Best posts made by ZombieGenesis

No FCs will be allowed. We are going to be an OC only game.

Here's my "hot take" for what it's worth. This is just based on my experiences and certainly may not represent the experiences of others. But...

I don't think the schisms in the MU community can be healed for the most part. It comes down to conflicting personalities, and those bridges will never be mended.

That said, here is a list of stuff I'd love to see be more common in the MU community. Some of these are more peeves than anything else but they are my thoughts on how the community, as a whole, might be a better place.

1. Realize these are just fun-time text-based games. They should be stress relievers, not stress causes.

2. Stop with the "red flags" attacks on new games. I can't count the number of times a new game was added to the advertisement section, and suddenly someone saw something they didn't like or didn't care to RP with, and posts about "red flags" started popping up.

3. Realize that new players are still coming into the community and may not be as good a text-based storyteller as you. That doesn't give you the right to shame them. Several players I know have been chased off games because instead of being given constructive criticism, they were talked down to and made fun of because of how they RPed.

4. Remember that there are actual people on the other end of these usernames. We often take the fact that we can see the actual human for granted and say things to or about them that we would never do in person. I know that's true of the internet, but I think it's especially relevant to here.

5. Just stop being judgy. Period. One of my biggest peeves is when someone does not like something, and they take on the mentality that it shouldn't exist. If you don't like something, ignore it. Don't attack it. Don't try and scare other people away from it.

Obviously, the things we say to friends in private is one thing, but we often take those private thoughts and make them very public, often in the most unkind ways. What I think needs to change most of all is the "If it isn't for me, it isn't for anybody" mentality that some players seem to have in this hobby.

Why is it so hard to be nice and encouraging to each other?

@groth This is just my opinion and how I see things and I could be very wrong BUT, this is how I feel about things...This place stopped being a community a long time ago. It became a gathering place for a certain clique to share their thoughts and ideas and belittle anyone who disagreed with them. It's why my interaction with this forum dropped off to almost nothing years ago and I know it's why several other people have left. You agreed with and were in CliqueX or you were an outsider for the most part.

I do feel this forum needed a change and I think the direction people want to take it is a good one. Was it a rough start? But that's how some journeys start.

Will this lead to something good? Who knows but I don't think what has happened has destroyed the board. I think it destroyed the board for a certain sect of people and, in the end, that may not be a bad thing.

I love the blue eyes!

Here are two of my brood enjoying the snow we got today.

Since I've moved on from the poll I figured I'd post this to let people know the status of the game.

Status: In Progress
Codebaes: Ares
System: Savage Worlds

We'll be set in the Old Republic just after the Mandalorian Wars. We'll be looking to evoke the style and feel of both Jedi the Fallen Order and The Mandalorian with remnants of The Clone Wars. We'll have a core setting(a pair of planets in the outer rim) but we'll have systems in place for players to RP anywhere in the Star Wars universe.

I have no real ETA for when I intend to open but I don't think it'll be too long. I've have the core Savage Worlds system coded up for Ares I just need to customize it for Star Wars and flesh it out with secondary systems(+roll and equipment). I'm hoping the end of January but we'll see.

Anyway, I'll update this thread with how things are going from time to time.

My wife tried creating a character on a game, her first game that wasn't private/run by me. She made a lesbian and was chased off the first night by people eye-rolling and mocking her OOCly as "clearly another man creating a lesbian sex beast". It was truly repulsive to watch and pushed her away from playing on any other public games. People cry about being inclusive but, in the end, I think most people in this hobby are happier just to sit back, mock, and feel generally superior to those around them.

A pic of the character modeled off of my cat that died a few years ago as he appears in the upcoming Monarchies of Mau RPG .

Hmmmm...

***=NSFW content***

I'm not sure why but for some reason I feel the need to jump in and hopefully clarify some points.

1. It's been brought up that I suggested Tony contact Warren OOCly. I did. I even provided some suggest verbiage to try and keep things mellow, essentially just making sure everyone was OOCly on the same page. Tony took a much more aggressive approach to the OOC communication than I had hoped. In the end, I probably should not have made that suggestion. I should have acted as a middle man and first asked everyone to sit on things for 24 hours to let emotions cool.

2. A lot has been made of RS coming and calling sounding the DWOPP alarm. Everyone has their opinion on that, here is mine; I wish he had waited till I had done my investigation before saying anything at all. Once I had verified that Warren was not DWOPP, the entire post would not have been necessary, IMO.

3. A lot has also been made over the Jean/Warren log. I just want to state that Warren was not banned over that log. The log was brought to my attention, I spoke with Jean at length about it, and she made it very clear that she had no problem with Warren or the scene and that I should not hold that scene against him. So I did not.

4. I've hard call for receipts for the bans with some folk saying they need or deserve them. I won't lie, I've only recently read stuff from BMD so some(or most or all) may have come from there but it's a sentiment that's been put out into the universe at any rate. I disagree. People came to me with thoughts and concerns, I did my own investigation, I made my own decisions. Sharing anything that went on behind the scenes helps nothing. It's not going to change anyone's opinions and it is just going to potentially make some people uncomfortable. Sharing these things feeds the drama but I have almost never seen it actually help the situation.

5. I've read some "we know why X or Y was banned". I want to assure you that you do not. No one was banned for any single reason and none of those reasons have been shared openly. Two of those people were banned blindly because I had just had enough and wanted them done and gone. I briefly shared the reason with the third because of our history together and I felt I at least owed them that.

Could some of the things that went down been handled better? Sure. It's also easy to say that now and it's easy to say that if you weren't involved. I had been dealing with some of these issues for weeks. In the final week leading up to the 3 bannings it was a daily thing. It got to the point where I didn't want to log onto my own game because I knew I was going to have several messages about Player X or Player Y.

Do I regret the bannings? I do not. It sucks to say because two of the people involved I think are actually decent people and I know I'll miss their friendship. Unfortunately, these were steps I felt I needed to take. In the end I think the game is stronger for it.

I think, often, it's not bad players that ruin things it's bad people. Over the last year and a half or so I've been RPing almost exclusively with people who are new to the hobby. Their RP was, by any standard on this board I'm sure, bad. That doesn't mean the experience was bad and, over time, they got better. Too many times I've seen new players on games chased off because they were "bad RPers".

I find most new players are very open to constructive criticism. That is generally not what they encounter. They get ostracized, mocked, and ridiculed right off of games. This can be particularly true of someone trying to stretch their RP wings by trying to play something against what they are in real life.

Maybe that dude playing a gay man is a bit over the top. Sure. Maybe it's because he's playing the character as he's seen it portrayed on various TV shows or movies. Or maybe he's just inexperienced. Maybe he's just an asshole trying to portray a caricature. I think the real problem is most people on MUs jump right to the last option and lash out at the player.

So when we ask "why don't we see more diversity on games?" or "why don't we see more new people entering the hobby" I think it boils down to this right here. There are people who will come to this hobby to explore RP. I've seen it. I've seen people new to RPGs in general excited to be able to RP online. I've seen people come from MMO RP servers excited to be able to stretch their wings textually in ways they can't in the MMO. I've also seen these players chased right off of games because they did something that set off someone's "radar" and made them suspect that the new player was "this" or "that" or "whatever the hell else".

TL;DR Version: Fewer new people try new things because they get burned for it by jaded RPers who assume the worst from every experience they have.

Even if the focus isn't on erotic RP(though it certainly could be) I'd just like to see more games that don't shame players for engaging in erotic RP. A lot of games nowadays have policies in place that amount to "do it but don't post logs about it or discuss it in any way" and I think that's a shame.

I can't speak for everyone, but from what I've heard from others and what I've experienced, the lack of posting seems to come down to a few things, depending on the situation.

• A New Game: I know some people who are wary of posting about new games either in development or that have opened because there's always going to be that one person or small group who log on, checks the game out, and posts about all the "red flags" they found on the game. It could be how something is worded in the policies/new files, someone they found out is a player on the game, or someone who is staff on the game. People often have to go on the defensive about their game before it's even open.

When I opened IA 2.0 I had people message me on Discord with a list of IP addresses and asked me if anyone was connecting to the game from them. And, if so, I need to be on high alert.

• It's Exhausting: Posting on these forums can be exhausting. For most people, MUing is a release and an escape from everyday life. The game itself is supposed to be their focus, but often(take a look at how this thread is going, for example), things spiral, and suddenly, we're all investing a lot of time and energy into defending(or attacking) someone or something. People have better things to do, and often, these posts become an emotional sinkhole.

• Lack Of Goodwill: I think people have run out of goodwill and faith in their fellow MUers. There have been too many attacks, too many smear campaigns, too many creepers, and too many breaches of trust for people to get over. I know a lot of people who now just play in their little corner and try not to think much about the rest of the MU world around them.

• Inevitability of Attack: No matter what you post, someone will attack you somehow. Someone, for some reason, will come at you and try to put you on the defensive. Whether it's having run too many games(whatever that means) in the past, having played a character someone thought was problematic, having said something off-color at some point in their past, or any number of other things.

In the end, I think it comes down to some people just feeling the juice is no longer worth the squeeze. They know that if they come here and post something, some combination of the above is going to happen. And I get it, a lot of people have a lot of valid reasons to be wary of certain people and situations, but other people take things too far.

That's been the experience I've had and the experience some others I've spoken with have had, at any rate. I know that I've personally written up posts that I thought might be fun or interesting and have ended up not posting them because I just knew the entire thread had a high chance of taking a sharp nosedive.

And I'm not saying this is specific to any forum, exactly. I don't know really anything about the other forum that popped up when the schism happened here(I don't even know the name off the top of my head). So I hope this doesn't come off as any type of attack against them or against here. It's not. It's just me recounting experiences.

It's a shame, as I've been a part of this hobby going on 30 years now. I love it. I thoroughly enjoy cooperative storytelling with people. I've just become very wary of the forum communities is all.

So to answer some questions quickly...

I'm leaning heavily towards Dayton, OH for the setting. It just seems like a Buffy kind of setting to me.

My plan is that after the slayers went active they managed to kill or chase most evil away with the world entering into a sort of peaceful period, even on Hellmouths. In reality evil just had to get smarter and hide. I want the idea that the characters are privy to things that normal people aren't to be prominent on the game. People and creatures have to work in the shadows.

For what "tier" the game will be on I'm thinking we're going to start small. The first "season" may focus on something localized and personal, something specific to Dayton. We may advance things as we play through but I'm envisioning this game as a "soft reboot" of the Buffy franchise so I'd like to start small and keep things personal for the time being.

Speaking of personal, I really liked the suggestion that personal drama needs to drive things as much as global(MUX wide) plots so I'm trying to find ways to make these things happen. Having characters submit 3 "dramatic hooks" as part of the c-gen process or having a "IC Drama" BBoard where people can post for things they're looking for or what not.

Anyway, it's all subject to change of course. These are just the things I'm pondering at the moment.

Seems like a conversation that doesn't quite belong in this thread anymore. Also...

I'll start by saying I treat romantic and sexual RP like I do any other RP which means I communicate very openly about it. I tend to be an OOC chatterbox that likes to discuss things like RP goals and desires so we at least know what direction we're heading in scene-wise.

@Arkandel said in The ethics of IC romance, TS, etc:

• If your PC is going to cheat IC on another character do you feel obligated to let your partner's player know?

I think so, yes. For me, this is likely to have come up in the "are there any things you'd like to avoid during our RP" parts of the conversation. For some people, cheating can be a very sensitive topic with OOC repercussions. If I'm playing a character who may not be the most loyal I let my partner know that and if they say they'd rather not have that happen in the relationship I work around it. I never want my IC actions to affect someone negatively OOCly and that's where communication comes in.

• Do you think you are responsible for a character whose roleplay is related to yours if your paths are to separate? In other words do you feel guilty someone else's PC might become quote/unquote unplayable because of your IC choices?

I would say no, not generally. I think this falls back on communication again. If you're open and honest about the RP and you give people a chance to opt-out then I think you've done your job.

For example, on my semi-private game Blood Falls we explore a lot of horror tropes but we are always very clear on what topics the RP might involve and give people a chance to either opt-out or discuss things with the scene runner to see if they can modify the content so that it's digestible for them. Everyone has been very cool with either reworking the scene or understanding that, unfortunately, the scene just isn't for them this time around and finding another scene to take part in.

• Very closely related to the above, what if the choice that takes a PC mostly off the table is OOC? For instance if you stop being active on my PC's spouse to play an alt with Theno's PC. Do I have the moral high ground to get pissed off?

Maybe? Did I just leave and not tell you? Did I not give you a reason for why I was leaving that character? Did I not give you a chance to find closure for your character and give them a way to move on? Then, yeah, I can see someone being a little pissed off at that.

• When it comes to TS what's the correct way to suggest it? Do you let the RP become more explicit until the big words come out or you get told no? Do you page the other player first and explicitly ask if they want to do it? Something else?

I think it depends on the person you're playing with. I've been with some partners who were very clear about their intent and desire for how a scene goes(once when I was playing Batman opposite a Zatanna she was very clear about it and even offered to cast a sex spell on Bruce if ICly he wasn't into her). Other times, I've RPed with people who came across very much like they were not interested in RPing the sex part of the RP and I've paged them with something like "Fade to black" and they've either responded with "Yes, please!" or "Uh, not unless you want to..." This is also a good example of when previous communication could have helped(knowing where RP can possibly lead) and having a +prefs system.

• Assuming OOC consent between adult players is there anything in an IC relationship, including TS, that you consider unethical? No, I'm not going to give examples since I'm keeping this classy! But you can.

Providing there is OOC consent between all parties involved then, no, there is nothing I consider unethical in RP.

• Any other choices not found in this short list. I'm sure it's far from complete.

I'll throw one out that got me once on a game. The characters are in a relationship, have slept together multiple times, and then I get OOCly informed that the character is pregnant with his child. I was not comfortable with that. To be fair, I never said "no kids" because the topic of getting pregnant never came up. That was a situation where playing my character became very difficult because of the IC and OOC drama related to that RP.

@faraday No joke, I staff on a game that is in beta and we have players who have never MU'd before but play on this game for two simple reasons: 1) the scene system that lets them do scenes via the web as well as on the game and 2) the online c-gen. The people I've spoken to love the fact that they can "slow burn" a scene via the web. They've also said that it's just much easier to create a character via the web than using MU based commands. So it may not be a dealbreaker for everyone but, from my experience with this game, it's certainly a method of bringing in players who may not play otherwise.

This is an interest check post to see if anyone would be interested in such a game.

So the past few years I've fallen into a personal slump creativity wise and I've been slowly crawling out of that with some private RP places. One of the things I want to do in 2019 is open a public game. I'm just trying to decide which game to go public with. My first choice is Mists of Barovia, a Ravenloft inspired game. It also harkens back to an old game I use to play on back in the day, Crypt MUX.

I say inspired because it mixes a lot of different things together; Ravenloft, Ravnica, Bloodborne, and Dark Souls mainly. Strahd is assumed dead, having died battling an angel that got trapped in Ravenloft. Since his death the land has gone mad. "Creatures" haunt the woods making travel between towns, villages, and cities treacherous. The game takes place in what is now the largest city in Barovia, the same named Barovia City.

What can people play? Humans, elves, dwarves, half-vampires, lycanthropes, vampires, patchwork men, daeva("children" of the angel that supposedly killed Strahd), etc. Standard "horror" fantasy fare.

What would people do? The game is about survival, both from the threats external(the "creatures") and internal(a lot of politics). The vampires and daeva live in a sort of standoff without being able to really go at each other without leaving themselves vulnerable to some other threat. This is where we mix in a bit of Game of Thrones I guess.

We use the Savage Worlds system for character sheets and what not.

Anyway, that's the crux of it. We've had a blast doing the game privately but I've been tempted to open the doors to anyone who wanted to play. Before I go through the work of making it "public ready", however, I just want to be sure there's interest in such a game.

@sunny said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

“Everyone needs to just step up and run plots” is an unreasonable expectation, full stop.

I think you're raging against a point that was never made. I don't think anyone is suggesting everyone should do anything. And I certainly don't think anyone is saying we should chase away players who won't run plots.

I think the point is, at least from where I see things, is that there are people who will sit in an OOC room and complain about not having anything to do when, in fact, they may very well be empowered to go out and do whatever they want. I think we're trying to get to the bottom of why they don't and how can we, as game runners, help entice and encourage them to do so.

I think the word "plot" might be being blown out of proportion too. A plot doesn't have to be a grand adventure. It could just be, "Hey, let's go beat up some monsters down by the ocean front" and having someone willing to emit those monsters. Or, as a collaborative effort, a few people emitting monsters.

I think you'll also find people are more capable than they think. On a private game I run right now most of the players have never played on any other MUSH before. They're total MU newbies for the most part. They asked me what they could do on the game and I told them, "whatever you want". They actually came up with an actual big old plot that they're working their way through. It may not always be pretty but they're having fun and that's the point. Just having fun.

I think this mentality exists IRL as well. One of the women in my tabletop group really wanted to try and run an adventure for D&D but didn't think she could. She was terrified but decided to give it a try and we all had a blast. Sometimes it just takes a little confidence.

And gaming with the right people. If you run something and people bitch and whine about it? Those aren't the type of people you should probably be gaming with.

Gaming partners should raise each other up.

With all that said, there will still be people who aren't capable or just don't want to run plots. That's fine. But should that stop us from trying to find ways to entice and encourage those who can or those who may be on the fence about trying but are unsure?

RE Sith: They'll be on the game and are intended to be the primary antagonists. As for PC Sith...I'm still formulating how i want to work that. I don't think they'll be available as PCs at least from the start but once we have a baseline for Jedi and "scoundrel" types I may look into opening up Sith RP even if only a controlled and limited basis. It's not that I have anything against the Sith(I love them) but I also want a common enemy for most PCs to be able to focus on and I want to be careful about introducing PvP elements to the game.

Found a bit of good news this morning. Apparently last year, for fun, I coded up a FASERIP style system in Ares. I think I can modify this for use on H&V pretty easily. At least that's my hope.