@Tyche said in The Shame Game:
I wouldn't be too hard on them. Bad science is not confined to "anti-vaxxxers". We've also been hit by the largest wave of immigration since the early 20th century, and a disproportionate number of cases involve them.
Problem found. Emigrating causes autism. Alert Trump.
@Lithium said in The Shame Game:
We have schools which are refusing to teach natural selection and other sciences. We have schools that are cutting art and music classes. We have people who are refusing to see any other point but their own when it comes to simple life choices. We have politicians who are making it illegal to be comfortable to go to the bathroom if you're remotely different from the 'norm' regardless of the damage it does. In the news currently there is a father who says that '20 minutes of action' has ruined his sons life, when it was 20 minutes of sexual assault on a passed out drunk woman. We have presidential candidates who's opinion is that Global Warming is a myth, and yet, they site Global Warming as a reason to build a seawall to protect their golf courses.
In each instance you have someone acting in their own self-interest. That in itself is a rational thing to do and each example you cited disproves your point.
Just because someone says something or does something you don't agree with does not mean that they are incapable of rational thought - no matter how much you might wish it to be true.
Your strongest argument is your own refusal to see what everyone else sees. However, you've proven yourself capable of rational thought before so even that is just proof that "anecdotal evidence" is not actual evidence.
@Cobaltasaurus said in RL Anger:
Seriously. Don't tell me things and then get angry when I deny you sales.
No. I'm not going to sell you things on someone else's food card. If its your wife's why isn't she in using it? Or just go through self check out. Jesus.
Also, no. If you tell me you're buying alcohol through your neighbor I'm not going to sell it to you. I don't care if he's 70. If he isn't with you for me to verify that I'm not selling it! I'm not losing my job for you.
Ugh. And yes, please through a tantrum and leave all of your groceries all over my belt, so I have to clean it up before I can help the next person in line. Because I want to make your life difficult by not selling you the beer. If you just kept your mouth shut it would have been fine.
Seriously. Don't tell your cashiers shit like "oh the beer isn't for me".
It is amazing how many people just expect someone else to just commit this crime for them and treat you like shit if you won't. How self-involved do you have to be to not only ask a stranger to put themselves at financial and criminal risk just so you can get a buzz, but to then be upset when they don't?
@Three-Eyed-Crow said in The 100: The Mush:
I feel like the 'Game sucks' and 'Game is awesome' sides have been pretty evenly split here, and even in being kind of annoying about their positions in spots.
Chalk me up for the former category. I couldn't even get out of chargen before bailing.
@somasatori Thanks for the heads up! Got some fun stuff. This is my favorite thread...
@Coin I don't refuse to marry mechanics with story. And I probably overstated and under-explained my opinion on the matter in the previous post. But rather than go into a big long thing, I'll just say that if staff stays out of trying to alter my answers to Breaking Points, I'm fine with the mechanics of Breaking Points. Most things will play out just like they should.
I understand that the systems are intrinsic to CoD, but that's a major reason - the most important reason - why staff should stay out of altering people's decisions in the area of Breaking Points. So for @Taika, I would definitely offer questions as help to players. But stay out of the answers. Let people make their own characters and IMHO people will enjoy them more.
@Coin said in Core Memories Instead of BG?:
<rant>
As an aside, I am repeatedly baffled at how difficult it is to get people to understand how to build Breaking Points. Running Eldritch--especially app approval--was a challenging experience mostly because I just found myself not even being able to even with some people's inability to comprehend this. And I know it makes me a bit of a dick--some people just have trouble with this sort of concept and it's not, you know, their fault. But the twentieth time someone presents a Breaking Point as, "one time my character shot a person and left them to die" as a Breaking Point, I twitch. It's not that hard to rephrase that as an actual Breaking Point, man. "Abandoning someone who may potentially die". Come on, man.
Maybe building Breaking Points just isn't that easy for everyone to understand. For example, "one time my character shot a person and left them to die" would not be the same thing as "Abandoning someone who may potentially die". The latter encompasses a slew of things that have little to do with the reasoning behind why the former is traumatic for the character.
And that might be difficult for some people to understand, even if they feel like they really understand Breaking Points and other people don't...
I suspect the disconnect in the "understanding" comes from the way people look at Breaking Points, either from a character vantage or a mechanics vantage. The Tony Stark example illustrates this perfectly:
@Coin said in Core Memories Instead of BG?:
- What has your character forgotten? Another perfect catalyst question for a core memory--except this is the opposite. What your character has forgotten is probably almost as important as what he remembers. Why? Because it can both represent something so traumatic that they blocked it out--but also what your character feels is insignificant. Tony Stark can't remember half (or even 90%) of the women he's bedded in Iron Man (the first movie). Why? Because they aren't important to him. It defines him as a character at that stage in his life. If we apply that to Breaking Points: being confronted emotionally with his disregard for women as people, being forced to face is own womanizing and misogyny, being shown the consequences of his ways (as he is, particularly in Iron Man 3, in the case of his womanizing) should be Breaking Points for Tony Stark. (This is a horrible example, by the way, not because it doesn't work mechanically, but because it makes Tony's womanizing and misogyny into a vehicle for his own character development, which... ugh... but I digress..!)
You list it as something that should be a core memory because of how important it is to the character, but then say it doesn't work mechanically so it is a bad example. (I'm not sure why it doesn't work mechanically, but the fact that it is viewed that way is the point.) Why would you disregard something that important to the character?
So one person might "understand" Breaking Points differently than another person. That's fine. Not everyone has to fit into neat orderly boxes.
Anyway, that's just a little of why these types of questions might help, but they should be far, far removed from any systems or rewards in the game. It shoud be just to guide the creation of your character, not box them into how they should to react to things. That's the role of the player.
There are so many preferences in how one enjoys games, one of the problems we have in the MU* community is that quite often people try to shoehorn one particular way as being better than another way. People are different. Different people enjoy different things. One way to help with this is RP preferences, but something more structured that gives people a better idea of who you are as a player and what you enjoy.
@Seraphim73 said in Core Memories Instead of BG?:
But even when I play these grizzled veterans, the meat of their story has to be ahead of them, in my opinion. They shouldn't have single-handedly defeated a platoon of enemy soldiers, married a princess, become king, given up the crown, and created their own form of kung-fu. But having played minor parts in two or three dozen battles/skirmishes? Sure! Great! Just means you have something to compare your on-grid accomplishments to. But I think that on-grid accomplishments should always be the highlight of your character... or else why are you playing them now? Shouldn't you be playing them back when they were awesome?
Here you have the classic catch-22 wherein you're allowed to take a certain set of stats for a particular type of character - then the staff tells you that your BG doesn't justify those high stats - then the player goes back and justifies those high stats with having single-handedly defeated a platoon of enemy soldiers, married a princess, become king, given up the crown, and created their own form of kung-fu - at which point the staffer shakes their head at the player for a background they shouldn't have.
If you don't want players to have done all that, don't require all that as justification of stats that you allow. And it isn't the player's fault if you push them to justify those and then they get in your game and they can't do anything as exciting as what you've pushed them to put into their background just to get approved to play the character concept they have already been encouraged to play in your game.
If your game allows people to start their characters with 70 to 80 percent of any person's absolute maximum potential, then you need to allow for whatever else comes down the line with that decision. If you really want people to have their most exciting moments on screen, there are much better ways to do that than to tell people to write less interesting backgrounds, like limiting how great people can be to start.
This is yet another reason BGs have devolved into little more than whip cracking and hoop jumping - on some games.
If she's there to play basketball, play basketball.
If she's trying to take a charge, you're okay to draw a foul.
It might look a certain way, but you have to decide if you're more concerned about how it looks when you play the game than actually playing the game.
I thought it was a MUD and had no interest. Didn't even bother reading on. Now that I realize it is a MUSH I am very interested.
@acceleration Many storytellers do handle failures and dramatic failures as story opportunities... but many players view them as dead ends and scene enders. Rather than making lemons out of lemonade they throw up their hands and cry about everything being sour. As an ST, I'm not going to give the players rainbows and butterflies when they dramatically fail. It is, by definition, a fail. And it is a dramatic fail. Is there a way out and to overcome? Yes. Is it easy to do? No. Is it going to come without some bumps and bruises? Probably not.
Dealing with dramatic failures sometimes require humbling ones character to the scene. And for some people, they just can't have fun unless they are the bestest ever alltimes. They view humbling one's character the same as humbling one's self and that isn't fun for them. As an ST you might hear something like, "you're just trying to humiliate me!" because the player's self image is attached so closely, if not entirely, to their character.
The problem becomes the uncertainty in how an ST is going to handle something. When you know and trust your ST you're much more likely to have fun. If you're playing in a scene with someone you don't know as an ST, sometimes people get this fear that their character is going to be killed - even on games where a PC has never been killed by an NPC. So people sometimes err on the side of pessimism and develop the viewpoint of 'this is a scene ender because chancing anything further could get me killed so I turn around and go home'.
The same can be said of players. If you join a +event, the 'fun' of what happens is sometimes tempered by the unfamiliarity of the other players involved. This is why storylines with friends are usually much more full and engaging, because things can go sideways without the apprehension that someone is gonna break the scene down the middle with some crazy character choices. If I choose to take a dramatic failure because it can create a fun opportunity, is the guy next to me gonna choose to frenzy and kill my character because he thinks that's a fun opportunity that was created? I was having great fun with a gaming group on one particular MU* and I made a character choice to go off on his own and handle an IC situation away from the rest of the group. Many others in the group took it as I, the player, didn't want to play with them anymore and they shut me out completely OOCly. They wanted to know OOCly what I was doing in order not to freak out. I wanted to keep things IC. It ended poorly.
The bottom line for me is that whenever I've had a bad experience in a scene it is usually because I'm not familiar with or used to the style of either the ST or the other players I'm with. Not everyone views the game (or gaming in general) the same way I do and that presents for very different outcomes in story and in satisfaction with a scene. I get the feeling it is like that a lot and many of the views and preferences we carry clash with others we encounter on games from both a player side and an ST side.
@ThatOneDude Agreed on that. To say that part of the problem with the game system is that people are asshats is applicable to a great many things. It isn't the system that needs adjusting. Its the people.
Most CoD conditions can be easily resolved. Its just that people don't want to because of they don't want to lose the scene or, as mentioned, they are worried other players will ostracize them for ruining their flawless victory. Conditions aren't just 'stuff I gotta get rid of'. They're guidelines by which characters should be played based on the story that has affected them. Fear based guidelines need things like this because they're routinely ignored or played as 'OMG I'm SO scared... but that won't stop me from expertly performing this intricate task requiring concentration and calm without any hindrance whatsoever.'
Tasks are supposed to be failed because of fear and groups are supposed to be hindered. A lot of people don't play it that way without some incentive to do so. And even with incentive, some people still don't do it.
@Lithium When a show has as many seasons as Castle did, it is a MAJOR 'screw you' not to give them an opportunity to finish off the series in a solid way. (Unless... they were given that opportunity and the show used it to try to cliffhanger in order to create interest for another season... I don't know exactly what happened in this case...) But it is unusual for a show on that long not to wrap it all up in a bow, regardless of how neat or pretty it is. And yeah, it sucks. No doubt about that.
My favorite antagonists on a game were the pirate Changelings (CtL) on The Reach (PCs). They brought a sense of fear to a group that was supposed to, by theme, be constantly fearful, but weren't. Although many people dramasploded OOCly about it, it was the only time I've ever played Changeling on a MU* and felt like the characters were being played the way Changelings were intended to be played. Having someone bring you into the game world like that was a boon for the sphere. Unfortunately, most players couldn't see that.
Most antagonists I've encountered are of the Big Bad variety. They're evil and invulnerable NPCs. They do horrible things to other NPCs, which is supposed to make you fear them, but they never do much of anything to PCs. And after a prescribed amount of time - or a few scenes to get the magic weapon that can kill them - they just get killed off easy peasy by PCs, most of whom never even get scratched. Even when the Big Bad could have taken any number of steps to prevent the PCs from getting aforementioned magic weapon, they don't. There's no real challenge, no real effort involved. Just a grind of scenes that force RP (forced RP is the worst thing evar) to get to the inevitable conclusion of the storyline. To me, that's a bore.
The biggest thing that will suck the life out of a game if people don't feel like they can be involved in a substantial way. And I don't mean doing things or going into scenes. I mean the other players have their cliques and you can just tell that the main group is the main group - and you ain't in it.
On a game based on a show where there are definitely the main characters and the background folk, nothing will make people flee faster than feeling like background folk.
That's a player thing, though. Not a staff issue. Just depends on what kind of community you have.
@Thenomain I never called anyone a whiner just for disagreeing with me. You're just trying to pick a fight here.
Players do whine (if you're really concerned about that very particular word, feel free to substitute it for something less abrasive to you) about being given consequences for using powers that are supposed to stay off the radar out in the open. There are players who complain about just being warned that there will be consequences, because they feel oppressed or whatever their rationale is.
It happens. It is a thing. To pretend it isn't is ignorant.
@Thenomain said in What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?:
A similar issue in the World of Darkness crowd used to be the Mage antagonists, the Technocracy. We've had Technocracy players and this shed light on a single problem: They had nothing to do but pick on the other Mages, and as they had a huge advantage of organization and backing, things quickly got into the realm of suck for the Mages.
To be perfectly honest, that doesn't sound like a problem. That sounds like the way things were supposed to work. Except that players whine and cry because they want to use their powerz for frivolous stuff out in the open without penalty. Players have to respect the setting in order for the game to work, otherwise it doesn't.
@acceleration said in What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?:
When players are reduced to a sandbox setting, they tend to get bored and move away. Players have very limited power to change the world, so their storylines tend to stall out without major events to frame them around.
The sandbox syndrome is one of the biggest problems in MU*s that people don't want to deal with. Its the reason staff feels like they need to come up with a big bad or monster of the week. Because players don't want to play against each other . They want to play against something that makes them feel powerful cause they're gonna beat it down, usually with a much smaller chance of death, then brag about it to other PCs. And staff accommodates because its easy. You think up a thing, make it impossible to find and harder to kill - until the the PCs have jumped through enough hoops and ran around in enough circles, when The Thing is found with little difficulty and is killed even easier. Once you give into that sandbox syndrome it is a black hole of repetition cause that's what everyone expects now (which is, by the way, what most people expect now). The community is mired in sandbox syndrome. Kill big bad, feast on xps, buy more powers, rinse, repeat until PCs get so fat and bloated the players start complaining that they are bored and the game has no depth, as though they haven't perpetuated the problem the entire time they are on the game.
But there are games that can be about something other than fighting a thing much bigger and badder. There can be games about things much smaller and gentler. Take WoD for example. It has an entire setting what constantly revolves around monstrosity versus humanity, yet humans on MU*s are constantly treated as inconsequential background noise. It always becomes big-bad versus PCs. What about greedy evil human versus the helpless poor human. The reason those kind of games don't exist? See above. Players want to solve the problem with loud, flashy powers, then get upset if their characters get killed off by the things that exist by theme to kill off anything using loud, flashy powers.
Also, how to deal with XP bloat? Stop giving out so much xp. No. Stop. If you're giving out mounds of XP to get people to come to your game then you get people on your game who look for mounds of XP. If you think the only way your character can grow or change is by devouring XP, you're missing out on huge and varied paths of character development. Again: a learned and perpetuated mentality in the MU* community. Many people believe this because they have experienced this. They have not been able to change or grow their characters except by spending XP. They can't affect the world around them in any satisfying way so they have to be content with just spending XP. Because again, that's easy. Give XP, spend XP. Staff job done.
We look for all the easy answers, usually because games are so big that is all anyone has time for. When staff does look to do more, they burn out and close quickly. And so we end up with the mess that we have now where everyone sees how bad things are and we keep recreating those bad games over and over and over again, despite the wrongs everyone sees and acknowledges but no one has the time or inclination to fix for any sustained period of time.
@Three-Eyed-Crow said in I will design you a MUX:
just fucking go with it."
That's the mantra for most entertainment these days. It should be required verbalization before your TV turns on. Nothing wrong with that.
@Arkandel said in The basketball thread:
Also, while I admire this rookie's sass...
I can get behind it. But only if he's got something to be sassy about.
... come on man, you are in his head and you played great defense? LeBron had 12/18 and 27 points. You're just gonna make him mad.
Not just that. James was 6 for 6 when being guarded by Johnson as his team was beaten by 17 points because the other team shot 20 3-pointers on them and they went down 0-2 in the series.
It must feel so helpless to make it past all the hurdles to become a professional athlete in the NBA and still not be able to compete with someone like Lebron James. How deluded do you have to be to believe you got in his head with those stats?
Yes. Johnson is in James' head. In there, he's the guy defending him in that one dream that NBA players have where they can't miss a shot no matter what the defender does. I've had that dream. Its pretty sweet. James is, apparently living it.