Best posts made by WTFE

@Jeshin said:

If the connection isn't there, then it isn't there but the "bluntness" isn't exactly the way to go about convincing someone short on time to invest more time in trying to connect with you.

You seem to have this relationship backward. You are trying to convince others to go to your site. I'm not particularly in the market for a new site to go to. I'm not intrinsically opposed to it, but it's not something I'm actively seeking. It really is incumbent upon you to make your site attractive.

The bluntness here is me explaining to you why, after 18 pages of your blather, I'm not even remotely interested in opening the front page of your site. And as I said, there's a very good chance that where I'm bluntly telling you, others are either not bothering to tell you or are more subtly telling you. (Others like @Thenomain or @Three-Eyed-Crow or @Autumn or even @Alzie, for example, whose subtler attempts to tell you what might be going wrong for you got blown off.)

That's four people in the last three pages alone who've (mostly) politely told you why what you're doing isn't working here. And one who's being far more blunt. So that's five people who've actually spent time trying to help you improve your technique so that you can actually attract new participants. Your response?

It's alright not to like me.

Yes. You're ever-so-open to input. I'm sure your site is a great place to exchange ideas instead of being merely preached to.

@Pyrephox said in Eliminating social stats:

@WTFE But here's the thing: you're not arguing that because one time the dice put an end to your story "prematurely" that rolling to determine success at a task is stupid.

No, I'm not. I'm arguing, though, that adherence to mechanics can (and inevitably will) clash with satisfying (or even vaguely coherent) story. So there will come a time when the good writing will clash with game mechanics and one or the other must give.

Don't get me wrong. I like dice. I like the unexpected twists you have to think and react your way out of when playing. (Hell, I like it in my non-RPGS. There's a reason why I like board wargames with dice (or some other randomizing element) more than I like Chess or Go most times.)

There is no RPG system that doesn't have a rule 0, that I'm aware of. And rule 0 is, of course, "If the dice or the rules say something that makes no goddamned sense, or something that doesn't work for your group, then change it."

Oh, you poor, innocent child. Do not follow this link for your own sanity's sake.

And if someone made a social action that made no goddamned sense, or would utterly ruin a reaasonable player's fun, then obviously that situation would need a GM's attention. That's just common sense. But that has no relevance to the day to day running of a system, and it's certainly not a reason to toss the whole thing down the toilet and decide you don't need rules at all.

I would say, however, that if a given mechanic (or class of mechanics) has a long history of causing this kind of problem that perhaps said mechanism needs to be entirely retooled or, even, dumped.

Again an example from history: Traveller, as originally published, (in)famously had the possibility of your character dying in character generation. This is utterly stupid and has been the source of many jokes at Traveller's (and its players') expense over the years. One of the earliest rules changes was based on common house rules that basically said "if you fail the survival roll you end character generation then and there half-way through your term without getting any term benefits" (like skills, money, or equipment). This was an improvement but it was still pretty fucking stupid. (My 20-year old character with literally no skills, no money, no equipment, and no lifespan after character generation is a case in point.)

This useless mechanism of failing a survival roll was a terrible mechanism put in place because character generation in Traveller was itself pretty fucking stupid. It would have been (and was, in later editions!) better to just gut the character generation as it was and replace it with something that wasn't as stupid because it caused trouble far more often than was warranted.

Call Girl of Cthulhu

But @Sunny! Science fiction is just different from fantasy, not better!

@faraday said in Eliminating social stats:

Now to be fair ... most "game versus story" conflicts aren't quite that extreme. Sometimes fickle dice can take you in an unexpected yet narratively satisfactory direction, and that's why a lot of people like them. But sometimes they're just fickle and dumb.

Well, yeah. I already said that I enjoy the weird twists and turns (and quick thinking) that dice often bring to games. It's just sometimes they bring REALLY BAD THINGS to the gaming experience too and a smart GM will curtail those.

(And I trot out that example specifically as an extreme to show that yes, indeed, dice can OBLITERATE stories where only an ignoramus would think that the dice's version is the superior story.)

...edited to add...

It would be like: "And Luke Skywalker teamed up with Obi-Wan Kenobi to go rescue Princess Leia from the clutches of the Empire, and on the way they died because Han Solo failed his piloting check and crashed the Millenium Falcon in the debris field that was once Alderaan. The end."

No, it would be worse.

"And Luke Skywalker teamed up with Obi-Wan Kenobi to go rescue Princess Leia from the clutches of the Empire, and on the way they died because Han Solo failed his piloting check and crashed the Millenium Falcon in the debris field that was once Alderaan. So Faruq Waterstrider and Wanna-Orb Barbobi, having never seen R2's message, never having had an aunt and an uncle die, never having had any kind of history with Darth Vader, took up the cause anyway and teamed up with Unity Corea to rescue the princess and ..."

As a teacher there's two ways to make me feel appreciated at the end of a lesson:

1. Standing ovation
2. A bottle of armagnac.

Guess who got both today!

@Jaunt said:

Don't like what OR's trying to do? Cool. I don't really care, because you're not the person that I want to engage in conversation with.

Then go the fuck away. Not a single one of your group of asshats has been trying to engage in a conversation since this whole clusterfuck of a thread started. The best of the breed, @Jeshin, has been a used car salesman. Now we have two more people who don't want to engage in conversation coming here to tell us in loud voices how much they don't want conversation.

Don't want conversation, don't come here. The thread dies down without any kind of talk whatsoever when you bunch of shitheads leave it lie. It only comes back up when you idiots come here to tell us how much you don't want conversation with us.

Fuck. Off.

Go. Away.

Go with God ... just FUCKING GO.

I'm not sure how to word this more clearly. Get lost. 滚开. Berambus. Biến đi. चले जाओ।. Хол яв.

Or, alternatively, and here's a thought, don't come to a discussion board explicitly saying you don't want discussion. 'Cause that's the part that grates the most with your PR. If you're not willing to engage in conversation here, a conversation-oriented board, then you're in the wrong fucking place. Participate in the fucking discussion about your board or get the fuck out.

Engage me, instead.

We've been trying to get you fuckers to engage from the first page of this thread. We've been explicitly told by two of you fuckers that they didn't want to engage in conversation. They only wanted to engage in broadcasting. Now, 415 messages deep, you want to "engage" all of a sudden? Why do I get this feeling that your "engagement" is just going to be broadcasting, this time of bile instead of used car sales?

I'd play the Hell out of that level of game.

That should be a hint: this game will be as popular as plague. (Nobody likes the things I like.)

@Shebakoby said:

@WTFE The chinese people value life? yeah. The chinese government? Not so much. Conflating the beliefs of a people with their non-democratic despotic government's beliefs is very deceptive. Which is why I suspect that the stuff about the russian people was going around during the cold war.

That's it exactly. Plus the fact that the western governments (both then and now) stood/stand to gain from dehumanizing the opposition.

@Jaunt said:

If you are incapable of identifying your behavior as inappropriately aggressive and bullish, then I have to wonder about you.

My first foray into this thread, 343 messages deep in the cow shit @Jeshin and @crayon had been piling up, was right here.

In that, I point out to @Jeshin that his approach is not working (and I quoted him directly in it, I note). What was his response? Aside from his irritating "Hey," opener, the first three words are "That is incorrect". Yes. Apparently me quoting him saying he's not interested in engaging in conversation on a conversation-oriented board and saying this is a bad idea is "incorrect".

At that point it became clear(er) that he is not here to do anything more than shill. And that his press release-spewing lackey (@crayon) was also not here to do anything more than shill. Salesmen and PR shills bore me. I decided to make it entertaining.

And even with that, the actual, full-blown, hostility didn't even begin to show itself until message 366 in this clusterfuck. And even there it was mild. So it took 43 continued messages of @Jeshin and @crayon missing the point completely and continuing with their "pronouncements from on high" (with both of them stating in clear terms that they did not want to engage in conversation here multiple times!) before actual hostility started to show.

Then, finally, in message 401, a full 57 messages after I pointed out how off-putting your pair of asshats was being came the real hostility.

From my perspective? This particular bull spent an awful long time (20 days) of being tolerant of your pairs' fucktardedness before exploding.

And now you want to go all good cop/bad cop. It's so adorable.

We've been trying to get you fuckers to engage from the first page of this thread. We've been explicitly told by two of you fuckers that they didn't want to engage in conversation.

I'm not certain where you're pulling that information from.

I spotted it first here where @Jeshin said:

Truthfully I think the primary gap to bridge is that we're much more likely to discuss topics freely and with less "this is how it is" style writing on Optional Realities itself. Discussions are content and that content we take time to create we try to keep on the website.

So how 'bout right fucking there, from the Used Car Salesman in Chief of OR itself? Then repeated at least twice by him after that, not to mention the number of times Yappy The PR Shill barked it out like a little shih-tzu as well as he bounced up and down, panting, waiting for whatever treat @Jeshin feeds him for being such a good little lapdog.

If you want to engage in a civil conversation, as I've said, I'll give you clear and civil answers. If you want to be an asshat, well, you can do that too.

Yeah, you clearly demonstrated the latter capability in your very first message here.

Why do I get this feeling that your "engagement" is just going to be broadcasting, this time of bile instead of used car sales?

I don't know. The two individuals ( @ThugHeaven and @surreality ) that have actually tried to engage me civilly with actual conversation instead of ad hominem, I've answered very directly and with no aggression. Perhaps the reason you "get the feeling" that I'm going to answer you with bile is because you've been spitting it all over your keyboard.

And perhaps you need to learn to fucking read and count. Or, and this is just a thought, you need to, and I quote:

Get lost. 滚开. Berambus. Biến đi. चले जाओ।. Хол яв.

To which I will add: Hau ab. Vas t'en. Уходи. All this in the undoubtedly vain hope that you find some words you understand.

@Tempest said in The Metaplot:

as it has screwed you up when you were trying to RP something that interested you more?
This complaint genuinely baffles me. Not targetted at you, but I've seen other people make similar complaints over the years.

"I just want to play X, not be forced to deal with Y, ugh!"

Okay...go do your thing in the corner if you can find other people interested in it?

The problem arises when people expect the entire game around them to cater to the thing they want to do, and they get mad when it doesn't.

No, the problem is when staff makes a metaplot so intrusive you can't escape it. And, indeed, when you try to escape it or avoid it they go out of their way to make sure that the plot follows you around.

Example from a pathological MU*: Castle Marrach. There was once a metaplot on that. (It withered on the vine for many reasons, but in my time there it was active. If you want to call what was happening "action".) At one point in the metaplot, the consort of the queen (whose name I've forgotten because it doesn't fucking matter), who was somewhat of a weather mage, got into a foul mood and it got reflected in the weather. Players were expected to jump through the hoops to find out why Lord Foulweather (not his real name, duh!) was upset and do something to soothe him. Since, however, most people didn't even really know Lord Foulweather existed, and those who knew he existed knew next to nothing about him besides that, this plot was met with a joint, loud yawn from everybody except the five players who routinely got plot bones handed to them to gnaw on. (And who were actually in a position IC where they could even go to where plot-fu was happening.) The rest just ignored the occasional weather emits.

This pissed off the staff. So they ramped up the weather emits. People still ignored them.

This pissed off the staff even more so they ramped up the weather emits more and added code that made it hard to move around anything that was outdoors (the wind would push you back, or a snow flurry would disorient you and send you to the wrong exit, or exits would be impassable because of piled-up snow, etc.). People still tried to ignore this.

This brought staff to the brink of insanity and they actually had some people FREEZE TO DEATH (this wasn't the huge handicap it would be in other games--basically it was a day of no RP) after being trapped out-of-doors.

All this to force a plot nobody wanted anything to do with.

When metaplots reach this level of disruption, I think "I want to play X and not be forced to deal with Y" is a perfectly valid reaction, don't you think?

Well, they're common in crap places like McDonald's and the like. But outside they're not.

Those aren't french fries. They're 干煸土豆丝 (lit. "dry-fried shredded potatoes"). They're a slightly-modernized version of 干煸藕丝 (lit. "dry-fried shredded lotus root"), a dish that's been around for ages. This is what I feed visiting 老外 (foreigners) when I want to cause them intense culinary pain. The dried chilis you can see. What you can also see (but may or may not recognize) are the sichuan peppercorns ("prickly ash seed"). Those are what you give people who think that because they can easily slurp down a thousand "suicide" hot wings that they can face anything.

Once they stop bawling on the floor and uncurl…

Nobody started "shitting on him" until loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong after he had about a hundred opportunities to communicate his "point" clearly.

Nice try, Dick Nixon.

@Ganymede said in The Metaplot:

@Tempest said in The Metaplot:

The problem arises when people expect the entire game around them to cater to the thing they want to do, and they get mad when it doesn't.

Nah, this is the real problem, @WTFE.

I'm playing on two games where the Metaplot is all-encompassing and inescapable, and no one seems particularly perturbed by that. Sure, the setting revolves around the Metaplot, but that's just good implementation. You couldn't escape The Descent's metaplot, and you're not escaping BSG: Unification's metaplot.

Not alive, at least.

Tightly-themed games are tightly themed. This is not a surprise. I don't know what The Descent is, but BSG is a very narrow environment whose entirety is impacted by anything that happens to it. When you sign up for such a game you (should) know what you're getting yourself into.

Marrach, on the other hand, was advertised as a "grand stage" (their term, not mine!) in which you were supposedly able to play out "your story" (again, their wording). Indeed all over the fucking place they tell you that you're on your own for making stories; that while yes there are "StoryPlotters" (their term, not mine, I emphasize) that you are responsible for your own fun.

And then they threw shit like the storm "plot" at the player base. Something you increasingly couldn't escape even though a) nobody wanted any part of it (modulo some staff-pals), b) even if you did want a part in it, you couldn't get one, and c) even if you could get one, that part would basically be "audience".

Again, I think it's perfectly fair to look at that situation and say "ugh, the metaplot sucks".

Mid-Autumn Festival is approaching and as part of the run-up into it we're expected to show our appreciation for things others have done for us. One of my private tutoring students showed up to a session today with this little gift as a "thank you" from his grateful father. Apparently I'm making a difference in his son's English exam scores.

Well, the only way that this thread with these people can be even mildly tolerable is if I kill off a few brain cells each time they post. Currently I'm working on that "blanche armagnac" (think: French grappa), but that's only 80 proof. For the concentrated hypocrisy and stupidity that Tricky Dicky brings to the table, I need something stronger:

Maybe 104 proof is enough to deal with teh stoopid. If not, I have 124 proof waiting in the wings.

@mietze said in The Metaplot:

I don't really count player response to metaplot here, because I'm not sure it's that important.

If the majority of your player base isn't even just ignoring the metaplot but actively hiding from it, you probably have a problem in your metaplot. So that's one level of where player response is important.

Then there's the other problem that kills such plots dead: due to staff incompetence (in that they think the plot needs to progress in one specific, rigid way) a key item that would move the plot forward falls into the hands of a packrat player. The packrat player sees the significance of the item and packs it away for "future use" as an attempt to gain leverage. Then, as packrats are wont to do, forgets about it with the next shiny that he stumbles over. The plot languishes because this one McGuffin is needed to move it forward but it is effectively out of play and the staff, being idiots, won't work around it.

You always have to take player response into account when designing your plots, with everything from "why are all the players fleeing?" (in the Marrach storm "plot" people actually finally got so tired of it they froze their accounts--impacting Skotos' already-failing income directly--until the plot was resolved…so for multiple months) to "why are the players overlooking this BLATANTLY OBVIOUS CLUE?" (hint: it probably isn't obvious from the outside) to "where did all the plot-fu McGuffins go? (hint: you need more, stat).

(protip--if "nobody" is getting what you want out of the scene the problem may be your clues aren't as "obvious" as you think!).

Quoted for emphasis. STAFF PLOTTERS PAY FUCKING ATTENTION HERE!

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

It smacks of idiotic human resources bullshit signifying nothing, but meh.

Nothing idiotic about it. The best way to control your employees if you can't motivate them is to have them live in fear. One of the best ways of doing that in a buyer's-market economy is to hold over their head a threat of losing their job constantly.

Setting unreasonably high standards and then making (direct or indirect) threats for not meeting them keeps employees afraid and thus malleable. And it has the added bonus of giving a paper trail should someone decide to fire an employee because they don't like his skin colour, her medical history, or whatever.

Cynical? You betcha. You get that way when you see sausage being made over and over ad infinitum.

@Thenomain said:

As the only person really replying to anything, I was trying to let the thread just be a series of un-commented posts since there seemed to be nothing left to talk about, so I kind of blame you for all this. "Blame" in the same way that the one person who says "at least it can't get worse" is to blame for the sudden shit-storm that follows.

Well, at least this thread can't get any worse, right?

It really feels like someone decided that something needed done, without any consideration that things were done.

A common flaw even outside of the nerd core. "SOMETHING MUST BE DONE! THIS IS SOMETHING! ERGO IT MUST BE DONE! Q.E.D."

I'm probably wrong, but it's one of the few scenarios where I can understand what the hell just happened.

I think you're dead on. Personally, as discussed in private, I agree that @Jeshin is not a bad guy. I think he's involved in sales or advertising IRL and he has the blind spot that a lot of hard core sales/advertising types have about how grating and annoying their sales persona is. It's why I've tagged him with the (relatively) nice "Used Car Salesman-in-Chief" title. The other two are assholes.

@Jeshin: Just to make this perfectly clear, unlike @crayon and @Jaunt, I don't think you have bad intentions. I think you have a piss poor communication style that has backfired on you. Your intentions, however are good. In the sense, sadly, of The Good Intentions Paving Company.

You may want to try giving your lapdog (@crayon) a good sharp tug on the leash, but your pit bull you may want to just put down.

GURPS Asparagus.