start over at this point, and that ain't happening. I make too much in industry to go back to that.

@auspice She blamed the app! "I can't get you different ham because the app only allows certain replacements and Publix somehow did not have any of the like seven to ten options the app would allow me to replace the ham they did not specifically have with."

I was like, "BITCH I NEED MY FUCKING HAM"

@miss-demeanor said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@tributary And now I know you live south of the Mason-Dixon line. XD But yes. Publix always has ham. At least three types. Deli meat (sammiches), steak/boneless (for meals), and sausage/bacon (breakfast!).

They didn't have two of the brands of boneless ham I asked for, and rather than ask if I wanted deli ham instead (FUCKING YES), she just checked out. WITHOUT ANY FUCKING HAM. THE HAM MY HUSBAND WAS GOING TO EAT FOR DINNER TONIGHT, WHICH IS WHY WE GOT GROCERIES DELIVERED, THANKYOUVERYMUCH. AUGH!

@auspice How on earth does Publix not have ham? Why would you leave the store without ham? Ham is so fucking basic. Trust me, Publix has ham somewhere. GO BUY ME SOME FUCKING HAM, INSTACART SHOPPER.

@aria This is also my mother. This is why I try not to watch things with her.

She is also bad at football games.

Mom: That was pass interference!
Everyone else: No, it wasn't.
Mom: Well, it should have been.

She'd like the rules changed to benefit her team, please.

My father concedes to take her to a movie approximately once or twice a year. This will be something like Star Wars or Marvel, because then he can confidently be like, "No, that's not how this works." when she comes up with a question out of left field. Usually this is a movie that he watched without telling her during a business trip.

80% Explorer
73% Socialiser
47% Achiever
0% Killer

I probably could have predicted that, just based on the explanations of type, though.

I have updated with what I am currently playing. You can find me now in games.

@faraday When I put a bunch of stuff in one pose, I also generally describe my character as frenetic.

Also, if you're overreacting to the first thing I said, I'll just assume I talked over you at some point. That there was a natural interruption. That I did walk across the room enthusing about something random while you freaked out. Because this is something that people actually do. Especially high energy people who don't pay attention to things very well.

@deadculture I can get an idea of someone's personality if I meet with them at an actual bar, so why shouldn't I get some semblance of a character's personality? If anything, I should get a better idea, because I've got descriptive text (in theory) to tell me about them.

Maybe the problem is that people are playing these mild-mannered boring characters. I think that has a lot to do with it.

Something I've noticed playing Arx, in particular because there is a +firstimpression command, is that a lot of people don't actually pose enough personality in a scene for me to be able to say the first thing about their character. "Drinks and talks" is boring. It's hard to be engaged with someone who just exists in the room with you.

This has happened to me in other games, too, where I'm like, "OMG, I have no idea of what this person is like at all because they have only drunk things and talked at me. I'm just going to mark them down as boring."

So please, when you pose, write in something approximating readable English, don't take half an hour to do it, and please, please, pose some personality to your character, which is supposed to have character.

When 2E comes out, I will acquire it, read it, and make a decision then. It is too soon for me to make the call.

Until then, we are going to play our game happily with 1E.

So hold your damn horses. This decision will not be made lightly or impulsively.

@arkandel said in Darkwater: The Return:

@tributary Any chance for Changeling 2.0 in the foreseeable future?

@Cobaltasaurus is going to get super excited about it and want to try it, and I'm going to have to read it and decide how much of a workload it will be for the people who are going to end up saddled with doing the conversion. If they're not absolutely giddy about the conversion, we may pass, but chances are they'll be excited about it, too.

So yes: there is a pretty good chance. Knowing that there's a pretty good chance and it's going to be a lot of work is one of the reasons I have been so firm on not adding any spheres.

@cobaltasaurus said in Darkwater: The Return:

@Tributary is my SanCheck, and I’m pretty sure she’d veto Mage because like she mentioned she likes the simplicity we had.

I'm vetoing Mage. We're sticking with mortals and changelings. We're keeping it simple.

@cobaltasaurus said in Darkwater: The Return:

And then there was the non-stop innuendo and suggestion that all WB players were just there to be sex-toys on werewolf channel. That I, in my player bit, would ask people to stop. That I, in my staffbit, would ask people to stop. That I, as the game head, finally went to Tributary with complaints because people would not stop.

I'm going to back her up on this, because I don't want to deal with the bad eggs that Werewolf attracted. We had a bad experience with Werewolf, and so we're not subjecting ourselves to that again. I should not have to police people like that.

I really want to keep things simple, because the odds of @Cobaltasaurus deciding to convert to 2E Changeling are very high and the simpler things are, the better.

I once built a grid for a game that was supposed to be Watership Down based. It never went anywhere. I'm not sure there's much call to RP as bunnies.

@thatguythere I also had one of those situations in college with an answering machine. The only people who ever called that number were our moms. (Our friends texted our limited talk-time mobiles.)

We did change the greeting to: "You've reached [Rachael] and [Monica]. If you're not calling for [Rachael] or [Monica], please don't leave a message. Otherwise, hi, mom, your daughter will call you back later."

One day, we got a message that went, "Hey. I know her name isn't on the answering machine, but if you guys can get in touch with Sandy, tell her that Melissa is looking for her. It's really important."

You can't win!

Rosters or the like make the most sense on dynastic games or games where immigration makes very little sense. Rosters of roles, on army type games, can also make sense, but there you're setting the rank/station/stats more so than the characters.

Otherwise, if you're going to have people in flux, give them a template and move along. Want to play a something? Use the something template.