The most recent dream I can remember is: A total stranger abandoned me at a Best Buy because I wouldn’t help them steal car stereo equipment from the store, and so I just hung out in the store until it got dark so I could go home without melting in the heat.

congratulations, you all passed age verification.

@renaveleigh Naturally.

@Imagicka I’m sure @Jihgfed will eventually chime in, but it was not cancelled! About 25 people showed up to his in person presentation!

@Jihgfed Yay, glad it went well! Thanks for spreading the word about the hobby!

@Ominous said in When is the last time you played?:

To find out how the story resolves? Just because everyone knows all the details of a setting doesn’t mean they know how it plays out.

Quite. If the PCs have agency you can’t know how the story will resolve because you don’t know what they will do.

It’s not a ‘I don’t care because I already how will things play out’ issue, it’s a potential-cheating issue. Like how we had to make up new monsters for our HS D&D campaign because one player would read the Monstrous Compendium and then somehow his character knew the weaknesses of every monster.

If the PCs don’t have agency and are just watching NPCs and weather cause events to unfold, then yeah, they will lose interest if they know what’s going to happen by reading the game lore pages. But they will probably lose interest without reading the lore pages, too, because they probably think reading novels is a lot less frustrating than RPing as a character who is utterly incapable of affecting the world, and that if all you can do is watch, most published novelists produce better stories than most MUSH STs.

@Jumpscare The short-desc stuff is what I was meaning. I forgot to elaborate my thought in the previous post, but that’s exactly how it worked in a few of the RPIs I played.

Our latest plot has wrapped up! The wingleader of the rogue dragonriders was killed in battle.

fiery shitsplosion.jpg

The ambitious goldrider behind it all has been defeated and imprisoned while her dragon waits to lay her eggs. The Weyrs are still navigating the sustainability and resource-sink of this arrangement, as well as how exactly they want to hold her and her supporters accountable. (There already aren’t enough dragons, and the rest of the world does need them to survive.)

The next leg of our rogue dragonrider plot begins to kick off in August, and the next hatchings are slated for early July and mid-August. For anybody on the fence, it’s a good low pressure time to ease into the theme.

I tend to be (I hope) rather nice, understanding and malleable as a player. I tend to yes and for the most part. Which is how one of my chars got married in a pub on a quasi-maybe-date. It leads to some great RP. I also try to go towards the funny and just see what happens.

That said.

I have also played a very arrogant full of himself asshole. He was a great character to play, but he also had money and power behind him so it made him more than a little insufferable. I would OOC disclaimer that as the pilot of my char, I could come up with a reason for him to be there. I can’t guarantee it’s going to be enjoyable for a few different reasons. I was also willing to tone down or full send the jerkfaceness depending on the OOC person and I did check in a lot, BUT the char was designed a certain way. If you weren’t part of his chosen few, you weren’t worthy of air in his eyes. I still had amazing RP and one of his IC best friends started as one of his nemesis at the beginning. It means I can see the ‘my guy’ as also writing for the the story line and where/how your char fits into the story.

@MisterBoring said in Non-toxic PvP:

Also, if you approach IC conflict in a fully RP MU (so a MUSH or MUX or whatever) as though it’s a round of all slappers in Goldeneye, I would suggest that you’re in the wrong place and would better be served by a PvP MUD.

I promise you I am in the right place lol.

Also - my bros and I never demanded no contact orders from our parents after a round of GoldenEye slappers. So maybe we had it right after all?

@Kestrel said in Non-toxic PvP:

There are players who enjoy playing weird little gremlins or satirical characters they see as totally separate from themselves, where they get to have fun at that character’s expense.

This is me.

@Kestrel said in Non-toxic PvP:

…is basically a service you’re providing other players…

you’re welcome.

@Wikibara said in Tales of Zalanthas:

@Juniper It’s for people who want to live in both denial and sadness simultaneously, I guess.

Ah. Marriage.

Not a scene, but I have to give shoutouts to Arx staff because multiple action responses to me led to some of the most impactful character development I’ve ever had in MU*ing.

Big things for me:

Is the house rule clearly explained so I know how it is likely to affect my play? Does it pass the “smell test”? Which is to say, when I read the rule, can I see what it’s trying to do, do I agree with what it’s trying to do, and do I think it will actually accomplish that? (And, honestly? WoD/CoD generally DOES need a little more houseruling than it gets when trying to blend spheres that have conflicting powers/themes/foci.) Do I think it’ll be fun and fair to all players?

If those three things are a yes, then I’m willing to run with it. When you’re talking about big changes–adding or removing or completely rehauling a system like pledges or whatever–then I do want the new rules to maintain the theme and appeal of the game for me. Like, HR rules to streamline making spirits and how they interact with the world from the rather complicated setup in CoD? Sure, I’m in, as long as spirits are still CoD spirits in recognizable ways.

@Pavel right and i think it’s better to focus on creating culture/implementing rules that determine how those systems are utilized rather than scrapping a nice thing

@bear_necessities I think it’s more just a clash of expectations.

Some people see async as merely a “last resort” when you can’t sync up to play live, but still expect a degree of responsiveness to get the scene done. For example, even back when folks were doing async with LiveJournal or Google Docs, it could be considered rude to let a pose go three days without a response. At that point, it’s not really about syncing up timezones and can start to feel more like the other player just doesn’t care enough to reply, isn’t engaged in the scene, etc. (Or they, aka me, just have ADHD and forgot the scene exists. 👀 )

Other people (including those who are influenced by other, slower RP modalities like forum RP, storium, etc.) might not even think twice about going days between poses.

@hellfrog and me 😞

@Third-Eye said in Paid Role-Playing:

The idea of dealing with players who think they’re a paying ‘customer’ always gets a legit, IRL, full-body shudder out of me when this comes up.

Yeah. I think we have problems with players and staff viewing the games as transactional when are meant to be reciprocal, and making them literally transactional would make it worse.

My mentality is “I’m here for a good time and maybe a long time.” If I’m not interested in what’s happening, I just kinda…wander off. Or, if I really like the place, I’ll try to make my own fun right up until someone tells me “I’m doing it wrong.” Which is basically what happened with AoA and Cujo. 😛 Right now I’m between games and just waiting to see if one pops up that looks more interesting than just booting up the PlayStation.

I don’t really feel any drive to ride a game into the sun.

@Clarion It’s more about the grid feeling like a virtual location where Ares / web scenes just have a flatness to them that I can’t get out of my brain (even though I know they’re both just scrolling walls of text).

Resolved now. Posting somewhere about it always solves a problem before anyone has a chance to find out what’s really wrong.